Introduction
Introduction to the book The Cincinnati Subway, by Allen Singer
Copyright © 2003, Arcadia Publishing
The year was 1920 in downtown Cincinnati. The beginning of the Roaring Twenties was an exciting time for the Queen City: the war was over, the city was prospering, the people were happy and could afford to spend money. For only a dollar a week, a man could buy his fiancée a thirty dollar diamond engagement ring at Sterling Jewelry Company at 5 East Sixth Street, opposite the Palace Theater. Moviegoers flocked to see Cecil B. DeMille’s new silent feature Male and Female playing at the Strand. And for twenty cents admission the Palace was presenting the play “Daddies.”
If a family wanted some home entertainment, they could buy a new Wurlitzer Kingston Player Piano for only $650 at the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company on East Fourth Street. Problems with cash? Pay “a small down payment, then easy monthly payments.” Piano rolls cost fifty cents apiece at the Baldwin Company on West Fourth Street.
If a player piano was out of the price range, the Mabley and Carew Company (“Cincinnati’s Greatest Store”) sold nice living-room console Victrolas for $300. A table-top Victrola in an oak cabinet could be found at Wurlitzer’s for $30.10. It came with six ten-inch double-face 78 RPM records of the customer’s choice. Otherwise, popular new records cost eighty-five cents; some, a whole dollar at Mabley and Carew. Current popular hits were Al Jolson singing “I Gave Her That” and “Not in a Thousand Years” with Charles Harrison, both available on Columbia Records. Every family wanted a talking machine of their own and all the latest dance records to play on it. Innumerable record companies pressed thousands of discs; over a dozen versions of each popular tune were usually available.
In The Cincinnati Post, readers looked for “Freckles and his Friends” and “The Doings of the Duffs,” popular comic strips in the newspaper. In the ad section, a new lady’s dress cost $14.75 at Leon Marks Company on Fifth Street. A loaf of bread cost twelve cents and a gallon of milk was fifteen cents at Kroger’s. Most people rodethe streetcars downtown to shop, and always dressed up in their nicest clothes while visiting Shillito’s and other department stores in the Queen City.
If a person needed to go shopping downtown, or visit nearly anywhere in the city, a ride on the streetcar cost a nickel. Streetcars crowded the downtown streets stopping only for passengers and the occasional automobile unlucky enough to crash into them. But something big was going to happen. The city was getting ready to start construction on the new subway system, one they hoped would alleviate traffic problems and create more downtown business. On Wednesday, January 28, 1920, they started digging.
Cincinnati thought it needed rapid transit during the early 1900s. At least, the city government certainly thought it was necessary. It was a great idea that could have worked, but who could have predicted the first World War breaking out? Who also could have predicted the popular use of the new invention, the automobile? Unfortunately for Cincinnati, the subway system turned out to be “the little engine that couldn’t” and a great idea that was doomed from the start. The results of the subway project became a famous “white elephant.”
The city of Cincinnati still has a subway system . . . sort of. Today the city has the remnants of a subway system that would never be completed. Two miles of a twin pair of subway tubes, station platforms and even an unused fallout shelter exist under the city’s streets, and most of the citizens don’t even know anything is there. Many people would be surprised to not only find out about them, but also to learn that the tubes are in fine condition, continuously maintained. Above ground, the tunnel exits stand beside a major interstate highway seen by thousands of people driving by every day, always covered and padlocked and rarely opened. Most drivers don’t know what the arched doors are, and would never suspect that they represent a failed rapid transit system from an earlier time in Cincinnati’s history. This is a subway system that started its short life as an idea proposed by a city newspaper and ended as an expensive disappointment.
Many Cincinnatians today know a little about the subway, but nobody knows the whole story. Until now, the only way to find out about the ill-fated attempt at rapid transit was to research old city reports at the library or just “ask around.” People will talk about what they know about the history of the tubes and how big the subway loop was supposed to be. Some will even say that they have managed to enter the tunnels and see firsthand the surviving platforms and fallout shelter. Some of the older folks will tell how “everyone was excited about it” and really thought something was going to happen.
But what did happen? According to what is commonly known, the money ran out; but why? The Depression wouldn’t start until 1929. Why was work suspended indefinitely in 1927? Why didn’t later administrations restart the project?
Well, history has been made in Cincinnati, and now the entire story of why Cincinnati never got rapid transit finally can be told. And among the various rapid transit plans in every decade were different ideas of how to use the subway tunnels for everything but rapid transit. This is a chronicle covering over a century of hopes, dreams, money, trains, automobiles, corrupt politicians, not-so-corrupt politicians and lost visions of rapid transit in the Queen City of the West.
It is a story about a white elephant.
If a family wanted some home entertainment, they could buy a new Wurlitzer Kingston Player Piano for only $650 at the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company on East Fourth Street. Problems with cash? Pay “a small down payment, then easy monthly payments.” Piano rolls cost fifty cents apiece at the Baldwin Company on West Fourth Street.
If a player piano was out of the price range, the Mabley and Carew Company (“Cincinnati’s Greatest Store”) sold nice living-room console Victrolas for $300. A table-top Victrola in an oak cabinet could be found at Wurlitzer’s for $30.10. It came with six ten-inch double-face 78 RPM records of the customer’s choice. Otherwise, popular new records cost eighty-five cents; some, a whole dollar at Mabley and Carew. Current popular hits were Al Jolson singing “I Gave Her That” and “Not in a Thousand Years” with Charles Harrison, both available on Columbia Records. Every family wanted a talking machine of their own and all the latest dance records to play on it. Innumerable record companies pressed thousands of discs; over a dozen versions of each popular tune were usually available.
In The Cincinnati Post, readers looked for “Freckles and his Friends” and “The Doings of the Duffs,” popular comic strips in the newspaper. In the ad section, a new lady’s dress cost $14.75 at Leon Marks Company on Fifth Street. A loaf of bread cost twelve cents and a gallon of milk was fifteen cents at Kroger’s. Most people rodethe streetcars downtown to shop, and always dressed up in their nicest clothes while visiting Shillito’s and other department stores in the Queen City.
If a person needed to go shopping downtown, or visit nearly anywhere in the city, a ride on the streetcar cost a nickel. Streetcars crowded the downtown streets stopping only for passengers and the occasional automobile unlucky enough to crash into them. But something big was going to happen. The city was getting ready to start construction on the new subway system, one they hoped would alleviate traffic problems and create more downtown business. On Wednesday, January 28, 1920, they started digging.
Cincinnati thought it needed rapid transit during the early 1900s. At least, the city government certainly thought it was necessary. It was a great idea that could have worked, but who could have predicted the first World War breaking out? Who also could have predicted the popular use of the new invention, the automobile? Unfortunately for Cincinnati, the subway system turned out to be “the little engine that couldn’t” and a great idea that was doomed from the start. The results of the subway project became a famous “white elephant.”
The city of Cincinnati still has a subway system . . . sort of. Today the city has the remnants of a subway system that would never be completed. Two miles of a twin pair of subway tubes, station platforms and even an unused fallout shelter exist under the city’s streets, and most of the citizens don’t even know anything is there. Many people would be surprised to not only find out about them, but also to learn that the tubes are in fine condition, continuously maintained. Above ground, the tunnel exits stand beside a major interstate highway seen by thousands of people driving by every day, always covered and padlocked and rarely opened. Most drivers don’t know what the arched doors are, and would never suspect that they represent a failed rapid transit system from an earlier time in Cincinnati’s history. This is a subway system that started its short life as an idea proposed by a city newspaper and ended as an expensive disappointment.
Many Cincinnatians today know a little about the subway, but nobody knows the whole story. Until now, the only way to find out about the ill-fated attempt at rapid transit was to research old city reports at the library or just “ask around.” People will talk about what they know about the history of the tubes and how big the subway loop was supposed to be. Some will even say that they have managed to enter the tunnels and see firsthand the surviving platforms and fallout shelter. Some of the older folks will tell how “everyone was excited about it” and really thought something was going to happen.
But what did happen? According to what is commonly known, the money ran out; but why? The Depression wouldn’t start until 1929. Why was work suspended indefinitely in 1927? Why didn’t later administrations restart the project?
Well, history has been made in Cincinnati, and now the entire story of why Cincinnati never got rapid transit finally can be told. And among the various rapid transit plans in every decade were different ideas of how to use the subway tunnels for everything but rapid transit. This is a chronicle covering over a century of hopes, dreams, money, trains, automobiles, corrupt politicians, not-so-corrupt politicians and lost visions of rapid transit in the Queen City of the West.
It is a story about a white elephant.