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The Queen City is one of the few major transfer points between North and South. Because of it's unique position, it also handles traffic heading diagonally from the Northeast to the Trans-Mississippi and from Chicago for Florida and the Piedmont coast. The variety and color of equipment passing through is a spectacle matched in few cities.
Cincinnati began as a key transfer point for the river trade to the small local roads reaching up into the lower Lakes states. As these roads consolidated, With this came an influx of northern roads, notably the New York Central System, who built the terminal above in the 1890s.
Not one to be left out, the Pennsylvania Railroad soon arrived on the scene with a branch off their Panhandle Route to St. Louis and set up a terminal on the banks of the river. This proved to be a poor choice, however, since the terminal was plagued by seasonal flooding as we see above in 1913.
What had been a river terminus for northern roads was soon
linked to the south by new bridges over the Ohio River. To the south, the
major player in the 19th century was the old Queen & Crescent Route
to New Orleans. This was absorbed into the Southern Railway at the
turn of the century and became a principal north-south route in the predominantly
east-west Southern system.
As the 19th century wrapped up, the major roads were concentrated at what was now dubbed the "Central Union Station" run by NYC subsidiary the Big 4, with only the Pennsy using its riverfront facility. As traffic grew, the Big 4 facility was soon overloaded and the Pennsy got tired of being flooded out. So, shortly after the Great War, plans were laid for a grand new Union Station.
Cincinnati Union Terminal - universally known as "Cinci" - is one of the last of the great Depots. Completed in 1933 to rationalize the traffic through this transportation hub, it went on line just as the great decline in passenger service began.
Gone are the stately and staid traditions of Federal or Italiante architecture: this terminal is done in a modern (some argue, tasteless) Art Deco. In keeping with tradition, the terminal is built on a grand scale (Art Deco was going through a monumental stage at that point) as we see above in this sweeping view above.
The entry way (at left) opens onto a vast hemispherical rotunda. Ticket counters line the walls beneath the famous mural to westward expansion and regional growth. From there, the traveler walks down the 400 foot elevated concourse (at right) and descends various flights of stairs to platforms for 16 through tracks that run past the rear of the station. The spacious concourse has seating which allows it to double as the waiting room.
Railroads served by the terminal include:
When completed, Cincinnati Union Terminal saw some 200 trains daily, all of them long haul. However, the Great Depression and the postwar decline took their toll and within 20 years traffic has dropped to a bit more than 100 trains daily.
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