United States · Ohio · Cincinnati
Pendleton, Cincinnati — Area Guide & Where to Stay
A gilded cross tops the tower of St. Paul Church in Pendleton, a triangular Cincinnati neighborhood between Liberty Street, Reading Road, and Sycamore Street.
About Pendleton
Where to stay in Pendleton
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Pendleton covers a few blocks between Liberty Street and Central Parkway, which makes the choice of edge count for more than the choice of street. West lies Over-the-Rhine. Only Sycamore Street separates the two, while Broadway Street through the middle carries the listed brick houses.
The quarter answers to a second name, the Pendleton Art District, and its studio buildings stand on Pendleton Street. Reading Road runs the other way, down toward Downtown Cincinnati and the hotels below Central Parkway. Anyone wanting Over-the-Rhine's evenings and the business district's mornings on one walk will find Pendleton sitting between them.
About Pendleton
What are the main landmarks in Pendleton?
St. Paul Church holds the corner of 12th Street and Spring Street in Pendleton, a Romanesque Revival brick hall finished in 1850 under a gilded cross. Fire gutted it in 1899. The walls and the German stained glass came through, and the rebuilding closed in 1900.
The Over-the-Rhine Gateway Campanile marks the far corner at Liberty Street and Reading Road, a brick clock and bell tower of 1996. Broadway Street carries two listed houses, the Federal Samuel Burdsal House of 1834 and the Italianate Bernard Ratterman House of 1865. Eighteen more nineteenth-century buildings form the Sycamore-13th Street Grouping along 13th Street.
What is the history of Pendleton?
Pendleton carries the name of George H. Pendleton, the Ohio senator behind the 1883 civil service act, whose house stands uphill in the Prospect Hill Historic District, north across Liberty Street. German Catholics east of Clay Street formed their own parish in 1848 and finished St. Paul Church by 1850. Schooling came earlier.
William Woodward and Abigail Cutter gave the land in 1826, and the Woodward Free Grammar School that followed in 1831 was Cincinnati's first free public school. Its third building rose on Sycamore Street in 1910 to Gustave W. Drach's design, and the School for Creative and Performing Arts held it from 1977.
Where is Pendleton?
Pendleton fills a triangle of Cincinnati's urban basin, closed by Liberty Street to the north, Sycamore Street to the west, and Reading Road to the southeast.
Good for
More areas in Cincinnati
Updated September 2026