Chicago’s first railroad terminal was opened on May 22, 1852 at LaSalle and Van Buren Streets, and a railroad station has been at the site for 160 continuous years since. In December 1866, an attractive state-of-the-art station opened on the site; it would be rebuilt in a similar style following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
In 1902, the New York Central Railroad’s popular 20th Century Limited began service to Chicago, and a new, modern station was built on the site. The LaSalle Street Station opened in 1903 with a station situated beneath a 12-story office building connected directly to the Loop elevated structure; it was across the street from the Chicago Board of Trade, and only a block and a half from Chicago’s financial district on LaSalle Street.
The 20th Century Limited service thrived through the middle of the century until air travel supplanted the railroads; it ended in 1967. A year later, the Rock Island-Southern Pacific’s Golden State Limited to the West Coast ended service. . Most intercity rail service at La Salle Street Station ended on May 1, 1971 when Amtrak consolidated long-distance passenger rail services at Union Station. The Rock Island Railroad was one of the few passenger railroads that opted out of Amtrak; they continued to operate intercity service to Western Illinois from LaSalle until 1978. The station was demolished and replaced by a modern skyscraper in 1981, but the replacement station continues to serve commuter rail passengers between Chicago and the Southwest suburbs.
When the old Union Depot caught fire in 1930, citizens actually gathered and cheered on the flames, but the building remained standing and was repaired. In the 1940s, the city’s planning commission, charged with creating a new vision for the city, wrote, “It is almost a crime to repeat what has been said so many times, that the first impression of a city one has, is formed upon the entrance to the city, and that invariably the opinion of strangers arriving at the Union Depot is bad.” Although designs were long in the works for a new station, the Great Depression and World War II diverted resources elsewhere. It was not until post-war when the railroad began to think about reinvestment in its infrastructure that the Toledo station complex became a priority.
Upon its opening in September 1950, Toledo Union Station was hailed in the New York Times as the “$5,000,000 Dream of 40 Years,” and a week of events was planned to celebrate the new building. The station which rose along Emerald Ave from 1947 to 1950 was unabashedly modern, incorporating restrained Art Deco lines and large expanses of glass block in reference to the city’s main industry. Commentators expounded upon the variety of glass used in the building, including plate glass, glass block, double-glazed and tempered glass. Soon enough, the press referred to the station as the “Palace of Glass.”
The new Union Terminal was designed by Robert Crosbie, a New York educated architect who had worked as an assistant engineer and designer for the NYC since 1936. The exterior consists of alternating bands of buff brick and silvery glass block that wrap around corners. The rows of glass block are punctuated by windows, but all of the glass elements take on square or rectangular forms, producing sharp, clean edges in a striking geometric pattern. Limestone used on the base is carried over to the central, projecting pavilion where the concourse-bridge opens onto the third floor.
The pavilion adds a vertical element to an otherwise horizontally oriented structure because it is slightly higher than the flanking wings and its façade features vertical bands of limestone which frame panels of windows surrounded by glass block—the surface is completely devoid of any brick. At night, the expanses of glass exude light from the interior, creating a welcoming and warm appearance—in fact, this was the view often shown on early picture postcards.
The station had a unique four-story layout. Passengers were dropped off at a four and a half acre park where they used a covered bridge to cross Emerald Avenue and enter on the third floor of the station. The third floor housed the main passenger waiting room and ticketing facilities; passengers then entered another concourse-bridge on the far side of the building that had staircases descending to the platforms which gracefully curved to the southeast so that they would fit into the station site. The ground floor was for baggage and mail services; the second floor had a YMCA and a bunk room for train crews; and the fourth floor was office space for the NYC’s Toledo Division and dispatching offices.
Former passenger areas reflect the glass industry for which Toledo was known. The soaring ceilings of the lobby are emphasized by the sunlight which streams through the walls of glass, and highly polished terrazzo floors add a bit more sparkle. The city’s major glass companies funded the room’s main decoration which is a map of the world centered on Toledo on panels of Vitrolite. The installation features bold color contrasts: white continents against a blue-grey sea and topped by dark red lettering that reads “Toledo—Glass Center of the World.” The red lettering is carried throughout the building.
Although constructed by the New York Central Railroad, the Union Terminal also served the Baltimore and Ohio, Chesapeake and Ohio, and the Wabash Railroad. The terminal was actually just one of nine structures built on the 25 acre complex; other buildings erected accommodated mail and car service and Railway Express facilities.
In time, the NYC became a major force within Ohio railroading, but it was not the first line to operate in the state. That honor falls to the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad which was chartered by the legislature of the Michigan Territory in 1833 to connect the mouth of the Kalamazoo River on Lake Michigan with present day Toledo; eventually the line was shortened to the thirty-three miles between Toledo and Adrian, Michigan. By 1836 the first horse-drawn trip was conducted, and this was the first operating railroad west of the Alleghany Mountains. A year later a steam engine arrived from the famed Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia; when the early steam engine functioned properly and the tracks—which had no gravel ballast foundation—were in good order, the trip took only three hours and cost $1.50. The city’s earliest known depot was at Monroe and Water Streets about a mile north of Union Terminal. Early chroniclers of the city recalled that it was a small building that had been built as a barber shop.
Over the next century-and-a-half, this section of track fell under numerous companies such as the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad and eventually the NYC. As the city grew during the Industrial Revolution and the first half of the twentieth century, Toledo became a rail hub due to its position as a Lake Erie port and location between Chicago and points east. Maps show Toledo at the center of a web of rail lines that connected it to all parts of the nation.
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