Cliff Radel

cradel@enquirer.com

Does something about your community have you puzzled? Email needtoknow@enquirer.com and we'll do our best to track down answers.

QUESTION: I have not seen steam come out of the stacks at the National Steamboat Monument in years. I always thought it was because of the construction on the Smale Riverfront Park. But ... people are now allowed to interact with the monument once again, and you still do not see any steam coming out of the stacks. This seems to be a missing link in the riverfront parks.

Will we ever see steam flowing out of the stacks again?

Jeffery Tyler Hall, Newport

ANSWER: In a word: No.

Now, before you get steamed, here's why: "There are three reasons, and all of them concern the monument's condition," said Willie F. Carden Jr., Cincinnati parks director. The park board took over care of the Queen City's riverfront properties in 2010.

• Reason One: "The life cycle" of the monument's inner workings has, in Carden's words, "reached its end." This 2002 Tall Stacks project, designed by internationally known sound sculptor-architect Christopher Janney, honors Cincinnati's riverboat heritage. It cost $2.8 million ($2.4 million in state funds, $400,000 raised by the Tall Stacks Commission).

Topped by a three-story, 60-ton fiberglass replica of the paddlewheel from the American Queen, the world's largest steamboat, the monument soars 40 feet above a street-level plaza south of Great American Ball Park and overlooking the Public Landing. At its base stand 24 stainless steel columns shaped like steamboat smokestacks. Steam and the sounds of riverboat calliopes belched from these stacks – officially known as the Daniel and Susan Pfau Whistle Grove – until 2011. Then the monument's innards failed.

While the smokestacks remain steamless and calliope-whistle-free, 22 of the 24 stacks still have functioning sound systems. They work when passersby activate hand-shaped motion sensors. The smokestacks' speakers broadcast snippets of conversations, diary readings, dockhands following orders, ragtime piano solos, bluegrass tunes and brass band music. All recall the 19th century's golden age of steam travel, when Cincinnati's riverfront served as a bustling port and savored its status as steamboat-building capital of the world.

• Reason Two: Inconsistency. "Even when they were new," Carden noted, "the smokestacks rarely worked all of the time."

• Reason Three: Money or the lack thereof. "It would cost $60,000 to $70,000 to get the monument in working order," Carden said. "Then it would have to be brought up to code." Figure in at least another $10,000.

"And then there is the cost of utilities. That's $30,000 to $40,000 a year. That's more than $100,000. We don't have $10,000 to spare for this. And there's no point in spending lots of money on something that's not going to work."

So, you see, Jeffery, as with so many other public projects in Cincinnati that begin with good intentions, the National Steamboat Monument has just run out of steam.