>> you are watching american history tv on c-span 3. join the conversation on facebook. >> each week american history tv sits in on a lecture to watch every saturday evening at 8 p.m. and midnight. joseph schwieterman talks about the revelation -- evolution of railroad stations. he talks about how terminals have been closed are redeveloped and the factors that contribute to how the land is reused. he describes what it means for small towns to lose railroad business. this class is about an hour. >> tonight we have a special lecture. nice to have him on campus. we worked on assignment spirit we will look at redevelopment. -- we worked on our assignments. we will look every development. they are trying make the transformation from a railroad city with lots of railroad employment and connections to a first-class center with expansion of o'hare. it involves redevelopment. a city that 10 or so years ago was labeled one of the 10 most dying cities in the united states. real excitement. it will be a fun project for you guys. we will talk for a little bit about why looking at redevelopment at the decline of the rover industry is a great way -- railroad industries a great way of how cities reinvent themselves. we are in downtown chicago. first thing you probably see is our city probably more than any other in the u.s. has benefited from this in normandy of the open land that has been made available by the decline -- enormity of the open man that has been made available. it was largely due to a confluence of some of the needs of our city, but also a freeing up of land and development by the railways. other cities were not so lucky. if you want open land, detroit has it. bad news -- it does not people wanted. -- not a land people wanted. for it was the right place at the right time. we will talk through this a bit. it is a found story. stations gone. if you go there tonight to buy a ticket to california, you would be disappointed. [laughter] the santa fe streamliner last left in 1971. as early as the 1930's, the city wanted to eliminate the station to free up what he felt was an obstacle of redeveloping the south loop. it turned out to be an ironic story. the most decrepit of our six stations kept hanging on. the santa fe trains were immensely popular. where did they go? if all of the santa fe trail to los angeles -- it followed the santa fe trail to los angeles. the process began. it had a profound effect. we are seeing immense growth. partly because of the redevelopment that is occurring. you live in downtown? >> yes. two blocks away. there is a great big building for student housing. >> and you are just -- anyone else? >> racine. a great area. very easy to walk toward any area of the city. accessible to mobile transportation. >> you are downtown as well? >> yeah. jackson in michigan. -- jaksonckson and michigan. >> good real estate. this is kind of when people say the major railroads began. anyone remember what states those occurred in? that's right. utah. the beginning of an era. you see how skeletal the system was. it was just a couple of decades. we moved to 1905. a dramatically different picture . we are in the heartland. you might as well take the black blotch and put it in the middle kid the density was so thick -- in the middle. the density was so thick. there is nothing there yet. the florida development has yet to occur. last vegas did not -- las vegas did not even exist at the time. 1905, all cities could almost be defined by their position of the railroad system. some cities thrived because they were by the railroads. some died because they were by the railroads. the enormity of this and the land devoted to railroads when they start to retrench, especially in the heartland, is astounding. let's get a sense for what the inevitable decline has meant for cities around the country. here we are in cincinnati. born in cincinnati. that is not why it is on the slide today. this is the very end of expectation the railroad will last indefinitely. this is a great showpiece. what architecture would you call that? art deco style. like the chrysler building. the reason i show this picture is often times when people think of railroads, they think of stations. it'll think of quadrants of city -- they do not think of quadrants of city. you had underground parking under large parts of the facility, as well as the norm is industrial facilities -- enormous industrial facilities. it was a bad time to open a big station. cincinnati learned the hard way that the handwriting was on the wall. the enormity of the railroad system. within a few years, the industry was terrified at the changes it was seeing. this facility would see it within 20 years. it went heavily underutilized because things changed. if you wonder how this process began and why it was profound for smaller cities, as early as the 19 30's, it was clear that railroads were doomed. you could imagine why. this is new mexico. i put this in because they have the distinction of being one of the few cities that had a railroad with the standard gauge, which meant it could go anywhere in the u.s. they felt the future was in narrow gauge railroading and they shrunk the track gauge. by the 1940's and 1950's, it was evident that if you were to ship a rail car, it would have to be transported somewhere. bring it to grant johnson or nearby -- grand junction or nearby. they avoid that sort of thing. put it on a truck. the trucking industry siphons off business. but remarkably, this line hung on until the 1960's. i think we have 747s flying and development. clearly times are changing. these cities had to brace themselves for enormous changes. at the same time, we saw railroads around the country were seeing the sun was setting. it was a debate around the country. what is the future? the automobile? or inner-city electric railways? people bet on one system or the other. in chicago, half a dozen of these routes. we had some great investors in chicago to put their money on electric railways. any names come to mind? >> samuel. >> that's right. he was convinced that these systems were going to really redefine inner-city transportation. a third of his employees -- by the 1950's, almost all of them are gone. we have one remaining. it is a block from here. >> the metro? >> sure. from downtown chicago to south end. as i looked at the demise of the railroads had on cities, it was evident that world war ii provided false signals to investors that the railroad era was going to last indefinitely. this shows the crowds of world war ii. union station, the railroad was indispensable during the war. it was clear if you look at the trend that the system was ready to crumble, particularly liked it used lines. cities and investors were misled. you have union station. we lost the beautiful concourse which is shown in the picture on the right. the dearborn station is no longer used, but was used in the war. after world war ii, people knew change was in the air. railroad companies had to place bets. do it modernize? -- do we modernize? compete with automobiles? do we accept the inevitability of change? it leads to the first few years of several railroads convinced that the growth of air travel would be confined to certain segments of the market that were not act -- apt to take trains anyway. investing in streamlined double deck bilevel cars, increasing the speed of their service. trains were defining the inner-city experience. for many americans, this brought back a sense that with proper investment american railroads really could be a continuing force in travel between 100-500 miles in the u.s. what would it take for trains to reassert themselves in that market? this next slide says it all. go to 1942. look at the size of the number of trains of downtown terminals around the midwest. this shows how many daily departures that the busiest railroad station had at the peak of the world war ii era. the first thing you will see is a smug as we are about having the biggest and the best, we are in that top 10. we had one station represented. that was chicago union station. say lewis and kansas city union -- st. louis and kansas city union -- why did they have a bigger station then we do? >> perhaps they do not have a huge transportation have such as o'hsare. you have to rely on high-speed rails in general to travel. >> trains are getting faster. that is not the answer looking for. they are very excited about prospect. >> there were four other chicago terminals? >> four. five on the list. that's right. they created a centralized hub. st. louis and kansas city captured every train come into that town and connected at the central hub. the synergy was tremendous. people with a single connection would walk across the concourse and you could reach vast destinations across the region. chicago was too big to achieve that. we were too formidable for the railroad industry to try to consolidate our stations into one. chicago is a city of stations that while large, they were not at the same level and volume as other stations. this created a paradox. this has created all kinds of challenges. we see that the pressure for chicago becomes the dominant hub and grew. around the world, we see there are great cities in europe in creating a central have. their numbers are well over 1080. we look at the u.s., 42. we also see the growth in europe . stations many times our size in terms of volume. we did this analysis. why some stations died before others. so, move into the 1950's. we see some of these great stations are struggling to hang on. going into this large pictures and seeing the cigarette butts on the floor and the sense of decline that created a real doom for the railroad industry, there was a view that the railroad industry was on its way down. there is no way to fix it. we see kansas city station hung on into the 1970's. amtrak is back. in chicago, we were condemned you might say with six stations. let to fabulous architecture. a city much like london. we were surrounded by rubber stations each with a personality or architectural -- by railroad stations each with a personality or architecture. but for the traveler, we were a royal headache. you could imagine travelers coming into chicago from 1870 through the early 1970's arriving in one station and having to schlep their backs to the next. -- bags to the next. in many cases, the trains were a mile of our. -- apart. the stations were not connected. you could see the systems that connect many parts of downtown that the system was not a line to serve the terminals. the terminals were not directly located inside the subway or the rapid transit system. as a result, chicago became kind of a connecting nightmare for travelers. they try to develop a coherent system of connections surrounding the city. in chicago if you look at the map, the enormity of the footprint. you have tracks all the way to the lake. as railroads declined, you could to the pressure to take his big stations and consolidate them into one. it became tremendous. as you look at the trends that occurred over time, how quickly did these stations fall in transportation significance? 1942-1956, how many trains? you see the pain of the decline of railroads was truly profound. if you go to columbus union station and indianapolis union station, over 40% of their trains were limited in. -- eliminated. cincinnati, somewhat less. what do you notice about chicago? we stand out a little bit. >> i think there is a little bit of resemblance of that kind of chicago in that 25% of below kind of category. it kind of shows that all of the stations are on the downfall. maybe we should think about only only one or two. >> chicago has less decline than the others. we are kind of on the right side of the chart. as the system was eliminated some of the lesser routes were the first to go. look at cities in the left hand of the chart. they tend to be smaller than those on the right. detroit is interesting. they are at the far end. detroit is expanding to magically in the 1950's -- dramatically in the 1950's. what's that? >> [inaudible] >> dramatic increase. the other cities had a tough go of it during this period. chicago weathered the period better than others. as the rail system is on its back here, we see the railroads are eager to -- this shows the trade through dayton ohio. it is a funny looking train. one car. there is probably one passenger on that train. through the early 70's, there are eager to eliminate the entire's system of trains. interesting commerce commission insisted they remain running until we were commissioned to eliminate those trains. the service became very defunct three. very poor a lot of stories about real roast trying to show weight passenger so they could get permission to eliminate -- shoo away passengers so they can get permission to eliminate that trains. try to reinvent the passenger. as the routes were eliminated during this difficult period, city started to ask, what do i do when the railroad leaves town? we will look at case studies that show all towns have a different experience with this. it led to remarkable redevelopment opportunities that by the enormity of the real estate in the first set of examples, made possible entirely in the -- we got to central station in chicago. we are looking north. this is one of the great streamliner's. this station was unfortunately torn down just before the historical movement gathered momentum. device forward to 1974 -- we flash forward to 1974. they call it one of the great lost landmarks. chicago began to see some of the development patterns described earlier. if we go to central station today and look at it from above we could see in a way downtown is spread to engulf the old property, which is pictured here with the shaded area toward the middle. we have a new development that rejuvenated the area in ways that would have been hard to imagine in the 70's. this development is called central station, right? the marketers have an easy job with that one. [laughter] it got a lot of good attention. we had the museum campus next door. splendid views of millennium park. chicago has been redefined the city. several acres of land remain available by the closing of central station. we see here along michigan avenue it is now almost complete. the community is comprised heavily of empty-nesters. it are attracted by the lakefront living. it would be more exciting had we landed the olympic games of 26 thing. it would have put us in the middle of some exciting -- 2016. it would have put us in the middle of some exciting -- the right place at the right time. let's go to another station. look at grand central. go to that last picture. go to the upper right. you see a nice grassy area. you see some corridors in their. -- there. this is one of our great architectural landmarks. it was called the norman style. it was never the busiest station, but some say it was the most beautiful. grand central is on borrowed time for many years. it kept the station functional through the early 1970's. here is a case where we are a mile or two west of central station. a dominant pattern was completely different. market for real estate, a mile or so west of the property. how does that compare to the demand for lakefront living? anyone care to comment on that? alex? >> everything in chicago is pretty much based on the lake. >> that's right. it is a fraction of the central station. look at what is there today. a lot of years have passed. a lot have come to look. when you look at what is left of the central station here is one of the great trains leaving the train shed at central -- grand central. it had a magnificent arch shed trains came out of. fast-forward 1979 to about 2015. we see here is a case where the closing of a railroad has not matched at all with the market demand for property. 40 years later on that parcel we waiting for redevelopment to occur. it has been elusive. one proposal after another comes and goes. we have several forces that conspired to doing this. people don't want to live in [indiscernible] that doesn't help for certain kinds of development. and the chicago river craze all kinds of standards for development. the market has never been able to make this property work. look at how close the two are together. their circumstances has been enormously different. >> who currently owns the parcel? >> it has changed hands several times. for a while it was owned by the railroad. they tried to find a user. there was speculation that this could be the next casino. it is walkable to the great venues. i'm relieved that proposal didn't happen. a number of movies have been filmed on this site. there would often be trucks on their. -- there. some chicago classics have been dumped here. -- filmed here. we look north. we go to northwestern station. essentially we have lost four of them with dearborn and union still standing. this is on prime residential land. look at the station at about 1912. it had the classic gothic entrance to it. and a waiting room that was magnificent by anybody's standards with a vaulted ceiling. we see that the railroad terminal was doomed by the fact that the large number of commuters arriving on this company made it prime for office tower development. the station was a victim of its own self. thousands of commuters arriving every day. the demand for that parcel would serve office space for these commuters in the current the railroad to eliminate the terminal. if you go to northwestern station today, it has a new name. the old concourse was torn down and replaced by a pretty impressive office power development. it is designed to serve the commuters coming in. all three of these stations we have an entirely different story to tell. with northwestern, it is a happy ending. it led to a transformation that we all benefit from today. as we walk around the country when i survey communities for the book, we found there is incredible passion behind what the closing of railroads has meant for the city. the second implication i would like to talk about is a small towns. what it means for the development outlook and the emotion that goes with the transition from being a railroad town to a non-railroad town. it is the city in idaho. if you can get get out there, i will give you extra credit. [laughter] this is probably the hardest one to get to. there is a great rainbow trout in the river there. avery was an amazing story. hundreds -- several hundred miles of road was put under wires. the route had difficult mountain grades. electricity was needed to pull the freight and passengers up the steep slope. we read about the milwaukee road earlier this quarter. unhappy ending for this carrier. what story do we tell about it? anyone care to remember that? >> [inaudible] >> that's right. it went bankrupt. >> there have been different rail lines that were created. that was a very big one that we lost. >> that's right. they couldn't buy couple of miles to keep it in service. avery has no other major business. it does not even have a paved highway. it was built entirely to serve the railroad. it is the point where crews change. avery was optimistic. when the railroad leaves, guest what we get? a paved road. we never had a paved road in that town. with that will become more business. small business. residential development. we should get sports fishing in our town. let's go to avery to day. let's see what happened. it is a great little town. the road is there. there are quite nostalgic about the history. every lost a battle in many ways. they've asked for a town that -- go to avery. it is a good case where a city lost its reason. charming place. great people. proved to be an optimistic hope. reed city, michigan. a small town. north of grand rapids. reed city has an interesting distinction. how is that for something on the town? we seek to lines crossed here. the predecessor. the city was literally built around the railroad junction. in reed city's case, the development pattern began to change when the logging declined a bit. they're looking for a kind of new economic engine to keep the town going. unfortunately, this is the early 20th century. we go to the seven days. the station is gone. trains still coming through. the road has been reduced to the margins of the community's economy. they had a tough recession. it lost lots of industrial but throughout our region. the city new it was that it crossroads. the railroad was leaving. it probably couldn't save the railroad. the town decided we had to commemorate the fact that we are only in existence of this location because of the railroad junction. we feel that our identity is the link to the railroads. natalie commemorate the railroad it -- not only commemorate their auto but use it to start a new -- not only commemorate the railroad, but use it. they called if the dimon where the two lines crossed. -- diamond where the two lines crossed. they called it the diamond crossing. there are often ceremonies out here when people retire. we see lots of unity through town. snowmobilers in the wintertime,. it created an interesting transformation that led to a real sense that great city had effectively weathered the change and reinvented themselves as a northern michigan playground. we had a interesting controversy . reed city had to look itself in the mirror. you have the transition away from the railroad set your. you want to allow one of these routes for the shipment of -- once you make the transition, it is difficult. it was somewhat sobering. it could be difficult to bring them back, even if the market is there. it becomes a bit of a one-way process. like geneva, -- lake geneva is notable. it has commuter service all the way up in the 1970's in chicago. lake geneva took great pride. top executives lived up there. it was a destination of great importance. service continued to decline. i think we read about it this quarter. the debate to bring them back has been nonstop. the planning efforts to do that have been extremely challenged by the factors that is outside of our state boundary. we go to the next slide. we can see they reared their ugly heads, you might say. they were opposing lake geneva's efforts to embark on planning initiatives to bring its railroad back to strengthen its connection to chicago. rumor has it government agency a may government agency b take it down really quick. it doesn't look good when they aren't cooperating. the options would have been so much greater for a city like lake geneva to re-strengthen it's just petition links to chicago. -- transportation links to chicago. what is your sense of it today? >> probably five or 10 minutes outside of town, you could pull that off. putting the tracks back in before it goes through town would be impossible today. >> what is an example of the type of construction you would see? >> new streets. new housing. new businesses. >> sure. >> across the board. >> it would be a tough go. >> in ohio, they had railroads in five directions. this is a train coming down detroit street. if you go back today, you could see remnants of the track are still there. the police car was given me not so flattering looks when i was photographing. you could see the tracks in the foreground. when i studied the economic impact of abandonment, the city probably more than any other had leverage the benefit of recreational trails in a way that has given it an image that is in effect transformative for the city. bike rentals in town. a lot of summer traffic. they're running placement -- ironic placement. the recreation trail below. the last thing i want to talk about as we look into the three models -- and this relates to your project. in some cases it wasn't as important as the town on that route. as i look at the abandonments around the country, the real battle is not in that town, but in the cities that want to be linked by real and had no longer the opportunity to do that. we looked at cities as configured in space and are presented by the population. population of city one being large. the relation of two and three being somewhat smaller -- population of two and three being somewhat smaller. it we view this as the model of gravitational force, which is in our statistical framework we have to define how this model is going to work to predict how much traffic will go between these two cities. we could see right away more traffic is likely to move between p1 and p2 than p1 and p3 because it is farther. the difference between p1 and p2 travel will depend on what kind of assumptions we make. different effects depending on how we calibrate the model. >> there are sent as political or geographical barriers. may be bodies of water could relive it. >> -- could prohibit. >> that's right. other factors come into play. the difference between p1 traffic and p3 traffic depends on what we assigned to the value of k. what k represents and how we can think about in this context. >> the rate of k. how will you are to travel distances. if we assume p3 is more willing to travel long distances, than it is possible that they could have a high demand, especially people in p2 are unwilling to travel long distances. >> the rate of k shows how traffic diminishes or decays as things become farther apart. a high rate of decay. as a calibrated our models, we looked around the midwest. let me show you an example. why the closing of 120,000 routes as a lot of implications of how we develop intercity networks between cities. i show this because we see the black line represents the available railroad line between cities. if we have a good look, you have to be patient traveler to get from new york to scranton. it is a tough go. the white line is an abandoned portion. that line is gone. in this example, for a traveler from new york to scranton, we have an active rail line and an abandoned portion and an active rail line. to offer direct service, use some help have to rebuild the section. seems like an easy thing to do. new jersey learned the hard way. that was one of the most remarkable rail lines the u.s. had seen. you see beautiful viaducts. a direct route through hilly terrain. it was a perfect railroad route to offer service. today that line is gone and new jersey is eager to bring it back into its control. in one instance, they divided the land of to several dozen small parcels because the government would have to condemn every parcel individually to achieve the maximum amount of money from the government to bring it back. no city in the country has led some to slip away as significant as they did the tree new york and scranton. -- a train new york and staff -- between new york and scranton. you would need to rebuild the railroad. 9/11 occurred. we have a recession. new jersey and pennsylvania are struggling to make this project work. new york and scranton are likely to go without servers for quite some time. let's talk about the midwest for a minute and some of your findings. we think about how these routes are privately run railroads with enormous potential for public use this map shows relative size of cities around the midwest. chicago to omaha links not so large cities with large cities. some have attractive stops. others serve largely for two end points. it has been fun seeing all of the different results. there is no easy right answer for which quarter has been -- corridor has been the most attract the. -- attractive. which ones are the most attract? to bring back into public use? >> it has a lot more demand than other routes. it is also more economically healthy. >> at first glance, it does look very attract to. it is not as take as the others pick but if you add in the other spots, there's a lot of traffic. you are right. a study i did came to that same conclusion. by some measures, it is the most attract. -- attractive. >> chicago twin cities. i found that the two endpoints got together. there are some stops that are fairly sizable and friendly to other transits. that is what struck me about indianapolis and st. paul as well. they have installed for lines. -- four lines. there a lot of branches to go to . it would be easy for travelers without cars to get around. >> it is favorable. distance is problematic. that endpoints are much more -- it's a very progressive city. >> one other thing i notice is i tracked what but travel times were. they were pretty close. you are not going through city after city after city. as often. in reality, however long it takes you to drive come is probably in our longer or our and a half longer than on a train. >> there's a time difference. speed would increase. sure. >> same thing with twin cities. i looked a lot at university and how many students there are. because the university of minnesota is so large, it has such a population. it is important that i added wisconsin on the route as well given all of the travel especially for college students going for interviews or being able to travel between cities is important. a lot of college students don't have cars. >> colleges have great affinity -- there is a rail friendly demographic. great comments. let's look at why this creates a difficult public process. we take these routes and show which cases agencies have them in two prevent a route from being lost or abandoned as railroads cut back. we look at the route. we see many of them have had segments where significant links were at risk of being pulled up or torn up. it had allegedly little use for that route. there is a segment that was very lightly used. in michigan, there is a segment that was at risk of being lost. governments have a responsibility to be stewards over these corridors. a couple of final thoughts. as you go to the cleveland corridor, one segment is one of the most famous routes in the u.s. from chicago to new york. you could see chicago to fort wayne to toledo -- it has been restored. it keeps the promise of rail service on the chicago-fort wayne route very much alive. if we go to michigan, when amtrak was created, it created a difficult proposition that could take ownership of some of the route. some of the direct routes was on the threshold of being lost until it was purchased or required -- acquired by amtrak. it invested heavily in that route. i heard from -- i talked -- in addition to this segment, the state of michigan has acquired large segments of the detroit route that make it a most entirely the public control. the last thing i will close on is around the country we are seeing a lot of aggressive action. look at these old corridors. they have great strategic value. in addition to the land, the interest -- new commuter services to be to see that there has been a number of really successful cases now where agencies have intervened to save orders from being lost. to preserve those opportunities for future generations. once it becomes a recreation trail or has another use it is very tough to bring the railroad back to santa monica, california dance out. -- stands out. you can see the old route which is shown in the upper left. they needed a little help. it was laying there unused. the railroad was abandoned in 1986. a group of citizens decided that they needed to save the route. you can see by the size of that tree next to the route that a lot of years has passed -- had passed since then. santa monica had 100,000 people and no other rail line and people realized that the corridor had a lot of potential. it pushed government agencies, the metropolitan transit district to save the route. it had a happy ending. if we look at the plans of extending the light rail system in santa monica, and los angeles, it can see they are moving west towards santa monica. phase one will be to move to culver city. phase two, they will take it to santa monica. it requires eliminating some of the -- pulling up some of the tracks and relaying them. if you fast-forward to 2015, we can see that they have made it all the way up to culver city. a very impressive light rail line which is doing quite well on ridership. the perfect example where right-of-way preserve can be brought back into use for a new generation of travelers in a very thoughtful way. now the plan is to push the line out towards santa monica and to bring that city back to the rail system in ways that it would've not been possible if the citizens had not pushed for saving that route. in closing, the book tries to show that the abandonment of railroad lines creates redevelopment issues that are fascinating but important in looking at the lifecycle of cities. cities have phases of development and when the railroad leaves town, it brings on a new era that draws upon the railroad's legacies in many fast gaining ways. -- in many fascinating ways. in small towns, it is much more emotional about development and opportunities for attracting manufactures and public transit services that need railroad right-of-way to be successful. we can see that for largest cities that seek high-speed rail, abandonment patterns create a lot of public pressure for agencies to come in and acquire support routes to allow for better service to continue. it is not an appreciated story. i'm glad we had a chance to talk about it today. thank you for of the class. -- thank you for a good class. announcer: join us each saturday evening for classroom lectures from across the country. on different topics and areas of american history. lectures are also available the of podcast. visit our website. or download the podcast from itunes. >> there is no difference in these medicines. they are both good. but they are different. this is made from the bark off a victory that we pick from the top down. then there are other medicines that we take from the bark from the roots up. [applause] [laughter] the only difference that i have found between the democratic leadership and the republican leadership was that one of them was dealing from the bottom up and when was stealing from the top down. >> that was a perfect example of appealing to the masses with a good yarn but ultimately, like a lot of characters, he became >> -- demagogic. he was consumed by his own power. >> he was a maverick. he gave just as much grief to his own writing leadership as he did to the opposition party. the senate has always me -- has always needed some mavericks but if they were all mavericks, nothing would get done. we have been fortunate that the ua longs have been in the distinct minority in this institution. announcer: don ritchie and former house sent -- former house historian talks about the house sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's u.n. day. -- c-span skua day. announcer: cumberland university history professor mark cheathem talks about his book "andrew jackson, southerner." he argues that pre