5 buildings worth visiting at SMPS HRC in Cincinnati

I’m heading to Cincinnati for the 2026 Heartland Regional Conference of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) from September 30 to October 2. This is OpenAsset’s second year as an SMPS Strategic Partner+. This year we’re also the conference’s Grand Deco Sponsor, so I’m excited to talk to the firms and industry experts in the exhibit hall all three days!

From experience, it’s easy to spend a whole conference talking shop and never see the city, and for people in our industry, the city is the best part. So I put together a list of buildings worth seeing between sessions. If you’re staying at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, all five of these are walkable.

One practical note: the Connector streetcar is free to ride. It runs a loop between the riverfront and Findlay Market, with a stop at Fountain Square two blocks from the hotel, and it stops right next to two of the places below. On weekdays it runs from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.

1. Ingalls Building

6 E 4th St (~4-minute walk)

The Ingalls Building went up in 1903 to a design by Cincinnati architects Elzner & Anderson with engineer Henry N. Hooper. It’s generally credited as the world’s first reinforced-concrete skyscraper. It’s 16 stories, built at a time when the tallest reinforced-concrete building anywhere was six.

Melville E. Ingalls, the financier it’s named for, spent two years convincing the city to issue a permit. Legend has it that a reporter stayed up all night waiting for it to fall down once the supports came off. 

Since 2021, it’s been the Courtyard by Marriott Cincinnati Downtown, so you can walk into the lobby and look up at the restored ceiling. The fitness room is in the old bank vault.

By Warren LeMay from Cincinnati, OH, United States – Ingalls Building, Cincinnati, OH, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79350545

2. Contemporary Arts Center

44 E 6th St (~6-minute walk)

The Contemporary Arts Center lives in the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, which opened in May 2003 as Zaha Hadid’s first building in the United States and the first American art museum designed by a woman.

Her big idea here is the “urban carpet.” The sidewalk at the corner of Sixth and Walnut curves up into the lobby floor and rises to become the back wall. Above it, the galleries stack up like interlocking concrete boxes.

The galleries are open until 5 p.m. on Wednesday and 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and admission is $12. Through October 1 the Creativity Center and the Collective Gallery are free while new shows go in, so expect a gallery or two to be closed.

If you only have 10 minutes, the lobby opens at 7 a.m. on weekdays, and “Gravity’s Rainbow,” a floating installation by the New York design studio SOFTlab, hangs in it through October 31. The Contemporary Arts Center is about a 6-minute walk from the Ingalls Building, so do the two together.

By EEJCC – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98465794

3. Cincinnati City Hall

801 Plum St (~11-minute walk)

Cincinnati City Hall opened in May 1893. Architect Samuel Hannaford designed it in Richardsonian Romanesque, which means rough stone and big round arches, with a nine-story clock tower, stone from four states, and marble from Italy and Tennessee. It cost $1.61 million.

Two things to look for. From the sidewalk, the windows get smaller as the building rises, which makes the tower read taller than it is. Inside, the stair landings at the Plum Street end carry stained glass windows telling Cincinnati’s early history, including Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer-general the city is named for.

City Hall is open to the public on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and guided tours need two weeks’ notice. Step inside during business hours and ask to see the staircase windows. It’s a few blocks from Elm Street Plaza, where Wednesday’s Welcome Reception is.

By Greg5030 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17984457

4. Over-the-Rhine at 12th and Vine

12th St and Vine St (~15-minute walk, or take the streetcar to the 12th & Vine stop)

This stop is a whole block of buildings. Over-the-Rhine holds one of the largest collections of 19th-century Italianate architecture in the country. Most of it was built by German immigrants between 1865 and the 1880s, and the neighborhood joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

12th and Vine is where the restoration started. Since 2003, the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) has restored more than 200 buildings and built 49 new ones south of Liberty Street, starting with the blocks of Vine north of this corner.

What to look for: tall narrow windows, heavy bracketed cornices, decorative hoods over the windows, and cast-iron storefronts at street level. Over-the-Rhine has great restaurants nearby, so if you end up here for dinner, look up between courses.

Wholtone, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

5. Cincinnati Music Hall

1241 Elm St (~17-minute walk from the hotel, or ~7 minutes from 12th and Vine)

Cincinnati Music Hall opened on May 14, 1878. Samuel Hannaford designed this one too, 15 years before City Hall and in a completely different style. It’s High Victorian Gothic: red brick, steep gables, and a rose window facing the park. Hannaford had range! It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1974.

In 2016, it closed for 14 months during a $143 million renovation. It then reopened in October 2017. Inside, rows of seats came out so the remaining ones could be wider, and Springer Auditorium now seats about 2,300 for a symphony concert. Outside, the black-brick banding Hannaford designed was restored, long-bricked-up windows were reopened, and the rose window was repainted its original color.

If you’re staying Friday night, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is here on October 2 at 7:30 p.m., billed as a Wynton Marsalis premiere paired with Bruch’s Violin Concerto. The best view is from Washington Park, which is also where the streetcar picks you up for the ride back.

By Larsonj3 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66012216

See you in Cincinnati!

Every event I do for OpenAsset teaches me a new city. I spend most of my time talking with architecture, engineering, and construction firms about how our digital asset management and AI proposal platform helps them win work, so it’s a treat to see what gets built once the work is won.

I hope you make some extra time in your schedule to see a few of these while you’re in town. And if you want to compare notes on them in person, we’re hosting the Mix & Mingle on Thursday, October 1, from 5 to 6 p.m., right after the last breakout session. I’ll be at our booth the rest of the week too.

If you can’t make it to Cincinnati, you can always book a demo, or follow OpenAsset on LinkedIn to see what city we’ll be at next.

Enjoy Cincinnati!