By Marilyn Bauer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Architect Alpha Blackburn says the building's craggy travertine stone, seen here on the south side, was chosen for its appearance. The Cincinnati Enquirer/TONY JONES

Architect Alpha Blackburn led members of her architectural firm on a tour of the center. The Cincinnati Enquirer/TONY JONES

For nearly two years we've watched it rise on the riverfront - the craggy travertine stone from Italy; the copper panels on the north and south sides, the three pavilions connected by a glass bridge and the undulating contours of the building, which pay tribute to the Ohio River.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is scheduled to open with a coming-out party in less than five months, but what about the inside? What is happening on the building's three interior floors as this new icon of the city's skyline takes shape?

"This is just way cool," says Alpha Blackburn of Blackburn Associates, lead architects on the project. Last month Blackburn brought 22 members of her Indianapolis firm to visit the nearly completed building. "Everyone has felt a part of this project from the beginning, but many people haven't come over to see it. We wanted to come in now, before things get hopping," she said.

Although it's unfinished, Blackburn praises the building's interior. From the southern entrance facing the river and the Roebling Suspension Bridge, to the large theater with a fiber-optic ceiling that re-creates the star field exactly the way it was on the morning the Emancipation Proclamation was announced, to the grand staircase made from black granite imported from Zimbabwe, the building abounds with attractive features.

There is a suggested path through the museum ("Not a forced march," Blackburn says with a smile), but visitors will be able to choose easily from any area of interest. They will enter through revolving doors into a glassed vestibule and an entryway that was recently redesigned to accommodate a security doorway similar to those at airports. The cafe and expanded gift shop are located just beyond the security checkpoint.

Even the wall treatment in the cafe bears one of the many unique elements of the building's design. Predominantly off-white porcelain tile, the wall also has copper pinwheels attached in a pattern that mimics stones in the river.

Alpha Blackburn

"They sparkle like rivers sparkle," Blackburn says pointing to an outdoor dining plaza that will be landscaped. "As often as possible we have brought the exterior into the building."

The travertine stone shows up in the interior as well. Chosen for its physical characteristics, it's meant to convey the permanence of the building.

"We looked at the stones in buildings built by slaves," says Blackburn. "But the color was cold and we didn't want it to feel oppressive in the building. The story is not all about suffering. It's about overcoming."

The grand staircase dominates the center of the structure, sited to provide a panoramic view. Buses will enter underground and shuttle patrons to a people entrance at the building's northern corner. There, students can enter a "decompression" room, where they can get settled and listen to a brief orientation.

Second floor

The second floor houses the Freedom Center's main artifact, the Slave Pen. Visitors will enter the Pen - originally from a Northern Kentucky farm and rebuilt in the center of the building - through an interpretation of a chimney in black steel that flows into the quarters that once held slaves in transit to the slave markets. Just beyond the pen is a 350-seat theater with the fiber-optic sky, where the audience can pick out constellations when the lights go down. The multimedia presentation "Suite for Freedom" will provide an introduction to the rest of the museum.

THE FACTS

Groundbreaking: June 17, 2002 Opening: August (10 years in development) Location: Northern bank of the Ohio River between Paul Brown Stadium and the Great American Ball Park. Size: 158,000 square feet Facility: Three connected pavilions devoted to community, exhibition, educational and research spans four acres. There will also be a gift shop and cafe. Core experiences: An orientation film, five exhibits including one for children, a live theater, and a concluding experience, which focuses on discussions of modern-day freedom issues. Programs: Freedom stations (research outposts), educational curriculum, public lectures and forums, family histories, live performances, film and Internet sites. Attendance: 320,000 visitors expected first year; 260,000 annual average expected thereafter. Project budget: $110 million Funding: Capital campaign raised $100 million Funding sources: 45 percent government, 55 percent private sector Board co-chairs: The Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones and Harry Whipple Executives: Spencer R. Crew, executive director and CEO; Ed Rigaud, president; Sue Feamster, vice president for advancement, Gary Bockelman, vice president for administrative affairs Staff: 62

BUILDING AWARDS

• Unbuilt Citation Award from the American Institute of Architecture, Portland, Ore., chapter, for excellence in design. (Portland because Blackburn Associates worked with BOORA architects, who are located in Portland, on this project.) • Cited as one of Cincinnati's Nationally Significant Buildings by the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati and the Cincinnatus Association

The second floor is the most impressive in the building. The river vistas are spectacular. The towering ceiling and rounded edges of the spiral staircase produce a soaring feeling of freedom. The colorful "Button Beaded RagGonNon Music Pop-Up BoOks" (a work that incorporates intricate quilting and adornment, text and music boxes) by Aminah Robinson and a mural by the late Tom Feelings (completed by New York artist Tyrone Geter) will add an extraordinary complement to the central area.

A children's area, "The Underground Railroad," in the eastern pavilion has been built on a concept never tried before, according to Rob Morgan, design director for Jack Rouse, a Cincinnati firm specializing in exhibit design.

"We have taken the story hinted at in (the introductory film) Midnight Decision and brought the characters through this exhibit," Morgan says. "This will pull children into the story and create a sense of empathy. We have tried hard to be sensitive to children and families, but we didn't want to sugar-coat the message."

The artifacts in this small gallery include a hollow-bottom wagon, and a crate like the one the slave Henry Box Brown sent himself to Baltimore in. (He made it in 27 hours.) The gallery doubles as a waiting area for the Story Theater.

Story Theater

"The exhibit will provoke people to think about the characters of the time and about what they would do in the same situation," says Morgan. "It will also create a sense of anticipation of what is going to happen next."

The Story Theater is Universal Studios and Disneyland combined. There is a forest of enormous old trees with leaves extending up and over the ceiling. The trees look real, but are actually made out of cement. A wall-to-wall screen covers the front of the room where Brothers at the Borderland will play, the center's most important film.

"It's considered an environmental theater, in that it has real simulated effects that you put you into the setting," Morgan explains.

The Ohio River seems to flow below the screen as the audience sits on benches beside banks lined by large stones and smaller vegetation. The walls, embedded with sound panels that provide audio effects, are covered by large mesh screens that have been spray-painted to look like the night landscape in the 1850s.

During the movie, the audience will hear thunder and see lightning, hear the sound of insects and whizzing bullets. The visual elements include fireflies glowing in the bushes and trees, and a fog that rises from the river.

Climbing the staircase to the third floor, visitors ascend into the time of the Middle Passage. There is a Caribbean village with pastel buildings, bronze statues of slaves, a gigantic hull of a ship and a mural depicting the off loading of slaves.

Continuing on under a lighting effect that simulates water, visitors will see large barrels stacked in a small room, spilling over with the type of products produced by slaves, including quilts and tools.

But the exhibition goes one step further by "burying" visitors in a watery tomb. The next room, very small and dark, was designed to connect the viewer with slaves who had jumped or were pushed off the slave boats. In this watery tomb, you can hear the sound of water crashing against the hull of a ship. Making the room even smaller is a 12-foot-tall, three-foot-wide Lucite tube situated in the center to symbolize the breadth of slavery in the New World.

"The cylinder will be filled with cowry shells or beads, " Morgan says. "It's an iconic way to show the number of people involved in the slave trade."

The third floor opens up as history moves forward. The hallway is lined with the faÁades of plantations, a stage scenery copy of Freedom Hall and a rear-projected painting of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence. An old barn has been built in the area dedicated to abolitionists where there is also a cotton gin, a stained-glass window from an old church and Civil War artifacts.

In another theater located in this area, "Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives," a documentary the center co-sponsored with Time Warner Cable, will be shown. The "experience" ends with Reconstruction and the Jubilee (end of slavery).

" 'The Everyday Heroes' exhibit is a bridge between the past and the present," says Rita Organ, director of exhibits and collections for the center of the final tunnel - a portal of projections of modern slavery with a discussion area that looks a little like a glass cage. "Visitors come in as bystanders, but leave as allies for freedom."