Omni Netherlands Plaza Hotel
Completed in 1931 as the hotel component of the Carew Tower complex, the Netherlands Plaza brings French Art Deco to Cincinnati at a scale unusual outside Manhattan — its Hall of Mirrors ballroom one of the most intact Art Deco grand-hotel interiors in the United States.
At a glance
The Netherlands Plaza Hotel opened in 1931 as part of the Carew Tower mixed-use complex in downtown Cincinnati, combining an office tower, hotel, and retail arcade in the New York model of the integrated urban skyscraper. Designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager, the hotel occupies the lower floors of the complex along Fifth Street, its lobby and public rooms executed in a rich French Art Deco vocabulary of gilded ornament, inlaid marble, and bronze metalwork. The Carew Tower complex was designated a National Historic Landmark, and the hotel has been operated by Omni Hotels since the 1980s, undertaking restoration of its historic interiors. The Hall of Mirrors ballroom — its mirrored walls and Art Deco ceiling plasterwork largely intact — is among the finest surviving examples of grand hotel Deco design in the country.
Key facts
- Completed: 1931
- Architect: Walter W. Ahlschlager
- Address: 35 W Fifth Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202
- Style: French Art Deco
- Status: National Historic Landmark (as part of the Carew Tower complex); National Register of Historic Places
- Current use: Luxury hotel (Omni Hotels & Resorts)
- GPS: 39.1013°N, 84.5148°W
History
The Carew Tower complex was developed in the late 1920s during Cincinnati’s commercial building boom. The project combined a dominant office tower with a hotel and retail arcade on the lower floors, following the New York formula of the mixed-use skyscraper complex that had proven commercially successful in projects like the Waldorf Astoria and Rockefeller Center. The architect Walter W. Ahlschlager, a Chicago-based designer with hotel commissions across the Midwest, brought a French Art Deco vocabulary to the hotel’s public spaces that contrasted with the more restrained commercial aesthetic of the office tower above.
The Netherlands Plaza Hotel opened to considerable civic fanfare in 1931, at the beginning of the Depression. Its public rooms — the lobby, the Hall of Mirrors ballroom, the Palm Court, the restaurants — represented a level of material and decorative ambition unusual for a Midwestern city of Cincinnati’s scale. The hotel served as the city’s principal venue for civic gatherings, political events, and social functions through the mid-twentieth century.
By the 1970s, downtown Cincinnati’s economic decline had depleted the hotel’s occupancy and deferred maintenance on its historic interiors. The subsequent operation by Omni Hotels brought investment in both structural and decorative restoration, returning the Hall of Mirrors and the lobby metalwork to conditions closer to their original appearance and stabilizing the hotel’s position as Cincinnati’s flagship historic property.
What you see
The Fifth Street facade presents the hotel’s public identity: a base of polished stone with bronze-framed storefronts, an elaborate entry portal with gilded Art Deco ornament, and the transition to the office tower’s shaft above. The lobby is a double-height volume of considerable spatial ambition — inlaid marble floors, gilded plasterwork at the ceiling, bronze elevator surrounds, and concentrated ornament at the concierge desk and entry vestibule that identifies the space as French Art Deco rather than the more austere commercial Deco of the office floors.
The Hall of Mirrors ballroom, one floor above the lobby, is the building’s principal interior spectacle: full-length mirrored walls alternating with gilded pilasters, a coved ceiling with the original Art Deco plasterwork intact, and a parquet floor of inlaid wood in its 1931 configuration. The effect is of a compressed Parisian grand salle transplanted to the Ohio Valley — the mirrors multiplying the gilded ornament into a room that reads as much larger than its footprint and that retains, in afternoon light, a quality of material richness that no subsequent renovation has diminished.
Practical information
- Lobby and public areas: Accessible to hotel guests and visitors during business hours
- Hall of Mirrors: Viewable when not reserved for private events; check with hotel concierge
- Photography: Interior photography permitted in public areas; flash discouraged in the Hall of Mirrors
- Time needed: 30-45 minutes for a thorough circuit of the public rooms
- Carew Tower observation deck: Located in the adjoining office tower; Cincinnati’s highest public viewpoint (small fee)
Getting there
The Omni Netherlands Plaza is at 35 W Fifth Street in downtown Cincinnati, at the corner of Fifth Street and Race Street. The Cincinnati Streetcar (The Connector) stops within two blocks on Walnut Street. Several Metro bus routes serve the immediate area. Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is approximately 13 miles south via I-71/I-75; the drive to downtown takes 20-25 minutes. Parking is available in the adjacent Carew Tower garage and in multiple downtown structures within one block.
Nearby
- Carew Tower (1930) — the adjoining office tower; shared complex; observation deck accessible from inside
- Cincinnati Music Hall (1878, National Historic Landmark) — approximately 2 miles north
- Cincinnati Art Museum (Eden Park) — approximately 2.5 miles east
- John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge (1866) — approximately 0.5 miles south, connecting Cincinnati to Covington, Kentucky
Sources
- National Register of Historic Places nomination, Carew Tower and Netherlands Plaza Hotel, Cincinnati
- Omni Hotels and Resorts, property history documentation, Omni Netherlands Plaza
- Cincinnati Preservation Association, Carew Tower and Netherlands Plaza Hotel landmark record
- Historic American Buildings Survey, Carew Tower complex
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