Walter Ross, president of the Nickel Plate Railroad, effused that the tower was “the symbol of the city’s progress and the prophecy of its future.
If the “Vans” wouldn’t toot their own horn, there were plenty of others ready to trumpet the Terminal’s superlative status.
When completed in 1930, it was the tallest tower in the world outside New York City. The Terminal Tower itself was built toward the end of the skyscraper craze of the 1920s. The Van Sweringen brothers, never comfortable in the spotlight, did not attend the 1930 dedication, instead spending the day at Roundwood Manor, their country estate in Hunting Valley. The Terminal’s concept of a multiuse “city within a city” anticipated New York’s Rockefeller Center. The 42nd floor was used as an observation deck, allowing a bird's-eye view of the city. department store, and the preexisting adjacent Hotel Cleveland. Travelers to Cleveland found many shops and services inside the Terminal’s concourses without having to step outside, including the elegant English Oak Room, Fred Harvey Company concessions, Higbee Bros. The project was estimated at around $170 million and the Union Terminal had its grand opening in 1930. After heated debates that lasted a few years, the Terminal cornerstone was set on March 16, 1927, tilting downtown Cleveland’s center of gravity decidedly back to Public Square and ensuring that the Mall concept would work. The brothers realized that if the station for Public Square could succeed, they needed to include railways and facilities next to it. While the Van Sweringens originally planned the Shaker Heights line, their ambition expanded. and Oris P., a duo of real estate and railroad tycoons who were keen on connecting their master-planned suburb of Shaker Heights to downtown via a new rapid transit rail line. Enter the Van Sweringen brothers, Mantis J. But the plan to make a new railway along the lakefront as the grand point of entry to the city came to a halt because of unexpected developments. This civic center centered on the Mall and was Cleveland’s dominant expression of the City Beautiful. Inspired by Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson and the Group Plan Commission began planning a “civic center” that would run from Superior Avenue all the way to the lakefront. The only problem was where to place this symbol of Cleveland’s progress.
In the interest of smoke abatement, the Union Terminal project would rely on switching trains to electric engines at outlying rail yards before passing through the city, including its central rail terminal. Steam locomotives produced excessive amounts of pollutants when converging downtown, hampering Cleveland’s goal of becoming a modern, attractive city. However, it was not commuter railways but rather intercity passenger trains that led to the creation of the Terminal. Ohio had one of the most extensive interurban networks, with over 2,000 miles of track.
In the early 20th century, as Cleveland grew as an industrial powerhouse, many Northeast Ohioans used railway lines to get to their destinations. The Terminal Tower, at least as a plan, didn’t start as a tower at all, but instead as a railway station known as the Cleveland Union Terminal. Despite its eclipse by a later, taller skyscraper, the 52-story, 708-foot-tall Terminal Tower was an instant icon and has arguably remained Cleveland’s most potent symbol. Although today the first sign of downtown that a motorist is sure to spot from any direction is the Key Tower, prior to its completion in the early 1990s the first sight was the Terminal Tower.
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