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Cincinnati Magazine
January 1997

King's Imprint Is Stamped Throughout the City

By Ryan Wilson

Cruising downtown Cincinnati streets in his Lincoln Towncar, Rubin Slovin takes a trip down memory lane. "The Schmidt Building used to be there. It had 11 or 12 stories," he says, pointing toward the southwest corner of Fifth and Main. He drives on and points toward a parking lot. "The Fontbonne building used to be here. It was a beautiful apartment building for Catholic women."

Slovin's view of the city's past is a mesh of fond recollection and practical measurement. For 40 years, he's been closer to Cincinnati's changing landscape and industry than anyone in town. Is he a politician or investor? No, not quite. Those types rarely stay as long as he has. Slovin is a wrecker.

In 1956, at age 28, he co-founded King Wrecking Company Incorporated. Through the years, he's played a major part in giving the Queen City and its 100-mile surroundings ongoing facelifts. From his first project, tearing down a one-story shed, to more recently making room for the construction of the Aronoff Center for the Arts, Slovin has weathered the long storm of urban planning triumphs and tragedies.

"You can find fault with anybody and anything once the building has gone up or down," he says. "But they [city planners] tried to do the best they could. They always do."

Slovin has been there to see the growing economic, social and historic concerns involved in city planning. When he began, 80 to 90 percent of his work was contracted with the city fathers. Now he receives only 5 percent of his work from the city. Slovin says that through the years the city has placed increasing value on the individual's living environment. Instead of running people out of an area by destroying buildings, more effort goes into gutting and then fixing up buildings that have social or historic value. Slovin is particularly proud of his gutting work on the old Baldwin Piano building, which he describes as having "some of the best original wood construction I have ever seen."

"Thirty years ago, nobody cared about old things and antiques …. Many of the beautiful buildings we've taken down should have been preserved," he says. "This is an old German city that had carpenters and craftsmen, and that's gone now. It won't be back." Unlike the buildings he demolishes, Slovin's job never grows old. His business has the power to affect communities in surprising ways. In 1958 King Wrecking demolished a tobacco warehouse in Middletown, Ohio, while employers looked on weeping. "That factory had been their life," says Slovin. "You could smell the tobacco in the wood." And in 1961, when I-75 was being paved, there was a rumor that an old man had hidden money in the walls of his abandoned house. Slovin says people showed up on the day of demolition and scoured the home for the treasure in between bulldozings.

King Wrecking earned its most infamous place in history over the 1972 demolition of Crosley Field. According to Slovin, people felt a great deal of sentimental attachment to the 1912 stadium. Many Cincinnatians didn't want to see the field go down. King Wrecking gutted it and sold 2,000 seats to fans wanting a piece of Reds history. Slovin, who claims not to have any sentimental attachment to any particular building he has taken down, nevertheless snatched the player's bench in the Reds dugout and a refreshment sign that now hangs in his office.

Could such nostalgia ever attach itself to Riverfront Stadium, now Cinergy Field?

Not really, says Slovin. "There's not as much sentiment on the Riverfront as there was with Crosley. It seems like the stadium is still new, and now they're taking it down."

But will Slovin and company be there to do the job?

"We're expecting to," he nods.

As the Cincinnati skyline can testify, Slovin would certainly know how to go about it.