St Anne Convent

You may or may not know that ‘80s classic «Rain Man» was filmed right here in Cincinnati — at least the part where Tom Cruise finds and pick up his long-​lost savant brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). One of the more memorable scenes in this classic is when Tom and Dustin are walking out of the hospital, down the long road filled with big, beautiful trees.
When I found that this pop-​culture landmark was filmed near me, I had to seek it out. So I got some buddies of mine to take the half an hour trip into nowheresville Kentucky in order to find this place.
It turns out the hospital isn’t a hospital at all, but instead, a very old convent. My GPS had broken on the way down there, so I was sort of driving blindly, guessing where it might be.
«Guys, let me know if you see this place, OK?» I told my adventuring companions.
«It’s over there,» my friend David said, pointing to my right. So it was! A large beautiful building tucked way down an epic road lined with … no trees.
All the big beautiful trees were gone and replaced with tiny, newly planted ones! WTF! I later found out the trees had suffered from some sort of horrible disease and were forced to be torn down. Sad.
We weren’t allowed into the convent (but that’s ok, we didn’t really come to see the inside since the movie only filmed the exterior, not the interior) and without the massive trees, it didn’t really feel so epic. I wanted cinematic epicenes, dammit!
Still, walking down that long, straight road, the same one Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman did decades ago, was still a very cool experience. I would like to go again sometime and maybe see the inside of the convent, but perhaps I’ll wait until those trees get a little bigger.