Now:
The Torrance Road Station was a passenger station on the Little Miami Railroad, operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company from 1868. It is located at Torrence Road and now Riverside Drive, across from St. Rose. The church and Cincinnati Water Works are visible to the right in the first "Then" photograph. Passengers would enter the building on Torrence and then could walk up to the platform one floor above for eastbound trains and then across a footbridge over the tracks for westbound trains to downtown. The sculpture that says "Cincinnati" was under the bridge along the westbound platform and is still there although very worn. Apparently passenger service ended here and at Pennsylvania's main station at Pearl & Butler Streets downtown (completed in 1880) with the completion of Union Terminal in 1933. Passenger service on this entire portion of the Little Miami rail line ended in 1968. I do not have the date of construction of the structure nor when the building and structures were demolished and filled in. Maybe a railroad enthusiast can fill us in!
Historic photos from Library's Cincinnati Memory Project.
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3 comments:
Kudos to you. I've run past that point hundreds of times and never had a clue that the station had been there. I guess I'm always looking at St. Rose and wondering how long before I get to stop.
Keep hunting. Great stuff.
i'm 30 years old and lived on eastern ave 21 years of that 30. when i was little we used to roam the tracks and catch snakes. as teenagers we used to go on them and do what teenagers do lol!! we used to spend alot of time on what we used to call headless(the wall with the statue) and hang out often i wondered what it used to be and never knew till i read this post. there are alotta things like that further down towards site gas staton (now closed) there is a tunnel and some steps leading from the street and the railroad tracks most people don't see it cause its hidden at the end of someones driveway.
This station saw great fanfare on October 30, 1897, as President McKinley embarked from this station to great cheers, and a performance by the Fulton Military band. My great great uncle Harry Henke was a drummer with this band, and lived only a few blocks from this station at 2222 Gladstone. The house has been demolished, but the stone wall and steps are still there. Harry's father owned a boot and shoe factory at the Corner of Jones and Wade in downtown's Over the Rhine neighborhood, but chose to commute into work from the Fulton/Pendletoan area, which was cleaner and more upstanding (less bars, saloons, and brothels) and had newer schools in the 1880s than downtown Cincy for his three sons.
Link to a NY Times article on President McKinley's visit to Cincinnati....
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9F05E7D81330E333A25752C3A9669D94669ED7CF
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