As a teenager, Louis Charles Graeter began making ice cream in a market at the base of Sycamore Hill. Before mechanized freezers, ice cream was a rare treat, and had to be made in very small batches using rock salt and ice to freeze the cream. His ice cream was a huge success and the business started to grow. Upon his sudden death in 1919, his wife Regina took over the business and became one of the first female entrepreneurs in the city. Over the next three decades she would help to make the name Graeter�s synonymous with ice cream in Cincinnati. Today, the Graeter family still operates over a dozen ice cream parlors in Cincinnati, including the Hyde Park store that Regina opened in 1922.