Cincinnaticum

"Shanty"

The Cincinnati Public Landing area before 1913, new 'Bethel' cupola on far left.

“The ‘Bethel’ was what the river roustabouts, the longshoremen, the deckhands come off the boats, as these made port here…called a “church boat”…It prospered. There, in what was then the roughest, toughest, more benighted and all-around forsaken section of the city, men whose every alternate word was a curse and whose angering meant a blow, or a knife-thrust, came, very quickly, to respect keenly the little band of sincere workers on the humble houseboat…It grew…The ‘Bethel’ bought a building…Every boat approaching Cincinnati from Louisville or from Pittsburgh, looked forward, as sailors use the term, to where the cupola on the roof marked port and the new ‘Bethel’.”
--Cincinnati Commercial-Tribune, November 11, 1928

Image: cincinnativiews.com