The Glory of an Industrial Age

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June 8th 2011

Published: March 3rd 2012

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Cincinnati Union Station

Cincinnati Union Station, an art deco masterpiece

Today I complete my circuit of the three Cs of Ohio, Cincinnati.

On first glance, the city reminded me of Pittsburgh.

Like Pittsburgh, it was founded where several rivers intersect the Ohio River.

It is surrounded by hills.

It became a trading center and then an industrial powerhouse.

While Pittsburgh made steel, Cincinnati made machine tools and soap.

The city became wealthy from all this activity, and plowed some of it into civic improvements.

One of the most dramatic is Union Station.

Union Station

The train station was built in 1933 to replace six different train stations around the city.

Notable architect Paul Cret designed an art deco masterpiece which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The station looks like a large semi-circular building surrounded by two wings.

The center of the building has a large clock.

The wings have friezes celebrating the glories of the railroads.

In front of it is a large parking lot and promenade.

The inside is even more glorious than the exterior.

The large half dome covers the original waiting area.

It is

Station central hall

The glorious central hall of Cincinnati Union Station

painted in bright pastels.

The room has wonderful acoustics, which have the unfortunate side effect of amplifying noise.

Around the bottom of the dome is a mosaic by Winold Reiss celebrating the history of Cincinnati, starting with the earliest Native Americans and ending with the building of skyscrapers in the 1920s.

This room is one of the most dramatic I have seen so far.

Unlike Grand Central Station in New York, another dramatic train station that survives as a commuter hub, Union Station could not exist solely as a train station at this point.

The city turned it into a museum complex in 1990.

It holds four, Natural History Museum, Children’s Museum, City History Museum, and an Omnimax Theater.

The original railroad concessions still operate, and now serve food for museum goers.

People can still catch Amtrack trains here, at a waiting room deep in the back that only opens in the middle of the night.

I saw the City History Museum, which was located in one of the annexes.

City History Museum

The museum contains a combination of really innovative exhibits, and the expected (and by now rather dull) collection of artifacts.

Thankfully, it’s organized so

Union Station Freize

Section of the frieze in Union Station. This section celebrates Cincinnati in the late 1800s.

people see the innovative stuff first.

Start with the architecture.

The museum is located in what was originally the taxiway.

Cabs would pick people up on a road within the station, so people did not get wet or cold.

The taxiway has amazing art deco detailing, such as grooves on the ceiling that follow the path of the road.

The circular air vents in the ceiling are designed to echo the curves.

The artifact part starts with a discussion of the city’s name.

Cincinnatus was a Roman general during the early Republic period who repelled an invasion by the Inner Gauls.

Afterward, he could have taken over Roman society, but instead resigned from the army to become a farmer.

After the American Revolution, many colonial army officers compared George Washington to Cincinnatus.

They formed an organization, the Society of the Cincinnati, to keep alive the principles and camaraderie of their time in the army.

The organization still exists, and only descendents of the original members are allowed to join.

In 1790, the territorial governor of what later became Ohio, Arthur St. Clair, was a member of the organization.

Although

Taxiway

The former taxiway at Cincinnati Union Station, now home to the Cincinnati City History Museum

he claimed at the time he named Cincinnati after the Roman general, he actually named it after the society.

From here, the museum has a pretty standard display of the city’s history, with some nice interactive areas thrown in.

The area was a strategic trading spot from ancient times.

The British fought a war with the local Indians to claim it, followed by clashes with the French.

It then passed to the newly formed US, and became part of the territory of Ohio.

In the early 1800s, the city found fame as an early stockyards.

So many hogs were slaughtered here each year that the city had the nickname “Porkopolous”.

All that waste pork fat had to be useful for something.

William Proctor and David Gamble ultimately figured out how to turn it into highly pure soap in 1837, and Proctor and Gamble was born.

The company is still one of Cincinnati’s most important employers.

Later, the city became a haven for German Immigrants, who settled in a neighborhood they named “Over the Rhine”; the hills next to the rivers reminded them of Bavaria.

Finally, the city became

Cincinnatus

Roman general Cincinnatus, the namesake of the Society of Cincinnati, which in turn is the namesake of the city.

a manufacturing center, known especially for skilled machining work.

This lasted until the 1960s.

Since then, city leaders have been trying to diversity the economic base, with some success.

The most innovative parts of the museum are located in the former taxiway.

The first is Cincinnati in Motion, a set of miniatures of the city.

The display represents the city in the 1930s (the time when the train station was built) with streetcars, manufacturing plants, and early skyscrapers.

The buildings and streetlamps have real lights, and the streetcars really run.

The train station is in the display, of course.

So is the main Proctor and Gamble factory, which was practically its own city called Ivoryville.

The Cincinnati Zoo, the nation’s second, also shows up.

The zoo has changed a great deal over the years, and the builders went to great lengths to get it historically accurate.

The riverfront, which is now a maze of highways and sports stadiums, was a huge rail yard back then.

The other big display is called Cincinnati Goes to War.

It tells the story of the city during World War II.

Downtown model

Model of downtown Cincinnati in the 1930s, from the Cincinnati in Motion display.

I really enjoyed this display.

I have seen other discussions of the home front during the war, but none are as extensive as this one.

During the war, companies had three basic choices: get a war contract, find a way to make something the armed forces needed, or close due to material rationing.

Proctor and Gamble made food rations, along with gelatin based explosives.

Most machine shops turned out parts for bombs.

A company that used to make dresses figured out how to make blackout shades, which had high demand due to air raid drills.

For people, their opportunities depended on who they were.

For Caucasian males between the ages of 18 and 35, being drafted was inevitable.

The army gave volunteers a wider choice of jobs over draftees, as an encouragement to not fight the induction order.

For African Americans, women, and older men, they could volunteer for service but would be mostly relegated to poorly paid support jobs.

Many volunteered anyway.

The rest found incredible opportunity at home, by getting one of the newly opened up factory jobs.

Many women and minorities entered

1940s City Bus

During World War II, when gasoline rationing prevented people from driving, they used busses like this one to get around town.

the skilled workforce for the first time this way.

The next section discusses home life.

Many people planted victory gardens, of which the museum has a sample.

Writing letters was an important way of staying in touch.

Many kids found the war exciting and followed it eagerly.

It probably helped that the gruesome TV footage of later wars did not exist yet.

Some teenagers lied about their age to join up (likely the last war this happened).

Rationing became a way of life, in order to prevent price spikes of key items.

The museum has samples of the rationing books, and a list of gasoline regulations (People were placed in one of four categories based on how much ‘necessary’ driving they had to do each month).

The final section is on the war’s end.

Naturally, the first reaction was euphoria.

The displays have lots of footage of celebrations and returning soldiers.

The difficulties started afterward.

Many people found returning to their old lives difficult, especially minorities that had tasted new opportunities for the first time.

As noted at the National Civil

Carew Towers

The Carew Towers, another art deco masterpiece

Rights Museum in Memphis (see April 20^th), their reactions ultimately changed American society in profound ways.

Fountain Square

Cincinnati has a short but brutal rush hour, so after the museum I had time to kill.

I ultimately spent it exploring downtown.

Downtown Cincinnati looks like almost every other regional business center, but it does have two notable items.

The first of these is Fountain Square.

It’s the closest thing Cincinnati has to a downtown park.

The square is a concrete space with an enormous fountain in the middle.

The fountain, the Genius of the Waters, was built in the early 1900s and has the beaux arts style typical for the time.

It looks out of place surrounded by modern buildings.

On the corners, there are four little fountains which pour into low basins.

People use these to cool off during hot weather.

Next to the square lies the other notable item, a set of art deco skyscrapers called the Carew Towers.

They were built in 1931, and their setback design served as a model for the Empire State Building.

What makes them

The Genius of the Waters

The fountain in the center of Fountain Square, downtown Cincinnati

notable is that this complex was one of the first mixed use buildings in the country.

The original design contained a hotel, a complex of shops, and two department stores.

The department stores are long gone at this point, but the hotel is still one of the better ones in the region.

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