Architects and Art Deco design The station building was designed by the firm
Fellheimer & Wagner, and is considered to be the
magnum opus of the firm. Fellheimer was known for designing train stations, and he was lead architect for
Grand Central Terminal (1903–1913). The large and busy firm gave the project design to
Roland A. Wank, a younger employee. Wank's original plan was traditional and featured
Gothic architecture: large arches, vaulted ceilings, and conventional benches in long rows. In 1930, during initial construction, the terminal company persuaded the architects to hire
Paul Philippe Cret as a design consultant. In 1931–32, Cret altered the design aesthetic: thereafter, the terminal and its supporting buildings used modern architecture (later known as
Art Deco), even in places not visible or open to the public. The revised designs were approved as cheaper than the intricate Gothic designs, and with more cheerful, stimulating, and colorful interiors than previous designs.
Location, layout, and exterior and downtown Cincinnati Union Terminal is located in the
Queensgate neighborhood, created in the mid-20th century; originally it was part of the
West End. The location is north of the Ohio River and west of downtown Cincinnati. The terminal lies directly east of the Gest Street
rail yard, and directly west of an expansive lawn and parking lot, formerly
Lincoln Park. The terminal lies at the western end of Ezzard Park Drive (named Lincoln Park Drive from 1935 to 1976, after the park, and subsequently named for Cincinnati resident
Ezzard Charles). The eastern end of Ezzard Park Drive abuts
Cincinnati Music Hall, another icon of Cincinnati, visible from the terminal's front terrace. The complex's northern boundary is Kenner Street, its southern is Hopkins Street, its western is the Gest Street rail yard, and its eastern boundary is Western Avenue (formerly Freeman Avenue). The terminal complex opened in 1933 with 22 buildings, , and of track. 130 acres were occupied by the terminal and its surrounding grounds, while 157 acres were occupied by supporting railroad facilities. The station building in total has . The building has a roughly T-shaped structure surmounted by its half-dome. It was built with five floors, but only two primary levels: the track level, and the station floor, placed above the tracks for simplicity of arrangement and for more architectural opportunities. The building lies east of the tracks, facing Downtown Cincinnati. The building is aligned on a central axis: the east lawn, the terrace, the main concourse, the checking lobby, and finally the train concourse built over the tracks, leading to the station's platforms. The station was considered to have a "pull-through" design, less common though more efficient than the "head-house" style. Another example of a pull-through station is
Kansas City Union Station, while
Grand Central Terminal is a head-house-style terminal. Carroll Meeks, a professor of architecture and art history at
Yale University, compared its layout to a half funnel laid out on the ground, with the wide end collecting passengers and the narrow end ejecting them out onto the platforms. Cincinnati Union Terminal had a capacity of 216 trains per day, 108 in and 108 out, carrying 17,000 passengers. Three concentric lanes of traffic were included in the design of the building, carrying traffic through enclosed ramps to a space beneath the main rotunda of the building, with ramps again for departure. One lane was for cars and taxis, one for buses, and one (never used) for
streetcars. Similar to
Buffalo Central Terminal, Union Terminal used a system of ramps for passengers to access the platforms below the concourse. The building's architecture and design received general acclaim though, even in 1933, it was seen as being possibly the last grand intercity train station to be built. Carroll Meeks described the passenger's route from the tracks to the concourse and back down again to vehicle ramps as relatively complicated and arduous.
Grounds east of the terminal The space to the east of the station consists of a terrace and fountain to the west and parking lots around a narrow lawn to the east. The terminal lawn originally measured , and gently carries broad driveways upward to the terminal. The lawn was originally Lincoln Park, a lush city park. It was remodeled during the terminal's construction to have simpler decorative landscaping, though it retained the name of Lincoln Park. The revised landscaping included elm and sycamore tree borders, with flower beds in the central strip. The central strip is still intact, but the portions to its north and south became parking lots in 1980. The west end of the lawn has an ornamental terrace with steps, hedges, and a central fountain. The terrace also features two groups of four pylons, supporting concealed flood lights. Behind the terrace, a driveway curves around the half oval to the building's entranceway. Dalton Avenue runs through a tunnel beneath the plaza. The fountain cascades water down a set of scalloped tiers into a pool below. It was constructed of concrete and green terrazzo, and was designed by Fellheimer & Wagner. The grounds also feature a large Art Deco sign, not original to the building. For a time, the sign read "Cincinnati Museum Center" although, during the extensive renovation in 2018, it was replaced with the current sign, reading "Cincinnati Union Terminal".
Main facade The main facade, wide in total, is the only portion visible from the plaza approach, and it is the building's most striking exterior feature. The only arriving passenger entry is from the east side of the terminal, due to rail lines to its north, south, and west. The central portion is semicircular, with a half-circle of frosted windows divided vertically by flat limestone
mullions, and a long polished aluminum and glass
marquee lies directly beneath the windows. Beneath this are nine aluminum-faced doors leading to a marble vestibule and the rotunda. The arch ends with a series of
stepped gables. The domed section is flanked by two symmetrical wings, lower in profile, each of which curves 90 degrees to the east. These curve around the driveway, which was only used for private cars. The north wing carried three lanes of traffic beneath the rotunda and out the south wing; the inner for taxicabs, the middle for buses, and the outer lane was intended for
Cincinnati's streetcar system, though it was never used. The taxi and bus drives connected to the main driveway; the streetcar drive utilized separate ramps beginning at Kenner Street and ending at Hopkins Street. In 1956, architectural historian Caroll Meeks referred to the terminal's vehicular traffic system as the most elaborate in any modern station. The main facade's central arch was inspired by
Helsinki Central Station in
Helsinki, Finland, which Fellheimer visited in 1927. The terminal was also reported as resembling
Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi railway station in
Kyiv, Ukraine. Two of the mullions of the facade support a large central clock. It measures in diameter and weighs 5 tons. The hour and minute hands measure and respectively. There are 52 panes of glass: 24 are red-tinted, while 28 are amber. It is unknown who designed it, though the Cincinnati Watch Company believes it was most likely Paul Cret. It was constructed by the
Seth Thomas Clock Company. The clock is original to the terminal, and was synchronized with all others in the terminal with a system created by
IBM. Neon tubing on the aluminum hour and minute hands is also original, lighting them in an orange-red hue. The hands were originally skeleton hands, with a hollow center. Later on, they were modified and filled in. The 2016-2018 renovation restored the clock, and returned the hands to their original appearance. The relatively unornamented facade has two
bas-relief carvings by Maxfield Keck on buttresses at the north and south ends of the arch. The north carving represents transportation, while the south represents commerce. ;Gallery File:Cincinnati Union 12.jpg|Exterior clock File:Athena - Cincinnati Museum Center.jpg|South buttress carving File:Mercury - Cincinnati Museum Center.jpg|North buttress carving File:Incoming Taxis & Motor Coaches Wing, Cincinnati Union Terminal, Queensgate, Cincinnati, OH (46615919875).jpg|Detail of the north wing File:Cincinnati Union 05.jpg|
Marquee File:Rotunda Entry Doors, Cincinnati Union Terminal, Queensgate, Cincinnati, OH (32588987617).jpg|Main entry doors
Exterior materials The building has a steel frame, masonry curtain walls, and concrete floors and roof slabs. The entire east facade and the outer walls of the entrance drives are faced with a light, fine-grained
Indiana limestone, with a low granite base. The low walls and pylons in front of the building are made of the same limestone. Fossils of
sea lilies,
bryozoans,
brachiopods, snails, and other organisms can be seen in the stone. The entranceway under the marquise features
Morton Gneiss, a
Cold Spring dark rainbow granite. Morton Gneiss was popular in American Art Deco architecture at the time. The fountain utilizes pink porphyritic granite. The side and rear walls of the building utilize light buff brick. The dome was originally covered with terra cotta, though it was replaced with aluminum sheathing in 1945. The entrance arcades are lined with cream-colored terra cotta.
Related structures The terminal was built along with several auxiliary buildings, on the north side of the station, also designed in the Art Deco style. They were designed by Edgar D. Tyler, a staff architect for Fellheimer & Wagner, as well as a former student of Paul Cret. The mail handling building and express terminals were on the east side of the terminal property, easily accessible to the city's downtown, and directly to the west and north of the Dalton Avenue U.S. Post Office, completed around 1933 and still standing. The mail building, , was a steel-frame, flat-roofed enclosure for chutes and conveyor belts. The building was also connected to the post office through conveyor belts, delivering city mail separate from transfer mail; the post office in turn delivered outgoing mail split between northern and southern railways. The mail building had two platforms each with two conveyors and serving two tracks, one platform for southbound mail and one for northbound mail. The express terminal was long, ranging from wide. The building was two stories tall, steel-framed, with brick walls and concrete floors and roofs. The second floor was used for offices and storage. It also included platforms with canopies. The terminal complex also included a roundhouse, washing platform, cinder pit, fire-lighting stations, coaling station, two electric substations, a power plant, and a water treatment plant. The roundhouse had 20 indoor stalls, 17 outdoor spaces, and a
turntable with a diameter. The power plant had a 250-foot chimney and a set of three boilers. The plant's basement housed a water treatment plant, which used
zeolite to purify city water, softening the water.
Interior layout and architecture Contrasting with the exterior's simple color scheme, the building's interior is characterized by bright, warm colors, intensified with natural light in daytime and with illumination at night. These colors and lighting contrast with the interior's simple form and detail. Most of the interior metal work is made of aluminum, including doors, signs, ticket grills, and light fixtures. The floor was consistently patterned in the rotunda, through the checking lobby, and into and through the train concourse. The pattern was
terrazzo divided by brass strips into bands and panels in shades of gray and rose. The contrasting flooring was laid out in way that guided traffic to and from the main entrance and platforms. All interior spaces were designed without visible heating or cooling units. Hot air would be vented into the train concourse behind light fixtures. The ramps were also heated, to prevent drafts of cold air from entering the concourse. The rotunda's vestibules were also heated, and the central space was indirectly heated: the space between the inner plaster dome and outer cement dome was heated, as well as the space between the east facade's two panes of glass. This would surround the rotunda with warm air, insulating it from the cold.
Rotunda The main entrance leads to a small marble vestibule, which leads to the terminal's main concourse, the
Rotunda. It is a semi-circular space measuring wide, deep, and tall. The arched front of the building forms the east wall of the rotunda; the other interior walls have a high
dado clad in red and yellow
Verona marble, with a dark red marble trim of
Tennessee marble at the base, and molded plaster used above the dado and up to the ceiling. The room's marble is 150 million years old, containing numerous fossilized skeletons. Approximately 24 of these fossils are visible in the walls of the Rotunda. Sound-absorbing plaster covers the dome ceiling, which has yellow and orange plaster banded with silver strips. The room is designed with Art Deco details like the other original portions of the building. It was designed with colorful pastels, and features colorful mosaic murals by Winold Reiss. The rotunda's semi-circular central information desk and ticket kiosk originally served as a newsstand and tobacco shop, and was originally the only structure in the rotunda. It features a decorative sphere and a digital clock, possibly the first digital clock installed in a public space. The clock is no longer functioning. The northern curved wall housed 18 ticket windows, while the southern curved wall had a soda fountain, telegraph counter, drug store, and the entrance to the terminal's two dining rooms. The east wall included four shops, a travel bureau, the Rookwood Tea Room, and a small theater. The shops were for men's apparel, women's apparel, books, and toys. The toy shop had star and moon light fixtures that reflected colors from the ceiling onto the toys, which were depicted in patterns on the shop's floor. The rotunda features a seemingly unlikely
whispering gallery. The east wall's arch around its windows features decorated flues, elements typical in Art Deco design. The flues act as sound channels, allowing people 30 meters apart at the base of each arch, by symmetrical drinking fountains, to hold a private conversation with ease. The Rotunda features the largest
semi-dome in the
Western Hemisphere, measuring wide and high (about ten stories in height). It was considered the largest in the world until 1973, when the
Sydney Opera House was built.
Train concourse The train concourse, demolished in 1974, measured . It lay directly above the railroad tracks, and had doors on its north and south sides, eight on each side. The sixteen gates each led to stairs and ramps to the platforms below. The concourse was well-lit with tall windows throughout. The room carried on the same marble pattern of the rotunda walls, and had a segmental arch ceiling 36 feet, 8.5 inches above the floor at the crown, painted in shades of yellow from pale lemon to orange. The room was used as a waiting area, though it lacked traditional wooden benches. Instead it had American Oak Leather-upholstered settees and chairs in aluminum frames, placed in twelve concentric groups of 46 seats, each around a small, round teakwood table. A conductors' visa counter was installed at the east end of the concourse at its longitudinal center. The room featured the
Winold Reiss industrial murals, commissioned for the space, as well as a large map mural, the only artwork original to the terminal that was demolished. The concourse's west end had a large clock, also saved from demolition. The clock was moved to an outdoor domed display in the Town Center parking garage, near Cincinnati Music Hall. In 2018, workers removed the clock from the garage and delivered it to the Museum Center, which plans to assess the clock's condition and decide where to display it. The entrance to the concourse had two train bulletin boards; a departure chalkboard at the north side and an arrivals chalkboard at the south side. One Reiss mural decorated the space above each board: a departing train above the departures and an arriving train above the arrivals.
Platforms and tracks The terminal was built with eight platforms and sixteen platform tracks, with room for expansion to 22 tracks. The platforms and tracks ran north to south, partially beneath the train concourse. The platforms were wide, unusual in train station design, and long, and able to be extended to 2,400 feet. They had concrete bases, covered with canopies. The support columns were 80 feet apart, also noted as unusual. The canopies were of painted steel; roofing was by the Philip Carey Company. Parking tracks were installed between the platform tracks, as there was sufficient room between the platforms. These tracks allowed for sleeping cars and express cars to be exchanged.
Baggage facilities The baggage level occupied space directly beneath the checking lobby and train concourse. The space also utilized a drive-through loading platform, where cars would enter the north side of the baggage level, drop off luggage on the loading platform, and exit the south side. Trucking ramps were located directly beneath the train concourse's northern passenger ramps, and a passageway connected the facility to the mail handling building.
Tower A Tower A, a former
signal tower, is open to the public as a railroad exhibit once per year. The tower is located on the fourth and fifth floors at the east end of the station, with sets of windows on the north, east, and south. It overlooks the Gest Street rail yard as well as a mile north and south, including part of Queensgate Yard. The room was noise-insulated with cork linoleum and Celotex due to its once-frequent exposure to passenger trains. The tower featured a large electro-pneumatic
interlocking machine, built by the
Union Switch & Signal Company. The machine had 187 levers, making it the largest interlocking machine in service at the time. Light bulbs underneath each switch indicated information. Above the machine was an illuminated track model. From 1989 to 2018, the Cincinnati Railroad Club occupied the space, offering public access to the space and operating a museum for the rail yard and station's innovative interlocking system. The club had been meeting in the terminal since 1938. In 1989, the club refurbished the space, installed exhibits there, and staffed it on weekends with volunteers beginning in 1991. Since the terminal's 2018 renovation, the club was required to pay rent, something that was mandatory for tax credits for the renovation. The club could not afford the rent terms and thus vacated the space. In late 2019, the museum center opened the space for a few weeks for the holiday season, staffed by Cincinnati Railroad Club volunteers. The club plans to raise money to have the space open more often in the next five years.
Foodservice spaces The Rookwood tea room is decorated entirely in
Rookwood Pottery tiles. It is located directly off of the Rotunda, and is currently a
Graeter's ice cream parlor. The room opened in 1933 as a parlor for tea, coffee, and light snacks. It operated as a
USO center during World War II, and afterward was used for different functions, including foodservice and as a game room. In 1980, the room became a GD Ritzy's ice cream and chili parlor. When the museum center opened, the space became a
United Dairy Farmers ice cream shop. In December 2018, the room became a Graeter's parlor. The room was designed by William E. Hentschel of the Rookwood Pottery Company, and utilized mint green, pale gray, and mauve tiles. The room has partitioned seating, and designs with dragonflies and flowers. The south side of the main level has a kitchen, dining room, and lunchroom. The lunchroom, now known as the
Losantiville Dining Room, has relatively high yellow Verona marble walls, with a band of green above it, and a chocolate-brown ceiling. The countertops used Vermont
verd antique; stools were aluminum and red leather. The lunchroom featured 22 murals, restored in the 2018 renovation; they had been removed around the 1980s to prevent further damage. The ceiling mural in the room's vestibule was also cleaned, and new green terrazzo was installed in the floor to show where the serpentine lunch counters were. The dining room had a large ceiling mural depicting a map of Cincinnati and neighboring parts of Kentucky. The kitchen and dining room were initially separated by a very early iteration of an
automatic door.
Other interior spaces A small 118-seat theater is at the entrance of the terminal. It reopened around 1991 as the Scripps Howard Newsreel Theater, showing free features, newsreels, and a video history of the terminal. It uses white and black marble walls, with linoleum carvings on either side of the main screen. It originally had a mulberry-color carpet. In the 2016-2018 renovation, the original seats were cleaned and repaired, and a new projector and sound system was installed. The north side of the main level included terminal company offices, also present in spaces above the checking lobby. The men's and women's waiting rooms both used distinctive marbles, and featured wainscoting, with the walls above made of plywood or flexwood showing the natural grain, or in designs. The men's room walls feature a railroad motif, using
zebrawood, walnut, and holly; the women's lounge had panels of zebra and
madrone wood. The rooms featured aluminum and leather-backed seats. Both waiting rooms had connecting bathrooms with marble walls and several showers. The checking lobby is a space behind the rotunda. It was originally an intermediate lobby between the rotunda and the train concourse, and served passengers with baggage checking on the north side and parcel checking on the south side. The space also included or led to restrooms, telephone booths, a shoeshine room, barber shop, newsstand, train bulletins, and a soda fountain. The upper portion of the walls are decorated with two Reiss murals depicting the terminal's construction and opening. The president's office is circular, with flexwood walls and cork floors. A design above the doorway has a depiction of Union Terminal created from inlaid wood, including a working electric clock. The room also has a
Kasota stone fireplace, above which lies a map of the United States using inlaid wood; each wood panel is indigenous to the state it depicts. The terminal also opened with a drug store, beauty parlor, barber shop, men's clothing store, gift shop, and a small hospital. ;Original features File:CUT Pictorial History 04.jpg|Vestibule File:CUT HABS men's room.jpg|Men's Room File:Main Dining Room Entrance CUT.jpg|Dining Room entrance File:Cincinnati Union Terminal - RA - 23.jpg|Checking Lobby File:Secretary's Office CUT.jpg|Secretary's Office File:CUT HABS President Office 03.jpg|President's Office ;Modern and restored spaces File:Cincinnati Union Terminal 31.jpg|Cincinnati Dining Room File:Cincinnati Union Terminal 47.jpg|Rookwood tea room File:Cincinnati Union Terminal 43.jpg|
Public Landing recreation File:Cincinnati Union Terminal 42.jpg|Cincinnati in Motion exhibit File:Cincinnati Union Terminal 41.jpg|Checking Lobby File:Cincinnati Union Terminal 39.jpg|Women's Room
Artwork Cincinnati Union Terminal features works of art throughout its interior spaces. The works of art originally included 23 mosaic murals, totaling , making it the largest collection of secular mosaics in the United States in 1933. The terminal's interior features numerous works by German-American artist
Winold Reiss. Reiss was commissioned to design and create two large
mosaic murals depicting the
history of Cincinnati and history of the United States for the rotunda, two murals for the baggage checking lobby, two murals for the departing and arriving train boards, 16 smaller murals for the train concourse representing local industries, and a large world map mural. Reiss spent roughly two years in the design and creation of the murals. The murals are often compared to works of the
Federal Art Project, sponsored by the
Works Progress Administration, however the Reiss murals predate the Federal Art Project by several years.
Rotunda murals The rotunda murals measure ; when created they were among the largest works of art in the US. The south mural (on the left side of the rotunda from the entrance) depicts US history, while the north mural (on the right side of the rotunda) depicts the history of the city of Cincinnati. Reiss explained that the south mural symbolizes the country's development from Native American inhabitance to the late industrial era, with a history of transportation in the background. The mural showed Native Americans of the
Blackfoot Confederacy, a group that Reiss himself joined for months in 1920 and painted for years following. The pioneer family depicted symbolizes "the courage and fortitude of the man; the loyalty and love of the mother; the wondering romance of the past and future America in the eyes of the boy". The Cincinnati mural, on the north side of the rotunda, is set in the
Ohio River Valley. The figures represent exploration, agricultural development, shipbuilding, and industry. Cincinnati's
Fort Washington is shown in the background at the top right, while the evolution of Ohio River shipping and Cincinnati in the 1930s fills the rest of the background. Above the 1930s skyline is Reiss' imagination of the future city. The only prominent figure is
Arthur St. Clair, who named Cincinnati, at the third from the right. The other figures are deliberately meant to be common people. Reiss used family members (including sons and a brother), local construction workers, and studio models for the mural. The African American laborers were drawn from Union Terminal construction workers, while the Blackfeet natives were copied from sketches Reiss made earlier while visiting the group. One of Reiss's studies for the mural is displayed in the mezzanine level of the Cincinnati History Museum.
World map mural The world map mural was , weighing 22.4 tons. It included five decorative clocks made of tile, together representing five of the United States's time zones: Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern, and Atlantic. The United States was depicted in the center, divided into the time zones. Major cities were spelled out in the terminal's Art Deco typeface; Cincinnati was spelled largest. The mural also included two
Nicolosi globular projections of the world, with the Americas on the left side and Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia on the right. The mural was demolished along with the train concourse in 1974; due to its size, the cost of saving it was estimated at $100,000 ($ in ). All of the clocks remain, except the Eastern time clock. The original Winold Reiss study for the mural survives, created in 1931-32 and measuring by . The study is a work in progress, showing the process and decisions taken to complete the work; it was not completed as his other studies were. The painting was one of several offered as a donation from a private collector to the
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at
Cornell University. Chief Curator Ellen Avril, a Cincinnati native, recognized the work and recommended donating it to the Cincinnati Museum Center instead. The donation to the Cincinnati Museum Center was accepted in 2013 and the mural was moved to the entrance to the Cincinnati History Museum. In 2014, Avril assisted with another donation to the terminal: seven Winold Reiss oil paintings of different people, four are figures in the south mural of the rotunda; three are figures in the south mural of the former baggage checking lobby.
Industrial murals Reiss also created a set of sixteen murals depicting Cincinnati industries, created for the train concourse. Since the concourse's demolition in 1974, fourteen of the works have been moved numerous times. Currently five of these murals are at the
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and nine are at the
Duke Energy Convention Center. Two of the murals were initially installed in a still-existing section of Union Terminal; these murals remain in the building.
Construction murals Two Reiss murals are located in the checking lobby, by the current entrance to the Omnimax theater and historically an intermediate space between the rotunda and train concourse. The lobby was where passengers would check their baggage and parcels before traveling. The murals measure , and depict seven people who played a significant role in the terminal's development and construction. The south mural, left to right, features
Russell Wilson (Cincinnati mayor at the project's completion in 1933), H. A. Worcester (first Union Terminal Co. president), and
Clarence A. Dykstra (city manager in 1933). The north mural features, left to right,
Murray Seasongood (mayor at the project's start in 1929),
Clarence O. Sherrill (city manager in 1929), Henry M. Waite (chief engineer for the Union Terminal Co.), and George Dent Crabbs (founder of the Union Terminal Company).
Other murals Reiss made two murals to decorate space above the arrivals and departures chalkboards at the head of the train concourse. After the concourse's demolition, they were moved to each side of the entrance of the Cincinnati History Library, on the mezzanine level (the space is now occupied by the Holocaust & Humanity Center). The arrivals board featured an oncoming
New York Central Hudson locomotive, and the departure board featured a departing
observation car typical of the time. These murals were spared from demolition. From 1989 to 1991, to make room for the Omnimax theater under construction, the train murals were relocated to the mezzanine. Pierre Bourdelle, son of renowned French sculptor
Antoine Bourdelle, was also commissioned to create artwork for the terminal. He painted of works, the largest single project of his career. The works included a jungle-themed mural of linoleum panels, painted and lacquered, for the women's lounge, and works for the men's lounge, baggage checking area, meeting spaces, and the executive offices. He also painted 22 murals for the lunchroom, the current Losantiville Dining Room. The murals depict live animals, fruits, vegetables, bread, and other food. They were removed around the 1980s due to damage from nicotine, soot, and dirt, and were restored and re-hung in 2018 during the terminal's renovation. The murals once again decorate the room's
frieze. The ceiling mural in the room's vestibule was also cleaned, and a small patch was left uncleaned to show the extent of the restoration.
Innovations, reception, and legacy The terminal is widely considered the United States' finest example of railway architecture, and one of the last grand train stations in the country. The terminal was designed with a large amount of interior and exterior art, unusual for train stations at the time, intended to set Union Terminal apart and make it a model of modern Cincinnati. The commission was one of the largest of the time period. As well, the dome was the largest unsupported half-dome at the time of opening. The terminal is popularly recognized by the American public; it was the 45th most popular work of architecture in the United States in the American Institute of Architects' 2006-2007 survey
America's Favorite Architecture. It was also recognized in the survey as the most popular work of architecture in the state of Ohio. ==In popular culture==