Mount Adams Public School, a registered historic building in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the schoolhouse in front of you. This is a place that carries official recognition: the building was listed in the National Register on November 24, 1980. Imagine the years just before that recognition, when from 1973 to 1975 this very building served as the first home of the School for Creative and Performing Arts — a formative, transitional moment in its life.
As you stand here, you are close to layers of civic memory: an ordinary schoolhouse that would come to hold an institution devoted to creativity and performance, and later be honored on the National Register. Listen for the quiet echoes of classrooms and rehearsals, and allow the dates you now know — 1973 to 1975, and that November day in 1980 — to give shape to the place beneath your feet. Between 1973 and 1975, and then again in 1980, this building earned its place in Mount Adams' civic memory, its classrooms now quiet behind you.