In 1943, Central National Bank sold its slender 17-story headquarters building at 308 Euclid Avenue to the F. W. Woolworth Co., which later demolished the building for a much shorter retail store (now the House of Blues). The bank continued to lease space in the “matchstick” building until it opened its new headquarters in 1949 in five floors of the Midland Building at West Prospect Avenue and West 2nd Street. Central National also acquired property at 509 Euclid near the northwest corner of East 6th Street to build a “service bank” convenient for downtown shoppers. The separation of main operations from transient services was part of an emerging postwar banking trend in large cities. The bank's purchase of 509 Euclid prompted the termination of Clark's Paul Revere Restaurant's lease, ending the eleven-year run of this replica of the silversmith and Patriot Revere's Boston home. 

The new five-story, air-conditioned Central National Bank Euclid Avenue Office, designed by Conrad, Hays, Simpson & Ruth of Cleveland, opened with fanfare in November 1948. With its facade of imperial red Swedish granite, stainless-steel geometric panels, plate-glass windows, and six-foot electric clock, it could not have been more different from the rustic, log-sided Paul Revere Restaurant. As a Cleveland Press reporter observed, “modernity prevail[ed]” inside as well. The ultra-modern building featured the first “moving stairway” (escalators) to be installed in a Cleveland bank. Its first and second floor lobbies featured terrazzo floors, white oak paneling and furniture, and formica counters in the tellers’ cages under a "luminous ceiling" like that in the United Nations Security Council chamber at Lake Success, New York.

The new building’s cost ultimately exceeded its million-dollar budget by a quarter, leading Central National to lease most of the three upper floors to other firms to offset its expense. Less than four decades after it opened, Central National’s Euclid Avenue branch closed quietly in 1986 after being sold to Ohio Savings Association as a real estate investment. Ohio Savings also acquired adjacent buildings, giving it control of everything between the Arcade and East 6th. Ohio Savings in turn sold to developers who built a parking garage in 2005 and, in 2019, completed the Beacon apartments above it, lending a new ultra-modern look to the block.

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The 1960s were a very active period for the construction of federal buildings in cities across the country, and Cleveland was no exception. As early as 1957, area members of Congress began pushing for the construction of a centrally located downtown federal office building that would consolidate federal services in the city. The site of the building was determined in 1960 as an integral part of the Erieview Urban Renewal Project in downtown Cleveland. This large scale, multi-phased urban planning project was led by renowned architecture firm I. M. Pei and Associates.

Pei’s 1960 master plan for the Erieview development included a mix of high- and low-rise commercial and residential buildings with more than fifty percent of the land left open for parks and malls. The plan was designed to be completed in two phases; a western area of 96 acres to be designated for primarily commercial use and an eastern area of 67 acres to be designated for residential buildings. The focal point, at the center of the development, was a forty-story office tower. Completed in 1964 and dubbed the Erieview Tower, this was the first part of the Erieview plan to be built. A new six-story federal building that was to occupy an entire city block was also a key part of Pei’s plan. In preparation for the Erieview redevelopment, more than 200 buildings were demolished, including the old Armory that was located on the site of the current Federal Building.

While I. M. Pei developed the master plan for the Erieview development, other architects were brought in to design the individual buildings, including the new federal building. The General Services Administration (GSA), established in 1949 to meet the needs of the growing federal government, selected three local architecture firms to work together on the design of the federal building: Outcalt, Guenther, Rode, Toguchi & Bonebrake; Schafer, Flynn & Associates; and Dalton & Dalton Associates. However, the GSA did not choose a lead designer for the project and left the three firms to resolve the issue. All three firms wanted to lead the project, so a compromise was reached that they would bring in an outside architect to be the lead designer. The firm principals originally thought about bringing in a famous architect to lead the project, but eventually decided to find an architect that worked for one of these significant architects. Peter van Dijk was working for Eero Saarinen and Associates in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, at the time and was selected based on a suggestion by one of Calvin Dalton’s employees. Upon speaking with van Dijk, the principals at the three firms quickly decided he was the right person to lead the design of the Federal Building project.

The design process began in 1961 and continued through 1962. The architectural team was charged with designing a one million square foot federal office building with an “open, flexible, well-planned loft space for offices.” GSA also requested that a two-level parking garage, large cafeteria, and loading dock be included. According to van Dijk, the goal was “to produce a most elegant steel cage. A façade executed with strength and precision. A stressed skin smoothness with machine-like clarity. Good proportion, scale, detail and choice of appropriate materials and colors.”

After careful consideration and study of the site and GSA programmatic requirements, it was decided that the team would design a tall building, which was in direct contradiction to the concept design in Pei’s Erieview Master Plan. The designers’ decision to abandon the Pei design was based on their belief that a tall structure would relate to the existing Terminal Tower and the other buildings being designed in proximity at the time. In their opinion, the large donut-shaped plan did not conform with the “plans for open space and plazas.” They believed a tall building would provide for more space for outdoor plazas, as well as views of the downtown and lake from the upper floor offices. Following their conclusion, the team convinced Pei and GSA that “a tall, slim structure would be more in keeping” with the other high structures planned in the renewal area.

The building was designed as a simple rectangular shape and had the proportions of a golden rectangle. The design also contained a definite base, middle, and top and was intended to utilize simple materials (glass and stainless steel). Furthermore, according to van Dijk, the steel frame of the building became “the basis of the architectural expression of the façade.” The siting was also important to the designers. The building was purposely set back from East Ninth Street to provide room for a plaza at the main entrance and set back even farther on East Sixth Street to create a “garden plaza.”

The design was substantially completed by June 1962 when GSA issued an official press release regarding the new federal building in Cleveland. In the press release, GSA described the thirty-two story building as “an important element in the city’s Erieview Redevelopment Plan” that would “provide the lake-shore metropolis with an imposing landmark.” They also estimated that the building would cost $41.2 million to complete.

The Celebrezze Building was designed during a period of growing public acceptance of Modernist design. The Modernist movement in architecture, which had roots in Europe, began to flourish in the United States following World War II as architects like Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe expanded their influence. As the movement continued to thrive throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, Modernism became the preferred style of architecture for office buildings across the country. Buildings such as the Seagram Building (1958) in New York City by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, as well as the Inland Steel Building (1957) in Chicago, Illinois by Bruce Graham and Walter Netsch of SOM, continued to push the envelope in Modernist design. Significant Modernist skyscrapers in Cleveland include the McDonald Investment Center (1968) by Charles Luckman; the Cleveland Trust Tower/Ameritrust Tower (1971) by Marcel Breuer; Earnest J. Bohn Housing Tower (1972) by William Dorsky Associates; the Diamond Building (1972) by SOM; the Holiday Inn Lakeside (1974) by William Bond; and the Sheraton City Centre Hotel (1975) – now the Crowne Plaza Hotel – by Bialosky and Manders.

The policies of the federal government also reflected the shift toward Modernist design. When John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in 1961, he found many federal buildings to be lacking in efficient office space and inadequate for modern use. As a result, he requested that an Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space be formed to develop solutions for short- and long-term space needs in federal buildings. In 1962 the committee issued its report, which included the “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.” In the “Guiding Principles” the committee recommended new mandates for “high quality architectural designs” for all new federal buildings across the country and developed a three-point system for federal architecture standards. They also encouraged modern principles of architecture through choice words within the standards, such as “contemporary,” “functional,” and “economical.” With the adoption of the new principles, the monotonous architecture of the previous decade gave way to new, innovative, quality design. Although the design of the Celebrezze Building was initiated before the Principles were published, it clearly exemplifies the Principles’ embrace of high-quality modern design.

The building’s expression of structure on the exterior façade follows the design principles of Mies van der Rohe, which can be seen in many of his works, including the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago completed in 1965. However, unlike Mies who used protruding mullions on his buildings, Peter van Dijk used only contrasting materials – stainless steel and glass – to emphasize the grid of columns and floor plates. According to van Dijk, the solid of the stainless steel and the void of the glass created a solid and void effect that clearly emphasized the building’s skeletal structure. The idea of an exterior skin with no protruding mullions was a concept van Dijk learned in the office of Eero Saarinen from projects such as the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, MI, and Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ. It continued to be the subject of experimentation with other Saarinen followers, most notably Anthony Lumsden and Cesar Pelli.

In 1965, in the midst of the Civil Rights era, the construction of the new federal building in Cleveland became the subject of protests that received nationwide attention. Led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), picketers protested discriminatory hiring practices among the predominantly white trades unions involved in the construction of the building. The protest’s leadership also targeted the federal government “for its failure to enforce civil rights laws.” The Erieview plan, of which the federal building was a part, also appears to have strained community relations. Across the country at this time, many cities had undertaken similar projects that resulted in the displacement of their most vulnerable residents and the destruction of their homes, with disproportionate effects being felt by the African American population. In Cleveland, many poor Black residents perceived that the Erieview project, which was located in the heart of the downtown area and treated as a showpiece by politicians and government officials, was diverting badly needed resources from projects in critically underserved east side neighborhoods. This resentment, combined with myriad other factors, burst out into the open the following summer in the Hough Uprisings, an episode of violent unrest comparable to the riots that occurred in Harlem, Watts, and other urban areas during the 1960s.

The Cleveland Federal Building was substantially completed in the fall of 1966 at a cost of $31,968,000 (substantially less than the budgeted $41.2 million) and officially opened in early 1967. The new building housed more than fifty government agencies that had previously been spread out in buildings throughout the city. In 1973, the building was renamed in dedication of Anthony J. Celebrezze, former Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio Congressman, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Kennedy Administration, and U.S. Appeals Court Judge. As mayor, Celebrezze was an early proponent of the Erieview Urban Redevelopment Project and helped in the process of bringing the Federal Building project to realization.

Following its completion, the building underwent relatively few significant alterations until 2009, when GSA utilized funds available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to begin a massive intervention addressing the condition of the curtain wall. Flaws in the original detailing and installation, water infiltration, the action of wind forces, and the harsh Cleveland winters had resulted in advanced deterioration on the façade’s various components. Additional assessments found the curtain wall to be strikingly deficient in terms of modern energy efficiency and security standards. Ultimately GSA decided to install a second skin on top of the existing façade, effectively overcladding the original building with an entirely new window wall system.

Pursuing this innovative approach allowed GSA to retain the existing building, thereby avoiding the expense and inefficiency of constructing an entirely new building and relocating the current building’s occupants. Additionally, it allowed the agency to preserve a historic asset. In 2011, the Celebrezze Building was determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places for its exceptional local historic and architectural significance. This determination rests on the Celebrezze Building’s distinguished modernist design and its role in the history of the Erieview plan and the development of the modern Cleveland skyline. It also recognizes Peter van Dijk as a master architect. Comparatively unknown at the time that he designed the Celebrezze Building, van Dijk went on to become one of the Cleveland area’s most celebrated designers. Following the Celebrezze Building, he designed the Blossom Music Center (1968) in Cuyahoga Falls. Subsequently, his firm developed a global reputation for expertise in the design of performance venues. A committed preservationist, van Dijk was also a driving force behind the plan to save Cleveland’s Playhouse Square theaters. Recognizing the need to address issues with the original design and construction of the Celebrezze Building, van Dijk supported and participated in the façade renewal project. Peter van Dijk passed away in 2019 at age 90.

Following the completion of the facade overcladding, the Celebrezze Building was identified as a contributor to the Erieview Historic District, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

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The 9, originally called Cleveland Trust Tower and then Ameritrust Tower, is the only skyscraper designed by one of the most eminent Modernist architects of the 20th century, Marcel Breuer. But like a number of projects Breuer designed in his career, this Brutalist tower did not win universal praise and was nearly destroyed in the early 2000s. 

Marcel Breuer was a Bauhaus-trained architect and furniture designer. A native of Hungary and a protege of the eminent Modernist architect Walter Gropius, Breuer earned a reputation for designing furniture and tubular steel chairs such as the Model B3 or Wassily Chair in the 1920s. In 1938 he joined Gropius on the faculty at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. For the next three years, Breuer and Gropius collaborated on several residential designs, including Aluminum City Terrace, an International Style defense housing project near Pittsburgh in 1941. The 240-unit "ultra-utilitarian" compound of prefabricated multifamily and semi-detached dwellings immediately drew "intense antagonism from surrounding economically well-off private residential property owners" who decried the project's design. It would not be the last time Breuer's designs produced strong feelings.

In the 1950s, Breuer continued in domestic architecture but also moved into institutional building design, notably in his UNESCO headquarters and I.B.M. Research Center in France. He went on to design the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1966, which earned him accolades, but when he produced a design for the proposed FDR Memorial that same year in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts rejected his creation as a "disrespectful" "pop art sculpture." Breuer found a better reception with his design of the Department of HUD headquarters in the Southwest Washington, D.C. urban renewal project, and he enjoyed commissions for a number of laboratories, university and museum buildings, including the Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art, completed in 1971.

The latter commission, received in 1967, led Cleveland Trust Company to turn to Breuer to steer the expansion of its downtown offices at Euclid and East 9th Street, where George B. Post's early-1900s rotunda was too small for the bank's needs. Breuer was no stranger to Modernist additions to historic buildings. He had recently designed a proposed pair of skyscrapers to rise above Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, but the project foundered because it underestimated the groundswell of commitment to historic preservation among New Yorkers who were still reeling from the loss of the grand Penn Station.

In Cleveland, Breuer planned twin 29-story towers that together would frame the old rotunda with frontage on Euclid and East 9th. Elements of the building's design evoked Breuer's HUD headquarters. The first tower, clad in black granite with cast concrete window frames, was completed on the East 9th side in 1971. Bank president George Karch was quick to assert that it reflected Cleveland Trust's dissent from the prevailing "gloomy predictions" about downtown's future. However, by that time, the second tower's expected construction was not expected to start before 1975. Not only was the second tower ultimately not built, its twin and the rotunda were abandoned in 1996 after Ameritrust (as Cleveland Trust had renamed itself in 1971) merged in 1991 with Society for Savings, which had recently invested in expanding its footprint on Public Square, leading to the construction of the Society Center. Society and KeyCorp, which acquired it three years later, had no need for the old Cleveland Trust complex.

The tower sat empty for nearly a decade before Cuyahoga County purchased it in 2005. County commissioners tried to convince the public to support demolishing it for a new county administration center because it was purportedly beyond saving. The threat of demolition hung over the tower for several years, stimulating considerable efforts to highlight the building's many merits, including its build quality, the renown of its architect, the fact that this was Breuer's only skyscraper. 

After the county commissioners' failure to assemble the needing financing for a new county complex and their becoming embroiled in scandal, the Geis Companies, a Northeast Ohio real estate development firm, stepped in and offered to purchase the skyscraper and rotunda and undertake their adaptive reuse. Completed in 2015, the rotunda opened as a distinctive Heinen's supermarket, while the tower became the 156-room Metropolitan Hotel and 105 apartments, and the adjacent Swetland Building contained part of Heinen's on the first floor and more apartments on upper floors. The project did much to reenliven a forlorn corner of downtown and ensured that Cleveland did not destroy what was possibly the boldest expression of one of the 20th century's greatest Modernist designers.

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Just 20 miles east of Cleveland, in Novelty, Ohio, a massive architectural marvel sits, enveloping an office building. An immense open-lattice geodesic dome covers the headquarters of ASM International. ASM, which stands for the American Society of Metals (originally known as the Steel Treaters’ Club), was founded in 1913 in Detroit, Michigan. The Society would subsequently grow into one of the largest scientific societies in the world, with over 50,000 members internationally. Known as ASM International today, the headquarters are situated on a campus called Materials Park that sits on land originally belonging to one of the founding members of the American Society of Metals, William Hunt Eisenman.

The dome and grounds are the culmination of the work of four men: the aforementioned Eisenman, John Terence Kelly, Thomas C. Howard, and R. Buckminster Fuller. Eisenman was not only a founding member of ASM but served as its National Secretary and first Managing Director; Fuller, a futurist and creator of the geodesic dome; Kelly, a modernist architect; and Howard, an engineer. Each was skilled in their respective crafts.

R. Buckminster Fuller was born in Milton, Massachusetts, in 1895. He began his studies at Harvard University in 1913 but was ultimately expelled for excessive socializing and missing his midterm exams. He then moved to Canada to work at a mill, where he showed an aptitude for working with machinery. During the course of his lifetime, he went on to hold 28 patents, author 28 books, and receive 47 honorary degrees.

The geodesic dome became Fuller's focus in 1947. The geodesic dome, which Fuller patented in 1954, uses tension to hold its shape; the structures need no support internally and are some of the strongest and lightest made of metal. ASM's dome, also called a space lattice, is 103 feet high and 274 feet in diameter. It weighs 80 tons and has 65,000 parts. Fuller's ASM dome anticipated the internationally famous geodesic sphere, Spaceship Earth at Disney's Epcot Center in Florida by more than two decades. This attraction not only built upon Fuller's innovation but even its name owes a debt to him. Indeed, Fuller argued in the 1960s, "We are all astronauts on a little spaceship called Earth," and he believed that by being better able to visualize the entire planet, humans might better address the global challenges of life on this “Spaceship Earth.”

Cleveland architect John Terence Kelly, born in 1922, grew up in Elyria, Ohio. He received a B.A. in Architecture from the Carnegie Institute of Technology and an M.A. in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. Kelly was inspired by Fuller’s geodesic dome and used Fuller’s model in his design. He enlisted the help of Fuller to design the dome. Thomas C. Howard, born in 1931, had worked with Fuller and others at Synergetics, a firm founded in Raleigh, NC's Research Triangle Park in 1955. After his work on the ASM dome, Howard designed the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden (1960) and Churchill Pavilion at the New York World's Fair (1964), now the Queens Zoo Aviary.

Completed in 1959, ASM’s headquarters design was regarded not only as modern but state of the art. ASM International is known for its innovation in science and engineering. This is extremely evident not only in ASM’s mission and achievements, but also in its physical office building. The design of the office building echoes the very nature of ASM International’s vision: “We are dedicated to informing, educating, and connecting the materials community to solve problems and stimulate innovation around the world.” The building showcases various types of metals in many aspects of its design. The three-level office building houses 90 staff members in its 50,000 square feet. The building uses an emphasis on metal in many aspects of its design. As noted by ASM, “Every door on the lobby level is stainless steel; the ‘floating’ main stairway is also of stainless steel, hung dramatically by the use of steel rods running the height of the three levels. Copper sheeting frames the elevator.”

The designers and builders of ASM’s headquarters were ahead of their time in terms of sustainability and green building practices. Many of the features the architects incorporated into the project would be recognized today within the “green” (environmentally sound) design field. The focus on environmental impact truly shaped the way ASM International designed and built its office building. While environmentally conscious and sustainable design may be at the forefront of today’s architectural achievements, this was not necessarily true at the time of the campus’s construction.

Incorporating sustainable building materials like those made from recycled resources, creating indoor environments by reducing air pollution and lowering emissions, and featuring landscaping options that reduce water usage by using plants that can survive with limited watering are all features that may be commonplace now. Environmental awareness in the 1950s and 1960s, while just barely starting to blossom in the minds of the public, was not what it is today. There wasn’t as much knowledge, and there certainly wasn’t as much data.

These facets of ecologically and environmentally conscious design can be seen in many features in ASM International’s office building and Materials Park. The office building is heated during the winter months using hot water carried through metal tubes near the windows and it is kept cool during the summer using aluminum screens. The building also features a roof covered in grass.

The building was registered as a historic landmark in the state of Ohio and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. It went through a major renovation project, completed in 2011, but “because of the Historic Landmark designation, the building had to be returned as closely as possible to its original design.” Original features, “including 32 original Steelcase chairs, brass metal screens, a conference room table with stainless steel ASM medallion inlays, and door handles and hinges designed by Kelly,” as well as light fixtures also designed by Kelly, had to be refurbished. Updates in regard to sustainability were also considered, with lighting fixtures being retrofitted with LED lightbulbs.

The designers and architects behind the Materials Park, office building, and the land surrounding ASM International’s headquarters knew exactly how to embody the vision of the Society in their construction. The four men responsible for creating such a marvel established a legacy that has truly made its mark east of Cleveland. The use of green building practices was not typical of the time period, but that didn’t stop the creators from utilizing things like water-based heating, sunshields for cooling, and arranging for protection of the land around the building.

More than fifty years on, with a National Register of Historic Places accreditation in its possession, and a recent renovation of the office building, ASM International’s headquarters is set to continue its legacy far into the future. A hidden gem, only 20 miles east of Cleveland, the Materials Park of ASM International’s novel headquarters is a wonderful example of the geodesic dome and its connections to the greater world surrounding it.

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In 1973, architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable described "a huge, bleak, near empty plaza with a complete set of non-working fountains and drained pools, focusing on a routine glass tower by New York architects Harrison and Abramovitz, known to Clevelanders as the 'jolly green giant.'" She lamented that the plaza was flanked by "vast, open parking lots." Huxtable was referring to Erieview Plaza and Erieview Tower, together the focus of the Erieview urban renewal project, which she derided as a "monument to everything that was wrong with urban renewal thinking in America in the 1960s." Erieview attracted more than architectural criticism. Some Clevelanders also argued that the project set back the downtown district it was intended to revitalize. Plain Dealer columnist Philip W. Porter called Erieview "the mistake that ruined downtown." Porter wasn't alone. Even in the 1960s, some downtown interests worried that Erieview, which some considered a "surrogate downtown," might siphon energy away from the downtown shopping district. Would Erieview workers continue to walk several blocks to Euclid Avenue to shop on their lunch break, or would they demand amenities in a new, self-contained city-within-a-city?

Erieview was born of the same concerns about downtown stagnation that gripped many U.S. cities by the 1950s. Pittsburgh’s Gateway Center became a national model for downtown renewal, and Cleveland leaders formed the Cleveland Development Foundation (CDF) in 1954 to emulate Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Conference on Community Development. CDF weighed whether to launch its urban renewal effort (with federal dollars matching municipal expenditures in a 2:1 ratio) in downtown in a subsidized version of Pittsburgh's privately financed downtown renewal or start in east-side neighborhoods. Local architect Richard Hawley Cutting even drew a plan, pro bono, that he pitched to CDF. Called Erie View, it featured a geometric assemblage of modernist towers and plazas along the lakefront to the east of East 9th Street. CDF, whose chairman was Republic Steel president Tom Patton, rejected that urban renewal and, in 1956, proceeded instead with another, dumping Republic Steel slag in Kingsbury Run and building the euphemistically named Garden Valley, which offered substandard housing and exacerbated residential segregation.

A succession of failed downtown projects (among them the collapse of a plan for underground parking beneath the Mall, voters' rejections of a convention center expansion, and county commissioners' denial of a downtown subway) led to a series of secret meetings in the spring of 1959. Weary of the slow pace of neighborhoods-first renewal and impatient with the CDF-commissioned $100,000 downtown plan due out later that year, CDF president Upshur Evans, Cleveland Chamber of Commerce president Curtis Lee Smith, and Cleveland Urban Renewal and Housing Director James M. Lister convened to strategize how to catalyze downtown revitalization. They consulted with Chase Manhattan Bank's David Rockefeller in the hope he might invest in Cleveland. He refused but reinforced their belief that only a large, coordinated plan was worthwhile. They turned to Newark-based Prudential Insurance to try to interest the company in a regional headquarters along Lake Erie. They too demurred.  

Undeterred, the trio bypassed the Cleveland Planning Commission and went straight to Mayor Anthony Celebrezze, who saw in their idea a project he could sell. Unveiled in January 1960, the plan, christened Erieview, promised the nation's largest downtown urban renewal project, a reflection of city leaders' desire to make up for lost time. They pronounced the 125-acre renewal area (roughly bounded by the Memorial Shoreway, East 9th Street, Chester Avenue, and East 17th Street) “blighted,” sealing the fate of many small businesses and manufacturers and some single-room-occupancy hotels. The city commissioned prominent modernist architect I. M. Pei to design the Erieview plan, which looked like many other plans of its era – a Tetris board of low-slung, interlocking buildings wrapping around open plazas punctuated by taller towers. The tallest of them was plotted between East 9th and 12th Streets with an open plaza and reflecting pool. It was not the first time Cleveland saw a grand scheme to reorient its downtown toward the lakefront. Pei’s conception reprised, updated, and extended eastward the early 20th-century Group Plan designed by the “City Beautiful” architect Daniel Burnham of Chicago.

Developers John Galbreath and Peter Ruffin planned to build one or more office towers in Erieview, including the focal building at its heart. The 529-foot-tall, 40-story Erieview Tower was designed by the New York firm of Harrison and Abramovitz. Firm partner Wallace Harrison was best known for his work on Rockefeller Center and the United Nations, but the Erieview design more closely resembled the firm's 45-story Socony-Mobil Building (1956) in New York, also developed by Galbreath and Ruffin. Erieview Tower was a simplified version of its predecessor, substituting black and green glass curtain walls for black windows and silver patterned aluminum walls. Yet both buildings were later panned by some as "ugly" designs. True to its nickname, the greenish tower did loom, giant-like, over the wide-open expanse of Erieview Plaza whose fountains and reflecting pool doubled as an ice rink in winter. Widespread clearance left mostly parking lots surrounding Erieview Plaza for years.

Erieview was billed as an antidote for an ailing downtown, on one hand, and as an outlet for downtown's expected office boom, on the other. While these aims may appear contradictory – one intended to reverse decline and another to accommodate anticipated growth – they actually reflected the complex situation facing downtowns in the 1960s. Suburban retail competition was causing downtown shopping to wither, but at the same time many firms were eager for more spacious, modern office space. Erieview initially spurred overdue renovations by several leading downtown department stores. That their efforts ultimately failed to save them owed less to Erieview than to the effects of population decline, suburban retail growth, and the city's failure to cultivate a strong convention trade. Office expansion promised a counterpoint to retail slippage. After Erieview Tower, the 32-story Federal Building (1967), two major hotels (today’s Westin and Doubletree) and a half-dozen major office towers, including headquarters for Diamond Shamrock (1972) and Eaton (1983), opened incrementally over the next two decades.  

No sooner had Erieview been fleshed out than it started to clear out. Downtown employment dropped by one-third in the forty years after 1970, and by the 21st century the main demand was for more living space. Boosters had long predicted a return to the central city. Erieview added three apartment towers (including Reserve Square) between 1967 and 1973, but it would take another four decades before downtown became a true residential magnet, aided by conversions of old office buildings using historic preservation tax credits. In 2010, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance rebranded the Erieview area, nearly one-third vacant, as a "live–work–play" concept dubbed the Nine-Twelve District. As renovators exhausted the supply of historic buildings, midcentury properties were just crossing the fifty-year threshold to qualify as "historic." In 2018, developer James Kassouf bought Erieview Tower, newly listed on the National Register, with plans to convert twelve vacant floors into apartments. Downtown's northeastern quadrant once had hundreds of units of low-rent housing, but these held no place in the vision of Cleveland’s boosters. They yielded to civic aspirations for a new downtown of gleaming office towers. Although Erieview, recast as Nine-Twelve, is reemerging as a neighborhood, its upmarket housing inventory ensures that it can’t rightly be said to have come full circle.

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