A 1904 Moorish Revival gazebo in Cincinnati's Eden Park, infamous as the site of the 1927 daylight shooting of Imogene Remus by her bootlegger husband George Remus during their divorce proceedings.
Eden Park Drive (south of Mirror Lake), Cincinnati, OH 45202
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public park access during posted hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved park drives and walking paths with some gentle slopes; gazebo sits on a grassy rise.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1904 · Oldest enduring structure in Cincinnati's municipal park system · Designed by Cornelius M. Foster in Moorish Revival style · Featured in the logo of the Cincinnati Park Board · Site of the October 6, 1927 murder of Imogene Remus by George Remus
The Spring House Gazebo stands near Mirror Lake at the heart of Eden Park, on hilltop ground that the Cincinnati Park Board acquired in the 19th century as part of its ambitious municipal park system. The original spring house on the site captured water from a hillside spring once believed to have therapeutic properties; for decades park visitors filled jugs there. In 1904 the Park Board replaced the deteriorating earlier structure with a new gazebo designed by Cincinnati architect Cornelius M. Foster in a Moorish Revival style, with decorated arches, finials, and an open pavilion suitable for park gatherings.
The spring itself was condemned in 1912 after the water was found to be contaminated, and the well was sealed. The gazebo, however, remained a beloved fixture of the park, eventually appearing in the logo of the Cincinnati Park Board as a visual shorthand for the municipal park system. The structure is the oldest surviving park-built feature in that system and continues to anchor Eden Park's central landscape.
The gazebo's most notorious moment came on the morning of October 6, 1927. George Remus, the Cincinnati bootlegger known nationally as the 'King of the Bootleggers' during Prohibition, had been released from federal prison and was estranged from his wife, Augusta Imogene Brown Holmes Remus. As Imogene rode through Eden Park in a taxi with her daughter on her way to court to finalize their divorce, Remus's driver pursued the cab, forced it off the park drive near the Spring House Gazebo, and Remus shot Imogene in the abdomen in front of onlookers. She died shortly afterward.
Remus's subsequent trial was a national sensation. He represented himself, mounted an insanity defense, and was acquitted after the jury deliberated for only nineteen minutes. He was briefly committed to a state hospital before being released within months. The combination of Prohibition-era notoriety, the public setting, and the speed of the acquittal cemented the Spring House Gazebo in Cincinnati memory as the 'Remus murder' site.
Today the gazebo functions as it always has — an open public pavilion in a working city park — but interpretive material from the Cincinnati Preservation Association, the Cincinnati Park Board, and local press routinely connect the structure to the Remus case.
Sources
The legend attached to the Spring House Gazebo is anchored to a single, well-documented historical event: the October 6, 1927 killing of Imogene Remus on her way to finalize her divorce from George Remus. According to local-history writeups collected by the Cincinnati Preservation Association and regional ghost-story aggregators, witnesses have reported seeing a woman in a black dress and black hat, sometimes described as appearing distressed or in a hurry, near the gazebo and the adjacent Mirror Lake. Sightings cluster at dusk and most often in autumn — the season of the historical shooting.
The phenomena described are visual and atmospheric rather than physical: there are no reported touches, voices, or object-manipulation accounts. According to the Cincinnati Preservation Association's writeup, the figure typically appears at a distance and either fades or is no longer visible when witnesses try to approach. Some tellers add the detail that the apparition seems unaware of onlookers, consistent with a residual-style haunting tied to a specific traumatic moment.
Because the historical incident is so widely documented in court records, period newspapers, and Wikipedia coverage of both Eden Park and George Remus, the legend is unusual among Cincinnati ghost stories in having a fully verifiable human anchor. That said, the sightings themselves are folkloric and not the result of a formal investigation, and visitors should treat the story as Cincinnati lore rather than evidence of a confirmed haunting.
Notable Entities
Walk the short loop between the Spring House Gazebo, Mirror Lake, and the Krohn Conservatory overlook. The most-reported sightings are at dusk on autumn evenings, near the anniversary of the October 1927 shooting.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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