It’s our Day 154 of “365 Things to do in Cincinnati” and today we are visiting a downtown icon, Dixie Terminal.
Originally built as a transportation hub, Dixie Terminal opened in 1921. At the time it had more square footage than any other downtown building. It was originally built as a terminal for the streetcar traffic that came and went in and out of Cincinnati and also included office space. Tenants in the office space included the prominent Cincinnati Stock Exchange.
The attention to detail and brilliant artwork that went into Dixie Terminal is phenomenal. Trimmed in Rookwood tiles at the front door (seen above), the front doors to the building lead into the most incredible two story lobby (called the arcade).
Full of marble and glass, the arcade is a polished and vibrant glimpse into the past. The building is incredibly well maintained and looks as if it was recently constructed. It is impeccably clean and polished.
You can walk right into the building and gawk like we did. We even walked upstairs to view the ceiling from the second story (which I highly recommend). Just keep in mind that business does still operate out of this building as it does house lots of office space.
And we even took a short trip down the steps into the lower level (as seen in the picture above). There’s not much to see down there now but one can only imagine what a vibrant place this must have been in the 1920′s.
Dixie Terminal is located at 41-53 East Fourth Street downtown.
Do you have any Dixie Terminal history to share? It was incredibly hard to find anything other than a few snippets of information. I’d love to know more about it!
I walked through the arcade in the 1970s several times a week, because i was a regular user of the TANK buses when I was a teen growing up in Newport. At the time, I ignored the gorgeous arcade – it was simply the entryway to the much less gorgeous bus terminal,. The bus area was dark and damp (or extremely humid) and smelly, and probably dangerous with all those diesel fumes trapped in there. But it was one of the livelier places in downtown, lots of people racing through the arcade in the early evenings to catch their bus home. Also – there was a little store in the lower level of the arcade, where you could pick up groceries(so hard to find in downtown Cinccinnati nowadays) There were men in the bus station at rush hour who would shoult out the bus numbers and destinations and people would rush to line up. It must’ve been even more bustling in the days when the trolleys ran. I moved away from Cincinnati for 30 years, but now I am back, Dixie Terminal is beautiful but the TANK buses don’t go there anymore of course – passengers stand in the heat and the cold outside alongside the Metro bus customers. Oh, and before the Underground Museum was built, the very large window at the south end of the arcade had a gorgeous view of the Suspension bridge – that’s gone too…sometimes you only know something was fantastic when it no longer exists…
Thanks for the above story Tony. I too moved back to Cincinnati after 26 years away and so much has changed. I love to hear stories about how cincy used to be. I hope you will share more.
There’s a scene in Rainman that I always wondered about the location, and I now know it was shot in Dixie Terminal. Here’s a still from the movie that shows he view of the bridge that Tony mentioned above:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerome1976/2658198357/in/photostream
When I was quite young, my father had offices in the Dixie Terminal building. I remember a wonderful restaurant but can’t remember the name. Every winter my mother made turnovers made of ham and turkey which was a recipe from the Dixie Terminal. They shared this recipe with her because it was one of our favorites. I wish I had the recipe today.