Union Terminal rotunda

Saturday
I'm afraid I had a rather lazy morning, while Roger was working (from home). After an early lunch we went downtown to see the Cleopatra Exhibit showing at the Museum Center in Union Terminal. Cincinnati's art deco style railroad terminal building, now the home of Cincinnati Museum Center, was dedicated on March 31, 1933. Initial planning for the building had begun in the early 1900s, as a solution to the chaotic existing railroad system, which consisted of seven lines operating out of five stations, but floods, inter-railroad squabbling and World War I delayed the plan until the late 1920s. It's life as a railroad terminal, however, was short-lived, as by the 1950s, the sudden expansion of interstates and airlines led to the rapid decline of the railroad industry. By the early 1970s, only two trains a day passed through Union Terminal and in 1972, train service was halted completely. In 1980, a Columbus developer converted the terminal into a shopping mall, but that never really caught on. Finally, in November 1990, Cincinnati Union Terminal reopened as a Museum Center, an educational and cultural complex featuring the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, the Cincinnati Historical Society Museum and Library and the Robert D. Lindner OMNIMAX Theater, and as such has been a great success.
The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977, and was recently named one of the top 50 architecturally significant buildings in America by the American Institute of Architects. As you enter the building, you enter into this huge impressive rotunda, under an impressive ceiling, with bands of yellow, orange and silver, and decorated by two huge mosaic murals.
The exhibit, Cleopatra, the search for the last Queen of Egypt, was excellent. It features artifacts recovered over the last two decades by marine archaeologist Franck Goddio from Cleopatra?s palace and the great port city she knew, now submerged in the harbor of the present-day city of Alexandria, Egypt. It also includes video footage showing the recovery of the artefacts.

One year ago: Turkey vulture