Moment in Time (November 10, 2021)
This photograph is an undocumented professional photograph from the Columbus Baker Art Studio that is in the Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society archives. It is thought to be documentation of the Panhandle Railroad celebration, or perhaps one from a previous year's railroad event.
In the late 1800s, major eastern railroads developed and merged different subsidiary lines to connect the eastern seaboard and its vast resources to markets in the mid-west. One such subsidiary line connected Pittsburgh with Steubenville, crossing the panhandle of West Virginia. It was referred to as the "Panhandle Railroad". It expanded to reach Columbus as the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad (PC&StL) and in the early to mid-1880s, they built shops and yards in Columbus. Many workers were transferred to the new facilities, growing the workforce to over 1000 people. In 1890 the railroad was consolidated with several others to become the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, or PCC&StL. (It was later leased to the Pennsylvania Railroad as part of the PRR growth to one of the largest systems in the country.) The PCC&StL continued to be referred to as the Panhandle Railroad.
In 1885, John F. Miller was named to the new position of General Superintendent of the PC&StL based at Columbus. Miller's home was in Richmond, Indiana, but he also owned significant land south of Fifth near Roxbury and Arlington Avenues. He also built a second home in the Hamlet of Marble Cliff at 1600 Roxbury that is now on the National Register of Historic buildings. He developed what has become known as the 'Arlington Inn' that was located immediately to the south of his home, which hosted many Columbus elite at the time. His Richmond newspaper reported that Miller was known to include railroad workers in events hosted at his home, on his property, and at the Inn.
On Thursday, July 31, 1890, an Ohio State Journal article announced such an event: “The 1000 employees of the Panhandle railroad shops and their families will have an outing at Marble Cliff, west of the city, on the Chicago, St. Louis and Pittsburgh railroad, Saturday August 2. For several weeks the various committees have been busy with preparations for the event. All kinds of amusement will be provided. The Fourteenth Regiment band and Elliot’s orchestra (colored) will furnish music. A dancing platform 50 x 80 is to be erected. There will be excellent boating on the river."
Transportation to the event included a special passenger train that left the Spruce Street Yards to carry the guests to the festivities. The first train left the yards for Marble Cliff at 7:35 a.m. with twenty-four well-filled coaches. Other partiers used buggies and regular trains and walked to the picnic. A follow-up article in the Ohio State Journal described the day's activities. The headline was "5000 Panhandlers in Marble Cliff!” and the article read: “It was a handsome train, the engine decorated in every available place with artistic arrangements of bunting and evergreen, and above the “cowcatcher” a steel engraving of Mr. George B. Roberts, president of the company. It took four trips and fifty-six coaches to get the people to Marble Cliff, but the crowd was successfully handled without an accident reported."
The Master of Ceremonies for the event on the Miller property that day was Samuel Prescott Bush, father of former U.S. Senator Prescott Bush and grandfather of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush. New Jersey native Bush had arrived in Columbus in 1887 as a draughtsman for the railroad, not long after his graduation from Stevens Institute of Technology on Long Island, where he had been a member of the baseball and football teams. In 1892 Bush served a volunteer assistant coach of Ohio State University football. In 1894 he married Flora Sheldon, daughter of Robert Sheldon and sister of Marble Cliff resident Butler Sheldon, President of the Columbus Railway Co. and Vice President of the Sheldon Dry Goods Co. Bush had assumed a leadership role with the railroad, and returned to Columbus to be general manager
of Buckeye Steel Castings Company, which manufactured railway parts. The company was run by Frank Rockefeller, the brother of business magnate John D. Rockefeller. Shortly after, he built his Marble Cliff mansion across from John Miller's home.
The Ohio State Journal article described the Marble Cliff location: "The picnic grounds are beautiful for situation, nature having spread the earth and arranged the foliage with a taste that art could not imitate. Undulating and sometimes abrupt hills vie with the glens in beauty, and so rugged is nature at the cliffs that all forms of loveliness are there. Yesterday the crags and chasms, the hills and valleys rose and shone in the countenance of a warm sun, and pretty figures in pink and white dotted the glades and aided nature’s beauty. Through the wood and down a hill is a valley, level except for sometimes dry gullies and to the left, under the hill, is a spacious dance platform, which was used without interruption all day in spite of excess of heat and disposition to perspire.”