Downtown Architecture
As a Great Lakes legacy city, Cleveland still has a trove of impressive architecture in its downtown district. Like other cities, it has lost some architectural gems along the way, but this two-mile, self-guided walking tour loop curates surviving examples from every phase of downtown's evolution, including a 19th-commercial block, neoclassical public buildings, formative Chicago-style skyscrapers, splendid hotels, department stores, and arcades, and modernist and postmodern towers. This tour begins with the city's first skyscraper, the John Wellborn Root–designed Society for Savings Building (1890), loops around Public Square, proceeds west to W. 9th on Superior Avenue, then east again, around the south side of Public Square. From there, it continues east along the south side of Euclid Avenue, south one block on E. 9th to Prospect Avenue and then back to Euclid, thence east to Playhouse Square. The route returns west along Euclid Avenue's north side, turns north on E. 6th, west on Superior, and around the Key Center block on the north side of Public Square to its point of origin, where the Key Tower (1991), the city's tallest skyscraper, stands alongside the first skyscraper. In a few instances, "stops" on the tour are slightly off the route but visible from it.
Along the way, be sure not to miss some of downtown's grand interior spaces. You'll find a coffered stained-glass ceiling and fanciful murals in the old banking hall of the Society for Savings, a colorful barrel-vaulted entry hall to Terminal Tower, the duo of beautiful interior passages at the 5th Street Arcades, a soaring 60-foot-high Tiffany-style stained-glass dome and murals painted by an artist who died aboard the Titanic in the old Cleveland Trust rotunda (now Heinen's supermarket), a semicircular lobby with a bust of Marcus Hanna inside the Hanna Building, WPA murals in Cleveland Public Library, and—arguably the city's crown jewel—the Arcade.
Society for Savings Building
Cleveland's First Skyscraper
"All that heap of lath, plaster, bricks and mortar being cleared away indicates that the old buildings are things of the past. Here will rise a ten story block, finished in the highest style of modern times." –"From a Housetop; A Birdseye View of Cleveland's Improvements," Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 15, 1888
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Weddell House and Rockefeller Building
A President's Shrine and an Industrialist's Investment
On February 15, 1861, the streets surrounding the Weddell House, as well as the windows, porches and even rooftops that looked upon the hotel, were dense with faces eager to see the newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln. Once inside his overnight lodgings on the corner of Superior Avenue and…
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Perry-Payne Building
Standing at a Place of Historic Memory
In the Spring of 1887, workmen tore down a number of three-story commercial buildings that had long stood on the north side of Superior Street between the National Bank Building on the northeast corner of Superior and Water (West 9th) Street and the Scovill Building (formerly the Franklin House), located midway up the block. The site was cleared to make room for the construction of the eight-story…
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Hilliard Building
The Oldest Commercial Building in Downtown Cleveland
Richard Hilliard achieved much as a businessman and civic leader in the thirty years (1826-1856) that he lived in Cleveland. Most of his achievements have long since faded from the public's memory. However, the three story brick building that he erected in 1850 still stands today on West 9th Street as a reminder to Clevelanders of who he was.
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Western Reserve Building
Weathering the Shifting Winds of Downtown Property Markets
Samuel L. Mather perched his offices in the Western Reserve Building above the river harbor where he plied his iron-mining and shipping business. At the time, he probably never imagined how the brick and stone edifice would fare as downtown and the city's economy evolved, but his onetime headquarters defied the odds, managing to retain its original function as an office building long after…
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Hotel Cleveland
Cornerstone of the Union Terminal
Shaped like an "E" opening onto Superior Avenue, Hotel Cleveland was built in 1918 by the Van Sweringen brothers on the corner of Superior and Public Square. The hotel was built long before the construction of the adjacent Cleveland Union Terminal (dedicated in 1930). The site where the new Hotel…
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Terminal Tower
Cleveland's Signature Skyscraper
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…
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Park Building
A Sensory Attraction on Public Square
One of Cleveland’s early skyscrapers goes frequently unseen amidst the hustle and bustle of Public Square. But ask any long-term resident to conjure up an olfactory memory, and all of a sudden the place becomes crystal clear.
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The May Company
Ohio's Largest Store
The new May Company department store opened on Public Square in 1915. Containing over 800,000 square feet of floor space, it was said to be the third largest store in the nation. Built by world-famous architect and city planner Daniel Burnham (who also designed Cleveland's Group Plan and…
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Cushing Building
Birthplace of America's First Neurosurgeon
Though he has been called America’s first neurosurgeon, Dr. Harvey W. Cushing was not the first American to perform brain surgery. Others did before him, piercing the dura which encases the brain in order to attempt to remove tumors, but the results were almost always disastrous for the patient. …
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5th Street Arcades
Cleveland's Four-Season Shopping Streets
Most people know about "The Arcade" in Cleveland. Some might be surprised, however, to find out that Downtown actually had three more of these incredible structures running parallel to each other between Euclid and Prospect Avenues. Two of them, the Colonial (1898) and Euclid (1911) Arcades, stood…
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Taylor Building
From Department Store to Office Building to Apartments
The history of the Taylor Building highlights the rise and fall of Cleveland's downtown department stores as well as the recent revitalization of Euclid Avenue. It was part of the wave of department store closings that signaled the beginning of downtown's economic woes.
The Taylor…
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Schofield Building
Recovering the Original Façade
Who would have guessed that underneath an ugly, polished granite exterior was a beautiful Victorian style building designed by Levi Schofield?
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Rose Building
"The New Center"
In 1898-1900, Benjamin Rose financed the construction of the largest office building ever built in Ohio up to that time. At a time when conventional wisdom dictated a Euclid Avenue address, Rose did the unthinkable, selecting a spot at the corner of Prospect Avenue and Erie Street. Naysayers were convinced Rose's daring venture was doomed to fail, but they were wrong.
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Caxton Building
Cleveland’s Historic Printing and Publishing Hub
The Caxton Building, located in downtown Cleveland, is a historic landmark that embodies the city's industrial past. Constructed in 1898-1900, the eight-story structure was designed by the architect F. S. Barnum as one of the nation’s earliest fireproof office buildings, tailored for printing and publishing businesses. Today, the Caxton Building stands as a testament to Cleveland’s rich history,…
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Ohio Bell Telephone Building
"Super Switcher" on the "Voice Highways"
Although many Clevelanders may want to believe the oft-told but never-verified story that it inspired the Daily Planet building made famous by the Cleveland-born Superman comics, this Art Deco skyscraper has more demonstrable contributions to telecommunications advances. While these may seem mundane today, they made the Ohio Bell skyscraper a marvel in their day.
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Hotel Winton
Carter Hotel / Carter Manor
Hotel Winton was a twelve-story hotel designed by architect Max Dunning of Chicago and built at a cost of nearly $2.5 million. Named after Cleveland’s automotive pioneer, Alexander Winton, the hotel opened its doors on December 20, 1917, on Prospect Avenue just east of East 9th Street on the edge…
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Cleveland Trust Company
The Rotunda at 9th and Euclid
The southeast anchor of Cleveland’s most prominent downtown intersection is a work of art that began, in the true spirit of capitalism, with a competition. In 1903, the Cleveland Trust Company (established in 1894 with $500,000 in capital) merged with the Western Reserve Trust Company. The combined…
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Cleveland Trust Tower
Marcel Breuer's Only Skyscraper
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…
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Halle Building
Alfred Pope's Terra-Cotta Showcase for Downtown Shopping
In 1907 a New York industrialist acquired a rooming house on the south side of Euclid Avenue with rear frontage on Huron Road. At the time, downtown scarcely reached east of East Ninth Street, and this section of Millionaires' Row remained largely residential. Undeterred, the man imagined a tall building that might entice downtown development eastward. Appropriately enough, he selected an…
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Hanna Building
Business Hub in a Theater District
The Hanna Building was named after the famous U.S. senator from Ohio and oil and coal baron Marcus Alonzo Hanna and built by his son Daniel Rhodes Hanna. Hanna is perhaps best known for having endorsed William McKinley for president in 1896, spending $100,000 of his personal funds to support…
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Kinney & Levan
The Nation's Largest Housewares Emporium
At 79 years old, George W. Kinney had no time to stop to smell the roses—79 of them—that his employees had ordered for his birthday. He was too busy preparing for his store's biggest expansion in three decades.
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Hotel Statler
The Hotel That Made Statler a Chain
Ellsworth Milton Statler masterfully crafted a luxurious hotel experience in downtown Cleveland. Thanks to his fine attention to detail, creative touch, and modern amenities for the time period, the Statler exuded grandeur and excelled in service.
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John Hartness Brown Complex
Where the Upper Euclid Avenue Shopping District Began
In recent years--until 2019, if you walked down the north side of Euclid Avenue, between East 9th and East 12th Streets, you couldn't help but notice the several dilapidated and vacant buildings between the 925 Building (formerly known as the Huntington Building, and before that the Union…
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Union Trust Building
Built to Send a Message to the Banking World
It wasn't by accident that Union Trust Bank erected a building on the northeast corner of East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue that, when completed in 1924, was reputedly the second or third largest office building in the world with the largest bank lobby in the world.
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New England Building
a.k.a. Guardian Building and National City Bank Building
In the late nineteenth century, downtowns in the United States were the center of major commercial expansion and industrial growth. The construction of skyscrapers and tall business buildings was exploding and replacing old structures located in central cities. The New England Building is an…
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Leader Building
Cleveland's Last Standing Historic Newspaper Building
In 1910, Daniel Rhodes Hanna, a wealthy industrialist and son of legendary political kingmaker Marcus Hanna, bought the Cleveland Leader, an historic, but struggling, daily newspaper. The Leader's offices were at the time located in a small two-story building on the south side of Superior Avenue,…
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Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
A Pink Marble Palazzo for Money
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…
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Cleveland Public Library
"The People's University"
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…
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Howard M. Metzenbaum United States Courthouse
Arnold W. Brunner's Parisian Vision
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…
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The Arcade
Cleveland's Crystal Palace
In the summer of 1886, former councilman and real estate broker James M. Curtiss met with acting Cleveland Parks superintendent and Case School of Applied Sciences professor John Eisenmann to express enthusiasm about a novel form of enclosed street called an arcade. After having visited an arcade…
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Standard Building
Warren S. Stone's Crowning Achievement
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers had never before had a leader quite like Warren Sanford Stone. In 1910, with Stone at the helm as their Grand Chief, the Brotherhood built the 14-story Engineers Building on the southeast corner of Ontario Street and St. Clair Avenue in downtown Cleveland. It was the first skyscraper in the country built by a union. That might have been achievement enough…
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Key Tower
Cesar Pelli's Nod to Art Deco-Era Manhattan
When Plain Dealer architecture writer Wilma Salisbury interviewed Cesar Pelli about his plan for Cleveland's newest and tallest skyscraper in 1988, he cited not only the geometrical Art Deco designs of 1920s-30s New York but even the ancient Egyptian obelisk, biblical Tower of Babel, and Renaissance Italian campanile as inspirations. Indeed, the new tower needed to be inspiring because it was…
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