The Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal was originally built as Cincinnati's Union Terminal. Construction took place between 1929 and 1933. The principle architects of the massive building were Alfred Fellheimer and Steward Wagner, with architects Paul Philippe Cret and Roland Wank brought in as design consultant; Cret is responsible for the building's Art Deco style.
The mayor at the time of the project's inception was Murray Seasongood. It took four years and 41 million dollars to complete. Like other Union terminals and stations, it was a joint project of several, in this case seven, railroad lines to create a single station for the entire city. The Union Terminal Company was created to build the terminal itself, the railroad lines into and out of the terminal, and to reconstruct the roadways that were destroyed by this project. The new viaducts that the Union Terminal Company created to cross the Mill Creek valley ranged from well built, like the Western Hills viaduct, to the hastely constructed and shabby, like the Waldvogel Viaduct.
During its heyday, the Terminal had a capacity of 216 trains per day, 108 in and 108 out. In the terminal's rotunda, two murals depicting the history of Cincinnati were created by Winold Reiss . Three concentric lanes of traffic were created to go in one side of the terminal, underneath the main rotunda of the building, and then out the other side, one for taxis, one for buses, and one (although never used) for trains. However, the time period in which the terminal was built was one of decline for train travel. While it had a brief revival in the 1940's, because of World War II, it declined in use through the 1950's and the1960's.
In the early 1970's, the terminal closed its doors to train traffic, and was transformed into a shopping center called "The Land of Oz". Set up in cubicle-like partitions in the main rotunda, it failed after a few years. The terminal laid empty for the next decade or so. In 1988, the City of Cincinnati passed a tax levy to save the terminal from destruction and to transform it into the Cincinnati Museum Center. Former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer was one of the major proponents of saving the building and tranforming it into a museum. Without Springer's involvement, the building most likely would have been destroyed. It was opened in 1990 and now provides a home to five organizations:
- Cincinnati History Museum
- Cinergy Children's Museum
- Museum of Natural History & Science
- Robert D. Lindner Family Omnimax Theater
- Cincinnati Historical Society Library
References
- Mecklenborg, Jake(2005). Cincinnati-Transit.net.
- Works Progress Administration(ed. Harry Graff)(1943). WPA Guide to Cincinnati: Cincinnati, a guide to the Queen City and its neighbors. Cincinnati: The Cincinnati Historical Society. ISBN 0-911497-04-8.
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