West Fourth Street Historic District

West Fourth Street Historic District is a compact group of late 19th century commercial and apartment buildings in downtown Cincinnati, centered on West Fourth Street and Plum Street. Most of the three- to seven-story buildings went up between 1879 and 1890, in Italianate, Renaissance and related styles, using cut stone, brick, cast iron and tin cornices. Anchoring the district is the 1870 Cincinnati Gas, Light and Coke Company Building, designed by James W. McLaughlin, which visually ties Fourth Street to Plum. The area grew as a lower-rent fringe of the central business district, housing millinery shops, insurance offices, banks, furniture makers and apartment houses such as the Lombardy and the Biltmore. It also benefited from its closeness to the Grand Central railroad depot. Expressways and redevelopment later removed similar nearby structures, leaving this streetscape as the last intact section of its kind in the central business district. Condition varies, but commercial activity continues and rehabilitation efforts were under way when it was listed.