05/29/2026
Christine Sullivan (1853? - 1899)
Christine (or Christina) Sullivan taught in the Cincinnati Public Schools Art Department during the last quarter of the nineteenth century – serving as Supervisor (Principal) for the final fifteen years. During most of that time she lived in Walnut Hills. She published four series of workbooks (often characterized as textbooks) that enjoyed popularity both within and outside of The Queen City. While much of her curriculum coincided with preparations for instruction in fine arts, Sullivan also expanded training for students headed toward traditional trades and the rapidly expanding field of industrial design. The Cincinnati painter and sculptor Charles T. Webber wrote “I know a silversmith who can design and mold a better vase, knife, or spoon; a carpenter who can build a better house; a blacksmith who can fashion a shoe with a better curve and bevel to fit the horse’s foot; all on account of the fine training obtained in the public schools, under the advanced methods of Miss Sullivan.” This effusive praise for an art teacher, especially for a woman in the gilded age, reflects genuine respect and affection.
During the late nineteenth century, Cincinnati was afflicted with a serious culture of boosterism. Miss Sullivan thrust her Art Department onto the national and even the international stage. She mounted exhibitions of literally thousands of drawings by students in the Cincinnati Public Schools to demonstrate the success of her “eclectic” method of teaching to ever widening audiences. The great Cincinnati “Industrial Expositions” of the 1870s and ’80s provided the most consistent venue for her displays. The late-nineteenth-century American vogue for “World’s fairs” offered even larger and longer-term display opportunities.
As Christine’s mentor Charles Webber observed, such training put the city in an advantageous position in manufacturing and the trades. Indeed, Webber’s obituary went on to say, “One of the most interesting features of her work was the private classes in which she gave free instruction in industrial art to boys and girls who intended to enter the trades before completing their school course.” It is one of the great canards of admirers of the nineteenth-century Art and Crafts movement that factory furniture put an end to handcrafted finishes, carvings, and embellishments. Rather, mass production ushered in a period of tremendous growth for hand finishing work to dress up mass produced pieces for showrooms and catalogs, and eventually in homes.
Through some combination of excellence in the classroom and lots of students in many different schools, Miss Sullivan in 1890 won a newspaper contest as the most popular teacher in Cincinnati. Her prize included an expense-paid trip to Europe. Part of the near reverence for Miss Sullivan reflected her role as a leader in the broader public school community. An early and enthusiastic member of the National Education Association, still the largest teachers’ union in the US, her embrace of organized labor was a bold move for someone of her comfortable upbringing. She led drives for pension benefits for educators. In more local education politics, Christine organized district-wide monthly meetings of women faculty to create a sense of solidarity and source of power. She also formed a “Teachers’ Club” open to those of either gender who worked in system. The club met on a different monthly schedule, to discuss questions of pedagogy. More broadly, Miss Sullivan became the first woman in the state to serve as a Director of a Savings and Loan company – the Columbian Building and Savings Company.
Less celebrated in the literature prepared by the mainstream white press, Christine Sullivan also chose to teach in rotation at the segregated Gaines Colored High School in downtown Cincinnati. The White School Board took over supervision of the “Colored Schools” in about 1873 and supplied the Gaines with a (white) drawing teacher beginning in 1874. When Miss Sullivan rose to the position of Assistant Principal of the Art Department in 1878, she put the half-day-a-week position at Gaines into her schedule. The influential leadership circles of Gaines faculty and graduates embraced Miss Sullivan as a valued mentor and friend. Accounts of the annual graduation ceremonies always listed the very part-time art teacher as a full member of the faculty – some years noting explicitly that she was the only white teacher at the school.
Christine’s most celebrated Black student, Adina White, moved on to complete the full three-year curriculum at the Cincinnati Art Academy. For decades, Adina acknowledged Miss Sullivan as the artistic mentor who opened the Academy’s doors to a Gaines graduate. Indeed, Miss White had made her living for many years as a carver and finisher of high-end woodwork.
Furthermore, in the mid-1890s Christine joined with a significant list of influential Black women in Walnut Hills to form the “Queen City Industrial Club” to encourage an Industrial School for students of the race. Christine Sullivan’s vision was finally fulfilled with the creation of the McCall industrial school two decades later. Its board included at least one Black lady from the Industrial Club.
Christine Sullivan, spelled one way or another, made her way into books about education in Cincinnati, and even won some brief mentions in more general histories of the city.
