The temptation to linger is strong at Betts House, where Barbara and David Day’s gently colored pen-and-ink-drawings are on view through April 23 in the exhibition Vanishing Cincinnati. Some of the scenes, like Crosley Field and the Albee Theater, already are gone, but we are prompted by the drawings to look again at those remaining. Pendleton House, built in 1870, is shown on its hilltop with the modern city behind it (although not Cincinnati’s tiara-ed latest addition) and City Hall appears in all its Romanesque resplendence. Findlay Market, Fountain Square and Music Hall in earlier states are also on view.
The Days, whose design studio high in the Pendleton Studio building looks out over the very area seen in many of these drawings, are themselves fourth- and fifth-generation Cincinnatians. The drawings are an offshoot of their historic architectural restoration work but have become a window to the city we know and the city remembered. Betts House, Ohio’s oldest brick house, is at 416 Clark St. in Over-the-Rhine, two blocks west of Music Hall.
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