1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (67 page)

C
AMP
W
ASHINGTON
C
HILI
: Tel 513–541-0061;
www.campwashingtonchili.com
.
Cost:
$4.50 for a five-way.
OKTOBERFEST
-Z
INZINNATI
:
www.oktoberfest-zinzinnati.com
.
When:
3rd full weekend in Sept.

April Flowers Bring May Choirs

Cincinnati, Ohio

Winston Churchill reportedly called it America’s most beautiful inland city, and in spring it’s hard to argue: Cincinnati celebrates the season appropriately, in bloom and in song. In late April, the city hosts the
Cincinnati Flower Show, the only exhibition of its kind on the continent endorsed by Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society, the plantsman’s Vatican. Produced by the Cincinnati Horticultural Society on the banks of Lake Como at Coney Island amusement park, it’s fashion week for the horticulture set: Breeders unveil new specimens and the air is abuzz with talk of the latest trends and new colors.

Visions of Eden in miniature are everywhere in dozens of theme gardens, including single-genus displays devoted to specific plants such as hostas and geraniums. A show-within-a-show gives amateur gardeners an opportunity to strut their stuff, and other exhibits feature exquisite floral arrangements, table settings, and plants in interior design. The nine-day schedule is jam-packed, with an opening gala, lectures, teas, classes, and the “Spring Fling,” a huge do for Cincinnati party people.

With trees, shrubs, and blooming plants, the Cincinnati Flower Show bursts with dozens of glorious gardens and plant collections.

The city welcomes visitors again a month later, to the Cincinnati May Festival, the oldest continuously held choral festival in the Western Hemisphere. Established in 1873, the festival grew out of Cincinnati’s Saengerfests, gatherings of German singing societies from around the region. Historic Music Hall, one of the country’s oldest and largest concert venues, was built to house the event five years later. The May Festival Chorus was founded in 1880, and the illustrious Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra became part of the festival not long after its formation in 1895. Premieres have long been a staple—Edward Elgar conducted the first American performance of his
Dream of Gerontius
here in 1906—and today the May Festival has few peers when it comes to presenting large-scale choral and orchestral works featuring world-class performers and soloists. The two consecutive weekends of concerts at Music Hall attract music lovers from all over the world.

C
INCINNATI
F
LOWER
S
HOW
: 6201 Kellogg Ave. Tel 800–670-6808 or 513–872-5194;
www.cincyflowershow.com
.
Cost:
$20.
When:
9 days in late Apr.
C
INCINNATI
M
AY
F
ESTIVAL
: Music Hall, 1241 Elm St. Tel 513–621-1919;
www.mayfestival.com
.
Cost:
single concert $15.
When:
5 days over the last 2 weekends in May.
W
HERE TO
S
TAY
: Cincinnatian Hotel, tel 800–942-9000 or 513–381-3000;
www.cincinnatianhotel.com
.
Cost:
from $165 (off-peak); from $225 (peak).

Museum in the Promised Land

Cincinnati, Ohio

The Roebling Suspension Bridge over the narrow Ohio River, built in 1867 as a handsome prelude to Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge, spans the two states of Kentucky and Ohio that used to represent two worlds, slave and free
. Today it points north directly at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, which opened just steps away in 2004 to commemorate the slaves—as many as 100,000—who fled north across the river to safety in the decades leading up to the American Civil War, and the network of abolitionists, former slaves, and others who helped them. The location is powerfully symbolic: The Ohio was likened to the River Jordan in those days, and Cincinnati, with a large African American population in the abolitionist state of Ohio, was one of the most important cities in the Promised Land.

Designed by the late Indianapolis architect Walter Blackburn, the grandson of slaves, the Freedom Center is a bold, technologically advanced work of architecture. The museum’s most imposing and haunting artifact is a two-story slave trader’s pen, built in 1830, that used to stand on a farm in Kentucky where men, women, and children would be held in shackles for days or even months at a time before auctions. Also on display are such items as wanted posters, abolitionists’ diaries, and a replica of the wooden crate that Henry “Box” Brown, a burly 200-pound escaped slave, used to mail himself from Virginia to freedom in Pennsylvania. Another gallery tells the stories of central figures in the Underground Railroad, and an inspirational film,
Brothers of the Borderland,
plays in one of two theaters. There are tributes to Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave herself and “underground railroad conductor,” who would return to the south 19 times to help more than 300 others escape.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s three pavilions represent courage, cooperation, and perseverance.

Part of the center’s mission is to promote the same kind of awareness and activism that animated the antislavery forces before the Civil War. To that end it also includes interactive exhibits on contemporary themes. Finally, there is a Family Search center with names of more than 480,000 freed slaves, allowing visitors to trace their roots and hopefully understand better from where and from whom they come.

W
HERE
: 50 East Freedom Way. Tel 877–648-4838 or 513–333-7500;
www.freedomcenter.org
.
When:
closed Mon.

High Culture and Horticulture in an Oasis of Learning

Cleveland, Ohio

Ashort drive east of downtown Cleveland, University Circle is one of the brainiest, artsiest, most culturally connected of all university districts: The square mile surrounding prestigious Case Western Reserve University
and the adjacent Wade Park is home to dozens of world-class institutions including schools, museums, a hospital, and performing arts venues. At the heart of University Circle’s refined setting is a true gem, the Cleveland Museum of Art. In the midst of a five-year, quarter-billion-dollar renovation and expansion (and only partially open until projected completion in 2010), it is one of the country’s top-drawer repositories of art and culture.

What began with the modest first acquisition of an embroidered lace collar in 1914 has grown into a renowned 40,000-piece collection of uncommon depth and breadth. On the front steps is a large cast of Rodin’s
The Thinker,
damaged by a pipe bomb in 1970 and left unrestored. Inside the vast beaux arts building are scores of galleries featuring 6,000 years of art from around the world, including especially fine Asian and pre-Columbian collections; Egyptian pieces acquired by Howard Carter, an agent for the museum who later went on to discover King Tut’s tomb in 1922; and a medieval Armor Court bristling with all manner of weapons, a particular favorite of young visitors. Among the European and American works are objects from the famous collection of medieval German relics known as the Guelph Treasure; decorative arts by the likes of Louis Comfort Tiffany; and masterpieces from such revered painters as Nicolas Poussin (
The Holy Family on the Steps
) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (
Burning of the Houses of Parliament
).

Spring, with its resplendent blooms, is especially lovely at the Cleveland Botanical Garden.

Across the street from this temple of man-made art is the Cleveland Botanical Garden, which, in 2003, opened its spectacular 18,000-square-foot Glasshouse, where you can experience two captivating and wildly different environments. One, devoted to the otherworldly spiny desert of Madagascar, features North America’s largest collection of baobabs, along with myriad wondrous, endangered plants indigenous to the remote ecologically rich island of Madagascar; the other, a re-creation of a Costa Rican cloud forest, has more than 20 species of butterflies sharing the air with colorful birds, and a 25-foot-high canopy walk that offers lofty views of the lush greenery below. Gardens in many styles cover 10 acres outside the Glasshouse, including one of the nation’s finest public herb gardens,
with more than 4,000 plants representing some 300 species, and the hands-on Hershey Children’s Garden, which offers such kid-friendly trappings as a tree house, dwarf forests, and the much-loved worm bins.

C
LEVELAND
M
USEUM OF
A
RT
: 11150 East Blvd. Tel 216–421-7640;
www.clevelandart.org
.
When:
closed Mon.
C
LEVELAND
B
OTANICAL
G
ARDEN
: 11030 East Blvd. Tel 888–853-7091 or 216–721-1600;
www.cbgarden.org
.
When:
daily, Nov–Mar; closed Mon, Apr–Oct.
B
EST TIMES
: spring for blooms; Christmastime for decorations at the Botanical Garden.

Alive with the Sound of Music

Cleveland, Ohio

I. M. Pei admitted to knowing little about the music in question when he was chosen to design Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the shores of Lake Erie. After a bit of remedial listening he set out to create a building that
would embody rock’s brash dynamism, and came up with a seven-story set of architectural power chords incorporating several of his signature elements: cantilevered spaces, angular masses clad in stark white tile, and a vast, pyramidlike glass atrium. It is the ideal home for the living heritage of rock and a bold showcase for a music genre that continues to impact our global culture—and a visit here guarantees a pretty fun afternoon as well.

Exhibits and interactive hands-on displays, many with sound and thought-provoking videos and films, pay tribute to the music, and the people behind it: performers, songwriters, disc jockeys, producers, and others. The permanent collection contains more than 100,000 artifacts in dizzying variety—thousands of instruments and stage costumes from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Iggy Pop, naturally, but also loads of less obvious items from quirky to poignant, such as Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout uniform and Elvis Presley’s draft card. Janis Joplin’s 1965 Porsche and ZZ Top’s 1934 Ford coupe, the Eliminator, are on display, and there are even school report cards for John Lennon, James Taylor, the Everly Brothers, and legendary drummer Keith Moon of The Who (“shows promise in music”).