The 1930s-era Greyhound station in Evansville, Ind., screams the New Deal era like few depots in the nation.
The curved entrance wraps around the street corner like so many buildings of that time. The station also sports slate blue porcelain enamel walls and glass blocks, other trademarks of the Art Moderne style. A neon version of the bus company’s famous greyhound dog flashes, making the animal appear to run. Greyhound buses still arrive and depart from the station’s downtown terminal.
“You’d expect Eleanor Roosevelt to get off the bus,” marvels Dennis Au, the city’s historic preservation officer. “It’s a niece piece of architecture.”
A dozen or so equally breathtaking Art Moderne Greyhound stations exist nationwide besides the one in Evansville: Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Cleveland; Cincinnati; Dallas; Billings, Mont.; Jackson, Miss.; Blytheville, Ark.; and Ann Arbor, Mich.
There used to be more examples of Art Moderne architectural style (also called Streamline Moderne, an offshoot of the Art Deco movement often associated with the mid-1930s to late 1940s), but they were razed as Americans bought cars and used planes to travel long distances. Experts suggest scores of these architecturally significant bus depots were built in the 1930s and 1940s.
Architect William Arrasmith was responsible for many of these designs, including the Cleveland Greyhound depot in 1948, one of the last Art Moderne buildings built. Greyhound restored this depot in 2000.
“Let’s call it a sympathetic restoration. It’s not 100 percent,” says David Grubbs, director of design and construction at Greyhound.
Sympathetic or not, the restored Cleveland station is a sight to see. A long vertical sign emblazoned with the bus company’s name, a functioning clock and neon dog sign hang over the entrance. Inside, the building’s original terrazzo floor has been refurbished. The washrooms have been moved to the first floor and the second-floor mezzanine converted into a dormitory for drivers.
Grubbs also oversaw the restoration of Greyhound’s Dallas bus terminal, which is not an Arrasmith design but still a joy to restore. “I was born in 1946, the same year it was built, so it was fun,” says Grubbs. “It was quite a challenge to remodel it while we used it. It’s like remodeling a house while your kids are still in it.”
He’s also enjoyed rehabbing the Greyhound bus facility in Billings, Mont. “It doesn’t have as many old details as Dallas did,” Grubbs says. “But for a small facility, it’s still a nice little building.”
Greyhound doesn’t own all of its original depots. The one in Washington, D.C., for example, fronts a newer, taller office building. Another in Savannah, Ga., is home to a restaurant. An architect in Jackson, Miss., bought a former Greyhound facility and converted it into his office.
“It still has the running dog, but it doesn’t say Greyhound on it,” says Grubbs. This bus depot is one of two still existing facilities [the other is Evansville] that came out of Arrasmith’s Blue Period, when he was obsessed with decorating building facades with blue steel panels covered in porcelain enamel.
Battles waged over some stations
The Ann Arbor Greyhound facility was built in 1940 and designed by Cleveland architects Banfield & Cumming with local architect Douglas Loree. This station retains most of its original curved-glass windows and has a stainless steel vertical sign and canopy. It is the last example of Streamline Moderne in Ann Arbor, according to Rebecca Binno, a member of the Detroit Area Art Deco Society.
A developer wants to essentially gut the 1940 Greyhound station in Ann Arbor, and tack on a new, taller building in the back, but the Detroit Area Art Deco Society opposes this.
“Just saving the facade is not preservation,” says Binno, who is also the society’s historic preservation chairwoman. “It is a sorry compromise that invalidates the original purpose of historic designation.”
But Ilene Taylor, a former Ann Arbor historic commission member, is confident the building won’t be gutted, because another building owned by the same developer has been awaiting a similar fate for 12 years.
In any event, the developer could look to the Washington, D.C., Art Moderne Greyhound station for inspiration. That building was the subject of a bitter battle between historic preservationists and developers in the 1980s. That station sat on valuable land; the developer wanted to tear down the facility for a new, larger building. Preservationists were able to win compromise when the developer decided to save the station, adding the larger office building in the back.
The concession saved an important part of the capital’s history. That depot was called the Super Terminal.
“It was important symbolically for Greyhound to have the flagship of their fleet in New Deal Washington,” says Richard Striner, a preservationist who rallied to save the building. “This was well before Washington became the nerve center for wartime efforts. The nation looked to Washington to pull them out of the economic morass, pay people’s paychecks, help them feed their families, save their farms and so on.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is a lot of those monumental picture postcard buildings [you saw then] were brand new. The Supreme Court building was finished in 1935, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial was under construction in 1939. It was very important for Greyhound to make the right statement in Washington.”
The bus company, founded in 1914, made the politically savvy move of sending their building proposal to the government’s Fine Arts Commission, which wasn’t required but would ensure the planned facility would be harmonious with the capital’s design.
The proposal sailed through. So Greyhound spared no expense for their newest depot. They chose Indiana limestone instead of the more common and jazzier vitrolite (baked enamel), walnut veneer for the waiting room walls, terrazzo for the floors. The $1 million Streamline Moderne building opened in 1940 with great fanfare: swing dancing and music, gifts for visitors.
No sign of trend left in Chicago
Not quite as important as Washington was Chicago. Greyhound coaches made stops at the Union bus depot at Wabash Avenue and Roosevelt Road, which is being restored. There is no record of an Art Moderne Greyhound station in the Windy City, though there was a Trailways one in the Loop.
“It was a classic of the Art Moderne bus genre,” recalls Tim Samuelson, former curator of architecture at the Chicago Historical Society. “No one really appreciated it while it was there.”
It was torn down to make way for a parking garage. Greyhound built a station in the 1950s across LaSalle Street from the current State of Illinois building. That building was torn down; the bus company has been operating out of a Harrison Street depot since 1989 (the date as published has been corrected in this text).
It’s important to save all the Art Moderne Greyhound stations, contends Au.
“It’s one of these things that’s not always fully appreciated,” says Au. “Unfortunately, some people think historic preservation equals Victorian [architecture]. They fail to realize that newer styles are irreplaceable and speak to a period.”
