In 1920, Cincinnati started building a subway. Two miles of tunnel and four stations are still sitting under Central Parkway — and no train has ever run through them. I made a short documentary about why, using the city engineer's original photos.
RecentIy I fell down a rabbit hole in the digitized archives - the Cincinnati Museum Center and Library of Congress have hundreds of the city engineer's construction photos from 1920–1925, most of which barely circulate online. I ended up making a 14-minute documentary trying to answer the question that bugged me: not that the subway failed, but why.
The Subway That Never Ran a Train
The short version: the $6M bond was approved in 1916, fixed in dollars, then WWI froze construction for four years while inflation roughly doubled the cost. The city started digging anyway in 1920, knowing the math. What got me is the detail I keep coming back to: there's a finished platform edge at the Race Street station, poured to the exact height of a train floor - for a train that was never ordered.