Hamilton County Steeples, Streets & Steps
103 church steeples plus 36 of Cincinnati’s public step-streets and historic hillside byways across Hamilton County, on live satellite or topographic imagery. Tap any pin for a full info sheet — history, dates, height or step count, and notable features. Filter by region or type and check off each one as you visit.
Building on Caroline Williams
The idea here isn’t new. Sixty years ago a Cincinnati artist was already cataloging the same city by hand — and this guide picks that work up with 21st-century tools.
From 1932 to 1979, Caroline Williams (1908–1988) drew “A Spot in Cincinnati” for The Cincinnati Enquirer — weekly pen-and-ink sketches of the city’s steeples, streets, and step-streets, each paired with history she researched herself. She wasn’t inventing reverence for the skyline; she was recording it in detail, one block at a time.
In 1962 she gathered the steeple drawings into Cincinnati — Steeples, Streets and Steps, hand-set and hand-printed on her own Penandhoe Press in Burlington, Kentucky. The title named the city’s defining character — the hilltop spires, the winding streets, the public step-streets — the same terrain this map’s topographic layer traces.
Same subjects, today’s tools — GPS, an interactive map, aerial video — and room to keep adding the ones she never got to.