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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;James Conrad, post: 1216089, member: 5066&quot;]A word about Cincinnati, many people are not aware ( i know i wasn&#039;t) but by the 1830s Cincinnati was the preeminent city of the &quot;west&quot; both culturally and economically. It wasn&#039;t able to sustain it&#039;s star power however &amp; by the close of the 19th century, Chicago had firmly claimed this preeminent title.</p><p>A couple excerpts from a well sourced paper by Robert C Vise</p><p><a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/extras/0821415115_excerpt.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/extras/0821415115_excerpt.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.ohioswallow.com/extras/0821415115_excerpt.pdf</a></p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Founded in 1788 on a sweeping bend of the Ohio River, Cincinnati had become, by 1830 the leading economic and cultural center in the transAppalachian West.</p><p>Most important of the crafted items, from a commercial perspective, was furniture. Nearby hardwood forests supplied an abundance of oak, maple, poplar, walnut, and cherry, which craftsmen turned into cabinets, beds, chairs, and sofas. Perhaps the best evidence of the frontier village’s future as a furniture center is found in the 1795 advertisement for “a Journeyman or two, who understand Cabinet Making&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>. In 1841 Charles Cist, the city’s chief chronicler of the era, noted that</p><p>there were forty-eight cabinet-ware factories employing 384 workers, as well as eight bedstead manufacturers and eleven chair manufacturers where another 147 men worked.21 With machines taking over the rough cutting, manufacturers placed more emphasis on individually decorated pieces; the increased use of “[tree] forks and crotches, curls, warts, and other excrescences,” along with two veneering mills used for imported mahogany and local curled maple, reflect this developing attention to detail.22 Power machinery lightened the work in making the intricate scrolls and carvings so popular at the time, and large factories began to replace individual shops. Just before midcentury the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce proudly announced that “seven steam-powered establishments” annually produced over 4,000 bedsteads, 7,500 bureaus, 14,000 chairs, 1,500 sofas, and 3,500 card tables.23 It is difficult to compare production statistics from different cities or to assess the claims of urban boosters, but Cincinnati may have been the nation’s leading manufacturer of furniture in the period.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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