Cincinnati Union Terminal

About this property

The Cincinnati Museum Center is a museum complex operating out of the Cincinnati Union Terminal in the Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. It houses museums, theater, a library, and a symphonic pipe organ, as well as special traveling exhibitions. The Museum of Natural History & Science includes a space called Dinosaur Hall, featuring skeletons and fossils, including skeletons in the Galeamopus, Daspletosaurus, and Torvosaurus genera. The Torvosaurus skeleton, installed in 2018, is the most complete skeleton of the genus, at 55 percent complete, and the only Torvosaurus skeleton publicly exhibited. The natural history museum also includes a reproduction of a limestone cave. The exhibit, titled "The Cave", was first installed as "The Cavern" in the museum's Gilbert Avenue location in 1967, ten years after the location opened. It was reinstalled in Union Terminal around 1994. It was designed to resemble Mammoth Cave National Park, the longest cave system in the world, in nearby Kentucky. Workers with extensive cave knowledge sculpted the cave from gunite. The exhibit has two levels and spans 500 feet. It includes an underground stream and vertical cavities (dome pits), one of which is 40 feet high. Holiday Junction is an annual rail-themed event at the museum center. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Cincinnati Historical Society and Cincinnati Museum of Natural History were searching for larger spaces. Both had their origins in the early-mid 1800s, and the historical society was interested in creating a museum. The most favorable options in their studies were to join in occupying space in Union Terminal. In May 1986, the voters of the surrounding county approved $33 million in funding to transform the building into museum space. The state of Ohio provided $8 million, the city provided $3 million, while about 3,000 individuals, corporations, and foundations also donated to the effort. Talk show host and former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer was one of the major proponents of saving the building and transforming it into a museum. The terminal's 200,000 square feet of underground space, then used as parking space, as well as its taxi and bus ramps, were renovated into exhibition space. The main concourse was restored, retail space was refurbished, and the theater was restored. The entrance to the train concourse was renovated into the Omnimax theater, and the men's lounge became Amtrak's waiting room and ticket counter. In 1986, the Union Terminal Association (UTA) was created to facilitate long-term preservation of the terminal. The organization included community members and city and county officials. The UTA leased the building from the city and searched for tenants. The UTA joined the Historical Society and Museum of Natural History in creating the Heritage Center at Union Terminal.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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