The Grand Plan for Freeways Across Cleveland
Cleveland Memory Project has just mounted a digitized series of 17
"Route Location Studies" from the 1960s, detailing the plans for a network of freeways across the city. Included are the infamous Heights, Lee and Clark freeways through the Heights. Each of these studies were produced by the engineering firm Howard, Needles, Tammen, & Bergendoff, for either the Cuyahoga County Engineer, Albert S. Porter, or the Ohio Department of Highways and are large-format, spiral-bound booklets containing maps, aerial photos, diagrams, tables and explanatory text about each proposed freeway.
Labels: Albert S. Porter, Cleveland history, Cleveland OH, freeways
The Albert S. Porter Civic Wrong-Headedness Award
There ought to be an award for civic wrong-headedness and it should be named for
Albert S. Porter, the powerful, long-term Cuyahoga County Engineer. He's justly infamous for trying to inflict
a system of freeways across the Heights, but I read today that he also once proposed demolishing the magnificent Guardians of Transportation statues on the
Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, so there would be more room for traffic lanes. "Those columns are monstrosities and should be torn down and forgotten," the
Cleveland Press quoted Bert Porter as saying in 1976. "There is nothing particularly historic about any one of them. We're not running a
May Show here."
Porter objected on the grounds that designating the statues historic would compound and delay the bridge widening project, but other studies demonstrated that extra lanes were not necessary. The
Cleveland Press editorialized in their favor, and eventually the Ohio Historic Sites Advisory Board unanimously recommended the Western Reserve Historical Society's nomination of the bridge to the National Register of Historic Places. Porter then had to grudgingly go along and keep the Guardians.
And therefore we still have these terrific icons as part of our thin and ever-threatened Art Deco heritage. Perhaps a model of one of them would be a fitting statuette for the Albert S. Porter Civic Wrong-Headedness Award. (Any candidate you'd like to nominate to receive it today?)
Labels: Albert S. Porter, Art Deco, Cleveland Ohio, Guardians of Transportation, Hope Memorial Bridge, Lorain Carnegie Bridge
