Indiana Historical Society

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Cincinnati Union Terminal
And then there was Cincinnati Union Terminal, the work of the New York City firm of Fellheimer and Wagner, who just a few years before had completed Buffalo Central Terminal. That depot was so clearly inspired by classical design—with some of the most impressive vaulted interior spaces in architecture—that it must have seemed startling that the firm could do a design as audacious as that of Cincinnati Union Terminal.

The terminal dominated the western reaches of the city and was so unprecedented as to shock and awe the viewer when he first encountered it. The view from the north, in particular, in which the great hump of the terminal’s roof loomed over a nineteenth-century neighborhood, was especially memorable.

Once again, however, it was the interior that contained the true treasures. Cincinnati Union Terminal was not so much architecture as a work of art that happened to house human activity. It is considered an art deco masterpiece, but it should be remembered that art deco was not an architectural style; it was an aesthetic philosophy that sought to introduce artistic design into everyday objects, places, and products.

At Cincinnati Union Terminal, established artists such as Paul Cret, Pierre Bourdelle, and Winold Reiss, a German who had become known for his paintings of American Indians, had commissions to integrate artwork into the very design of the building. The building was the art, and vice versa, and art was no longer something simply to be hung on the wall when the building was finished.

Best remembered, no doubt, were the soaring dome of the rotunda and Reiss’s huge mosaic murals on the inside of its curved walls. Depicting the settlement of America and development of Cincinnati and the Ohio valley, the curved rotunda murals were the largest and the most colorfully executed. They were done as “shadow” mosaics, in which large areas of a single color were rendered in plaster, while the mosaic tiles gave form and detail to individual figures and objects.

High above the terminal up in Tower A, the nerve center of operations, the model board and interlocking machine were works of art in themselves, ensuring smooth arrivals and departures for passengers who never had to wonder how it all ran.

The concourse over the tracks was a more traditional space but still was worthy of note. Here were fourteen additional murals depicting Cincinnati industries, also rendered in shadow mosaic.

The arrival and departure boards had their own murals, oddly reversed, since the arrival board showed the rear of a train and the departure board showed the locomotive. Other artwork integrated into the design included carved stone, wood veneer, sculpted leather, and beautifully worked metal elements. Down to the last detail, Cincinnati Union Terminal was completely true to its art deco inspiration.

Urban Design/Urban Fabric Impact
All of the “3-C” union stations had a significant and unique impact upon the cities in which they were built. When each was built, it helped—to a greater or lesser degree—to shape its city’s future development; and, in varying ways, all three stations still affect their cities today.14

Station location was the most important factor. In Columbus, for example, all three union stations were located at a point that successfully balanced the convenience of the public with the operational needs of the railroads. Development of rail service to the city occurred in a way that dictated only one logical location for a depot. Its location less than a mile from the city’s center at Broad and High Streets made Columbus’s union station one of the most convenient of the “3-C”stations.

The first depot literally straddled the lines of the city’s pioneer railroads, which followed a “natural” route outside of but close to the city’s core. This route gave the best combination of affordable land, manageable grades, and ease of use by the public, and it proved to be nearly ideal for all the additional rail lines that reached Columbus in the second half of the nineteenth century.

With elevation of High Street over the tracks, the third union station gave Columbus a truly functional transportation hub that, with easy access to streetcar routes, enabled a traveler to reach all parts of the city with a minimum of trouble. The High Street arcade provided a continuous row of commercial development that kept the viaduct from becoming a barrier between the downtown and the north side, and the depot quickly became integrated into the fabric of the city.

Cleveland’s experience was considerably different. Unlike Columbus, Cleveland did not have a single dominant union station dating from the earliest years of rail travel. The city’s unusual and distinctive topography had a strong influence on the locations of its rail lines, and the bluff-top location of the city’s downtown core made it something of a chore to get to, from, and between the various lakefront and riverside depots. Overcoming these disadvantages would take a capital expenditure that simply was not forthcoming in the nineteenth century.

The Cleveland Group Plan addressed this issue in a way that successfully struck the necessary balance between operational convenience for the railroads and ease of use for the traveling public. The plan’s lakeside depot at the head of the proposed Mall was appropriately scaled, architecturally distinctive, and provided the best solution to the problem of getting passengers between the lakefront level of the tracks and the bluff-top level of the city. Had it been built, the union station on the Mall would have substantially aided the Group Plan’s purpose of organizing and reorienting Cleveland’s development.
As it actually happened, the construction of Cleveland’s new union station took an entirely different direction. Development of the Mall and implementation of the Group Plan were well under way when the Van Sweringen brothers achieved a political and economic coup by winning approval for the Public Square location of their massive development. Indeed the Terminal Group could not have succeeded without its union station component; it needed the daily ebb and flow of passengers and commuters. Location of the new union station in the heart of the brothers’ commercial development was a brilliant move, as was the creation of the whole complex on a steel structure located above ground level. No other union station in the country developed in quite the same way.

Cleveland Union Terminal’s balancing of needs between the public and the railroads was tilted decidedly toward the public. The very existence of the Van Sweringens’ development caused a shift of focus and development back toward Public Square, and the terminal was the best located of the “3-C” stations in terms of ease of public use: a shopper or businessman could easily arrive in town, do shopping or have business meetings, stay overnight, and eat in fine restaurants without ever venturing outdoors. For those who needed to go elsewhere in the city, everything was a short walk or streetcar ride away.

For Cleveland’s railroads it was a different matter. The terminal required construction of a new seventeen-mile electrified railroad and included the necessity of changing from steam to electric power and back again at each end of the new route. It required operating and trackage-rights agreements and was an expensive facility. At the same time, it did have some benefit by removing passenger trains from some heavily used freight routes, easing traffic flow through a busy urban area.

Cincinnati Union Terminal had almost entirely the opposite result. It made railroad passenger and freight operations easier, but it was anything but conveniently located for the traveler. In the case of the Queen City, the “natural” rail routes, dictated by topography, were along the Ohio River and in the valley of Mill Creek west of the city’s core. Like Cleveland and unlike Columbus, Cincinnati never had a single dominant union station dating from the earliest days of rail service. Its several small depots were inconveniently scattered around the town’s low-lying areas and were subject to serious flooding. Any union station would require a large amount of land that was above flood level.

This made it almost a given that the terminal would have to be located in the valley of Mill Creek, up on artificial fill, to achieve the needed elevation. The terminal itself was a work of architectural and artistic genius. From the rotunda murals to the large concourse and conveniences such as the Rookwood Tea Room and the tiny newsreel theater, Cincinnati Union Terminal made travel as easy and pleasant as possible. Once in the terminal, passengers had little to complain about. However, its location well over a mile west of the downtown core made walking to the terminal impossible. While the terminal’s design accommodated streetcars, they never actually went there, so the options were automobile or city bus. The result was a wonderful union station located at such a distance that it never became fully integrated into the city’s urban fabric, standing instead in splendid isolation, the jewel in the crown of the Queen City.

For the railroads, however, the terminal was more than convenient. It occupied new land that did not interfere with freight operations, yet blending the flow of passenger trains into and out of the existing rail network was a fairly simple proposition, since the five new connections between the terminal and the railroads were so well thought out and built to such high standards. The self-contained coach yard, mail facility, engine terminal, and control tower, all located in a logical flow of trackage as part of the double-ended terminal project, were a model of modern passenger transportation planning. What the traveler lost in convenience the railroads gained.