The Cleveland Union Terminal, or as most Clevelanders call it “the Terminal Tower,”
is one of the most iconic landmarks in the city. However,
the predecessor station that it replaced was an embarrassment to many Clevelanders.
To start off, let’s talk about Cleveland’s various railroads. The city had four different railroads
in the 1850’s. The first was Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, followed by Cleveland & Toledo,
Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula, and Cleveland and Pittsburgh. After a
series of mergers and consolidations, these four railroads were later condensed into two, the New
York Central, and Pennsylvania Railroads. At the time each of these four railroads had
separate passenger stations in different locations throughout the city of Cleveland. This made it
difficult for riders to locate their correct railroad and passenger station as they couldn’t
tell the difference between them. As a result, all four railroads got together to solve this issue.
The fruit of their partnership was the construction of a $75,000
shared complex in 1853 that featured a passenger station, railway eating house, and freight
station. The station measured 363 feet long by 125 feet wide and was built on piles over Lake Erie
located near where West 9th street terminates. For nearly 10 years the station successfully
served its purpose and was heavily used. President Abraham Lincoln even stopped at the depot when he
visited Cleveland during his inaugural rail tour to Washington D.C. in 1861. After he
was assassinated in 1865, his funeral train also stopped at the Union Depot on April 28,
1865. The depot’s condition began to deteriorate in the 1860's because the piles holding it
over Lake Erie were rotting. A fire had also destroyed the northern part of the depot in 1864,
prompting an effort by the four railroad’s presidents to build a new Union Depot.
The project was headed by Amasa Stone, president of the Cleveland Painesville & Ashtabula Railroad.
Stone was a prominent industrialist, who at the time was known for designing and building bridges.
He later became director of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway after the Cleveland
Painesville & Ashtabula had been merged into the company. His reputation was
severely tarnished after his experimental bridge in Ashtabula collapsed killing
over 160 people on December 29, 1876. A new site for the Union Depot was chosen
in between Bank and Water Streets, which today Is West 3rd and 9th Streets. Designed by Amasa Stone,
and B.F. Morse, the massive $475,000 dollar structure measured 603 feet long by 108 feet wide.
Its distinguishing feature was a 96-foot-tall clock tower adorned with a 50 foot tall flagpole
on its tin roof. The depot itself was made entirely of Berea sandstone with structural
iron and a roof covered by slate. Work began in April 1864 under the supervision of Stone,
and it was later fully completed in 1866. The Union Depot was opened to the public
on November 10, of that year. A grand banquet was held by the four railroad presidents with
an attendance of an estimated 300 guests. The first train to pass through the station was on
November 11th, and the next day on the 12th, regular passenger service was established.
At the time of the Union Depot’s opening, it was the largest railroad station in the United States.
It held this title until Grand Central Depot in New York City opened 1871.
Cleveland’s Union Depot had eight tracks that went through an enclosed train shed connected to it.
Inside was the main concourse and platforms. The depot portion contained railroad offices,
waiting rooms, a dining hall, and baggage area. Adorned atop the train shed was the year 1865
carved in stone. It signified the year of peace when the Union won the American Civil War.
Many politicians, presidents and celebrities passed through the station during its heyday.
One notable visit was when President Rutherford B. Hayes traveled by
train to attend a Cleveland Republican Businessmen’s Club meeting on November 5,
1880. Afterwards he ate lunch with Cleveland Mayor Rensselaer Herrick, Amasa Stone,
and several others. As Hayes returned to his train at the Union Depot, future President James A.
Garfield, who was on a separate train, just pulled into the station. As Garfield exited his train,
he elbowed his way through a crowd surrounding Hayes’ private railcar to shake his hand goodbye.
By the 1890’s Cleveland Union Depot had already outgrown the sheer volume of passenger trains
and people coming into the city. That number was about 95 trains in total. In a Plain Dealer
Newspaper article, they criticized that it technically wasn’t a true Union Depot.
Since it was completed in 1866, four other railroads were routed through Cleveland. They
opted to build their own stations because they couldn’t access the Union Depot on the lakefront.
After over 30 years of exposure to soot from steam engines and industrial pollution,
the Berea Sandstone on the depot was blackening. It did not make a good impression on visitors
to the city who commented it looked dingy. William Brown, President of the New York Central
Railroad made a comment saying the depot “is a disgrace both to the city and to the railroads.”
One Cleveland businessman became so fed up and embarrassed that he paid for a billboard
that was erected near the depot. It read, “don’t judge this town by this depot.”
Both the city and railroads were actively looking into a suitable replacement for the existing Union
Depot. At the time, Cleveland was looking to completely revamp its downtown area public
buildings. They were inspired by the “White City,” a group of buildings built in neoclassical
architectural style featured at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The “Group Plan''
was introduced in 1903 which featured a central mall surrounded by new buildings for city hall,
courthouse and federal buildings, an auditorium and public library. At the northern end it would
have been anchored by the plan’s centerpiece, a state-of-the-art Union Passenger Station.
But even this new planned station wasn’t suitable for Cleveland’s current and future
rail traffic as it turned out. By the time the United States entered World War I in 1917,
the lakefront tracks were bottlenecked with trains for the war effort. The Group Plan’s Union Station
went into limbo because of the war and decision to move it elsewhere away from the lakefront.
Ultimately, the Van Sweringen Brothers, who were real estate and railroad moguls that had developed
the city of Shaker Heights, Ohio, came up with something different. A public vote to change
the location from the lakefront to the southwest corner of Public Square was secured on January 6,
1919. Dubbed as a “city-within-a-city,” the 179-million-dollar Cleveland Union Terminal
complex began construction in 1926. It was formally opened on June 29, 1930.
The 99,000 square feet site encompasses a 708-foot tall tower that has 52 stories for office space.
Below it was a station for railroads and the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit System.
Surrounding the tower and station was a Higbee’s department store,
restaurants, banks, and a hotel. All but one railroad moved their passenger
operations to the Cleveland Terminal when it opened. That was the Pennsylvania Railroad,
which had been against moving Union Station to Public Square ever since the proposal phase.
Their intention was to build their own station on the lakefront but that never happened.
In the end, they continued using the old Union Depot which by this point was half demolished
and lost the bulk of its traffic. Sometime between 1912 and 1917, the depot’s train shed was removed
to improve clearance and ventilation. Built in its place were separate canopies over each platform.
The main concourse was suspended by a covered bridge which connected
from the depot to the northernmost platform. This was how the depot remained for the rest of
its years in service. It was later renamed to Penn Station on April 28, 1946, and on September 27,
1953, the depot closed. Pennsylvania Railroad held a goodbye ceremony on its closing date which
brought in 10,000 attendants. The main attraction was a 2 ½ mile train ride from the Union Depot
to their other depot at Euclid Ave. & East 55th St., which is the station that replaced it.
On March 23, 1959, Pennsylvania Railroad announced the Union Depot would be demolished. In its place
a 600-car parking lot was built on approximately 4 acres. It was fully demolished by April 6, 1959.
Surprisingly, there are a few remnants left from the depot. A sculpture of Amasa Stone’s head that
was used as a keystone on the station was removed in 1905. It was placed over the southeast entrance
of Amasa Stone Chapel at Case Western Reserve University. The last evidence is the sloped
entrance and stone retaining wall that leads to the Pit Parking Lot on the former depot site.
What once was said to stand the test of time as a monument to Cleveland’s progress spirit,
ended up becoming the exact opposite. It however gave way to a monumental
passenger terminal that over 80 years later Clevelanders are still proud of.