Envision walking out of Tower City Center, ascending an escalator, and boarding a driverless train that whisks you around downtown fifteen feet above the streets below. The monorail, dubbed the Downtown People Mover, represented progress and modernity. In 1976, Mayor Ralph Perk submitted Cleveland’s Downtown People Mover proposal to the federal government. The DPM proposal portrayed Cleveland as the ideal city for a monorail.

The various attempts at developing an effective system to circulate people through downtown led to the development of the Downtown People Mover. In 1969, the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA), created five years earlier amid a flurry of Great Society legislation, funded a People Mover project for Morgantown, West Virginia. The people mover successfully transported students and faculty throughout the West Virginia University campus, avoiding the traffic congestion in the city, but the concept was slow to progress to the next level. Accordingly, the federal government set aside $220 million to test the abilities of People Movers as downtown transportation in the spring of 1976 and held a national competition in which a number of cities submitted proposals.

The Plain Dealer characterized the unveiling of the winning cities as being as “suspenseful as an Academy Award show.” U.S. Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman announced the grant recipients at a news conference by revealing downtown maps of the winners. Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles and St. Paul won portions of the federal grant, while Detroit won a portion of funds from an earlier people mover grant.

Downtown transit circulation was an important concern in Cleveland as in other U.S. cities, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1950s the Cleveland Transit System (predecessor of today’s RTA) had twice failed to achieve a downtown circulator subway to serve as the hub for a revamped rapid transit system serving the metropolitan area. Cleveland;s downtown consisted of dispersed retail locations, government centers, and office buildings, which the DPM planned to connect with its 2.2 mile loop, elevated fifteen feet above Cleveland’s streets.

Many opposed the construction of the DPM, including Thomas E. Bier, then an assistant professor at the Institute of Urban Studies at Cleveland State University. The proposed route would have run along Euclid Avenue, stopping at East 6th, East 9th, and East 13th Streets. At lunchtime, the area of Euclid Avenue between Public Square and East 9th brought together a variety of people in regard to class, race, and age. Bier reasoned that building the DPM fifteen feet above street level would further promote separation of the affluent, largely white pedestrians from less affluent, particularly African Americans. The lower-income shoppers of Euclid Avenue between Public Square and East 9th would have had little use for the DPM, therefore separating them from the higher income shoppers traveling further down Euclid Avenue to reach Halle’s and other upscale retailers.

Norman Krumholz, the City Planning Director in Cleveland at the time, also opposed the DPM. Krumholz concluded that the DPM conflicted with the transportation needs of 87 percent of RTA bus riders. The DPM’s free fare would undermine the twenty-five-cent fare that RTA had promised to uphold for three years. Armed with the information from Krumholz, Cuyahoga County Commissioners Robert Sweeny and George Voinovich also opposed the building of the DPM calling it “unnecessary . . . and the potential ruination of downtown.” Sweeney and Voinovich requested that Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams take back Cleveland’s Downtown People Mover grant, a premonition of what the future held.

Much like the failed Cleveland subway system, Cleveland did not build a DPM. Elected mayor in 1977, Dennis Kucinich requested that U.S. Transportation Secretary Brock Adams withdraw Cleveland’s application for the federal DPM grant. Richard Page, the director of UMTA, expressed his surprise. The UMTA had never been turned down for a federal grant by a mayor or city government before. Kucinich stated three objections to the DPM. First, the DPM violated an agreement with the RTA against such systems. Second, Kucinich expected the cost of the DPM to exceed its estimate. Finally, Cleveland’s existing transit system would be negatively impacted by the DPM.

Both Detroit’s DPM and the Morgantown People Mover exceeded their initial budgets by millions, legitimizing Kucinich’s fear of cost overruns. Cleveland’s DPM was expected to serve 46,500 riders per day. Morgantown’s People Mover transports 10,000 people per day. Detroit’s DPM transports the same number, even though it was estimated to move 55,000 passengers per day. Would the Downtown People Mover have proved popular enough to move 46,500 Clevelanders per day through downtown? Cleveland will never know, but if Detroit’s DPM is any indication, the answer is unlikely.

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In 1970 the future of public transportation in Cleveland looked bleak. The city was millions of dollars in debt and its transit system crumbling. Ridership had dwindled in the wake of World War II and large groups were moving into the suburbs, outside the current busing system's range. The road to recovery began in 1971; with the election of a new mayor the city was able to institute a regional public transportation system.

In 1971 Ralph J. Perk became Cleveland's first Republican mayor in more than three decades and, after establishing the Cleveland Regional Sewer District, he set his sights on the transit problem. At the time of Perk's inauguration as mayor, the busing system in place was Cleveland Transit System (CTS). In the late 1960s, CTS ridership suffered a dramatic drop from which it was unable to recover. To combat the drop in ridership, CTS resorted to cutting service programs, employee layoffs, and selective fare hikes. In 1968, under the mayoralty of Carl Stokes, an attempt to revitalize the transportation system in the city resulted in a four-mile rail extension to Hopkins International Airport. This made Cleveland the first city in the Western Hemisphere with direct rapid transit service to its major airport, but that was not enough to overcome the financial problems of the system. In its last full year of operation, CTS operated with a net loss of $6.9 million. The city council, working under the recommendation of Perk, approved a bill to allow the city to purchase $9.5 million in CTS bonds and temporarily solved the money problems. While this relieved the immediate pressure of the transit issue, Perk knew he needed a more concrete solution and developed a plan for modernizing the transit system.

A variety of circumstances delayed the implementation of Perk's plan. First, it was necessary to assess the fair market value of CTS and arrange a way to pay the remaining debt after it was no longer in existence. The city obtained a federal grant by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration in the amount of $582,000 to conduct the survey. Recognizing it was not within the power of a single municipality to solve CTS's problems, the study called for the regionalization of transit and proposed that public ownership should rest in a transit authority. This push for regional transportation was not limited to the Cleveland area; it was a concern evident throughout the nation in the late 1960s and 1970s. Cities such as St. Louis, San Francisco, and Chicago were conducting similar studies, all of which concluded the best solution for the economic well being and suburban development of each city was to develop a regional transportation system.

Next, Perk had to determine a way to finance the new transit system long term. To combat this Perk proposed a one-cent tax increase. The proposal was overwhelmingly approved by the voters and on September 5, 1975, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) was given control of all CTS assets. During its first year, the RTA was averaging a ridership of 356,000 riders a week - a 65% increase from the final years of the CTS. RTA also made a profit of $260,000 its first year that was allotted to paying the debt of CTS and other capital expenses. By the end of 1975, RTA had added bus service to Euclid, Maple Heights, North Olmsted, Brecksville, Garfield Heights, and Bedford. In 1976, RTA added six additional service areas.

Perk had to overcome problems of debt and corruption, poor sewage and water pollution, and a crumbling transportation system. Under his leadership and belief that a city is meant to function in the best interest of the people, the Regional Sewer District and Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority were established. During his four years as mayor, Perk laid the groundwork for the RTA. Perk did not sit by idly while city council and the transit board made all the decisions but actively campaigned for the implementation of the RTA program by attending meetings, encouraging the support of the plan, and appointing the board that would oversee the day-to-day functioning of the RTA. Perk gave the city a transportation system it could be proud of, one that would prove to be profitable and a model that other cities could emulate. Forty years later the Regional Transit Authority is not only still operating, but continues to flourish and receive recognition.

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The settlement of the Heights on Cleveland's east side was dependent upon electric streetcars with sufficient power to ascend the Portage Escarpment at Cedar Glen in the 1890s. From there, streetcars opened heights land for development progressively farther east until the Van Sweringen brothers faced the task of making their distant Shaker Heights project accessible to downtown. The Vans created the Cleveland & Youngstown Railroad to make this connection, envisioning an interurban train linking Cleveland to the growing east side, and specifically their Shaker Village development (later Shaker Heights). The C&Y became their means of performing a number of transportation projects, building freight yards for other railroads and, here, putting in place the infrastructure necessary to bring the Shaker Rapid down off the Heights.

Trains, including the Rapid, require gentle grades in order to be operated economically. Too steep a slope and additional engines have to be added, or less weight can be hauled up hill, or both. To traverse the eighty feet of elevation between Shaker Square and the base of the Escarpment cliff west of Woodhill Road, a long elevated roadbed was required, including several bridges to allow north-south traffic to cross below the tracks. This roadbed is a little over a mile in length, meaning the resulting 1.25 percent grade could permit the Rapid to run affordably between Shaker Heights and downtown Cleveland.

The grading of the Rapid's right-of-way actually starts at Shaker Square, as the roadbed gradually descends into a trench between the two lanes of Shaker Boulevard, eventually becoming deep enough to pass underneath Woodhill Road. From that point west the tracks emerge onto an elevated bed that gradually descends to the level of the city. In doing so, it crosses over nine streets and two sets of railroad tracks, each of which has a bridge carrying the Rapid overhead. The bridge at Holton Avenue is one of Cleveland's most interesting and unappreciated structures.

This roadbed was created by building a temporary trestle of logs to get the tracks sufficiently elevated. Then trains of hopper cars were brought in on these tracks to dump large quantities of dirt and stone ballast to fill in the trestle. This was more economical than trying to pile up the ballast from below and then place tracks on top later.

At first the Rapid reached the bottom of the roadbed and moved onto tracks in the city's streets to finish the journey to Public Square, but that was only a temporary expediency. The ultimate goal was to bring the Rapid into the lower level of the Van Sweringens' new Cleveland Union Terminal passenger station beneath their Terminal Tower complex. To do this, the trains needed to come into town near the level of the river, where the major railroad passenger trains would also be delivering passengers to the C.U.T. This entailed extending the Rapid's grade dozens of feet lower, which they did through the gradual descent of Kingsbury Run, a tributary of the Cuyahoga River. It was the need to secure rights to use existing tracks of the Nickel Plate Road that led to the Vans purchasing the Nickel Plate Railroad and becoming a major player in North American railroading in the 1930s.

But the original focus of their attention was developing Shaker Heights up on the Portage Escarpment and making it possible to move their homeowners quickly to their jobs in downtown Cleveland. This led to their building the Cleveland & Youngstown's elevated roadbed that is largely unseen by the multitude of people who still ride the RTA's Green and Blue Lines west of Shaker Square, but deserves to be recognized as an important piece of Cleveland's urban infrastructure.

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Imagine descending an escalator from USBank Plaza and boarding a subway bound for Tower City Center. Mayor Tom Johnson first proposed a Cleveland subway in 1905, and the idea surfaced repeatedly thereafter. After several failed attempts between the world wars, the city came closest to realizing this dream in 1953, when Cuyahoga County voters approved a $35 million bond issue for a downtown circulator subway by a two-to-one margin. The most discussed route would have traversed a loop from the Cleveland Union Terminal to Superior Avenue and East 9th Street, then to Euclid Avenue and East 13th Street, and back along Huron Road to its origin. Although popular with the public, freeway advocate and county engineer Albert S. Porter persuaded county commissioners to nix the plan in 1957.

Two years later, Playhouse Square area merchants had grown alarmed by the drop in business that afflicted many American downtown retailers by the late 1950s. With the bond issue set to expire in a matter of months, a group led by officers of the Halle Bros. Co. department store and the owner of the Hanna Building worked behind the scenes to reopen the debate. They got a big boost when the City Planning Commission wrote a subway into Downtown Cleveland-1975, a master plan to guide future development in the city's heart. The plan, which now featured a simpler hook-shaped route under East 14th and Euclid, prompted a bitter feud between downtown interests in Playhouse Square and those near Public Square. The former had long clamored for easier access for transit riders. The latter, especially the Higbee Co. with its advantageous basement entrance adjacent to the Union Terminal rail platforms, frowned upon the subway idea.

It may never be known exactly why the county commissioners voted down the subway again in 1959. Some alleged that a sizable bribe bought the decisive vote against the tube. True or not, it is clear that Porter succeeded in creating a situation ripe for defeat. Although Toronto had recently completed a similar subway that reinforced its downtown as a vigorous hub, Porter warned darkly of buildings collapsing into the "quicksand" beneath Euclid Avenue and stores with their utilities cut off for weeks on end. He insisted that no one who could drive on a new freeway would think of being packed in "sardine" fashion into a railcar.

In the 1980s the idea of a subway reemerged in the form of the Dual Hub Corridor, a combination downtown subway and at-grade rail link with University Circle along Euclid Avenue. As cost estimates soared, the idea was scaled back, and the RTA Healthline ultimately opened as a bus rapid transit system in 2008. Meanwhile, the issue of how to distribute transit riders all over downtown found resolution when downtown interests banded together with RTA to fund a system of free trolley buses whose digital overhead destination signs exclaim, "Smile and Ride Free!"

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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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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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Cleveland, like many American cities, experienced its heyday of streetcar transit lines in the early decades of the twentieth century. Many Clevelanders still fondly recall their trips downtown aboard the creaking, groaning streetcars that plied the city's major thoroughfares. While streetcars formed the backbone of public transit in the first half of the century, in the second half, buses and rapid trains became common. The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority formed in 1975 through the merger of the Cleveland Transit System and the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit and also assumed control over several suburban bus systems. RTA spearheaded the federally funded Euclid Corridor Transportation Project, the culmination of decades of attempts to introduce a high-speed transit line on Euclid Avenue.

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