Cincinnati Union Terminal is an intercity train station and museum center in the Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. It opened in 1933 as a union station to replace five train stations serving seven railroads in the city. Passenger service ceased in 1972, and the station concourse was demolished. From 1980 to 1985, the building housed a shopping mall. In 1991, the terminal saw the opening of the Cincinnati Museum Center and the return of Amtrak service.
Overview The terminal was developed throughout the 1920s to replace five train stations that served seven railroads. The cramped stations, close to the Ohio River, were prone to flooding. The Great Flood of 1884, one of the largest floods at that time, particularly prompted efforts to consolidate services in a new terminal. Numerous committees developed plans between 1908 and 1923, but construction only started in 1928. The project involved creation of viaducts, mail and express buildings, and utility structures: a power plant, water treatment facility, and roundhouse. The station building's site necessitated demolishing numerous structures and relandscaping and repurposing Lincoln Park. While construction was taking place, the design plans evolved. The architectural firm Fellheimer & Wagner originally conceived a conservative design, though the terminal's development company urged the firm to hire Paul Philippe Cret in 1930, and the terminal's Art Deco design is credited to him. The design, more modern and cheerful, came along with cost savings over the originally planned intricate designs.
The station opened on March 19, 1933. It was initially underused, as the Great Depression reduced passenger travel. World War II passenger traffic increased significantly, and three United Service Organizations recreation centers opened for troops to use within the terminal. In the next two decades after the war, passenger use declined significantly, as Americans had taken to affordable automobiles and airplanes for long-distance travel. A science museum opened in 1968, offsetting some of the building's maintenance costs until it closed in 1970. Amtrak, the national railroad service, was formed in 1971 to rescue declining railroad companies. Amtrak recognized significant operating costs and moved its Cincinnati services to stop at the smaller, new River Road station in 1972. The station's concourse, platforms, and tracks were sold to the Southern Railway for freight operations. The company tore down the terminal's concourse in 1974, after giving the community time to save its artwork. Starting in 1978, a shopping mall was built within the terminal, opening in 1980, though the last tenant left by 1985. Around this time, the Cincinnati Historical Society and Cincinnati Museum of Natural History were looking for new museum space, and led the county to approve funding to transform the building into a museum. The renovation restored some original spaces and included creation of the museum's Omnimax theater. The museum center officially opened in 1991, and its renovations spurred Amtrak to return service to the terminal that year. In 1998, the Cinergy Children's Museum joined the Cincinnati Museum Center. In 2016, the county funded an extensive renovation throughout the building, also supported by grants, donations, and tax credits. The two-year renovation cleaned and repaired artwork, the main exterior clock, the plaza and fountain, walls, and roofs. Following reopening, in early 2019, the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center became an additional museum tenant at Union Terminal.
Today, the terminal is served by Amtrak's Cardinal line, passing through Cincinnati three times weekly. The building's largest tenants are the Cincinnati Museum Center, a group of three museums, a library, and a theater, as well as the Holocaust & Humanity Center.
Background
Cincinnati was a major center of railroad traffic in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially as an interchange point between railroads serving the Northeastern and Midwestern states with railroads serving the South. The city's stations were not effective for interchanges: only one of Cincinnati's seven railroads operated through the city; for all the others Cincinnati was a terminal point. For travelers passing through the city by rail, they would often have to travel between two of the city's five stations, forcing them to navigate local transit themselves. It also required companies like the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to split its operations between two stations. Additionally, the stations were cramped, because they were not large enough to support the city's passenger traffic. Cincinnati's stations were also located close to the Ohio River, which was prone to flooding and would frequently render the buildings useless. After the Great Flood of 1884, railroad presidents began seeking one major terminal located far from the river. Alderman Robert J. O'Brien was also an advocate for a unified railway station for the city.
Committees of railroad executives formed to discuss the topic on numerous occasions between 1908 and 1923. Charles A. Wilson was hired by the railroad companies to plan the terminal; he created several schematics between 1912 and 1923. In 1923, the Cincinnati Railroad Development Company was created to spur creation of the terminal and assess its feasibility; former Philip Carey Company president George Dent Crabbs became its president. During the midst of planning, the Depression of 1920–21 and World War I interrupted efforts to create the union station. A final agreement for a union station among the seven railroads that served Cincinnati and the city itself was not achieved until July 1927, after intense lobbying and negotiations, led by Crabbs. The seven railroads–the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; Chesapeake and Ohio Railway; New York Central Railroad (through its subsidiary, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, or "the Big Four"); Louisville and Nashville Railroad; Norfolk and Western Railway; Pennsylvania Railroad; and the Southern Railway–selected a site for their new station in the West End, near the Mill Creek. Four of the seven railroads already utilized the Mill Creek Valley, which naturally lent itself as a good site for a terminal. At the time, the Southern Railway had a train yard and local freight terminal at the site. Henry M. Waite, Chief Engineer, and Charles Wilson, Consulting Engineer, organized about 100 engineers and assistants, and came up with seven studies, labeled A through H, of different track and building layouts in the Mill Creek valley. These ranged from the most costly, at $55.6 million, to the cheapest and chosen option, H, at $39.5 million.
Design considerations and Art Deco origins
After a limited architectural competition, the firm Fellheimer & Wagner was commissioned to design the terminal in June 1928, shortly after completing their work on Buffalo Central Terminal. The firm first released plans for the terminal in June 1929. The sketches showed a conservative design, utilizing large Gothic arches, vaulted ceilings, and conventional benches in long rows. The originally proposed shape of the rotunda and concourse were the same as the finished product, though the details of the design more closely resembled the architects' Buffalo Central Terminal. The main exterior facade was presented in a similar way to the final product, however somewhat less modern in its details. At this point, most other details of the structure were the same: the semi-circular bus, taxi, and streetcar ramps, the relandscaping of Lincoln Park, and the relative locations of all the rooms in the building. The building was then estimated to cost $8 million, with the total project costing $40.6 million.
There were persistent changes in the blueprints between 1931 and 1932, indicating the involvement of an architect outside the firm's regular staff, like Paul Philippe Cret, employed as an aesthetic advisor. He is attributed with the terminal's Art Deco design due to his similar-style designs of other buildings at the time. His submission of a plan for the Chrysler Exhibition Building, in the 1933 Century of Progress world's fair, has numerous similarities to the terminal's final plan and design.
The new Art Deco design was approved with its proposed cost savings in mind; an issue the terminal company valued as the Great Depression continued on. Henry Waite said that the first Neoclassical plan would have been cold and costly, and that the new structure was plain, but brightened with color along lines of modern decoration and art. The architects first tried a moderate color scheme, which had a depressing effect. They then decided the terminal should be bright and cheery, like the flowers and birds of the open country. They reported that the effect was joyous and stimulating.
Pierre Bourdelle may have been considered to design all art in the terminal, as he made sketches for art throughout the entire terminal. Winold Reiss, who may have been introduced to the project by Paul Philippe Cret, used his source material more faithfully. That may have been significant in Reiss's selection for the final works. Reiss ended up designing nearly all of the terminal's artwork, including over of mosaic murals.
Construction
The Union Terminal Company was created on July 14, 1927, to build the terminal, railroad lines in and out, and other related transportation improvements. Construction began in 1928 with the regrading of the east flood plain of the Mill Creek to a point nearly level with the surrounding city, an effort that required of landfill. Elevation was a serious concern, as all older stations in Cincinnati had experienced regular flooding from the Ohio River. The new terminal's main level was to be built at 522 feet above sea level. The terminal company purchased a hill nearby, locally known as Bald Knob, for the landfill. Material at Bald Knob was discovered to be thin strata of fossil limestone, imbedded with clay and weak shale, which did not consolidate properly. This led the terminal company to abandon the site and to use material from a gravel pit in Miamitown.
Other work included the construction of mail and express terminals, an engine terminal, power house, coach yard, viaducts over the Mill Creek, and the railroad approaches to Union Terminal. The new viaducts the Union Terminal Company created to cross the Mill Creek Valley included the Waldvogel Viaduct and the well-built . Out of all structures built for the complex, the Western Hills Viaduct was considered only second to the terminal building in its design.
Construction on the terminal building itself began in August 1929, shortly before the Great Depression started. At the time, much of its site was used for yard tracks, a public dump, houses, grain silos, an ice warehouse, and a city park, Lincoln Park. The terminal company transformed the park, which had a sunken garden, lake and island, into the terminal's lush entrance drive. The Lincoln Park Grounds or Union Grounds was an adjacent baseball field, removed for installation of the terminal and plaza. The terminal company also bought multiple lots, many unoccupied, and altered or tore down many buildings in order to construct tracks, reportedly numbering 276. The project involved widening the streets around the station, in anticipation of increased traffic. Buildings were also demolished to widen the principal street, first known as Laurel Street, renamed Terminal Approach or Terminal Parkway in 1932, renamed Lincoln Park Drive by 1935, and given its current name, Ezzard Charles Drive, in 1976. Laurel Street Park was constructed along the street in 1931 in exchange for the loss of Lincoln Park. The park is now known simply as Laurel Park, potentially due to the street's name changing.