For about eight dollars, Carew Tower's open-air 49th floor gave you the best view in Cincinnati and one of the last genuinely unglazed deck experiences in the Midwest. It shut around 2018 and it has not come back.
The building is now being converted into roughly 385 apartments, a project running to about 2029. The owners have said the deck will return. They have not said when, and an end-of-2025 target came and went.
Why the listings still say it's open
Because closures don't generate the same volume of content as openings. The tower's own site now writes about the deck in the past tense — "many guests visited the 49th floor's observation deck over the years" — while third-party pages happily quote hours and a price. Treat any reopening chatter as unconfirmed until there is a ticket you can buy.
It's worth understanding what's actually being decided here: when the deck returns it will sit on top of a residential building, and residential buildings and public observation decks are an awkward pairing. Assume the product changes.
The view Cincinnati actually uses
Cross the river to Covington and drive up to Devou Park. The overlook there is the shot that appears on the front of every Cincinnati publication — the whole downtown stacked against the Ohio's bend, the bridges strung across it, best about half an hour before dusk. It's free and there's parking.
In town, the Mount Adams overlooks in Eden Park cover the close-up angle, and the Netherland Plaza lobby at Carew's base — French Art Deco, 1931, and one of the finest interiors in the country — is open, free, and takes ten minutes.