If you look at early photographs of Cincinnati from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you’ll often spot the names Rombach & Groene. Or just the initials R&G, which were painted onto the corners of the photo prints.

Rombach and Groene were among the most prominent photographers in Cincinnati. They were listed in the city directory as “mercantile and landscape photographers,” meaning they photographed scenes, buildings, residences and machinery.

Their images of long-gone buildings from Cincinnati’s past, such as the castle-like Chamber of Commerce Building or the old Hamilton County Courthouse, are of particular historic interest.

Though I saw their names often on old photographs, some in The Enquirer’s collection, I knew little about who Rombach and Groene were. Like most photographers, we mostly know them by their work.

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Rombach & Groene, largest landscape photographers

J. Louis Rombach, known as “Lew,” was born in 1848. Theodore Groene was born in 1860. Both were sons of German immigrants and native to Cincinnati.

Both also began working at a young age for noted Cincinnati photographer Charles Waldack, who was credited as the first person to take underground photos in America when he captured images of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky in 1866.

Starting in the mid-1870s, Rombach and Groene worked together for landscape photographer Charles Muhrman, noted for his stereoscopic views – side-by-side photos of a scene that when viewed together in a device create the illusion of depth.

In 1883, the duo purchased Muhrman’s business at 401-403 W. Third St. and began operating as Rombach & Groene. Three years later, R&G moved to a studio at 476 W. Fourth St. (later renumbered as 812 W. Fourth St.).

Rombach & Groene was advertised as “The Largest Establishment of Its Kind in the United States.” Its three-story studio included one of the largest photographic operating rooms in the country, as well as separate rooms for printing, retouching, chemical processing, enlarging, and mounting and finishing, plus a fireproof safe for negatives.

Photography was still such a novelty in the late 19th century that making prints larger and quickly was worth notice.

The Enquirer printed a brief story on March 29, 1884, under the headline “Fast Work,” praising Rombach & Groene for photographing a wrecked building “yesterday at four o’clock, and two hours later sent a mounted picture of the ruins to this office.”

The date is significant. Not only had it just been a few months since Rombach and Groene took on the business for themselves, but that was also the first day of the infamous courthouse riot.

Photos of the effects of the 1884 courthouse riot

A Cincinnati Post story on March 31, 1884: “Rombach & Groene, Photographers, of this city, have just printed some elegant views of our burned Court-house.”

A very brief history of a complicated event: In March 1884, Cincinnati citizens were fed up with laxity in murder charges in the court system. A mob of thousands stormed the jail next to the Hamilton County Courthouse at Main and Court streets, sparking three days of deadly riots. The militia brought a Gatling gun to help quell the mob. On the second night, the rioters broke into the courthouse and set it on fire, destroying the building and most of the county’s irreplaceable records. When peace was restored, more than 50 people were dead.

Rombach and Groene took a series of photographs of the militia at the barricade, of the exterior of the damaged courthouse and of the gutted ruins inside. They published them under the title, “Effects of Great Riot at Cincinnati, March 28 & 29, 1884.”

The Ohio Memory Collection has those photos available online.

This visual records of the darkest days in Cincinnati history are frightening in their reality, more effective even than the illustrations depicting the actual burning of the courthouse.

It seems likely it was these photos that made Rombach & Groene’s reputation, launching the duo to the height of the profession in Cincinnati.

Photographing nearly a century of Cincinnati history

Rombach made his home in Covington. Illness forced him to retire in 1906, and he died Sept. 3, 1910. He is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery.

Groene of West Price Hill died April 25, 1911. He is buried in St. Mary Cemetery in St. Bernard.

Groene’s sons, Charles and Arthur, continued the business for many decades. The studio moved from Fourth Street in 1962 (the site is now a criss-cross of freeways) to 1774 Westwood Ave. in South Fairmount.

Charles Groene was an aerial photographer during World War I and president of the Photographers Association of America. Arthur took most of the company’s later photos until his retirement in 1973.

The Cincinnati Museum Center acquired the Rombach & Groene collection in 2001, with more than 6,500 glass and film negatives that document the city’s growth – and growing pains.

Sources: “Mercantile and Landscape Photographers: Rombach and Groene” by Linda Bailey, Enquirer and Cincinnati Post files.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati’s 1884 courthouse riot documented by these 2 photographers