The Cincinnati Type & Print Museum has traded its longtime Lower Price Hill home for a larger facility off Central Parkway, a move that founder and director Gary Walton says will roughly triple how many people the museum can train at once. The museum, which spent nearly a decade in Lower Price Hill, now sits about an 11-minute drive from the University of Cincinnati's main campus, and leaders say the added space will let it expand both its historic collection and its workforce-training mission.
According to The News Record, the museum previously trained around four people at a time but expects that capacity to grow to at least 12 in the new space. The museum houses roughly 35 printing presses, including a replica of a Gutenberg-style press and an 1860 Franklin press that Walton has identified as the museum's oldest piece of equipment, per the same report. Walton has worked in printing for more than 60 years, including 35 years teaching at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, where he served as program chair before retiring, according to Cincinnati State. The college's account places his retirement in 2012, while The News Record reports 2011 — a discrepancy the available sources do not resolve.
A Mission Built Around Jobs, Not Just History
The Cincinnati Type & Print Museum describes its purpose as preserving Cincinnati's printing history while raising awareness of career opportunities in print media today, according to the museum's own website. It operates as a standalone 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and training there has long included ink mixing and matching, press operation and customer service, per Cincinnati State's earlier reporting. Walton told The News Record that all of the museum's training is free and that the organization prioritizes jobs over training itself, framing the hands-on instruction as a pipeline into printing careers rather than an end in itself.
That jobs-first approach has already produced results: the museum trained four autistic men who now work in the printing industry and hired one of them directly, The News Record reports. More broadly, Cincinnati State says more than 50 people from the community have completed the museum's training for entry-level printing jobs, and a 2024 report from Movers & Makers said the museum was aiming to train 120 people for printing jobs over five years. That same report noted the museum became the first non-commercial graphic arts organization to receive the William Maxwell Award.
New Equipment Plans and a Dickens-Themed Reopening
At the new location, the museum hopes to introduce traditional papermaking and aims to eventually produce some of the paper used in its own printing demonstrations, according to The News Record. A Facebook video from the museum, captioned as teaching the next generation of print media leaders the art of papermaking, points toward that same ambition, though it drew modest engagement of roughly 195 views and a handful of likes.
The museum plans to reopen in December, with a holiday open house celebrating Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol running December 3 through 5, 2026, per The News Record. Visitors to that event will reportedly be able to print wrapping paper, Christmas cards, gift tags and pages from A Christmas Carol on the museum's presses. The museum's own website separately notes it will be closed for tours from October 1 through December 1, a window that aligns with the planned reopening timeline. Earlier versions of that holiday printing activity have a track record locally: Cincinnati State previously reported that visitors could sign up to print Christmas cards or gift labels on the museum's presses, and CityBeat reported that participants in the museum's Redeemed Letter Press program, which serves women in recovery, designed more than 1,000 cards and gift tags for a past holiday season. CityBeat also reported the museum drew 600 visitors in 2019, with attendance that year trending to surpass that figure.
How It Fits Alongside UC's Printmaking Program
The move also puts the museum in closer orbit with the University of Cincinnati's printmaking program, whose facilities do not offer traditional letterpress printing, according to The News Record. Neil Daigle Orians, UC's assistant professor of fine arts and curricular lead for printmaking, said print remains relevant in the digital era, the outlet reports. UC's printmaking lab instead offers screen printing, relief printing, copper plate intaglio and lithography, per the same report.
Baylee Schmitt, a UC printmaking lab associate, said printmaking requires students to slow down, according to The News Record — a sentiment that echoes the deliberate, hands-on pace Walton has built into the Type & Print Museum's own training model. Between UC's lab-based techniques and the museum's historic letterpress equipment, the two institutions offer complementary routes into a craft that both say still has a place in Cincinnati's creative and working economy.
