Some sources report that it was the city’s proud citizens themselves who first proclaimed their magnificent home “The Queen City” or the “Queen of the West.” Long before marketing slogans and organized chambers of commerce, the residents themselves decided their grand and glorious city was regal. By 1826, co-authors Benjamin Drake and Edward Mansfield referred to city as the “Queen of the West” in their book, Cincinnati. Then in 1854, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned "Catawba Wine," which memorialized Cincinnati’s vineyards. In the last stanza of his poem, he refers to Cincinnati as the “Queen of the West.”
In the years following, the Queen City was given many other monikers. As Cincinnati became famous as a pork packing center in the mid 1800s, it was often called “Porkopolis.” It had surpassed both Dublin and Belfast as the world’s primary pork packing centers and was chief supplier of salt pork to the British Navy. During the same time period, residents still boasting their pride also referred to their Queen City as “the London of America.” When music, arts, a university and professional baseball entered the city’s complexion in the 1870s, the Queen City was also known as “the Paris of America.”
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