In the early 1920s, Cincinnati set out to revolutionize its public transit by draining the stagnant Miami and Erie Canal to construct a state-of-the-art underground rapid transit loop. Engineers utilized the drained canal bed to build 2. 2 miles of heavy concrete tunnels directly beneath what is now Central Parkway.
The architectural design was ambitious, featuring four fully excavated underground stations: Race Street, Liberty Street, Linn Street, and Brighton. The flagship Race Street station was planned as a bustling central hub with a central island platform, ticket mezzanines, and broad entrance stairwells leading up to street level. Structural engineers constructed the subway tubes using heavy reinforced concrete arches and steel beams designed to bear the weight of heavy rail vehicles as well as urban traffic above.
Design features included tiled wall accents, designated turnstile alcoves, and ventilation shafts built directly into the street medians above. However, severe post-World War I inflation practically doubled material costs, depleting the initial $6 million municipal bond before tracks, electrical systems, or signal lights could be installed. The advent of the Great Depression and the rising popularity of the personal automobile permanently derailed the project by 1928.
Today, the pristine, trackless tunnels and cavernous concrete platforms remain preserved in pitch-black silence. The city continues to spend thousands of dollars annually to maintain the structural integrity of the tunnels because they support the busy arterial road above, keeping this eerie, frozen-in-time architectural relic intact beneath the modern city.