By Kathy Witt
Special to NKyTribune
There’s a little piece of the American West in a pocket park in Covington’s Old Seminary Square neighborhood. Located at the corner of Banklick and Robbins, the Henry Farny Park recalls the artist and illustrator born in 1847 who lived and worked for a time in Covington and Cincinnati.
Farny became famous for his paintings that captured scenes of the life and culture of the American Indians and the vanishing West. Farny had an affinity for American Indians that went back to his childhood in Pennsylvania, where he and his family lived after leaving Ribeauville, France, for America in 1853. The Farny home was located near a Seneca reservation.
Less than thirty years later, Farny embarked on the first of several trips west to pursue his interest, sketching and collecting artifacts as he went and eventually creating a body of oil paintings that today grace the walls of museums all over the country, including in Cincinnati.
The location of the park in Covington is fitting, as Farny lived at 1029-1031 Banklick Street from 1890 until his death in 1916. He painted one of his most recognizable and famous paintings, The Song of the Talking Wire, in 1904 while living here.
Westside artist David Rice recalls this painting, on display at Cincinnati’s Taft Museum of Art, in the mural he created on the park’s picket-fence canvas. Rice also created the park’s sculpture centerpiece, that of Farny’s Sioux signature (a dot within a circle), which appears on all of his paintings. Once a vacant lot, the park is colorful and utterly charming with stone walkway, metal horse and cactus silhouette sculptures, and trees and plants.
Farny was among the founding members of the Cincinnati Art Club, created in 1890 by area artists. It is the country’s second oldest, continuously operating art club west of the Allegheny Mountains. Farny was the organization’s second president, sandwiched between painter and set designer John Rettig and painter and sculptor Frank Duveneck—both of whom studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati together with Impressionist painter Edward Henry Potthast.
Learn more about the park on signage found at the Henry Farny Park. Visit the Taft Museum of Art to see Farny’s paintings, The Song of the Talking Wire.
Henry Farny Park is one of the “secrets” in Secret Cincinnati: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure. Secret NKY is inspired by this book by Kathy Witt and her latest book, Cincinnati Scavenger: The Ultimate Search for Cincinnati’s Hidden Treasures (Northern Kentucky’s and Southeast Indiana’s, too!).
In Northern Kentucky, the books are available at Hail-Record & Oddities in Mainstrasse, Granny’s Garden in Burlington and The Roost Latonia. Kathy is a regular columnist for the NKyTribune and is currently writing Perfect Day Kentucky, due in Spring 2024. For more information about Kathy’s books, visit www.KathyWitt.com. Email Kathy at KathyWitt24@gmail.com.