The Ark was a small, two-room frame house located on the northeast side of Public Square. It housed taxidermy ranging from birds to reptiles and mammals, which led to its being called the Ark in reference to the biblical story of saving the world's fauna from the great flood. The Arkites, as the group of 26 young men who frequented the Ark came to be known, were led by William Case, mayor of Cleveland from 1850 to 1851, and his brother Leonard Case Jr. Their father Leonard Case Sr. had started the Ark in the 1830s as a place to relax. After buying the property, he let his two sons take charge of the building and began to fade from popular society because of health issues. William Case worked in his father's companies but spent much of his time at the Ark. The Ark is important because there were no museums in Cleveland during this time. The Arkites collected, researched, and discussed findings with each other. As time passed, other societies were interested in representing Cleveland history and the Arkites were the most knowledgeable within the city. They began to present papers and work with others to curate and show their research. William Case's taxidermy bird collection is still on display in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH) today.

CMNH considers the Ark as a part of its founding because of the work that was done by the Arkites. The Ark moved into adjacent Case Hall in 1876 after its building was demolished to build a new post office. Many other societies also used Case Hall, including the Kirtland Society, whose leader Jared Kirtland was also an Arkite. Case Hall lasted until 1916, when it too gave way to the new Cleveland Public Library.

When the Natural History Museum was established in 1920, it was located in the Lennox Building at Euclid Avenue and East 9th Street. The museum first moved down Euclid Avenue onto Millionaires Row in the Leonard Hanna Mansion. The mansion held many exhibits but most notably many of them were from the original Arkites, including William Case's birds as well as many exhibits donated by the Kirtland Society in 1920. As the museum began to gather more and more collections, such as Jeptha Wade II's precious stone collection and discoveries of new animals and plants from the a safari that the museum had sponsored in Kenya in 1930, eventually it either had to expand or find a larger building.

The choice was made for the museum when the Hanna mansion was in the path of a planned highway. In 1958 the museum moved to Wade Park, where it is still located today. Since that time, the museum has enjoyed many achievements. In 1971 the CMNH sponsored a team of zoologists to breed bald eagles, which were threatened with extinction and had only a handful of working nests. They were the first team ever to artificially inseminate a bald eagle and repopulated the area and others with the national bird.

The CMNH's accomplishments built upon a firm foundation. The Arkites, with the Case family at its center, set the stage for this venerable institution in both spirit and collections. Thus, as this nationally significant museum looks toward its official centennial, it must also cast a glance back-more than 80 years before its official inception-to the humble shack that started it all.

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The firm founded in 1892 as the Cleveland General Electric Co. by Charles F. Brush became the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (C.E.I.) just two years later and established its headquarters offices in the Cuyahoga Building on Public Square. C.E.I.'s stint in the Cuyahoga Building was short-lived, however. The company transferred its headquarters into the 75 Building, on the northwest corner of Public Square in 1914. C.E.I. outgrew its facilities at 75 Public Square as the demand for electrical power rose, and in 1956 broke ground to construct its own Illuminating Building right next door at 55 Public Square. C.E.I. signed a fifteen-year, $408,000 lease to occupy the first five floors of the Illuminating Building. Despite occupying all fourteen floors of the old 75 Building, the Illuminating Building offered 17% more space on those initial five floors alone. The monumental 1958 move included some 800 dolly-loads of office equipment and an additional 500 desks. Nevertheless, the move was completed in less than eighteen hours as workers never stepped foot outdoors thanks to existing pedestrian tunnels connecting one building to the other.

At the turn of the twentieth century, C.E.I. ran advertisements offering to wire homes with electricity for a price of $38.50, touting the benefits of domestic electricity, "Convenience-Cleanliness-Brightness-Luxury." Eventually, the company became famous for its 1940s-1960s ad campaign, which promoted Cleveland as "the best location in the nation." This ad campaign aimed to attract major industries to Cleveland, and promoted C.E.I.'s contribution to the overall welfare of Northeast Ohio by emphasizing its own role in expanding business, industry, job opportunities, and improving the overall quality of life.

A massive workforce strike erupted in the midst of the "best location in the nation" ad campaign. On April 24, 1957 the members of Utility Workers Local 270 voted a resounding 1,754-63 in favor to strike against C.E.I. Workers demanded that C.E.I. do away with its right to make job changes and transfers without informing the union, as well as re-negotiate wages to obtain a "substantial" increase. The strike ended on May 7 after a grueling fifteen-hour negotiation. The fifteen-day strike became the longest of its kind in C.E.I.'s prominent history, which had only witnessed a single six-hour strike in 1945. Resolutions involved a new two-year contract with a general wage increase of five percent, or the equivalent of ten to fifteen cents per hour.

During the 1960s, C.E.I. became pressured to respond to the increasing demand for nuclear power, and began to invest in nuclear power plants in collaboration with Toledo Edison in 1970. The decade of the 1970s witnessed the widespread energy crisis, which drove up the price of coal dramatically. Likewise, domestic energy costs for consumers skyrocketed, and C.E.I. lost a considerable amount of customers. In order to stay afloat, C.E.I. merged with Toledo Edison in 1986 to form Centerior Energy. A little over a decade later in 1997, Centerior Energy combined with Ohio Edison and Penn Power to form FirstEnergy, which controls the electric system for northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

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Four Cleveland physicians founded the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in February 1921, creating an institution dedicated not only to medical care, but also to research, innovation, and physician education. Three of the four founders had served together in a U.S. Army medical unit in France during World War I. The Cleveland Clinic X-ray fire of 1929 – a basement fire caused by combustible nitrocellulose film that left 123 dead – was a tragedy that temporarily set back the hospital's progress. After World War II, however, the Cleveland Clinic rose to become one of the nation's leading medical centers.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Clinic researchers pioneered dialysis and kidney treatment and were the first to identify carpal tunnel syndrome and isolate the neurotransmitter serotonin. The Cleveland Clinic also emerged as a national leader in cardiac procedures. Clinic physicians performed the first coronary angiography in 1958 and continued to make significant advances in heart surgery techniques in the proceeding decades. The Clinic's main campus, located along Euclid Avenue in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood, has undergone tremendous growth since the 1970s. As adjacent land has been purchased and numerous new facilities constructed in a process of expansion, it is no great surprise that the Cleveland Clinic has become one of the city's largest private employers.

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