I recently had the opportunity to do one of my favorite things: tour old, empty spaces.

I love old buildings, whether they be homes, warehouses, hotels, storefronts, whatever. I love them all. Cincinnati being one of the older “big” cities in America is chock full of old buildings, many of them concentrated in the old outposts on the major arteries of the city.

A pretty great guy I know that has a pretty great web magazine also has a pretty spectacular 115 year-old building in Lockland, Ohio, a once-thriving hub of industry and commerce in the center of what is now the greater-Cincinnati area. When the building was a dump and we walked through it for the first time, I fell in love with it. I saw the possibility, but also the past glory & grandeur of the place. That it has a beautiful 3rd floor ballroom with stage, in addition to a secret whorehouse and parlor is also super badass.

The buildings I toured today were in Pleasant Ridge, my neighborhood and my home. In my capacity as a member of the PR Development Corporation and as a general good-will ambassador, I was showing around a local chef & restaurateur who is interested in setting up his new concept in the community. He’s a cool guy with a cool wife and he loves funk & soul 45s, beer and charcuterie. He pretty much rules.

One of the buildings we went through is my favorite in the neighborhood. It previously housed an art glass design firm that actually created my front door, oh, some 15 or 20 years ago. I have no idea what was in it before that, but I know it was originally, some 130-some years ago, an inn or large boarding house on the turnpike that would become Montgomery Road. It saw a lot of traffic, and at 8 miles from downtown, was an ideal resting point for people on their way into Cincinnati from the outlying towns to the northeast, or travelers from as far away as Columbus or Cleveland.

The basement was straight out of the sewer scene in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, just without the rats and the petroleum and the ossuary and the very dead knight.

I love the building. It has a grand staircase that splits at a landing and heads in opposite directions to a balcony on the second floor that over looks the main entrance. It has the original decorative tin ceilings, as do many of the buildings in Pleasant Ridge and elsewhre throughout the city. If time & money were no factor, I’d spend 2 years and up to $1,000,000 renovating that building – I love it that much (the corner building here, or here, if you’re interested in buying it).  But if Ifs and Buts were Candy and Nuts we’d have Christmas all year ’round.

So, tonight I was cruising the interwebz, trying to take my mind off how much I want Walt Jocketty to send Nick Masset to Louisville (or Siberia) to get his head straight, when I stumbled upon Lynnewood Hall. I discovered that it was one of the truly great homes of America in the late 19th and early 20th century, built by an Philadelphia industry magnate and lawyer, and home to pretty much his whole family. They were great patrons and collectors of art, and even commissioned Henri-Leon Greber (the man who redesigned the Parisian suburbs)

And reading the saga of the property, and how it over the years fell into the hands of the culturally insensitive and generally tasteless… Well, it just broke my heart.

Listen: crazy people with lots of money build big beautiful homes (and big awful ugly homes) all the time. They’re doing it right now. But nobody did it like the Robber Barons of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age and the Roaring ’20s. Nobody. For about 50 years in America, from 1875 to 1930, the ridiculously wealthy had one of the greatest architectural stretches of Keeping-Up-With-The-Joneses the world has ever known.

Biltmore, Lynnewood Hall, Eastman House, Harbor Hill, the Breakers, Whitemarsh Hall, Hearst Castle… These places were ridiculous and awesome and beautiful, monuments to excess or greatness or overwrought taste or whatever other labels you want to attach. They are all of those things. They are transcendent.

They tell stories of socio-economic disparity, of race relations, of politics, culture and art. They paint a picture of a bygone era when entertainment encompassed an entire weekend of food, drink, games, conversation, music and conviviality among your peers. Some of these homes are still standing; others, like Harbor Hill and Whitemarsh and Lynnewood, are either gone or deteriorating.

Regardless, they were the culmination of a vision that harnessed thousands of man-hours of genuine craftsmanship in their flawless execution. Whether then or now, I love seeing that in America. I wish I could see more of it.

PS – That these houses were populated by rich white people, longing to show the world just how cool they were, and who usually exploited the poor and minorities for financial gain is a discussion for another day. I can just hear my good friend Mr. D. perched on my shoulder saying, “Hey, that’s capitalism. You don’t like it? Move somewhere else. This is America. Don’t hate them because they’re rich.”

PPS – Interestingly, what I found myself looking for as I went through all these blueprints and designs was the location of the kitchen (too frequently in the basement or “downstairs” of the house). And the farming / cooking / baking / cellaring operations these places had was just unreal. What I would give to have just a peak at what those processes looked like 100 years ago…