CINCINNATI — An 18-foot-tall menorah and a Hanukkah greeting sign have been placed on Fountain Square, a downtown focal point where the city had tried to prohibit holiday displays by private groups

Using a truck with an extended boom, workers set up the steel, lighted menorah on Monday. Three days earlier, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens overruled an appeals court order that had blocked installation of the menorah by Chabad of Southern Ohio.

“This menorah has been up every year since 1986, and we were not going to miss it this year on a technicality,” said Rabbi Sholom Kalmanson, who watched as workers raised the menorah.

U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott, who ordered the city to return to the practice of issuing a limited number of permits before the appeals court intervened, also observed. She declined comment. The nonprofit Chabad of Southern Ohio and Congregation Lubavitch, an affiliated Jewish organization, had challenged a city ordinance amended in April to say that only the city can use the square during the last two weeks of November through the first week of January.

The ordinance grew out of the city’s efforts to prevent groups such as the Ku Klux Klan from using the square for displays. City lawyers argued last week that allowing private organizations to erect unattended displays would overcrowd the square and make it difficult for the city to keep order. During the 1990s, protesters toppled the 10-foot Klan crosses several times.

The city contends it has authority to regulate the use of the square, including barring its use by others at certain times. The city plans to ask a federal appeals court to overturn the ruling that it must allow all displays.