Cleveland Terminal & Valley Railway Depot: A relic of 19th Century passenger rail travel

From the mid-19th Century until the mid-20th Century, railroads were the main method for transporting goods and materials to and from Cleveland. Paired with passenger trains crisscrossing the country and coming through the city, train depots were a normal sight.

The 1898 Cleveland Terminal & Valley Railway depot on Canal Road in the Flats sits today as a reminder of the heyday of Cleveland’s bustling freight and passenger rail system more than 100 years ago.

Early in the 1800s, industrial Cleveland embraced the railways as a lucrative transport method for bringing people and products to and from the burgeoning region. Then, the Financial Panic of 1857—the first widespread financial crisis in the country—set railroad growth back temporarily.

By 1949, the industry was back on track with the launch of the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad, which sparked a string of new rail lines in the city.

In the late 1800s, a group of local industrialists and businessmen—including rail industrialist James Farmer, steel manufacturer Henry Chisholm, Cleveland politician and one-term mayor Nathan Perry Payne, steel executive Samuel A. Fuller, and successful Akron attorney David L. King—got together to form a short line railway from the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) mainline in West Virginia, through the Cuyahoga Valley, to Cleveland.

Terminal & Valley Railway depot buildingTerminal & Valley Railway depot buildingBy 1870 the Valley Railway Company was established to transport coal, iron ore, and other commodities to the docks of Lake Erie for further transport. The track from Canton to Cleveland was completed by 1880.

At the same time, the Valley Railway Company also established a passenger rail line—shuttling people between Cleveland, Silver Creek, Cuyahoga Falls, Canton, Cambridge, Newcomerstown, Zoar, and Marietta.

The Valley station was on S. Water Street, today’s Center Street. By 1891 the Valley Railway could not compete with the six other passenger railways in Cleveland—lacking the freight and passenger capacity of the others.

In 1895 the Valley Railway was bankrupt. B&O bought the line at auction and created its subsidiary, the Cleveland Terminal & Valley (CT&V). B&O immediately began a two-phase upgrade of the facilities—building a freight house near Columbus Road and replacing the S. Water Street passenger station.

The new passenger station would be larger than the original, so B&O purchased two adjoining properties on Champlain and Water Street.

Designed by Cleveland architects A. Lincoln Hyde and William Stillman Dutton, B&O wanted the building to stand out in the neighborhood.

Dutton and Hyde designed a four-story Gothic Revival-style building with a foreboding clock tower. The building was constructed of blue Amherst sandstone (quarried in nearby Amherst in Lorain County) and vitrified yellow brick with Amherst stone embellished trim.

Construction began in September 1897. The Cleveland Terminal & Valley Depot was completed in July 1898 and the depot opened on Aug. 1 on what is today Canal and Carter Roads in the Flats.

Train going by the Terminal & Valley Railway depot building (left)Train going by the Terminal & Valley Railway depot building (left)The 100-foot by 43-foot depot with steel support beams and floor had state-of-the-art indoor plumbing and a generator that supplied electricity for indoor lighting and powered an elevator that traveled to the upper two floors and the basement.

Upon stepping inside, guests were welcomed in the front entry with the CT&V insignia within the mosaic tile flooring.  There were separate waiting rooms for men and women—each with newsstands, a lunch counter, a package check room, and a telegraph office.

The CT&V president’s office and operating department were located on the second floor, with the telegraph and engineering department on the third floor. There was a baggage room in the basement and a records storage room in the attic.

Additionally, a 300-foot-long by 80-foot-wide, two-level steel train shed stemmed off the rear of the depot. Four tracks that were elevated to street level allowed passengers to board and exit the trains, while package freight was loaded and unloaded on the lower level.

The building and its amenities were praised and admired across the country as an example of a modern depot.

Terminal & Valley Railway depot buildingTerminal & Valley Railway depot buildingBy the 1890s plans were underway to replace Cleveland’s outdated 1866 Union Depot between Water and Bank Streets (today’s W. 9th and W. 3rd Streets), which served the New York Central, Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Chicago and St. Louis Railroads.

City officials wanted to build a unified station to serve every railroad in the city.  A commission was formed to build a new Union Depot, but plans were halted because of World War I.

Then, in 1919, the Van Sweringen brothers unveiled their plans for the Cleveland Union Terminal, the Terminal Tower.

B&O officials initially opposed the Van Sweringen plan but supported the Cleveland Union Terminal by the time it was finished.

All CT&V trains moved to the new terminal on June 17, 1934, but B&O kept its original depot for its general offices and occasionally used the old depot for passenger excursions.

B&O discontinued passenger service on the CT&V in 1963 but the building was used until 1975 when Sherwin Williams bought it.

The depot has been vacant ever since, although there was some interest from a local organization in 2001 to use the space as an international heritage center. Sherwin Williams agreed to lease the building for $1 a year.

The group removed the lead paint and asbestos, but the cost of restoring the building became too high.

At some point, a fire at the depot destroyed the clock tower and original roof. The clock tower was never replaced. 

Today the forgotten building is boarded up, just a faded reminder of the heyday of passenger rail travel.

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Karin Connelly Rice
Karin Connelly Rice

About the Author: Karin Connelly Rice

Karin Connelly Rice enjoys telling people's stories, whether it's a promising startup or a life's passion. Over the past 20 years she has reported on the local business community for publications such as Inside Business and Cleveland Magazine. She was editor of the Rocky River/Lakewood edition of In the Neighborhood and was a reporter and photographer for the Amherst News-Times. At Fresh Water she enjoys telling the stories of Clevelanders who are shaping and embracing the business and research climate in Cleveland.