The former Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama, now houses the Freedom Rides Museum. It’s one of several buildings from the bus company’s midcentury heyday that have been repurposed.
Photographer: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
For These Old Bus Stations, It’s Not the End of the Line
The streamlined depots built by Greyhound in the middle of the 20th century reflected a more optimistic era for bus travel. A lucky few are finding new uses.
When it opened in 1948, Cleveland’s new bus station was a curvilinear wonder.
Greyhound Lines was then near the apex of its powers; the company claimed that the $1.25 million depot was the biggest in the world, with 88,000 square feet of floor space. It was designed for additional floors to be built on top of it, as the city’s population was still racing toward its 1950 peak of more than 900,000. An estimated 25,000 people showed up for the building’s opening on March 31, including Ohio Governor Thomas Herbert and Mayor Thomas Burke, who called the swoopy station — a prime example of the late Art Deco style known as Streamline Moderne — a “face-lifter for Cleveland.”