A quick trip out of town can be just as interesting and less costly than catching a flight to a far-flung location.
Head south along I-75 and in 200 miles you will arrive in Southwest Ohio and the Cincinnati area. In addition to dining and sports, Cincinnati offers plenty of attractions for both individuals and families.
The Queen City is home to Ohio’s American Sign Museum, where visitor Danny Dienger exclaimed, “It’s blown me away.”
More than 800 illuminated signs, once seen along Ohio’s streets and highways, now offer visitors a nostalgic experience. “The museum is an amazing collection. When they all come together and you see them, it becomes just this wonderful kind of joyous moment of getting lost in history and nostalgia,” said museum director of engagement and education, Erin Holland.
Among the collection is a 1963 McDonald’s sign saved from the scrap pile. A smiling figure wearing a cook’s hat continuously points to the price of 15 cent hamburgers. A full-size, old-style “Holiday Inn” sign welcomes visitors along with neon signs from Howard Johnson’s, Frisch’s Big Boy and Sohio.
“We cover all of it,” Holland explained. “We go back to hand painted and handcrafted signs up through plastic through a wide wash of these materials that all went into making a sign. You can see how the signs evolve as we get new materials and technologies.” Guests stroll through a “Main Street” replica of storefronts with emblems hand painted by artists from across the USA and Canada. Dienger was impressed, “What surprised me is how big and how they got it in here, honestly. I mean this is massive stuff.”
15 minutes from the American Sign Museum is a beautiful, historic and treasured art deco building. Union Terminal, built in 1933, is now home to three museums and a five-story theatre. But the Cincinnati Museum Center didn’t happen easily. The former train station near Interstate 75 closed in 1972. For a brief period, it was converted into a shopping center. After much debate and discussion, a decision was made to transform the 500,000- square-foot building into a multi-museum facility.
The Museum of Natural History & Science, Cincinnati History Museum and Children’s Museum span the complex. Each museum provides exhibits, education, information and entertainment for a range of ages and interests. “We have mammoth and mastodons on display. We have a re-creation of what that space might have looked like during the Ice Age,” said Cody Heffner, Vice President of Communications. “Neil Armstrong is a native son of Northwest Ohio. He donated a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission to the museum center. So that’s on display…plus a replica of his spacesuit.” It is the only place in the world with a Torosaurus on display. Science demonstrations thrill young and old while the Children’s Museum highlights interactive experiences and educates them through play.
The history museum offers a birds-eye view of downtown Cincinnati in the 1940s, complete with intricate model buildings and S-scale trains transporting patrons to a bygone era. “It’s very fascinating, very visual and beautiful to see. We also have an area called the Public Landing that is a recreation of the riverfront in the 1850s, complete with cobblestone streets and a steamboat you can actually walk on.”
The area where passengers used to board trains is now a giant Omnimax Theater. It features a domed screen with ultramodern sound. Heffner explained, “When you see a film in it, it’s in front of you, above you, on each side of you. It’s just this wonderful immersive experience in space films, underwater films or ocean films that look incredible.”
Volunteer Rita Reinfelder greets visitors entering at the front of the spectacular atrium. “We have tour buses come through here and a lot of school groups come through. One day we had 1,000 people.” More than 1.8 million visitors flock to the center annually.
The Holocaust and Humanity Center presents stories of Ohio’s Holocaust survivors. “It’s not just about what they experience, what they lived through and what they lost,” said Heffner. “But the lessons to take away from that, how to be an upstander, how to have the courage to speak up when you see something wrong.”
Our neighbors living near the Ohio-Kentucky border have much to offer. Just two minutes from downtown Cincinnati over the bridge to Kentucky sits the Newport Aquarium. Visitors will find all manner of creatures including an unusual white alligator, sharks, Penguins and rays.
Plan to spend at least half a day at the Cincinnati Museum Center, at least two to three hours at American Sign Museum and guests can spend a full afternoon at the Newport Aquarium. All the organizations have full ticketing and visitor information posted on their websites.
