By:  Angela Vanderbilt

The University of Cincinnati’s Archives and Rare Books Library (ARB) maintains numerous collections containing records of historic value for research and scholarly use. These materials are comprised of a variety formats, including printed documents, university records, sound recordings, and photographic prints and negatives.

One of these collections is the Ohio Network collection, comprised of historic local government and public records. The City of Cincinnati Engineer Records is part of this collection, and contains records produced by the engineer’s office from 1851 through 1957, including those of the Rapid Transit Commission for the subway and Central Parkway construction, as well as other street improvements carried out by the city within the same timeframe. And among these records are the negatives and photographic prints that are currently being digitized and that will be made available online via the ARB and Digital Collections web sites.

Nitrate negatives contained within City of Cincinnati Engineer Records collection

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By: Angela Vanderbilt

In my June 25 blog, “Ezzard Charles Drive: The Making of a Parkway,” I described how over time, many of the streets and locations captured in the Subway and Street Improvements images no longer exist, or have been altered in name or appearance, as they have been adapted for new uses. The area discussed in that blog is currently the site of the Cincinnati Museum Center, which occupies the former Union Terminal. Most residents of Cincinnati are familiar with the most current use of this building as well as its original purpose, a major railroad terminal by which passengers and freight from all over the United States passed through the Queen City. However, this area served two other purposes prior to the building of the terminal station, the first of which may surprise you. Continue reading →

By:  Angela Vanderbilt

The subway and street improvements photograph collection is truly a wealth of historic information about the city of Cincinnati in the first half of the 20^th century. As with most cities, many of the streets and avenues are named for the founders and prominent families who helped establish the city, as well as important statesmen such as presidents, governors and military heroes. Cincinnati has her fair share of these, with the city directories reading like a “Who’s Who” of Cincinnati’s political, cultural and economic development, with street names such as Ludlow, Symmes, and Patterson, St. Clair, Gamble and Ault, Anderson, Findlay and Wade, among others.

Gamble Street, named for industrialist James Gamble, of Proctor & Gamble.

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By:  Angela Vanderbilt

Contained within the subway portion of the photograph collection are images of the interiors of homes along McMicken Avenue taken during the construction of the subway. Originally intended to serve as evidence for claims by homeowners of structural damage to the houses caused by blasting for the subway tunnels, the pictures now serve as a historic reference of domestic life during the 1920s.

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By:  Angela Vanderbilt

Downtown Cincinnati at the turn of the 20^th century was a bustling business and commercial center, but with a dangerous mixture of pedestrians, horse-pulled wagons and carriages, street cars, and unseasoned automobile drivers. Add to this a mess of unpaved or cobblestoned streets, a lack of traffic laws, speed limits, and stop signs at intersections, with streetcar tracks criss-crossing lanes. It was a recipe for disaster.

On the left, deliveries to the Raschig School are unloaded from a horse-drawn wagon while, on the right, automobiles park along a drained Miami & Erie Canal, looking east down Canal Street as subway construction begins, April 20, 1920

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By Angela Vanderbilt

The story of abandoned subway stations and tracks hidden beneath busy city streets is not unique to Cincinnati. Other large cities, such as New York, London, and Paris have similarly mysterious and intriguing stories to tell. An article I recently read in The New York Times introduced me to this underground world of hidden subway ventilation shafts disguised by false building facades, with doors from which people occasionally exit, but never seem to enter. Some of these subterranean secrets are in use, while others have been abandoned like Cincinnati’s own subway stations beneath Central Parkway.

What’s fascinating is the effort made to disguise these facilities, to blend them in with the neighboring buildings. While it seems a logically aesthetic means of making the utilitarian more appealing, some have argued that the cities in which these structures are located are trying to hide a deep secret. For comparison, consider the Cincinnati subway – when the subway and Central Parkway were first being constructed, the ventilation chimneys and the entrances to the below-ground stations were nicely appointed with decorative stonework.

Ventilation shaft, looking north along Parkway from Liberty St., July 2, 1928

Close up of decorative stonework for ventilator railing, Central Parkway,
Nov. 19, 1928

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