One of the major attractions during the first year of the Great Lakes Exposition was the Marine Theater, a performance which took place in Lake Erie and showcased swimming and diving acts. The following year, Broadway producer and showman Billy Rose came to town and turned the Marine Theater into something even more spectacular: The Aquacade.
Rose invested $500,000 in his Aquacade show and built an elaborate moving set and seats for 5,000 spectators. Grander and more ambitious than the Marine Theater, the Aquacade featured a cast of hundreds of swimmers, divers, and showgirls who performed to live musical accompaniment. Dinner was served during evening performances of the four-act show, and tickets could cost as much as $1.50 -- quite an expense at the time. The show proved to be a great success, with sold out performances being the norm and seasoned New York critics claiming that Billy Rose had "brought Broadway to Lake Erie." Even the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly, and Moe -- came to see the show when they had a night off from performing at the Palace Theater.
Some of the most spectacular drama surrounding the Aquacade (drama that in fact only helped promote the show further) happened off-stage, however. Johnny Weismuller (best known for his movie role as Tarzan) performed at the Aquacade, and his equally famous wife Lupe Velez (a Mexican actress) would sometimes fly into Cleveland unexpectedly. Velez would fight and argue with Weismuller in public, creating plenty of fodder for the papers. Olympic swimming star Eleanor Holm Jarrett performed in the show, too. Jarrett made headlines by giving up her amateur standing to perform the starring role in the Aquacade, but she had already been suspended from the Olympic team for drinking (itself a hot news item), and may not have been reinstated anyway. Rumors of a romantic affair between Jarrett and Rose (who were both married at the time) also fueled much speculation. The two later divorced their spouses and married in 1939
The Aquacade ended its run in Cleveland when the Great Lakes Exposition came to an end in September 1937. Rose took his show to the 1939 New York World's Fair, with Holm and Weismuller reprising their starring roles, and it again drew rave reviews and large crowds.
For more (including 7 images & 2 audio files) view the original article
]]>The Donald Gray Gardens were situated on 3.5 acres of lakefront just to the north of Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The gardens and the Horticulture Building (1000 feet to the west of the gardens) were built in 1936 as part of the Great Lakes Exposition. One visiting the Expo had to pay twenty-five cents to reach the gardens, entering through the building. Ironically, the gardens sat on what was once the city dump, also a haven for the homeless during the Great Depression. Winsor French of the Cleveland Press remarked on this saying, "Incredible, to pass a dump one day and the next to find it a garden, complete with rolling lawns and flowering shrubs, but that's the way they do things."
Hundreds of workers from the New Deal's WPA (Works Progress Administration) were in charge of planting and landscaping the gardens. The man who designed the gardens was a prominent Cleveland architect by the name of A. Donald Gray who also had a private landscaping business and served as gardening editor for the Cleveland Press. Gray accomplished the task of constructing the gardens in only sixty-eight days. He created a rich and diverse setting in his landscape with waterfalls, ferns, mosses, vines, annuals, perennials, and rhododendron, to name just a few. Different gardens existed within the space, too, such as the various nationality gardens in the "Gardens of the Nations" and period gardens representing the eras of the frontier, Civil War, World War I, and the garden of the future. Expo visitors could relax in the gardens and enjoy views of Lake Erie on one of the many benches that lined a gravel walkway.
The Horticulture Building, meanwhile, was 60 feet wide and stretched 190 feet in length, with outdoor terraces at the top two levels holding umbrella tables and floral boxes It was built with the intention of being one of the permanent gifts left behind after the two year Expo ended, along with the gardens and the East 9th Street underpass. The building was designed in a modern, oval-tiered shape. Its fifty-foot tall entrance was embellished with Roman-style murals depicting harvesting and gardening scenes intricately painted by local artists. The building was under the sponsorship of the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland with contributions from other groups such as the Mentor Headlands Garden Club and Our Garden Club of Rocky River. Chairman of the project was Mrs. Elizabeth Mather, who planted the first tree outside the gardens. There were rotating flower shows in the building each month, along with space for garden club meetings and exhibition areas.
Unfortunately, the Horticultural Building burned down in 1941, only five years after it had opened. The gardens, however, lasted longer than any other part of the Expo. Indeed, they remained in their original location north of Municipal Stadium until being dug up and destroyed during the construction of the new Cleveland Browns Football Stadium in the late 1990s.
For more (including 9 images & 2 audio files) view the original article
]]>During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Cleveland's civic and business leaders sponsored the Great Lakes Exposition. Held along the lakefront on a reclaimed refuse dump, the Expo was intended to foster civic and regional pride, attract visitors and businesses to Cleveland, and provide an entertaining diversion in the midst of the Great Depression.
Local businesses and industries from the region sponsored exhibits designed to celebrate American progress and promote their own products. Standard Oil of Ohio produced souvenir maps to the city, while the Higbee Company hosted a branch store on the expo's grounds, housed in an impressive tower. Visitors learned about regional industries at exhibits such as "The Romance of Steel", and watched patriotic pageants.
Municipal Stadium acted as the western anchor of the grounds, which stretched to East 24th Street. The main grounds extended to East Ninth Street, where the Midway began. The main area featured imposing, albeit temporary, structures and pageantry, while the Midway "Streets of the World" area provided carnival style entertainment with an international theme. Controversy over appropriate entertainment on the Midway swirled around the expo. Originally, nudity and "exotic" dancers were banned, but in 1936 several venues featured scantily clad females and striptease dancers. In 1937 the nudity rule was again enforced.
The Expo garnered some international attention but was never a full blown world's fair. Attendance was not as large as hoped for, and plans to construct more permanent lakeside recreation facilities never came to fruition. Even so, the Great Lakes Exposition provided two summers of excitement and entertainment for many Cleveland residents and out of town guests at a time when spirits needed a lift.
]]>