The Emery Theatre is finally on its way back. After years of dormancy, the 100-year-old Over-the-Rhine venue is in the midst of a restoration that will allow artistic endeavors of varying stripes to grace its stage.

The Emery Center Corporation Board and The Requiem Project — the nonprofit brainchild of Tara Lindsey Gordon and Cincinnati native Tina Manchise, a duo intent on restoring the Emery's historic legacy — announced over the weekend that the Emery has secured two architects to take on the renovation: locally based John Senhauser Architects, and Cleveland-based Westlake Reed Leskosky, a firm that specializes in opening closed arts venues.

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BuzzFeed, the viral video and pop culture aggregate, loves lists. And Cincinnati has been mentioned in at least two of their “random number funny sentence” list posts this past week.

First, it’s always best to start with dessert … and chili. BuzzFeed contributor and former Cincinnatian Donna Dickens makes a list of all of her favorite Cincinnati foods that are better than food from other cities, claiming, “The worst part about moving away from Cincy is leaving behind this regional feast.”

Included on the list? Graeter’s ice cream, Skyline chili (sorry, Gold Star), Izzy’s giant rueben, Busken cookies, Glier’s Goetta, LaRosa’s, Montgomery Inn sauce and the unnaturally blue, unnaturally delicious, formerly Smurffy blueberry soft serve from King’s Island.

For those of us less interested in praising our meat products (although perhaps we should since they aren’t full of horse), can praise the beautiful history of our public library.

Listed at #28 on the 30 best places to be if you love books list, which includes Shakespeare and Company in Paris as well as the Oxford Union Library, is an image of the Cincinnati Public Library looking as most of us have never seen it — in black and white, yes, but also from its original location, “Old Main,” at 629 Vine Street. With stories and stories of shelves and shelves of books, each with a small catwalk, the expanse and whimsy of this literary wonderland is fantastic. (And really makes you wish it was still there.)

According the Main Library’s flickr page (where you can find more images of the original library location): 

“The Main Library has occupied a prominent position in downtown Cincinnati since 1874, when a new building was constructed at 629 Vine Street. Considered the most magnificent public library building in the country at the time, ‘Old Main’ featured one element similar to today’s library: a towering atrium with a skylight ceiling. Of the dramatic atrium, Harpers Weekly said, ‘The first impression made upon the mind on entering this hall is the immense capacity for storing books in its five tiers of alcoves, and then the eye is attracted and gratified by its graceful and carefully studied architecture.’ The building closed in 1955, when the ‘New Main Library,’ located at 800 Vine Street, opened.”

Find more historic photos of Cincinnati and learn more about the history of our library on the virtual library Facebook page.