Upon my arrival in Terre Haute, I was instantly intrigued by the Terminal. A building of immense grandeur, I was surprised to discover it was a bar. It is glaringly obvious that a bar was not this building’s intended purpose. This building, constructed in 1911, has not experienced a boring century of existence.
The Terminal was built by the Eastern Traction Company. It was the western headquarters for Indiana’s second largest interurban. Such an important hub deserved a sufficiently extravagant building. The trolleys transported people around Terre Haute and to Indianapolis. It closed in January 1940, because the abundance of automobiles made the track superfluous.
It sat vacant for nine years until the city of Terre Haute converted the old trolley station into the union bus station. For more than twenty years, citizens of Terre Haute caught the bus behind the Wabash entrance of the Terminal. It closed in 1972, but joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
In 1995, the Terminal transitioned into a bar. Officially titled the Terminal Sports and Spirits, it has two distinctly different sets of clientele. For lunch and early afternoon, it is commonly frequented by businesspeople and older adults. After the sun sets, college students from ISU make the place their own. The different generations of Terre Haute still find the allure of this historical building nearly one hundred years after its creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment