Cincinnati Union Terminal

At a glance

Overview

Cincinnati Union Terminal is an Art Deco railroad station at 1301 Western Avenue in the Queensgate neighborhood, built from 1928 to 1933 to replace five cramped, flood-prone stations used by seven railroads. The Cincinnati Union Terminal Company, formed in 1927, raised the Mill Creek bottoms with more than five million cubic yards of fill; the New York firm Fellheimer & Wagner designed the building, with Paul Philippe Cret likely steering it from a conservative Neo-Classic scheme to Art Deco in 1931-32 and Winold Reiss designing its mosaic murals. It opened in March 1933 as passenger rail travel was already declining, boomed during World War II, and lost its last passenger train on October 28, 1972, after which its train concourse was demolished and the building briefly became a shopping mall. Since 1990 it has housed the Cincinnati Museum Center, Amtrak trains returned in 1991, and a $228 million restoration was finished in 2018. It is a National Historic Landmark.

The name

A 'union' terminal is one station shared by several railroads. Cincinnati's replaced five separate stations used by seven lines: the Baltimore and Ohio; Chesapeake and Ohio; New York Central (through the Big Four); Louisville and Nashville; Norfolk and Western; Pennsylvania; and Southern. Since 1990 the building has also been known by its main tenant's name, Cincinnati Museum Center. (source)

Native American history

No Native village, mound or other site is recorded at the terminal grounds in the sources consulted. The site lay in the Mill Creek bottoms west of the old city; in the historic record it was waste ground, rail yards, a city dump, a pesthouse and a cemetery before Lincoln Park and then the terminal were built. The land is part of the Miami (Symmes) Purchase between the Great and Little Miami rivers, which John Cleves Symmes bought from Congress in 1788; in the 1786 Treaty of Fort Finney Shawnee leaders had ceded parts of the Ohio country to the United States, and after the Battle of Fallen Timbers the nations gave up most of their Ohio land in the Treaty of Greenville; before contact the Ohio valley in southwest Ohio was home to the Fort Ancient culture. The Native figures in the rotunda's United States mural are Blackfeet people whom Winold Reiss had sketched on an earlier visit, not people of the Ohio country.

• Treaty of Fort Finney: treaty, Mouth of the Great Miami River; ceded parts of the Ohio country to the United States, January 31, 1786
• Symmes (Miami) Purchase: other, Land between the Great and Little Miami rivers, including the Mill Creek valley, 1788

Stories

Opened by a flood

The terminal was built high on purpose. Every older Cincinnati station stood near the river and flooded regularly, so the company raised the Mill Creek bottoms with more than five million cubic yards of fill, first from a hill called Bald Knob, whose shaly limestone would not settle, and then from a gravel pit at Miamitown. In March 1933, with the building six months ahead of schedule but not yet dedicated, another Ohio River flood closed four of the city's five stations. The terminal went into emergency service on March 19, and Southern Railway engine 6455, bound for Chattanooga, was the first train out. The formal dedication came twelve days later. Four years on, the 1937 flood tested the design: the lower levels filled, but the passenger floors, tracks and platforms stayed dry. (source)

'The completion came after its need had passed'

At the March 31, 1933 dedication, attended by an estimated 50,000 people, Baltimore and Ohio director John J. Cornwell said aloud what many feared: passenger stations were declining, and this one had been finished after its need had passed. Planned for 17,000 passengers a day, the terminal opened in the depths of the Depression, and by 1939 local papers were calling it a white elephant. World War II reversed that for a few years, when troop trains pushed traffic to about 34,000 people a day and three USO centers operated inside. By 1962 service was down to 24 trains a day, and the company was offering space to the city for $1 a year. (source)

'Died young' and the fight to save it

Amtrak took over Cincinnati's two remaining trains in 1971 and, with fewer than 30 passengers a day using the building, gave it up after 18 months; the last train left on October 28, 1972. The Union Terminal Company sold the concourse, platforms and yard to the Southern Railway, which wanted the 450-foot train concourse gone so taller freight cars could pass. The Ohio Historical Society filed an emergency National Register nomination, University of Cincinnati students and faculty mounted exhibits, and in January 1973 protesters picketed a railroad board member's house. A city council committee's May 1973 landmark vote saved the rotunda, but the concourse came down in 1974. Fourteen of Winold Reiss's industrial murals were cut out and moved to the airport; the world map mural on the concourse's west wall could not be saved. (source)

A park, a pesthouse and a cemetery

Before the terminal, most of the ground was covered with yard tracks, and some was waste land used as a refuse dump; there were also houses, grain silos, an ice warehouse and Lincoln Park. Earlier still the site held a house for people with contagious diseases and a cemetery. Lincoln Park had a small lake with an island, and on the island a gingerbread gazebo that served as a bandstand; on Sunday afternoons musicians played there while people gathered along the shore to listen. The broad lawn in front of the terminal is what remains of the park. The approach drive was first Laurel Street, then Lincoln Park Drive, and is now Ezzard Charles Drive, for the Cincinnati heavyweight boxer. In 1980 the lawn areas on either side of the approach were paved for parking. (source)

Reiss's mosaics

German-born artist Winold Reiss designed nearly all of the terminal's artwork, including 23 mosaic murals covering some 18,150 square feet, the largest collection of secular mosaics in the United States in 1933. The two rotunda murals, each 105 by 22 feet, tell the history of the United States and of Cincinnati; for the Cincinnati mural Reiss used family members, studio models and local construction workers as his figures, drawing the African American laborers from the terminal's own work crews, and the only prominent figure is Arthur St. Clair, who named Cincinnati. Sixteen smaller mosaics in the train concourse represented local industries. Two more, in the checking lobby, portray seven people behind the project, among them the mayors, city managers and chief engineer. A 70-by-16-foot world map mural was the only original artwork destroyed when the concourse came down. (source)

The Land of Oz

After the city bought the building in 1975, it leased it for $1 a year to the Joseph Skilken Organization of Columbus, run by its 27-year-old president Steve Skilken. His company spent about $20 million turning the rotunda and ramps into a shopping mall called the Land of Oz; a promised ice rink and bowling alley never came. The mall opened on August 4, 1980 with 40 tenants and at its peak drew 7,800 to 8,000 visitors a day, but interest rates of up to 22 percent in the early-1980s recession emptied it. By 1982 only 21 tenants were left, the mall closed in 1984, and Loehmann's department store in the middle of the rotunda held on until 1985. (source)

Timeline

• 1858: West End Park was landscaped in June on ground whose burials had been moved elsewhere; around 1865 it was renamed Lincoln Park. (source)
• 1873: Parks landscape architect Adolph Strauch added a miniature lake, waterfall, island and grotto to Lincoln Park, the future terminal lawn. (source)
• 1884: The Great Flood of 1884 swamped the riverside stations and started railroad presidents looking for one terminal far from the river. (source)
• 1923: After committees of railroad executives had met repeatedly since 1908, the Cincinnati Railroad Development Company was formed under George Dent Crabbs to push the project. (source)
• 1927: The seven railroads and the city reached agreement in July, and the Cincinnati Union Terminal Company was created on July 14. (source)
• 1928: Fellheimer & Wagner was commissioned in June, and regrading of the Mill Creek flood plain began, eventually taking about 5.5 million cubic yards of fill. (source)
• 1929: Work on the terminal building itself started in August. (source)
• 1931: In late 1931 or early 1932, with construction under way, the drawings changed from a conservative Neo-Classic scheme, with Gothic arches in the waiting room, to Art Deco, likely under Paul Philippe Cret's influence as design adviser. (source)
• 1931: Mayor Russell Wilson laid the cornerstone on November 20 with a silver trowel. (source)
• 1933: On March 19 an Ohio River flood forced the terminal into emergency service six months ahead of schedule; the first train out was Southern Railway engine 6455, bound for Chattanooga. (source)
• 1933: The terminal was formally dedicated on March 31 before an estimated 50,000 people. (source)
• 1937: The record Ohio River flood flooded the lower levels, but passenger floors, tracks and platforms stayed dry and the Southern Railway kept running on generator power. (source)
• 1941: Around August the Rookwood tea room became one of three USO centers in the terminal; at the war's height about 34,000 people a day passed through. (source)
• 1962: Daily trains had fallen to 24, from 51 in 1953, as travelers shifted to cars and airplanes. (source)
• 1968: The Cincinnati Science Center opened in part of the train concourse; it closed for lack of money in 1970. (source)
• 1972: The last passenger train, an eastbound George Washington, left on October 28; Amtrak moved to a small station on River Road the next day. (source)
• 1972: The terminal was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 31, on an emergency nomination by the Ohio Historical Society. (source)
• 1973: On May 15 a Cincinnati City Council committee voted 3-1 to designate the terminal a local historic landmark, blocking Southern Railway from razing the whole building. (source)
• 1974: Between November 1973 and August 1974 fourteen concourse murals were moved to the Greater Cincinnati Airport, and the 450-foot train concourse was demolished. (source)
• 1975: In August the City of Cincinnati bought the terminal building and about 15 acres from the Union Terminal Company for $1 million. (source)
• 1977: The terminal was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 5. (source)
• 1980: The Land of Oz shopping mall held its opening celebration on August 4 with 40 tenants; the lawns beside the approach were paved for parking. (source)
• 1985: Loehmann's, the last mall tenant, left the rotunda a year after the rest of the mall closed. (source)
• 1986: In May Hamilton County voters approved a $33 million bond levy to turn the terminal into a museum center. (source)
• 1990: The museum center opened on November 10 with the Cincinnati Historical Society Library, Cincinnati History Museum, Museum of Natural History and an Omnimax theater. (source)
• 1991: Passenger trains returned on July 29, when Amtrak's Cardinal began stopping at Union Terminal. (source)
• 2014: In June the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the terminal one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the country because of deterioration. (source)
• 2016: The building closed in July for its first full restoration, funded mainly by a county sales tax approved by voters. (source)
• 2018: The $228 million restoration was finished and the building reopened on November 17. (source)
• 2023: The terminal appeared on a U.S. Postal Service Forever stamp in a five-stamp Railroad Stations series. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Cincinnati Union Terminal
• en.wikipedia.org: History of Cincinnati Union Terminal
• en.wikipedia.org: Lincoln Park (Cincinnati)
• loc.gov: oh0024
• npgallery.nps.gov: 72001018 text
• cincymuseum.org: union terminal
• cincymuseum.org: union terminal restoration
• cincymuseum.org: about cincinnati museum center
• en.wikipedia.org: History of Cincinnati
• en.wikipedia.org: Fort Finney (Ohio)
• en.wikipedia.org: Symmes Purchase
• commons.wikimedia.org: Category:Cincinnati Union Terminal