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Cincinnati’s Nightlife Was Illuminated by Flaming Gas, and It Wasn’t Natural at All - Cincinnati Magazine.At nighttime, Cincinnati shines like a jewel these days, with lights and lamps of all sorts.A panoply of neon, incandescent, LED, and fluorescent sources spray photons in a dazzling array.Electricity, however, has only dominated the past century or so of our city’s history.Before 1900, when Cincinnati’s nightlife was legendary, every single source of illumination involved some sort of flame.It took a long time for Cincinnati to adopt electricity on any substantial scale.For one thing, it took a long time for the city to adopt a standard electrical distribution system.Before 1910, if you wanted electricity in your house or business, you had to install your own generator.Some of the first Cincinnatians to buy generators were saloonkeepers.In his wonderful book, Pioneers of Night Life on Vine Street, Frank Y.Grayson describes one of the first electric signs in Cincinnati: “The first electric light sign caused a lot of enthusiasm.Of course it had to be swung from the northern exposure of a saloon.Wasn’t many other kinds of places on Vine Street to display one in those days.Before then perforated gas pipes formed into letters sufficed.Sometimes the wind blew out the gas, but Vine Street could not be asphyxiated.People wanted to know what made the new lamps burn, and there was always a wise guy around who would tell them it was air combustion.Used to see throngs of aimless mutts rubbering up at that sign, wondering what made it go.” Stop right there and back up a bit.Is Grayson saying that Cincinnati once had signs that were essentially just copper pipe leaking flammable gas?Yes, he was.The American Gas Light Journal of Oct.2, 1905 describes just such a sign: “Then the letters are properly shaped over forms and each letter is secured to its proper position in the design to make the sign read as desired.Then comes the boring for the jets.Sometimes tips are put in, but in many cases the tips are not used and the escaping gases are lighted on the pipe surfaces direct.This results in a serial line of many little gas jets, which when all burning in line, present an attractive appearance.” Remember, these were the days when almost everybody smoked, and every Cincinnati saloon had cigar-puffing patrons standing within feet of signs pumping out flammable gas.As with electricity, Cincinnati had yet to standardize gas distribution.Before 1909, Cincinnati did not pump natural gas throughout the city.Instead, Cincinnatians burned a manufactured gas known as “town gas.” Town gas, also known as “coal gas,” was manufactured by heating coal and siphoning off the resultant gases.The coal turned into coke, and the town gas was pumped throughout the city.Town gas lit Cincinnati’s streetlamps as early as 1840.What we now know as Duke Energy and previously as Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company started out as the Cincinnati Gas, Light & Coke Company.Town gas, it must be admitted, was poisonous.Unlike natural gas, which is mostly methane and burns to produce carbon dioxide and water, town gas consists of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in roughly equal quantities.Although Cincinnati was introduced to electric signs as early as 1895 when the Walnut Street Opera House installed one, for something like 15 years, gas-powered signs coexisted side-by-side with electrical signs.By 1910, the completion of an electrical grid and the brighter appearance of electrical signage saw the decline of gas signs.The first electric signs were arrays of light bulbs, lots of light bulbs.One Cincinnati department store bragged that its electric sign contained more than 500 light bulbs.For many people, however, gas flames offered a charming radiance unknown to incandescent light bulbs.The Illuminating Engineer, a magazine for lighting experts, had this to say in 1909: “We are familiar with types of gas-lighted signs which are made of metal pipework, out of which the gas issues by numerous small orifices.Such designs have frequently been employed for festive occasions in the streets, and the trembling gas flames have sometimes a certain decorative value which is claimed to be less readily obtained by a steady unwavering light, such as is furnished by electric glow lamps.” Until electricity took over, gas-lighted signs were common, and often achieved breath-taking size for special occasions.When Cincinnati celebrated the centennial of the United States in 1876, the Cincinnati Times raved about a thirty-foot eagle, blazing with gas jets, stretching across Plum Street in front of the Cincinnati Gas, Light & Coke offices.Gas-lit eagles were apparently popular in old Cincinnati, because the Gibson House Hotel brought one out to mark Cincinnati’s grand Industrial Exposition in 1879.According to the Cincinnati Star [September 10, 1879]: “The Gibson House, as usual, on occasions of this kind, has hanging from each window a national streamer and a wreath of evergreen.In addition to this the building is covered by flags of all nations, and the perforated gas-pipe eagle has again been put in position over the front entrance.” The headquarters of Cincinnati’s Democratic Party was the Duckworth Club on Seventh Street.The Enquirer [November 26, 1893] reported on decorations installed by the club to attract a crowd on the night they elected officers: “Above the entrance was displayed a brilliant gas sign that could be seen for squares, attracting the straying ‘Duck’ from afar.” Town gas was not the only flammable option.Because town gas was expensive, many shops and saloons fueled their gas signs using carbide to produce acetylene, or even hydrogen gas supplied in tanks.On Fountain Square, during the 1876 Centennial, the Genius of Waters fountain was bathed in limelight, with colored shades transforming the cascading streams into ribbons of red and gold.Limelight – commonly employed to illuminate theatrical stages – is created by heating a cylinder of calcium oxide, known as quicklime, in a flame of hydrogen and oxygen.The effect produced by all these open flames must have been breathtaking.The morning after Cincinnati’s grand Centennial celebration on July 4, 1876, the Cincinnati Times reported general satisfaction with the gas-powered flaming displays throughout the downtown and recorded a specific appraisal: “A gentleman standing near the Lookout House, last night, watching the great roaring, blazing city, with its strange sounds and weird lights in the darkness below, remarked, ‘It is like the day of judgement!’” Your proprietor has it on good authority, from a retired Duke Energy employee, that many signs still connected to gas lines were removed from buildings downtown and Over-the-Rhine in the 1970s and 1980s.