Just Askin': Cincinnati has hundreds of public stairways. Which one is the longest?

Erin Couch, Cincinnati Enquirer
Updated ·2 min read

Editor's note: The year the Main Street Incline opened has been corrected.

The Enquirer's Just Askin' series aims to answer the questions that no one seems to have an answer for, not even Google.

One of Cincinnati's many quirks is our presence of public stairways and alleys.

According to the Cincinnati Preservation Association, almost 400 sets of hillside stairways are scattered throughout the city. About 320 are still currently available for public use.

View looking south from Mount Auburn down the Main Street Steps to Over-the-Rhine, pictured, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Cincinnati. The stairs are the longest in Cincinnati, connecting five streets and the neighborhoods of Mount Auburn and Over-the-Rhine.
View looking south from Mount Auburn down the Main Street Steps to Over-the-Rhine, pictured, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Cincinnati. The stairs are the longest in Cincinnati, connecting five streets and the neighborhoods of Mount Auburn and Over-the-Rhine.

At the height of their use in the 19th century, over 30 miles of hillside steps at one time connected the neighborhoods of Cincinnati. To this day, the city is still tasked with maintaining all those steps, though they have some help from local advocates wanting to preserve local history.

What is the longest one?

What is the longest public stairway in Cincinnati?

The Main Street Steps in Mount Auburn is the longest public stairway in Cincinnati. It connects five streets and two neighborhoods.

The stairway starts at the dead end of Eleanor Place in Mount Auburn and continues southward in four segments, intersecting Dorsey, Goethe, Seitz and Mulberry Streets. It ends on the portion of Main Street that serves as a dividing line between the Mount Auburn and Over-the-Rhine neighborhoods.

Christian Huelsman, founder of Spring in Our Steps, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and beautifying the stairways of Cincinnati will tell you these steps have an especially significant history.

The Main Street Steps are the longest stairs in Cincinnati connecting five streets and the neighborhoods of Mount Auburn and Over-the-Rhine, pictured, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Cincinnati.
The Main Street Steps are the longest stairs in Cincinnati connecting five streets and the neighborhoods of Mount Auburn and Over-the-Rhine, pictured, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Cincinnati.

Built in 1908, the entire stairway is comprised of 354 steps. It was the first concrete stairway in the city and was the longest in the U.S. at the time.

The stairs are located at the site of the first rail incline in Cincinnati. The city began installing rail inclines to neighborhoods on hilltops, where typically only the wealthy could traverse by carriage. When the Main Street Incline opened in 1872, The Enquirer declared the hilltops were "no longer inaccessible" to common folk.

Also notable, according to Huelsman, is the reversal of a petition to close another Mount Auburn site, the Wendell Alley Steps. In the 1990s a resident petition shuttered the stairway to the public. But Spring in Our Steps reopened it with its own petition in 2021.

"That's resulted in renewed interest in taking care of them," he said.

Spring in Our Steps has conducted more than 200 projects since it was founded in 2012. Clean-up events have garnered volunteers and advocates, raising awareness of the city's public alleys and stairways.

Do you have a question for Just Askin'? Send it to us at cinlocalnews@enquirer.com.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati stairways: Which one is the longest?