Long before craft cocktails, speakeasies, or Dry January trends, this city was already writing its own rulebook. In fact, Cincinnati played a starring role in one of America’s most defiant chapters: Prohibition.

Looking more like a cathedral than a public library, the Old Main Public Library was ornate and magnificent in nature, four floors high.

A drawing of the passenger pigeon by John James Audubon (1785-1851). From the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library's Digital...