Cleveland’s 1903 Group Plan was a grand undertaking: one of the era’s most ambitious and successful attempts to turn what civic leaders saw as an irredeemable slum into a “City Beautiful,” replete with dignified new structures and striking public spaces. In 1910, the Group Plan’s first building opened and the bar was set high: Christened the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, the structure is an architectural masterwork with a Beaux Arts façade and interior spaces enhanced with fine art and marble and brass finishes. The building was renamed the Howard M. Metzenbaum United States Courthouse in 1998; it is the only Group Plan structure to border both Public Square and the Mall.
The Courthouse belongs to an elite group of 35 buildings commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department under the Tarsney Act of 1893. That legislation gave permission to the secretary of the treasury to use private architects, selected through competitions, to create federal buildings around the United States. The Cleveland structure was designed by Arnold W. Brunner under the direction of James Knox Taylor, supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury Department.
As the first Group Plan building, the Courthouse—built at a cost of $3,318,000—became the model upon which most of its Cleveland brethren were later based. The Public Library (1925), which resides next door, bears a particularly close resemblance to the Courthouse. Most of the other Group Plan buildings—the Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1912), City Hall (1916), Public Auditorium (1922) and the Board of Education building (1931)—also emulate the Courthouse’s style, size, scale and overall appearance.
Brunner took as his architectural inspiration the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The similarity is evidenced particularly by the tall Corinthian columns that adorn all four of the Courthouse’s facades. Like the Place de la Concorde, the Courthouse also is festooned with statuary, including two pieces—"Jurisprudence" and "Commerce"—by Daniel Chester French who also designed the Lincoln Memorial.
The interior is equally notable. Entering through one of three arched doorways, visitors encounter a lateral corridor 30 feet deep that runs the entire width of the building. The hall’s vaulted ceiling reaches 30 feet in height and all surfaces, including the floor, are done in Italian marble. Cast-bronze, spread-wing eagles standing on globes appear over each pair of elevator doors. Windows are trimmed in bronze. On higher floors of the building, there also are small interior windows. When the building was used as a post office these “postal peeps” served much the same function as internal security cameras do today, allowing supervisors to keep an eye on workers below.
The third floor’s ceremonial courtrooms have often been at the center of history-making events. In 1918, Eugene V. Debs was put on trial in the East Ceremonial Courtroom for opposing US involvement in World War I. Civil suits relating to the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University were held in the building’s upper courtrooms, which also were the site of Cleveland’s famous school desegregation (bussing) case that was decided in 1976 by Judge Frank J. Battisti.
Visible everywhere inside the building are fine artworks, many of which have Cleveland or Ohio themes: “City of Cleveland Welcomes the Arts” by William Hickok Lowe. “Passing Commerce Pays Tribute to the Port of Cleveland” by Kenyon Cox. “Battle of Lake Erie, Sept. 10, 1813” by Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum. The building also boasts a collection of 63 “Delivering the Mail” murals by artist Francis Millet, who also created the 13 murals in the Cleveland Trust rotunda and died on the Titanic.
Following a 1998 upgrade, the courthouse was renamed in honor of former U.S. Senator Howard Morton Metzenbaum. A major initiative to restore public spaces and modernize the mechanical systems was initiated in 2002. That same year, a number of functions of the U.S. District Court moved to the new Carl B. Stokes Federal Court House Building west of Public Square. Today, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, General Services Administration, Immigration & Customs Enforcement, and Office of the U.S. Trustee reside in the Metzenbaum facility. The upper courtrooms are still used for public hearings and proceedings.
One of more than 200 legacy properties under the stewardship of the General Services Administration, the Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
]]>Cuyahoga County was established in 1807—eleven years after “Cleaveland” became a city and four years after Ohio became a state. For the next century, multiple structures provided judicial services for the county. Initially, court was held in various taverns and inns around town. The first actual courthouse was completed in 1813. It contained jail cells, a living room for the sheriff, and a 2nd floor courtroom. Three other facilities—all located on or near Public Square—were built and deployed throughout the 1800s.
The current building on Lakeside Avenue near Cleveland City Hall was completed in 1911 at a cost of more than $4 million. Designed by the architectural firm of Lehman & Schmitt, with Charles Morris (an École des Beaux-Arts alumnus) as chief designer, the building is constructed of Milford pink granite from Massachusetts. It is one of seven buildings composing the Group Plan—a landmark 1903 initiative to redefine downtown Cleveland with open park space and grand, dignified buildings. The Group Plan structures are representative of the Beaux-Arts school, which emphasizes symmetry; arched and pedimented windows and doors; largely flat roofs; and myriad statuary.
The Courthouse is a prominent salute both to the Beaux-Arts tradition and to some of history’s most important figures. Posted at the entrance are bronze statues of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Above the front cornice are representatives of the four kinds of law: Moses (moral law), Byzantine Emperor Justinian (civil law), King Alfred the Great (common law), and Pope Gregory IX (canon law). Various other statuary includes Simon de Montfort (founder of the English House of Commons), English King Edward I (who gave the English people the right to determine taxation), and US Chief Justice John Marshal.
Directly above the front entry doors are three large arched windows between fluted Ionic columns. These south-facing windows allow copious amounts of daylight into the courtroom—a convenience, an aesthetic bonus and even a metaphor. The frieze of the cornice includes the inscription “Cuyahoga County Courthouse.” The rear (northward) elevation facing Lake Erie is composed similarly but with the inscription “Liberty is Obedience to Law.”
The interior, created under the direction of noted Cleveland architect Charles Schweinfurth, features a grand three-story central court with vaulted ceilings, marble Ionic columns, and a balustraded (railing supported by spindles or stair sticks) mezzanine. An elegant curving marble staircase rises past a large stained-glass window representing Law & Justice.
Along with the Mall district, the Cuyahoga County Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
]]>The Cleveland Public Library comprises one of the largest collections in the United States: nearly ten million items. The Library’s two buildings on Superior Avenue (the main structure, 1925) and the Stokes Wing (1997) command an entire city block between East 3rd and East 6th Streets. The exceptional collection and iconic buildings demonstrate both the institution's importance as a symbol of democracy and—at a more pragmatic level—the library's popularity.
The development of the Cleveland Public Library mirrored a larger movement in the United States: merging practices from tax-funded school-district libraries with early circulating libraries that required fees or membership dues. Heavily laden in classist ideals of democracy, these early public libraries became increasingly popular in the last decade of the 19th century. The advancement of publicly funded libraries also was a response to rapid social changes—particularly industrialization and a tidal wave of immigrants. Thus public lending institutions focused largely on maintaining large collections of educational materials, even though limited operating hours and a closed-stack system limited their accessibility.
Cleveland's first public library was founded in 1869, following the passage of a law providing library funding as part of the Cleveland school system. Known until 1883 as the Public School Library, the new institution on the third floor of a building off West Superior Avenue was estimated to have 5,800 books on its opening day. Visitors to the 20 x 80-foot room had to submit their requests at a main counter. The item would then be retrieved from the stacks by an employee of the library. This system remained in place until 1884, when William Howard Brett was appointed librarian. Under Brett's direction, the institution became a model for progressive, service-oriented libraries throughout the United States, a fact that led to its popular nickname "The People's University."
The notion of accessibility lay at the core of Brett’s innovations. He made all materials in the adult sections available to the public. Cleveland Public Library also became the first large urban library to institute an open-shelf policy. In addition, Brett developed programs and collections for children, instituted a classification system to group books of similar subject matter, opened Cleveland's first branch libraries, created library stations throughout the city, expanded the collection of fiction, and created the city’s first stand-alone children's room. This trailblazing librarian helped secure both the land and funding for the Cleveland Public Library's permanent home in the city's emerging civic district east of Public Square.
And what a home it is. Designed by the prominent architectural firm of Walker & Weeks, the five-story facility was completed in 1925 for about $5 million. It is one of six buildings conforming to the Group Plan, an ambitious 1903 city-planning scheme built around a massive three-segment public park (the Mall) northeast of Public Square. Like most of the Group Plan buildings, the library reflects a Beaux Arts, neoclassical design. Its interior was modeled in a Renaissance style, making ample use of Italian marble. Vaulted ceilings are adorned with paintings of mythological and historical figures, while grand staircases carved in Botticino marble and elaborately decorated passageways invite visitors to explore the library's various departments.
Library functions were sorely tested during the Great Depression, when restrictions on public taxation reduced funding to libraries. Salaries were reduced, staff was let go, and the acquisition of new materials dropped drastically, even as library usage increased by up to 20 percent. Fortunately, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Public Works programs included the Cleveland library: WPA employees made building repairs, cleaned, painted, and even copied musical scores. In the 1930s, the library also was a recipient of federally funded art. In addition to countless prints and paintings, three WPA murals adorn the main Library’s walls to this day. Six additional murals were painted for branch libraries.
The late 1990s were a busy and productive time for the Cleveland Library system. Massive renovations were made to the building. A second structure—named after former U.S. Congressman Louis Stokes—was built in 1997 on the former site of the Cleveland Plain Dealer which, since 1957 had been used by the library as an annex. Focused largely on science and technology, the Stokes Wing has 11 floors totaling 267,000 square feet and more than 30 miles of book shelves for a capacity of 1.3 million books.
The two buildings are connected by an underground corridor below the outdoor Eastman Reading Garden, named after Linda Anne Eastman (1867–1963), the first woman to head a major U.S. city library system and a pioneer in the modern library system. The garden that bears her name was designed by landscape architecture firm OLIN, and includes sculptures by Maya Lin and Tom Otterness. The garden provides space for concerts, garden shows, book displays, and public art exhibits. Think of it as the center of a cultural sandwich—part of a block-long demonstration of Cleveland’s prowess and historic leadership in the arts and humanities.
Today, the Cleveland Public Library operates 27 branches throughout the city, a mobile library, a Public Administration Library in City Hall, and the Ohio Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Among the main facility’s special collections are the Mears and Murdock baseball collections, the Cleveland Theater collection, 130,000 volumes of children's material, a 74,000-volume rare book collection, 1.3 million photographs, and the John G. White Chess Collection—believed to be the largest and most comprehensive chess library in the world. In 2009, CPL became the first library in the United States to offer e-book downloads.
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]]>In the 1920s Cleveland's Public Auditorium was among the largest and most popular meeting venues in the United States. By the end of the 20th century, Cleveland and Public Auditorium were fighting tooth and nail for second-tier convention business. Two decades later Cleveland hosted the 2016 Republican National Convention—leveraging a new convention center connected to a large hotel and a revamped Public Auditorium.
Public Auditorium was one of seven public buildings constructed as part of the Cleveland Group Plan of 1903. Reflecting the goals of the “City Beautiful” movement (attractive public buildings and open spaces), the Group Plan emphasized Roman Revival and Beaux Arts architecture surrounding a large mall. All of the resultant structures survive to this day, except for the Cuyahoga County Administration Building (the least iconic of the group) which was demolished in 2014.
Design plans for Public Auditorium were created by city architects Frederic H. Betz and J. Harold McDowell in conjunction with Frank R. Walker of the architectural firm Walker & Weeks. Planning and fundraising commenced in 1916. Construction began in 1920 and the building was completed in 1922. The result was magnificent in scale and aesthetic allure: A 21,780-square-foot registration lobby, a 10,000-seat auditorium with color frescos lining the balconies, a 3,000-seat Music Hall and a 600-seat Little Theater. Small wonder that the auditorium’s heyday was long and fruitful: Republican National Conventions in 1924 and 1936. Concerts ranging from the Cleveland Orchestra and Duke Ellington to the Beatles and David Bowie.
Unfortunately, Public Hall began to languish by mid century. In 1957, an issue to expand the convention center beneath the Mall was rejected by Cleveland voters. The resolution reappeared in 1958 and again was struck down. In 1959, voters also rejected a 1,000-room Hilton hotel, controversially sited on the south end of the Mall. Not until 1963 did Public Auditorium receive a much-needed subterranean addition. Auditorium business and attendance rebounded but only temporarily. For nearly another half century, Public Auditorium remained static.
A positive new stage for Public Auditorium emerged in 2011. First the Global Center for Health Innovation was conceived (initially as the Medical Mart) and eventually built on the west side of the mall. Voters also approved a 0.25 percent sales tax increase to fund development of the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland—a massive renovation of the convention space beneath the Mall and the adjoining Public Auditorium. Adding to the allure of the new meeting spaces, the Hilton Cleveland Downtown was finally erected on the former site of the County Administration Building. Voila: 390,000 total feet of meeting space and underground access to a 600-room hotel. With the help of some powerful new neighbors, Public Auditorium saw new life.
]]>On July 3, 1916, Cleveland city councilmen convened for their weekly meeting. But this was no ordinary get-together. Instead, it was the legislators’ inaugural gathering in Cleveland’s glamorous new city hall at 601 Lakeside Avenue—the very first Cleveland building constructed specifically to function as council chambers. Previously, Cleveland's council chambers had shared roofs with retailers and private and commercial offices. The first place local government business was conducted was in a log cabin.
On April 5, 1802, the first Cleveland Township elections took place at the home of James Kingsbury, one of Cleveland's most important pioneers. After that spring, the Kingsbury home (now the site of the Federal Building at East 9th Street and Lakeside Avenue) became the site of township elections and government meetings, and remained so until 1815. In November, 1836, Cleveland finally had a city council, and the newly elected councilmen chose the two upper floors of the Jones Building, located southwest of Public Square, as their city hall.
In the summer of 1875, Cleveland's city hall headquarters moved to the Case Block: a commercial building on Superior Street where the Cleveland Public Library's main building now stands. For thirty years, Cleveland City Hall shared this building with everything from a ladies clothing store and hotel to artist studios. Not until 1906, when it purchased the Case Block building, was Cleveland able to claim that it had an entire building for its city hall.
Around the time the Case Block building was purchased, plans to build a new city hall were presented to Mayor Tom Johnson. The design was finalized by 1907 and construction began in 1912. Four years later the $3 million building was completed. It was architected by Clevelander J. Milton Dyer, who also designed the Cleveland Athletic Club, the First Methodist Church at 3000 Euclid Avenue, the Coast Guard Station at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, and myriad residences along Euclid Avenue and in Wade Park (University Circle).
The new City Hall is one of many structures conforming to Daniel Burnham's 1903 Group Plan. Thus its styling is similar to other Group Plan buildings such as the Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1911), Public Auditorium/Music Hall (1922), the Cleveland Board of Education Building (1931, now the Drury Hotel), and the Cleveland Public Library (1925). What may be most striking is the building’s similarity to its neighbor to the west, the Cuyahoga County Courthouse. Both buildings feature bays on each end, balustraded roof lines, and a central pavilion with three entrance bays. City Hall has been designated a historic landmark by the Cleveland Landmarks Commission.
On July 4, 1916, Cleveland welcomed its new government building with a citywide celebration. City Hall's bronze doors were opened at noon and Clevelanders flooded in to see the council chambers and mayor's suite. Concerts of orchestra music and singing filled the building with music. The day ended with the largest fireworks display the city had ever seen.
Since 1916, Cleveland City Hall has undergone several restorations to keep it a functioning location for city affairs. Council Chambers underwent major renovations in 1951 and 1977. However, the façade remains largely unchanged. Today, in addition to the mayor's office, many departments—including City Planning, Finance, Public Health and Public Safety—are housed inside City Hall.
]]>When the city approved the Group Plan of 1903, it was believed that the Mall would become the city’s functional and symbolic center. The long stretch of land northeast of Public Square would turn a former slum into a parklike space, and a half-dozen neoclassical government buildings surrounding the Mall would instill a sense of civic pride and duty. These goals fit the aims of the City Beautiful reform movement, whose proponents worried that the attractiveness and dignity of American cities were being compromised by poverty, overpopulation and the perceived deleterious effects of immigration. Daniel Burnham, who played a leading role in designing Cleveland’s Group Plan, was a major figure in the City Beautiful movement. He may best be remembered for designing Chicago’s White City at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. In Cleveland, however, as Walter Leedy wrote, “Instead of a ‘White City’ the Mall turned out to be a ‘White Sepulcher.’”
The Mall’s transformation into a true city center was quashed in the 1920s by the Van Sweringen brothers’ decision to build their Union Terminal train station on Public Square, a decision that answered a federal government concern about mixing local and national rail traffic on the strategically important tracks along the lakeshore. The 1903 Group Plan specified that the city’s main train station would be built at the north end of the Mall. When that didn’t happen, it became clear that Public Square would remain the city’s center. In retrospect, this was a propitious choice: Public Square was Cleveland’s transportation hub and it was closer to the booming commercial district taking shape along Euclid Avenue. The Mall, meanwhile, became somewhat of an afterthought, used occasionally for concerts and other events but serving mainly as a cut-through for downtown workers.
A number of plans over the years promised to inject new life into the Mall, including unrealized plans for embellishments in the late 1920s and again in the late 1930s, the short-lived amenities brought by the 1936-37 Great Lakes Exposition, a failed bid in the late 1950s for a "hotel on the Mall," and the addition of the Hanna Fountains in 1964 (but removed in 1987). In the 2010s the Mall received a new carpet of grass atop the ramp-like rise on Mall B necessitated by the most recent expansion of the convention center. New buildings, including a "medical mart" and a convention hotel were added on the Mall's western flank in anticipation of the city's hosting of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Yet the Mall still struggles to serve as a civic space, calling attention to the challenges that face all efforts to create such places.
]]>Spanning more than 200 feet along Superior Avenue and East 6th Street, the thirteen-story Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland sits comfortably among neighboring Group Plan structures in the city's Civic Center district. The building is a reminder of an era of unprecedented urban growth in Cleveland, and of the federal government's fledgling control over a central banking system.
Following the Wall Street Panic of 1907, a movement for banking reform increasingly appealed to citizens distrustful of banks and bankers. In response, Congress created the National Monetary Commission in 1908. The committee recommended the development of a central banking system that could issue currency. After years of debate, what is now called the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913. It called for the creation of eight to twelve autonomous Federal Reserve Banks, to be owned by the banks in the region each Federal Reserve Bank would represent. The actions of the banks were to be coordinated by a Federal Reserve Board appointed by the President. The primary function of these privately owned, but publicly controlled, institutions was to be a lender of last resort.
One of the twelve member banks was slated for Cleveland. Following its 1914 establishment, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland was housed on the second floor of the Williamson Building overlooking Public Square. It served the Fourth District of the Federal Reserve: member banks in Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Cleveland branch quickly became the third largest of the twelve Federal Reserve banks, forcing the institution to expand to multiple floors of the Williamson Building.
In 1919, the architectural firm of Walker & Weeks was hired to design a new home for Cleveland's branch of the Federal Reserve. Four architects and a team of draftsmen worked for thirteen months on the design. One thousand sketches and nearly 2,000 blueprints were prepared for the new structure. Construction began in 1921. Two years and $8.25 million later, the Fourth District Federal Reserve Bank formally opened on August 23, 1923, an event attended by an estimated crowd of 40,000.
The pink Etowah Georgia marble building fits well with the Beaux-Arts character of neighboring Group Plan buildings, such as the Cleveland Public Library and Public Auditorium. Inspired by the Medici palace in Florence, the Federal Reserve Building is reminiscent of a modern Italian Renaissance palazzo.
The grandeur of the bank's exterior is equaled or even surpassed by the intricately detailed lobby. Gold marble walls and pillars complement the ornate iron grilles that protect twelve large ground-floor arched windows. The vaulted ceiling and layout remind one of a Roman basilica. Dignified statuary, paintings, and ironwork speak to the history of the Federal Reserve institution and the ideals underlying its development.
Beyond its classical lines and elaborate interior, the building’s other design mission was to communicate soundness and safety. Exacerbated by several financial panics, people’s trust in banks waned in the early 20th Century. The Federal Reserve System was created to stem these concerns, but the physical demonstration of security was equally important. Toward this end, the Cleveland facility’s fortress-like structure includes hidden gun ports and observation windows and slots for sharpshooters under the third step of the main entrance. It also is purported that small artillery cannons or revolving gun turrets are hidden beneath the base of the statues at the building’s entrance. Inside, the two-story vault has concrete walls 6.5 feet thick. The bank vault door—100 tons and five feet thick—is the largest of its kind in the world.
All in all, the building—inside and outside—seems to say “Not only is your money safe but it’s living better than you are.” What’s more, you’re welcome to go visit your money, or at least see where it’s hanging out: Check the Federal Reserve Bank website for tour hours.
]]>Until 2013, the administrative headquarters of the Cleveland Board of Education was an iconic sandstone, Beaux-Arts structure located at 1380 East 6th Street on the east side of Mall A. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975, the 1931 building was designed by Walker & Weeks, which arguably may have done more to define Cleveland architecture than any single firm. In addition to the Board of Education Building, Walker & Weeks designed Cleveland’s Public Auditorium; Federal Reserve Bank; Public Library; Severance Hall; Allen Memorial Medical Library; Lorain-Carnegie Bridge; Cleveland Municipal Stadium; Warner & Swasey Observatory; and numerous churches including St. Paul’s Episcopal, Epworth-Euclid Methodist and First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Completed in 1931, the Cleveland Board of Education Building was the last piece in the Group Plan vision for Cleveland’s three Malls (A, B and C). Around that time, the Malls were expected to replace Public Square as the center of downtown. The idea was to honor the Progressive Era and the City Beautiful Movement by creating urban paradises to counter the upheavals caused by rapid industrialization. The “re-centering” idea obviously didn’t pan out, but the Board of Education building nonetheless took its place as an aesthetically pleasing cornerstone to a space that may never have looked better than it does now.
The Board of Education building’s two-story lobby features marble columns, massive arched windows, bronze chandeliers and two Depression-era murals that flank the space: "The Progress of Education" and "The Branches of Education" by Cleveland artist Cora Holden. Further enhancing the structure is a statue of Abraham Lincoln located on the west side of the building facing the Mall. Sculpted by Max Kalish, the statue was installed in 1932 in front of the building which, at that time, faced west toward East 4th Street (East 4th was removed in 1988). Donations from Cleveland schoolchildren helped pay for the statue. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is carved on its base.
The Cleveland Metropolitan School District occupied only about half of the building when Drury Hotels bought it at auction in early 2013 for $4.5 million. Three years later, following a three-year, $52-million renovation, a 189-room Drury Plaza Hotel opened in the 85-year-old structure. The school district’s administrative functions are now located at 1111 Superior Avenue, in the former headquarters of Eaton Corporation.
]]>St. Colman Catholic Church, located on West 65th Street near Lorain Avenue, was founded in 1880 as a response to the rapidly growing Irish immigrant population on Cleveland's West Side. Father Eugene M. O'Callaghan, former pastor of the predominately Irish St. Patrick's Catholic Church, held the first mass in a rented home off of Gordon Street (W 65th Street). Later that year, the first church was constructed on Gordon Street and the home was converted into St. Colman School. With over 1,000 worshipers in 1883, the church was expanding in both its size and the role it played within the surrounding community. A new school was built on Gordon Street in 1885, and a convent was constructed for the Sisters of St. Joseph to begin their residency the following year. By 1904, a larger three-level schoolhouse opened that included a 1,000 seat auditorium in the basement.
Taking four years to construct, St. Colman Catholic Church opened its doors in 1918. The classically styled structure could accommodate 2,800 people. St. Colman continued to expand, with a convent added in 1921, and both a second school and rectory constructed in 1930. The Church continued to act as the centerpiece of the neighborhood's Irish community until the middle of the century.
The West Side Irish community remained stable until the end of World War II. Soon after, however, the community dissolved as a result of the general exodus of Cleveland residents away from the urban core. In this changing environment, St. Colman Church evolved to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse and less prosperous community. With the 1904 school being closed and demolished in 1974, St. Colman opened one of the West Side's first preschools in its 1930 school building. Additionally, the church expanded its role ministering and providing social services to the outlying neighborhood through the development of a recovery program, literacy projects, an outreach ministry, and HUD-supported housing for senior citizens.
In an effort to downsize the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, Bishop Richard Lennon announced that St. Colman would merge with St. Stephen in March 2009. This order led to local grassroots efforts by the community to get Lennon to reconsider his decision. Rev. Bob Begin visited Lennon on two occasions to make the case for St. Colman. A flurry of appeal letters were sent to Lennon, arguing that the parish's social services had a tremendous impact on the urban poor, and that the church was financially stable. The works done by both Begin and St. Colman’s parishioners convinced Lennon to keep the church open.
However, not every church was spared closure. St. Emeric Church closed on June 30, 2010, leaving hundreds without a parish. Enter St. Colman; Rev. Begin collaborated with St. Emeric’s parishioner Eva Szabo, to hold monthly masses at St. Colman. Begin started learning Magyar, a Hungarian language, in order to prepare for St. Emeric’s churchgoers. He told the Plain Dealer, “I’ll learn to speak Hungarian enough to do the prayers.” The masses continued while Szabo and others continued to fight for their parish.
When Rev. Begin turned 75, he had to retire under church law. St. Colman’s parishioners disagreed, wishing Begin could stay longer. In their efforts, they submitted over 3,000 signatures and letters to Lennon to change his mind about Begin’s retirement. Lennon listened and offered to allow Begin to work for one more year, which Begin accepted. Begin officially retired in 2014, but continued to help and assist the church and those in need.
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]]>The Group Plan of Public Buildings in 1903 was an ambitious city-planning scheme that—as much as any single initiative—shaped downtown Cleveland. The Plan’s six public buildings are the Federal Building (1910, now the Howard Metzenbaum US Courthouse), the Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1911), City Hall (1916), Public Auditorium (1922), the Cleveland Public Library (1926) and the Board of Education Building (1930). A seventh Group Plan structure—the Cuyahoga County Administration Building (1957)—was demolished in 2014 to make way for a Hilton Hotel.
All six structures are loosely clustered around the key Group Plan component, the Mall, a long, three-segment public park northeast of Public Square. The buildings are of uniform height and style, representing the Roman classicism of the Beaux-Arts school of architecture. The strategy was to create an official gateway, an iconic corridor, leading from a new railroad depot on the lakefront to Public Square.
Responding to proposals made by the American Institute of Architects and the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the City of Cleveland formed the Group Plan Commission in 1902. Three architects—Arnold W. Brunner, John M. Carrére and Daniel Burnham—served on the commission, which presented its recommendations to Mayor Tom L. Johnson in 1903. The resulting Group Plan was heavily influenced by several sources: One was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Another was the Washington, D.C., Mall then under construction. A third was the City Beautiful movement: a response to concerns that the attractiveness and dignity of American cities were being compromised by poverty, over-population and the perceived deleterious effects of immigration. It was believed that “beautification”—personified by ample park space and grand, dignified buildings—would instill civic and moral virtue in city residents and revitalize urban areas that were increasingly perceived by the wealthy as undesirable places to live and work.
The central aim of the Group Plan was to re-center downtown and provide a model that might inspire harmonious architecture guided by principles other than the dominant commercial mode of urban development. However, the rail station idea, which was essential to such a re-centering, was scrapped because the U.S. Railroad Administration worried that local rail traffic would impede cross-country traffic on the "Water Level Route" along the lakefront, a matter of heightened importance during mobilization for World War I. The federal government looked with favor on a southern railroad approach to downtown by local and regional trains. The Van Sweringen plan for the Cleveland Union Terminal, which opened in 1930, meshed with this broader consideration and shifted the city's focus shifted from the Mall back to its traditional center on Public Square.
Despite the Mall's diminished role, it remains nothing less than “beautiful”—a testament to smart planning and placement, and the enduring aesthetic appeal of classical architecture. The Mall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
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]]>Although today the first sign of downtown that a motorist is sure to spot from any direction is the Key Tower, prior to its completion in the early 1990s the first sight was the Terminal Tower. Despite its eclipse by a later, taller skyscraper, the 52-story, 708-foot-tall Terminal Tower was an instant icon and has arguably remained Cleveland’s most potent symbol. The Terminal Tower, at least as a plan, didn’t start as a tower at all, but instead as a railway station known as the Cleveland Union Terminal. In the early 20th century, as Cleveland grew as an industrial powerhouse, many Northeast Ohioans used railway lines to get to their destinations. Ohio had one of the most extensive interurban networks, with over 2,000 miles of track. However, it was not commuter railways but rather intercity passenger trains that led to the creation of the Terminal. Steam locomotives produced excessive amounts of pollutants when converging downtown, hampering Cleveland’s goal of becoming a modern, attractive city. In the interest of smoke abatement, the Union Terminal project would rely on switching trains to electric engines at outlying rail yards before passing through the city, including its central rail terminal. The only problem was where to place this symbol of Cleveland’s progress. Inspired by Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson and the Group Plan Commission began planning a “civic center” that would run from Superior Avenue all the way to the lakefront. This civic center centered on the Mall and was Cleveland’s dominant expression of the City Beautiful. But the plan to make a new railway along the lakefront as the grand point of entry to the city came to a halt because of unexpected developments. Enter the Van Sweringen brothers, Mantis J. and Oris P., a duo of real estate and railroad tycoons who were keen on connecting their master-planned suburb of Shaker Heights to downtown via a new rapid transit rail line.
While the Van Sweringens originally planned the Shaker Heights line, their ambition expanded. The brothers realized that for the station for Public Square to succeed, they needed to include railways and facilities next to it. After heated debates that lasted a few years, the Terminal cornerstone was set on March 16, 1927, tilting downtown Cleveland’s center of gravity decidedly back to Public Square and ending the concept of a Mall anchored by an imposing rail station. The project was estimated at around $170 million and the Union Terminal had its grand opening in 1930. Travelers to Cleveland found many shops and services inside the Terminal’s concourses without having to step outside, including the elegant English Oak Room, Fred Harvey Company concessions, Higbee Bros. department store, and the preexisting adjacent Hotel Cleveland. The 42nd floor was used as an observation deck, allowing a bird's-eye view of the city. The Terminal’s concept of a multiuse “city within a city” anticipated New York’s Rockefeller Center. The Van Sweringen brothers, never comfortable in the spotlight, did not attend the 1930 dedication, instead spending the day at Roundwood Manor, their country estate in Hunting Valley.
The Terminal Tower itself was built toward the end of the skyscraper craze of the 1920s. When completed in 1930, it was the tallest tower in the world outside New York City. If the “Vans” wouldn’t toot their own horn, there were plenty of others ready to trumpet the Terminal’s superlative status. Walter Ross, president of the Nickel Plate Railroad, effused that the tower was “the symbol of the city’s progress and the prophecy of its future. … Cleveland may be sixth in the census list of cities, but so far as its Union Station is concerned, if that is any consolation, it may regard itself as on a parity with the leading city.”
However, the completion of taller buildings in other cities periodically whittled down this superlative: to tallest in North America outside New York after 1953 and tallest between New York and Chicago after 1964. When Key Bank Tower was completed in 1991, the Terminal Tower became the second tallest in Cleveland and second tallest between the Big Apple and the Windy City. Nevertheless, the Tower’s architecture is something to behold, with the upper portion closely resembling New York’s Municipal Building. Both were modeled on ancient Roman types called sepulchral monuments, a favorite classical nod associated with the Beaux-Arts architectural movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ironically, by the time Cleveland’s iconic tower was built, even the Beaux-Arts style was antiquated as more architects embraced the emerging Art Deco and other modernist modes.
The choice of an older style of architecture may have reflected a desire to make downtown Cleveland appear more well-established. After all, despite the steady rise of skyscrapers on the skyline since the 1890s, Cleveland’s skyline had fallen further behind a handful of the nation’s other largest cities by the late 1920s. Although it was hardly an original and audacious design apart from its towering height, over the next few decades, the Terminal Tower grew to be a defining status symbol for Cleveland. The self-contained “city within a city” of interconnected buildings—all linked to the same central transit station—made for daily interactions with those who worked there. In 1970, the president of Terminal Management, Homer Guren, mentioned how his employees became “sort of a Tower family.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Terminal Tower became a symbolic place in many other ways as well. To support the Cleveland Indians, twelve baseballs were dropped from the roof to the ground below. Only two of the balls thrown by third baseman Ken Keltner were caught by catchers Hank Helf and Frankie Pytlak. The Indians’ special treatment didn’t stop there, as the team’s flag flew atop the Tower during home games. In 1980, after Mayor George Voinovich’s election amid Cleveland’s long, painful slide in the 1970s, the Terminal Tower was illuminated from base to crown at night to symbolize the city’s comeback. The building adorned the logo for Yellow Cab taxis for many years, frequently found its way into Harvey Pekar's comic books, and was featured in the background of many television shows and movies, most notably the 2012 hit The Avengers.
More recently, the Terminal Tower has taken on a modern aesthetic, not just for the look, but to show support for the community. Thanks to the addition of LED lights in 2014, the Tower is lit up every night in a range of different colors: for the Cleveland Cavaliers, wine and gold; for the annual Pride celebration, rainbow; and even colored images like the Leg Lamp from A Christmas Story, which was filmed in Cleveland. During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, the Tower staged a special light show to signal hope for the city. The ever-changing colors of these lights keep Clevelanders’ eyes focused on the skyline, helping reinforce the Terminal Tower as an enduring symbol of the city.
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