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Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal
The Cincinnati Museum Center at
Union Terminal, which had been the Cincinnati Union Terminal
railroad station, in Cincinnati, Ohio, was like many of the old rail
stations that went through a big decline, is now housing other
venues like theaters, museums and library. During the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, the city was a main hub of traffic on the
railroads, more importantly as an interchange point between the
northeast and Midwest states that were serving the south. It was
difficult for many of the travelers, since there were five stations
in the downtown Cincinnati area, and intercity travel was tough. The
Louisville and Nashville Railroad, with its sleepers, had to split
its operations between two stations, and one would be a union
station in Cincinnati, beginning in the 1890s. The early proposals
to construct this station finally was able to seat a committee in
1912, but it wasn't until 1928, after difficult negotiations and
intense lobbying. There were 7 railroads that would be using the
station; the Southern, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, the
Chesapeake and Ohio, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St.
Louis, the Louisville and Nashville and the Norfolk and Western. The
main architects were Steward Wagner and Alfred T. Fellheimer, and
design consultants, Roland Wank and Paul Phillippe Cret. Cret has
often been the architect most credited with the design, since he
designed the signature Art Deco styling, with a rotunda containing
the biggest semi-dome in the western hemisphere, that measures a
staggering 180 feet and 106 feet high. Winold Reiss, a German artist
was brought in to create two 22 foot tall by 110 foot long color
mosaic murals that would depict the history of the city for the
rotunda, two more murals for the baggage lobby, two more for the
arriving and departing trains, 14 smaller murals for the concourse
that would represent local industries and a huge world map mural at
the end of the concourse. During other renovations, the majority of
these murals were taken away and put on display at the
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Those industries
that were depicted included; piano making by Baldwin Piano Company,
meat packing by Kahn's Meat Packing, radio broadcasting with Crosley
Broadcasting Corporation, laundry-machinery manufacture with
American Laundry Machine, roof manufacture with Philip Carey Co.,
machine tools manufacture with Cincinnati Milling Machine, tanning
with American Oak Leather Co., soap making with the Proctor and
Gamble Co., airplane and parts manufacture with Aeronca Aircraft
Company, sheet steel making with American Rolling Mills and Newport
Rolling Mill, ink making with Ault & Weiborg Corp., foundry products
operations with Cincinnati Milling Machine, drug and chemical
processing with William S. Merrill Co. and printing and publishing
with U.S. Playing Card Co. and Champion Paper Company. To build the
terminal, the Union Terminal Company was created, as well as
construct the lines in and out and other related improvements. In
1928, they started, with the regrading needing a huge 5.5 million
cubic yards of fill. The terminal building was started in 1931, and
it was finished early, so that in 1933, trains were coming into the
station. During its busiest time, the station was greeting 108
trains each day and sending them out the same day. They built three
lanes for traffic outside the building, one for cabs, one for buses,
and one for trolleys, but it was never used. It was unfortunate that
while the terminal was being built, the train business was on its
decline, and thus by 1939, the station was called a white elephant
by the local newspapers; but WWII gave it a boost in the arm, but
then the 1950s and 1960s continued the decline and sadly, in 1958,
the station waved goodbye to its final train; the Norfolk and
Western #603. After Amtrak was started, in 1971, the terminal had
only two trains coming through each day; the James Whitcomb Riley
and the George Washington, but Amtrak abandoned it in 1972 and
opened one in a smaller station in another part of Cincinnati.
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