Longworth Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio

A new bridge for I-75 will be built over the Ohio River in Cincinnati. Unfortunately a portion of the historic “Longworth Hall” will have to be demolished in order to make way for the construction project. However, we were able to interview local Cincinnati historian Jeffrey Jakucyk and the history of the building and we were give a private tour with the Ohio Department of Transportation of the soon to be demolished area.

Taken from the Longworth Hall webpage:

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Longworth Hall Office Complex and Design Center was originally the Baltimore and Ohio Freight Terminal. Longworth Hall’s sister building is Camden Yards in Baltimore. Longworth Hall rests on ground originally owned by Nicholas Longworth. In fact, some lease payments are still made to relatives of Nicholas Longworth for land leased into perpetuity. Longworth Hall remains one of the longest buildings in the country, and is over one quarter mile in length.

80,000 feet of piling were driven to support the foundations, which are built of concrete, 4,000 cubic yards were used. The piers between the doors on the first floor are made of Bedford stone (Bedford, Indiana). 4,250,000 bricks were used in the walls. The floor loads are carried on steel girders and these in turn are carried on steel columns, 1,200 tons of steel required. Floors, joists, roof beams, etc., are frame requiring 2,500.000 feet of lumber. 1,277 feet in length, 5 stories high, and divided into 6 sections by heavy fire walls. All floors are double, being 1 3/8″ maple on top of 1 3/4 yellow pine. Each floor will carry 400 pounds to the sq. foot.

The lower floor is designed as the inbound freight house with the upper 4 floors for storage warehouse. The inbound Freight House (Longworth Hall) — delivery of freight on the 2nd St. side. On the North side of the building the inbound tracks had a capacity of 65 cars. The facilities also consisted of an Outbound frt. house, transfer shed (1,250 feet long), a receiving yard [on the North side of the outbound House – 45′ wide and 1,100′ long paved with brick.

All in all the total facility trackage had the capacity of 125 cars. There was also a boiler house and a 6 stall roundhouse a coal tipple, with other locomotive services. The roundhouse was used primarily for passenger locomotives. Besides the space devoted to the storage of miscellaneous goods, there was a United States Customs Bonded Warehouse, for the care of imported goods. It was stated that some of those goods remained stored up to 3 years until the proper duty was paid.

2:00 Interview with Jeffrey
3:16 Nicholas Longworth
4:30 Taft Art Museum
6:17 The “Gas Works”
7:33 Longest building constructed at that time
7:57 Camden Yards
10:12 The “Scale Building”
15:17 The “Ditch Track”
18:57 Inside tour of the east end of the building
19:00 Abandoned bar and dance hall
20:50 Creepy Doll baby found in office space
21:20 We reach the 5th floor
22:23 Going up on top of the roof