Cincinnati Museum Center

Sunday
We skipped church again this morning to watch Murray vs Federer - way to go Andy! After an early lunch Roger, Laura and I went down to the Cincinnati Museum Center to see the exhibition A Day in Pompeii and the Omnimax movie Hidden Hawaii: Born from volcanoes. However, the only time for the movie was 4pm and the next available admission for the exhibition would only have given us about an hour and twenty minutes before the movie, so we decided to go for a walk and return for the movie and see the exhibition afterwards. We went walking along the river, starting at Montgomery Inn Boathouse, through Sawyer point park down to Yeatmans Cove as far as the Ballpark, where the Reds were playing. Rain had been forecast, but although the skies looked threatening, we remained dry.

Cincinnati Museum Center is housed in the Union Terminal Building, originally Cincinnati's railroad station, a fine example of Art Deco architecture and a National Historic Landmark. Cincinnati was a major center of railroad traffic in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially as an interchange point between railroads serving the Northeastern and Midwestern states with railroads serving the South. However, intercity passenger traffic was split among no fewer than five stations in Downtown Cincinnati, requiring the many travelers who changed between railroads to navigate local transit themselves. Proposals to construct a centralized station began as early as the 1890s, however it was 1928 before a final agreement was made between all seven railroads that served Cincinnati and the city itself. Construction on the terminal building began in 1931, and the official opening of the station was on March 31, 1933. However, by the time it was completed, train travel was already beginning to decline, though it would see a brief revival in the 1940s, because of World War II. But in the 1950s, the sudden expansion of interstates and airlines led to the rapid decline of the railroad industry, and by the early 1970s, only two trains a day passed through Union Terminal and in 1972, train service was halted completely. In 1980 it opened briefly as a shopping mall/entertainment complex, only to fall victim to the recession of the early 1980s. It then remained empty for the best part of the next decade, before opening in 1990 as the Cincinnati Museum Center, home to six organizations, the Cincinnati History Museum, the Museum of Natural History & Science, the Robert D. Lindner Family Omnimax Theater, the Cincinnati Historical Society Library, the Duke Energy Children's Museum and the Cincinnati Railroad Club.

We were somewhat disappointed with the Hidden Hawaii movie - it really focused on the volcanic origins, and didn't show as much of the present day scenery as I'd hoped. The exhibit A Day in Pompeii, however was excellent, showing 250 ancient artifacts including frescoes, daily household items, jewelry and the moving body casts of the victims of Mount Vesuvius, completely preserved in their final moments. We rounded off the day with dinner at a Mongolian Grill restaurant, then back home to catch up on a bit of the Olympics.

One year ago: Summer cottage