Picture the tallest building in the city rising here from 1913 until Carew Tower opened in 1930, once the world's fifth-tallest tower. Right here a bold silhouette rose that would be the tallest building in the city from 1913 until the Carew Tower opened in 1930, and when it was finished it ranked as the fifth-tallest building in the world. This site once held Cincinnati’s Chamber of Commerce headquarters, which was devastated by a fire in January 1911, and later that year the Chamber accepted an offer from the Union Central Life Insurance Company to build anew.
Union Central brought in New York City–based Cass Gilbert as principal architect, with local firm Garber & Woodward as associate, and many of the same contractors who worked on Gilbert’s Woolworth Building were here too, including the Thompson–Starrett Company as primary contractor. Construction began in 1912 and concluded the following year at a cost of over $3 million (about $97.7 million in 2025), and the tower opened as the Union Central Building with Union Central as owner and primary occupant. Central Trust leased space in 1918, and an annex opened in 1928.
Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building crew raised this neoclassical tower, its cityscape still framed for you today.