[2] The namesake was from Ida Martin, a washerwoman who lived in the hollow of an old sycamore tree located on a steep hill.

[2][3] In 1831, Nicholas Longworth, a wealthy attorney, transformed the hill into a vineyard[2] and purchased the mansion that is now the Taft Museum of Art and the large lot of land behind including barren Mount Adams[4].

Longworth would become the first commercially successful winemaker in the United States and has been called the "Father of the American Wine Industry.

[5][7] The American Civil War created a shortage of manpower needed for vineyard labor, and the death of Longworth in 1863 furthered the end of Cincinnati's wine industry.

[5] Allegedly to increase his property value, Longworth donated a portion of the hilltop to the Cincinnati Astronomical Society for an observatory.

[8] The observatory is still in operation today, though in 1871 it was moved to its current location in Mount Lookout due to excessive smoke from downtown buildings.

Although Cincinnati was largely Presbyterian in its early history, Mount Adams was originally a strongly Catholic working-class community composed of the Germans and Irish.

[8] In the late 1960s people began to gentrify the hilltop neighborhood, including workers who wanted to live near their downtown offices.

[1] According to the U.S. Census American Community Survey, for the period 2016-2020 the estimated median annual income for a household in the neighborhood was $99,125.