Amid the busy streets of downtown Cleveland stands the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, built to honor the 10,000 Cuyahoga County residents who fought in the Civil War. Almost fifteen years after Major William J. Gleason first suggested the idea of honoring the bravery of these local Union soldiers, the monument was finally dedicated on July 4, 1894. This long anticipated event featured a parade over five miles long, an opening address made by William McKinley, performances by the Great Western Band, and children singing anthems of patriotism.

Despite all this enthusiasm, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument was subject of hostility throughout most of its planning. City authorities and a few citizens opposed the scheme to locate the monument in the southeast corner of Public Square, where it now stands. After numerous court battles, one of which went to the Supreme Court, and meetings to protest the building site, construction finally began at the location on August 25, 1891.

A committee of twelve former soldiers and sailors were in charge of the monument's planning. The monument was designed by architect Levi T. Scofield, but the entire Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument committee contributed with their ideas. The decision to have the monument be either a shaft or a memorial hall was put to a vote at a meeting of Camp Barnett Soldiers' and Sailors' Society. Because the votes were split, it was decided to include both styles in the design.

The total height of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument reaches to 125 feet. Atop the black Amherst stone column stands Lady Liberty in a defensive stance. The column itself is separated into sections by six bands that together contain the names of thirty of the most notable Civil War battles. A bastion fort with guns mounted in barbette connects the column to the monument's building. Surrounding the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument are four bronze statues symbolizing the principal branches of service: the Infantry, the Cavalry, the Navy, and the Artillery. During the planning, the building became a tablet room rather than the originally proposed memorial hall. Inside the building, which became a tablet room rather than the originally proposed memorial hall, the names of the 10,000 Cuyahoga county Union soldiers are carved in the marble walls. Above the tablets, on the east and west walls are the bronze busts of officers who were killed in action. Above the north side door is the bust of General James Barnett, and above the south side door is Captain Levi T. Scofield. The foundation of the column centers the room. On each of the four sides are bronze relief statues portraying the Beginning of the War in Ohio, The Emancipation of the Slave, the Northern Ohio Soldiers' Aid Society, Sanitary Commission, and Hospital Service Corps, and The End of the War.

In 2008, an extensive restoration began on the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument lasting two years and totaling two million dollars. Reopened to the public on June 4, 2010, this symbol of pride for the residents of Cuyahoga county can now be visited and appreciated year round.

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The Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio grew out of Cleveland's Ladies' Aid Society's efforts to assist soldiers serving in the Civil War. The parent organization of the Soldiers' Aid Society was the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which was established by the federal government in June 1861 to provide aid and medical care for Union soldiers throughout the North. Before this occurred, however, the Ladies' Aid Society (1861-1865) was organized by Rebecca Rouse, only five days after President Lincoln's first call for troops to fight in the Civil War in April 1861. This small group of Cleveland women from various churches met on April 20 and organized a "blanket raid" by collecting blankets and quilts for soldiers being mustered at Camp Taylor in Cleveland. The officers of the organization were Rebecca Rouse, who served as the president, Mrs. John Shelley and Mrs. William Melhinch, who served as vice-presidents, Mary Clark Brayton, secretary, and Ellen F. Terry, treasurer. The Ladies Aid Society merged with several other of Cleveland's charitable groups in October 1861 to form the Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio.

The Cleveland Branch of the Soldiers' Aid Society was located at 95 Bank (West 6th) Street and served as a model for the creation of smaller aid societies in other towns and villages. It was the first permanently organized branch of the U.S. commission and the first to enter the field. The organization, financed mainly by private donations, cared for the sick and wounded, provided ambulance and hospital service, asked for clothing and medical supplies, and sent food to soldiers in the field throughout the Civil War. Rebecca herself frequently visited military hospitals at the front. She also helped organize a "sanitary fair" in 1864 to raise funds to help soldiers. The Northern Ohio Sanitary Fair was widely advertised and held in a temporary building in Public Square. Single admission to the fair was $.25 and over $100,000 was raised. For a few years after the end of the Civil War, the organization helped returning soldiers find employment and file benefits claims. The Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio finally closed in 1868.

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Laid out by Moses Cleaveland's surveying party in 1796 in the tradition of the New England village green, Public Square marked the center of the Connecticut Land Company's plan for Cleveland and, soon, a ceremonial space for the growing city. In 1856, Cleveland's first fountain was constructed on the square. Four years later a statue of Battle of Lake Erie hero Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry was erected in the center of the square, leading City Council to rename Public Square as Monumental Park. In 1865, Clevelanders watched returning Civil War regiments as they mustered on Public Square, and later generations would greet returning veterans from subsequent wars. Public Square also provided a space for viewing the caskets of fallen U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and James A. Garfield in 1865 and 1881, respectively. In perhaps its most notable moment in the 19th century, in 1879, Public Square garnered international attention when inventor Charles F. Brush showcased one of the world's first successful demonstrations of electric streetlights there.

Adding to the reputation of Monumental Park, a statue of Moses Cleaveland rose on the northwest quadrant in 1888, and on July 4, 1894, the 125-foot-tall Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument was dedicated on the square's southeast quadrant in honor of Civil War veterans, at which time Perry's monument was moved, first to Wade Park. Although protests halted an 1895 plan to erect a massive new City Hall across the northern half of Public Square with an arch to permit Ontario Street traffic to pass underneath, in the following year the city marked its centennial with a large arch over Superior Avenue just east of Ontario and a replica of an original log cabin in the northeast quadrant.

In addition to its symbolic value, Public Square has also been a transit hub since the 19th century, first as a point of arrival for stagecoaches, and later as the hub of streetcar, interurban railway, and bus lines. Traffic patterns around Public Square were a source of much controversy in the 19th century. In the 1850s, supporters of a fully enclosed square erected a fence around its entire perimeter, preventing traffic from entering. Eventually the transit demands of an expanding city won out, and in 1867 roads once again passed through the center of Public Square.  Since that time, Public Square has labored under often-conflicting demands that it serve simultaneously as symbolic space, transit hub, and park. The opening of the Cleveland Union Terminal in 1930 prompted a sprucing up of Public Square, including the removal of a pavilion and a rustic bridge over an artificial stream that had occupied the square's southwest quadrant for decades. In their place was a large open lawn that provided a tidier "front yard" for the tallest building in the world outside New York. In the years that followed, transit use gradually eclipsed whatever parklike qualities the space had held.

In 1943 a new transit plan called for a new central subway station under Public Square. Ontario Street was to be depressed beneath Superior Avenue, and the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument was to be relocated elsewhere. A Plain Dealer reporter quipped that the statue's removal "alone is almost worth the cost."  The 1940s and 1950s passed with no action on building a subway system. A 1958 plan proposed by architect Howard B. Cain, whose Park Building offices overlooked Public Square, envisioned closing Ontario, depressing Superior below grade, removing the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, and creating a Rockefeller Plaza-influenced sunken plaza with an ice-skating rink. Dubbed International Square, Cain's transformation--no doubt inspired by the expanded world trade that boosters claimed the impending opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway would produce-imagined shops and restaurants representing many nations. The next year, a new downtown master plan revived the idea of a subway under Public Square, this time affecting only its southern half. The plan also called for lowering the level of the northern half of the square, moving the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument to the northeastern quadrant and building a sunken ice rink in the northwestern quadrant.  Like Cain's plan, this part of the downtown plan languished when county commissioners nixed the subway project. In the wake of the subway defeat, a 1960 plan to close through streets in Public Square and construct a 1,600-car underground garage likewise failed.  

Yet, the dream of remaking Public Square did not disappear. In the 1970s, urban planner Lawrence Halprin brought his imaginative renewal ideas to Cleveland. Halprin recommended turning Euclid Avenue into a pedestrian mall and remaking Public Square into a more parklike space. Iris Vail, wife of Plain Dealer publisher Thomas Vail, and other Garden Club of Cleveland women held a "Beautification Ball" in the Arcade in 1975 to raise $100,000 to finance a specific blueprint for the square. They hired Don M. Hisaka of Cleveland and Sasaki Associates of Massachusetts to design the new Public Square but then decided they did not like his minimalist, modernistic vision for the space. Instead, they spearheaded a more traditional parklike redo of the northeastern quadrant as a demonstration. Over the ensuing decade, Public Square was remade quadrant by quadrant as city, county, state, and federal funds, along with Cleveland Foundation and Garden Club monies--in all $12 million, augmented the original $100,000 raised by the Garden Club.  

Opened with laser-show fanfare just in time for Cleveland's sesquicentennial in 1986, the revamped Public Square sported parklike spaces and, in the southwest quadrant, a brick and granite terraced plaza with an artificial waterfall. In maintaining Superior and Ontario as through streets, the 1980s Public Square remake fell well short of decades of visions for reuniting the four isolated quadrants. In 2002 the New York-based Project for Public Spaces visited Cleveland and urged reunification of the square, calling it one of the world's most dysfunctional public spaces. Mayor Frank Jackson's appointed Group Plan Commission, a blue-ribbon committee inspired by Daniel Burnham's famed "Group Plan" of a century before, set out to make both the Mall and Public Square reach their potential as appealing destinations for locals and visitors. The commission approved a plan by James Corner, known for his innovative High Line project, which transformed an abandoned elevated railroad in New York City into a linear park. With the announcement of Cleveland's selection to host the 2016 Republican National Convention, civic leaders rallied to raise the $32 million needed make the long-awaited reunification of Public Square a reality.

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