Union Terminal Field Trip

You'd think that working for a newspaper editorial page would be about all the excitement a guy could handle, but you'd be wrong. The other day our department took a day-long field trip to visit behind the scenes at the 75-year-old Union Terminal building, current home of the Cincinnati Museum Center and formerly the most magnificent art deco train station ever built.


Head honcho Doug MacDonald and some of his staff took us into the bowels of the building, along the catwalks just behind the front windows of the building, and up over the top of the rotunda.



Here's a view to the left (into the rotunda) and then to the right (city view) through open windows on the highest catwalk. The catwalk is maybe three feet wide, sandwiched between two walls of windows.



The mechanism behind the huge clock on the front of the building.

The building's former life as a train station is still happily preserved. Check out these awesome mosaic murals. One stands beside the door for departing passengers, the other signals arrivals. How cool is that?



They've even preserved the color sketches the muralist worked from.


Eventually we made our way crosstown to the Geier Building, where the scientists and archivists do the real grunt work. They work with tons of great stuff -- stuffed mammals and birds, trilobytes, a whole roomful of snakes preserved in jars of alcohol, cool artifacts from Polynesian islands, Civil War uniforms and swords. They have drawers and drawers full of birds. It's nuts.



Thanks for prying us out of the office for a day, Doug. But that last photo reminds me, I've got deadlines.