Lost Cleveland: Seven Wonders of the Sixth City (New book)
Michael DeAloia, Cleveland's emeritus "Tech Czar," has authored
Lost Cleveland, a new book by the History Press, about seven of his favorite historic landmarks from the city's past. With the 75th anniversary of the Great Lakes Exposition -- one of the places he discusses -- coming up this summer, here's a great way to bone up on that amazing event.
Michael has been signing copies all around town and reports that the first printing is almost sold out, so rush out and get yourself a copy.
I wrote the foreword for this book, but neglected to negotiate a royalty split with Michael before it went best seller like this. :-)
Labels: book, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Michael DeAloia
Historic Interiors in the News
I just noticed that the Plain Dealer has been full of news on historic interior spaces this week. On Sunday
the Culture section had an article on the best seat in
Severance Hall and in the
Drury Theater at the Cleveland Play House. Then there was a two-part series on the issues with the Medical Mart, which included a photo of the mammoth
Public Auditorium. Finally (?) today there's an article on one of my favorite buildings, the old
Cleveland Trust Bank at Ninth and Euclid, including a wonderful shot of
the main lobby and dome. What's next? The Huntington Bank lobby? The old Society for Savings lobby? They all appealed to me more than the
artist's rendition of the proposed Medical Mart.
(Returning to the issue of Public Auditorium, I haven't seen any discussion of why, if we determine that the Medical Mart developers are correct in their assessment of Public Auditorium's condition, we wouldn't just increase the cost of the project and fix the hall so it can be included. Surely we cannot afford to have conventions coming to town over then next few years think it's a safety hazard, so we may have to address that problem anyway. And while we're at it, finish the negotiations with the property owners on Ontario and St. Clair, or take the land by eminent domain. I have a bad feeling about the idea of a glass box on Mall C and want to see the original plan restored.)
Labels: architecture, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Cleveland Trust, Drury Theater, interiors, Medical Mart, Public Auditorium, Severance Hall, The Mall
Mysterious Eastside Building to Become Doubletree Hotel
Cleveland east-siders all recognize this building, on the southwest corner of Carnegie and East 107th Street, but few know anything about it. Some could mention that the Jobs Corps was in there, but feel unsatisfied with that reply, since the age and style of the building doesn't fit the idea of a governmental social service agency. And with the demise of the Carnegie Medical Building a couple of blocks to the west and with this building's upper stories wrapped in netting to prevent pieces from falling on the sidewalk and street below, we all have had the apprehension that its days were numbered, whatever exactly its history.
This morning's Plain Dealer solved the mystery (was I the only one?) and hopefully the apprehension when it announced that the old Tudor Arms Hotel had been sold to the Maron family of developers to be turned into a Doubletree Hotel. This is terrific news and I for one hope it goes through. According to the article, the building started life in 1931 as the home of the Cleveland Club -- shades of
CSU's Fenn Tower, which started about the same time as the National Town and Country Club -- and then a hotel, a home for students and the Job Corps over time. Becoming a residential property again seems very fitting. Keep your fingers crossed.
(Photos from the Cleveland Press Collection, Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University, are dated 1960.)Labels: Carnegie Avenue, Cleveland Club, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, East 107th Street, hotel, Job Corps, Tudor Arms, University Circle
New Book: "Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart"
Announcement received.NEW BOOK CELEBRATES BYGONE ERA OF CLEVELAND NEWSPAPERSFifty-four veteran Cleveland reporters, editors and photographers swap stories about the life and times of the newspaper business in a new book:
Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart: Tales from the Last Glory Days of Cleveland Newspapers (hardcover / $24.95 / 256 pages).
The book, which was compiled from interviews conducted by
John H. Tidyman, provides an oral history of the period between 1950 and 1982. During that time, fierce competition between the “Cleveland Press” and the “Plain Dealer” made working for a daily paper an unusually interesting job. (The Press ceased operation on June 17, 1982, a date many people consider the sad end of an era.)
“It was a job unlike any other,” Tidyman said. “Reporters, photographers and editors were envied, threatened, beatified, fooled and thought to be the luckiest s.o.b.’s around.”
Contributors to the book are former staffers from the Plain Dealer and Cleveland Press, many of them familiar to readers from their bylines — Dick Feagler, Brent Larkin, Marge Alge, Don Bean, William Miller, Dan Coughlin, Dick Peery, George Condon, Helen Moise, Mike Roberts, Bob Dolgan and Bill Wynne, among others.
All of them share a common nostalgia for the bygone era when Cleveland had competing daily newspapers and newsrooms were filled with the sound of typewriters and the ring of the newswire bells.
The stories they tell range from funny to tragic and sometimes outrageous. For example:
-Jim Dudas (Press) once bribed a prisoner with a carton of cigarettes to refuse an interview with the rival Plain Dealer.
-Whitey Watzman (Plain Dealer) ventured onto a crime scene and stumbled upon half a dozen officers, guns drawn, waiting in the dark for the real criminal.
-Wally Guenther (Press) infiltrated and wrote about the Ku Klux Klan.
-William F. Miller (Plain Dealer) put on a hardhat and passed himself off as a Salvation Army worker to cover a Great Lakes ore boat fire.
The book groups stories thematically, including chapters on the police beat, sportswriting, the women’s department, drinking on the job, and hazardous assignments. Short anecdotes from different storytellers are interspersed so that the text reads like an informal conversation among longtime colleagues.
More samples and information can be found online at:
http://www.grayco.com/cleveland/books/10169/sampleChapter.htmlAbout the AuthorJohn Tidyman was ordered by his father to take a touch-typing class the summer before high school. Tidyman often cites that incident as the reason he became a writer. After graduating from Lakewood High School, he was drafted and fought in the Vietnam War. He returned a 19-year old “buck sergeant.” Before he joined the Cleveland Press as a reporter, Tidyman worked as a waiter, a warehouseman and an airfreight agent. He is the author of eight books and has also written for almost every area publication.
Price and AvailabilityGimme Rewrite, Sweetheart ($24.95 / hardcover / 256 pages) is available at Northeast Ohio bookstores, online from Amazon.com, and from the publisher’s Web site. For more information, call Gray & Company, Publishers at 1-800-915-3609, or visit their Web site:
www.grayco.com.
Labels: book, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, journalism
More on Cleveland's Balloon Boy
The
Plain Dealer recently ran a story about Cleveland's "Balloon Boy," a 6-year-old kid whose father floated him high over the city as a publicity stunt during the Depression. Think flagpole sitters and other attention-getters during those hard times. In these days, when Michael Jackson was lambasted for dangling a child over his balcony, you can imagine the response today if some father sent his 1st grader soaring up over Municipal Stadium in a home-made balloon, indeed the recent story of Falcon Heene is enough indication of how feelings have changed. Read the PD story for the story of Cleveland's Balloon Boy, but here are a couple of photos from the Cleveland Press Collection, at CSU's Michael Schwartz Library Special Collections.
BTW, in the PD story the child is identified as Billy Crawford, who they quote in the story as an 82-year-old today, whereas the Press calls him Don Crawford, which was the father's name.
Labels: Balloon Boy, Billy Crawford, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Depression era, stunts
Cuyahoga County Public Library Partners with Cleveland Memory
Cleveland Memory is now sporting some great shots of the Belle-Vernon Dairy, bookmobiles, Mr. William Telling, and other images from the South Euclid Historical Society's collection. Kent State University library school intern Jennifer Pflaum digitized and cataloged the photographs as part of her practicum project, under the supervision of Joe Salamon, of the Cuyahoga County Public Library's South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch.
This new site is the first of what we hope will be many such collaborative projects between the Cleveland Memory Project and the County library system, thanks to Becky Ranallo, their Internet Services Manager.
Labels: Belle-Vernon Dairy, Cleveland history, Cleveland Memory, Cleveland Ohio, Cuyahoga County Public Library, South Euclid, William Telling
Demolition update
Destruction of the old
Carnegie Medical Building, aka the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine Building, is well underway. It's being torn down back to front, so the facade still stands relatively unimpaired on Carnegie.
Meanwhile CSU has completely removed the
Corlett Building, the white terra cotta structure on Euclid just west of East 21st Street, in front of the Music and Communications Building.
I don't believe there are any exciting plans for either site at the moment.
Labels: Carnegie Medical Building, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Cleveland State University, Corlett Building, demolition, Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine
New Book on Veterans Bridge Coming in Fall
In September the Cleveland State University Library will be publishing a major book on the Veterans Memorial Bridge (aka the Detroit-Superior Bridge), by bridge engineer William E. Beyer. Over 600 pages in length and packed with hundreds of historic photos of the bridge, including dramatic construction shots, this handsome hard-cover book will commemorate the bridge's recent 90th anniversary. Only 250 copies of the book will be printed, but thanks to support from the Sloane Family Fund and CSU's Watson Endowment Fund, the book will retail in the $20-25 range. This will be a great gift for someone who loves the bridge (who doesn't?), or Cleveland landmarks history in general. Direct inquiries to me at w.barrow@csuohio.edu.
Labels: book, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Detroit-Superior Bridge, landmarks, Veterans Memorial Bridge
Roldo: Walking is Depressing in Downtown Cleveland
Roldo Bartimole wrote a blog in May that contrasts nicely with my last entry about downtown traffic counts 90 years ago. Titled
"Walking is Depressing in Downtown Cleveland," it reflects the feeling many of us who remember Cleveland's glory days when viewing Euclid Avenue, between CSU and Public Square. Let's hope the benefits of the Health Line kick in one of these days.
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Euclid Avenue, Health Line, Public Square, RTA, traffic counts
Terminal Tower Gets a Make-Over
This morning's
Plain Dealer carries a
two-page spread about the recent renovations going on to the venerable Terminal Tower. The article gives us the good news that the scaffolding, which has marred the Tower for a couple of years, is gradually going away, and there's the hopeful comment that owners Forest City Enterprises would like to find a way to re-open the observation deck. With the Sears Tower opening a splashy new cantilevered glass-floored deck and the Empire State Building having a long history of their observation deck being open, I'd sure like to see ours be accessible once again.
The article mentions that the Tower was the "second tallest building in the world" for many years, to the Empire State Building. This is a confusing subject that is repeated in a number of forms and depends upon what's measured and when the clock starts running, but it's pretty clear that the Terminal Tower was the second tallest building when it was topped out in 1927, may've slipped when the complex was dedicated in June of 1930 (well before the Empire State Bldg.), but was still the tallest outside of New York until 1967. The claims often run to the whole world, not just Cleveland, but I haven't taken the time to sort out all the possibilities, which include the considerably-higher 1889 Eiffel Tower.
Thanks to William Neff for the graphics and the PD in general for the article about Cleveland's most important and revered landmark.
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Cleveland Union Terminal, Forest City, Terminal Tower
Mash-ups of historic and contemporary maps
The
Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium (GCHDLC), an informal network of historians, librarians and others interested in presenting Northeast Ohio's historic resources in digital format, will be meeting July 30th to learn more about collaborative projects in the Heights which center around historic maps. The group's map committee has previously conducted workshops on how to overlay digitized historic maps onto contemporary maps and aerial photos in Google Earth and now some actual projects have come forth in Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights that will be demonstrated. Dr. Roy Larick and Steven Titchenal will present their work on a "Bluestone Hts." use of this technology and we will also see what's been done in Shaker Heights, particularly a further development using the Sketch-up program to create 3D models of North Union Shaker settlement buildings.
For more information, contact Bill Barrow, at w.barrow@csuohio.edu.
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Google Earth, Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium, maps
NOCSIA Tour of W.S. Tyler Building
Most east-siders have seen the huge brick complex of historic industrial buildings at Superior and the railroad overpass just west of East 40th Street and maybe a few know it as the W.S. Tyler Building.
This afternoon a small group of members of the
Northern Ohio Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology (NOCSIA) got a tour of these buildings and learned how they are being developed into
Tyler Village, a 1.2 million square foot, 10 acre space for new businesses. I have driven past this complex and particularly admired the arching brick bridges, several stories up in the air, connecting different buildings and the elaborate details of the buildings' trim, so it was good to learn more about them. In the 1870s,
W.S. Tyler Co. started manufacturing wire cloth on St. Clair, at the northern end of the property and gradually enlarged to the south until the main entrance was set up along Superior and the old St. Clair headquarters building demolished. In 1962 W.S. Tyler moved to Mentor, where it remains today.
NOCSIA has tours and lectures throughout the years, so
visit their website and join.
Labels: Cleveland Ohio, history, industrial tour, NOCSIA, W.S. Tyler
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
The more things seem to change...
Seems familiar somehow:"The System in Cleveland at that time [1880s] was simple and imperfect. Business men supported it. There was no boss, and such leading politicians as the city boasted were nothing but business men's political agents. They depended largely upon the campaign funds contributed by the business men. In return the business men could get what they wanted out of the city, and they let the politicians do about as they pleased with the rest."
"They didn't always use cash bribery. Mulhern, who picked the the president and organized councils, came to control more and more departments, and he had the patronage of these to dispense to the friends and followers of pliable councilmen. But this was making the city pay for its own corruption..."
-- from "OHIO: A Tale of Two Cities," [Cincinnati and Cleveland]
The Struggle for Self-Government, Lincoln Steffens. 1906.
I love that phrase about "... making the city pay for its own corruption...."
Labels: Cleveland Ohio, corruption, Mark Hanna, politics, Tom L. Johnson
Henry George and Tom L. Johnson this summer
Early this August, the
Council of Georgist Organizations will be convening in Cleveland to continue studying the life and philosophy of nineteenth century reformer,
Henry George and to see Cleveland, the hometown of George's most effective political disciple,
Mayor Tom L. Johnson. I knew that Johnson was suddenly converted to George's single tax theories, strove to implement them in Cleveland and is buried near George in Brooklyn, NY, but I didn't know that our statue of TLJ, on Public Square, portrays him holding a copy of George's book,
Progress and Poverty. [Disclosure: I'm presenting at that conference]
Labels: Cleveland Ohio, conference, Henry George, Tom L. Johnson
Did Cleveland have a Fleet Street?
By which I mean, were there places in Cleveland that designated where a particular industry was situated, or a historic function took place, or are just intriguing? In this case, the city's newspaper row was more on Rockwell, but we never called it so.
Looking more generally, there have been places that have funky names that weren't the formal designation, but perhaps became so when the city later created planning districts and development zones. The Flats comes immediately to mind, but there's also ethnic neighborhood names like Little Italy, ritzy place-names like Millionaire's Row, and modified street names like Short Vincent.
Cleveland isn't old enough to have mysterious designations from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, like Boston or New York (much less even earlier ones in London), but am I missing any historic place-names that aren't already hard-wired into the fabric and consciousness of the city, like Ohio City, but still have some ancient resonances?
Anything come to mind? I'd like Cleveland Memory to have something useful on each of these historic place-names we identify.
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, place names
The Hidden City Revealed: A Walking Tour (1988)
When I first returned to Cleveland, in 1989, I became aware of a recent project called "The Hidden City Revealed," which seemed to be an archeological study of the Downtown and Flats districts of Cleveland. I just came across the map/brochure for it and see that it was more of a walking tour of early sites in Cleveland, created in 1988 by the Committee for Public Art, with the participation of David S. Brose, Robert A. Wheeler and a host of co-sponsors. Here's how the brochure described the project: |
|
"The Hidden City Revealed is a unique walking tour which directs you to artifacts and historic sites that were an important part of the growth of Cleveland's first neighborhoods. This walking tour is not one of signs and words, names, dates and places, nor does it identify empty space where something once existed. Instead you will encounter actual physical evidence of the past and be able to see how history relates to the present day life of the city.
The twenty sites on this tour span a time period from Moses Cleaveland's first survey of what was to become the City of Cleveland, to the radical changes imposed upon the cityscape by the dominance of the automobile. Identification and selection of the Hidden City Revealed sites was made by a team of collaborators that included historians, archeologists and designers. Criteria for selection sites included their relative historical and archeological importance , and the visual and/or structural characteristics which give them special interest.
These sites are identified by temporary markers. Over the next two years, teams of artists and designers will be commissioned to design, construct and install permanent markers intended to me more than information plaques. They will also be public works of art. Some of the larger sties will be developed as public open spaces; smaller sites will receive a graphic marker.
If you follow the sites in the order in which they are listed you will traverse the entire district. It is not, however, necessary to follow the sites in sequential order, you may simply encounter them as part of any walk through the District. This list of twenty sites is not meant to be inclusive, but it is hoped that those which have been listed will make you more award of the historic nature of the neighborhood and its many other artifacts of interest." |
Like many such historical research projects and exhibits, once it was over it vanished. I don't know if the promised public markers ever materialized, nor whether any still exist, but I'm checking. This tour literature could be recycled and made into a nice web site.
Labels: archeology, Cleveland Ohio, downtown, flats, historic tour, walking tour
Cleveland's 25 Biggest Moments: 1972-1997
On the occasion of it's 25th anniversary, the December, 1997, issue of
Cleveland Magazine featured an article titled "The 25 Biggest Moments of the Last 25 Years." Here they are, 12 years later. How do they stand up?
1. "The Death of a Great Lake: Too Much Life 'Kills' Lake Erie." (Joe Mackall, 1972)
2. "Playhouse Square Dodges the Wrecking Ball." (William Troy, Spring, 1972)
3. "Mrs. Perk's Bowling Night." (Julie A. Evans, December 13, 1972)
4. "The Mob's Last Stand." (Ned Whelan, October, 1977)
5. "The Blizzard of '78. "(Richard J. Osborn, January 26, 1978)
6. "Busing: Battisti's Disasterous Legacy." (Michael D. Roberts, September, 1978)
7. "A Midnight Duel: Cleveland Defaults." (William Troy, December 15, 1978)
8. "The Shah of Iran Visits the Cleveland Clinic: The City's Greatest Myth." (James M. Wood, October 1979)
9. "Voinovich's Hard Hat Era Begins." (Mary Ann Sharkey, November 12, 1979)
10. "Jackie Presser, Changing of the Guard." (James Neff, July 21, 1981)
11. "The Halle's Tradition Ends." (Lynn Thompson, January 29, 1982)
12.
"Stop the Presses (For the Very Last Time)." (Dick Feagler, June 17, 1982)
13. "The Sohio Building Rises, and Becomes the Promise at Public Square." (Shari M. Sweeney, December, 1982)
14. "Dorothy Fuldheim's Final Interview." (Patricia Mote, July 27, 1984)
15. "The Jacobs Brothers Save the Tribe." (Edward J. Walsh, July 2, 1986)
16. "The Drive and The Fumble." (Doug Clarke, January 11, 1987 and January 17, 1988)
17. "George Forbes Lashes Out." (Michael D. Roberts, December 1987)
18. "One Man, One Building: Changing the Flats Forever." [The Powerhouse] (Jeff Hagan, May 23, 1988)
19. "Tower City Center: From Civic Symbol to Glittering Mall." (March 29, 1990)
20. "Time Magazine States the Obvious." [Cleveland Orchestra] (Frank Bentayou, January 10, 1994)
21. "A Gift for Generations: Game Five of the 1995 World Series." (Michael Grant Jaffe, October 26, 1995
22. "Cleveland Rocks - Finally." [Rock Hall] (Lynne Thompson, September 1, 1995)
23. "Model Kidnaps the Browns." (Richard J. Osborne, November 6, 1995)
24. "Cleveland Says Goodbye to Carl Stokes." (Mary Ann Sharkey, April 8, 1996)
25. "Cleveland Stadium's Final Days." (Mark Winegardner, November 25, 1996)
I have my doubts about the importance of the Powerhouse, looking back, but what do you think of this list?
Labels: Cleveland Magazine, Cleveland Ohio, Comeback City
Digital Library Consortium takes it to the bank
The
Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium met at the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Cleveland this afternoon, to hear Angela O'Neal share the latest news from Columbus and to tour the Fed's new
Money Museum and Learning Center.
Angela is the Digital Products Manager for the Ohio Historical Society, where she runs the Ohio Memory project, is the Vice-President of the
Society of Ohio Archivists and is associated with the
Ohio Digitizers Interest Group, so she touched on all these areas of her professional interest during her talk. I was particularly happy to hear that the
Ohio Historic Markers Program has made it to the web and discovered that people are encouraged to submit photographs of markers in their community to this site. She also reports that proposals are being accepted for papers or sessions at the
MAC/SOA Spring Meeting, in May of 2007.
The tour of the Money Museum was a lot of fun. It is designed to explain the nature of money to all age groups, but we had particular fun using a series of rubbing stations to create our own bills. The
Federal Reserve Bank Building itself is truly impressive -- it was specifically designed to awe, so people would feel assured that their money was in the hands of banking gods -- and we so grateful to Lynn C. Sniderman and the bank staff generally for making all of this possible!
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Federal Reserve Bank, Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium, Money Museum
Next meeting of the Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium
The next meeting of the
Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium will be held at 1:00 on Thursday, April 27th, at the
Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University.
Nick Fischio, a member of the Library's Technology Team, will give a brief demo of their newly implemented Fedora digital file management and archiving system. This is where the library's digital books now reside. There will also be a tour of the Freedman Center, where items in any format are digitized, including microfilm, LP records, 8 tracks, slides, photos and video. The tour will demonstrate a large format planetary scanner and visit their Preservation Department.
The meeting will also include a brief presentation by Paul McKey, of
Aptigent software's "itemright" metadata program, which several consortium members are signed up to use or are at least considering.
The consortium is made up of representatives from dozens of local libraries, historical societies and others interested in networking local history materials on the web. Their mission statement is reproduced in an earlier blog posting here (below). If you are interested in attending or wish to know more about the consortium, please write to me at w.barrow@csuohio.edu.
Labels: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland history, Cleveland Ohio, Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium, Kelvin Smith Library
