"Roy, this place ain't gonna make it!"
"Huh, what, sputter, sputter...Are you talking about the station?" I asked, reviving from a marvelous, light-induced reverie unfolding before my very eyes outside the station.
"Yes, I am talking about Union Station."
The speaker was Lloyd Dillinger, the man who had worked at Union Station since the 1960's, was hired and laid off, and hired again several times from and to essentially the same job: All 'round technical guy and possessor of all knowledge of the physical facilities of the station. Not a part of his job description but he is also one of the truly nicest and warmest human beings a person could meet. Lloyd was a tremendous help in my photo documentation.
"Well, think about it," he continued. "If you take the projected budget for operations of around $7~$9 million dollars a year, it would take about 2500 paying visitors 364 days a year, mostly through Science City; the Extreme Screen and the City Dome would have to help (My note: the planetarium was called the City Dome when it opened). That would just about make the station break even. It ain't gonna happen. It just won't have that kind of crowd."
I will admit that up to that point I had not been thinking about the money. I was just grooving on the incredible images that I had seen all those years through the viewfinder, and with luck, that I was also recording them-on FILM, BTW. Digital photography was still in the infant stage and did not allow high enough resolution for what I knew some of the images would be used.
As I thought more about it, I saw that Lloyd was right.
Oh, it all sounded so convincing: Under the direction of David Ucko, Science City was to be a world class, immersive science learning experience for children. There would be no text blocks explaining how to operate the various "experiments," that task left to costumed interactors who would respond to questions posed by visitors. People would be lined up for Science City .
David Ucko was proposing a method of learning that educators sometimes call heuristic, or self-discovery. Cliff Edom, my major graduate professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia, , employed this technique. Darn near drove us all crazy. But at the outcome, we all "got it" because we were, in classic heuristic fashion, truly immersed in a wide-ranging photojournalism adventure, and, we had a guide.
At Union Station, the "guides" or interactors, were laid off when it became apparent that 30,000 square feet of Science City was not going to support 850,000 square feet of an old train terminal.
I had my own self-discovery about Science City. My daughters, their husbands, my wife and I were touring the recently opened station in 1999. As we went along, it was becoming obvious that no one in our group could exactly figure out some of the exhibits, or as David Ucko called them, "adventures" or "immersions."
Those of you who know me realize that I am not, ahem, the sharpest roll of film in the bag. My wife and daughters went to college, and unlike my own checked, higher learning resume, their report cards mostly showed A's. One son-in-law is an engineer, the other an architect. I knew that Science City was in real trouble when all five were scratching their heads in bewilderment at some of the the activities that were meant for a fourth grader.
I won't demonize David Ucko. He was always kind and gracious to me. However, blame lies where it will, and if David was ultimately responsible for what Science City became, then we have only him to blame. I will add that the normal budget for such an undertaking at that time was $500 a square foot. Science City was to come in at $300 a square foot. So yes, there were budget restraints, even at a quarter billion dollar price tag.
Were we lied to on purpose by members of the bi state commission, et al? How about the media? Where were they when those on the inside of the project realized that (1) Science City was not going to be a world class facility and (2) that it would not support the huge Union Station complex?
It depends upon how one defines a lie: If not telling the entire truth is a lie, then we were told those two big ones. If in this case the end justified the means, was it OK?... you decide.
And the reason for the omission of those two truths?
It began to dawn early on among the powers that be that there were serious financial problems coming, given the Science City plan, as surely as tornadoes come to Kansas. The timing was...interesting. It was about this period when the "historic bi state tax initiative" was to be voted on. Should the public really be told the awful truth? If so, then the tax might not pass and therefore the station might this time surely face destruction.
We all know what happened...It was saved, at a price to be paid later.
I suppose because of my life experiences and maybe the way I am hard-wired, I tend to cut people a lot of slack. What the heck, we are all human, even though some of us, sometimes, don't act like it. We all make mistakes.
Bear in mind that no one-no one-had attempted what was being done with Union Station, at least not on such a grand scale.The closest project of any comparable size was Cincinnati Union Terminal, and it was not in the awful condition of Union Station. Cincinnati required a "mere" $30 million to restore, VS $250+ million for KC's landmark. (Note: the total of $250 million includes the $118 million raised in sales tax; the remainder was from corporate, private and foundation sources). The Cincy terminal is 550,000 square feet, about 2/3 the size of our station.
The largest train station still standing in America, Grand Central Terminal in NYC, was restored a few years after USKC at a cost of $300 million, but it remains an active railroad center; hundreds of Amtrak and commuter trains pass through daily. And, of course, GCT is in NEW YORK CITY, center of the universe for most folks. I still contend that if our Union Station were in NYC, Chicago or LA, people would be lined up around the block just to look inside.
Next time: The David and Andy dance, or, what color is the sky and what time is it really?
Notes on the photos:
Lloyd Dillinger points out what is generally assumed to be a mark from a bullet fired during the Union Station massacre June 17, 1933. The KC Star disputed the long-held belief that the pock marks near the station's east doors were in fact made by bullets. The newspaper hired an expert to recreate the circumstances as nearly as possible and concluded that the holes could not have been made by bullets. Make up your own mind...
Lloyd Dillinger posed for this photo in the North Waiting Room, just before the inside restoration began. I shot it on 4x5 in color but later changed it to B&W because I like it better,
The late Walter Cronkite, shown by himself, and with David Ucko, and others, went on a hard hat tour of the station, especially for the revered old newscaster in 1999. Cronkite was a big supporter of Union Station and the restoration, even contributing his celebrity to a TV commercial in favor of the bi state tax.
Reflections of the upper west wall of the North Waiting Room collide with the interior scaffolding and the south window. Shot from the old Midway roof.
Workers remove roofing in early 1995.
One of my favorite images: the brass doors shot with a panoramic camera.
