Views from the Terminal Tower Observation Deck, Then & Now
Thanks to the generosity of Tower City Archivist Drew Rolik, some local archivists got to see the Terminal Tower's observation deck, the Van Sweringen's personal offices, and the Greenbrier Suite yesterday.
The views from the observation deck reminded me of similar scenes from our
Cleveland Union Terminal Collection in Cleveland Memory, shot in the late 1920s. So here below are some I happened to snap with my cell phone, going clockwise around from Public Square.....
LOOKING DOWN ON PUBLIC SQUARE
LOOKING NORTH UP ONTARIO
LOOKING NORTHEAST OUT SUPERIOR WITH LAKE IN BACKGROUND
LOOKING EAST OUT EUCLID AND PROSPECT TOWARD THE AT&T BUILDING (LEFT)
LOOKING SOUTHEAST ALONG EAST BANK OF THE RIVER
(OLD CENTRAL MARKET IN THE CENTER OF THE INTERSECTION)
LOOKING WEST TOWARD COLUMBUS PENINSULA
LOOKING DOWN ON THE INTERSECTION OF WEST SUPERIOR AND HURON ROAD
Labels: aerial views, Cleveland history, Cleveland OH, Cleveland Union Terminal, observation deck, Terminal Tower, then and now
Balancing Developers' Plans and Downtown Preservation
There is a bit of contention about plans to install a skywalk diagonally across the intersection of Prospect and Ontario, linking a new parking facility with the casino being built in Higbee's (
1) and destroying historic landmarks in the process (
2). There are a multitude of architectural renderings of what this would look like and it upsets a lot of people who feel that it will trash the appearance of venerable Higbee's and remove gamblers from the city street, into some sort of hamster habitat designed to cocoon them from the real Cleveland. Cruise ships and mega-resort hotels do this too, as a way of harvesting all the spare change they can from the pockets they have in their facility at the time.
This is all a bit ironic, as that's exactly the strategy the Van Sweringen brothers employed in building the Cleveland Union Terminal on Public Square, including Higbee's. While passengers were interchanging between railroad trains, the Shaker Rapid, streetcars, automobiles or simply walking, the intermodal point was so valuable that the brothers surrounded it with every convenience they could, to maximize the dollars they could harvest from the passengers. A department store, a hotel, a series of restaurants, shoeshine stands, and the complex of office buildings behind the Square (Landmark Office Buildings), capped off by the iconic Terminal Tower. So we begrudge the twenty-first century's developers the right to control the environment to grab every nickel? How must many of the merchants have felt, viewing the Vans' plans for the C.U.T. around 1920?
But on the issue of the skywalk and its affect on Higbee's and downtown ambiance, here's part of a message I posted in reply to a friend's Facebook message....
Some of us -- myself included -- remember Cleveland as a walking city, with hundreds of pedestrians churning up and down the streets, crowding the intersections waiting for the light to change and catching streetcars and buses. Lots of urban interaction. And the buildings were right there off and towering over the sidewalks. But we ran through the drizzle, suffered our umbrellas blown inside out in the wind howling down Euclid and sloshed through the slop and snow banks to get around in the winter. Now at CSU, I'm traveling from East 24th Street to East 17th Street indoors, in shirtsleeves, in any kind of bad weather and enjoying it. I pay extra to park in the central core and never go outside if I don't have to and do so when I worked in the Hanna Bldg, too. And I interact plenty and comfortably with others I encounter.
If you thinking about it, historically what's the treasured Old Arcade except an early hamster habitat for Clevelanders trying to escape our weather and why do we speak so fondly of cities with underground dimensions we lack, be they shopping centers or merely subways? Our great old architecture was designed for a time when people apparently had fewer choices for getting around downtown (again, the arcades being early exceptions), so the skyline and streetscapes reflect that.
I'm all for preserving the historical ambiance of Cleveland -- you must suspect that of me -- but I'm not happy with the preservation community's habit of waiting until something is far advanced and then deciding the plans suck and some building few have ever heard of is endangered. There aren't, IMHO, that many buildings out of the multitude downtown that are so important that the future needs to be unduly hung up about them and I don't think that any of them are in peril here.
No one loves the Cleveland Union Terminal more than me, but plugging a skywalk into the face of Higbee's back side doesn't automatically make me shudder (the Public Square face, yes of course), but we do need discussion on how reversible it would be (the first principle of preservation, after all). Suburbanites have voted for indoor shopping with malls in past decades and whatever Legacy Village sorts of retro downtowns tell us, I suspect staying dry and warm is still a virtue for attracting them downtown (or even keeping some from moving to Florida). Sure, ya gotta be tough to live in Cleveland and all that, but let's realize that the notion of a city is evolving and skywalks might be something to incorporate, as sci fi illustrators have drawn for decades.
But more than anything, we as a preservation community need a lot, LOT better advance planning and tougher ordinances to identify the buildings, districts, skylines and vistas (a topic I'd like to pursue someday) that we really cannot live without and set up means of protecting them long before developers get this far into their planning.
Forgive me if all you were criticizing was the fanciful, ethereal nature of "renderings," which drive me mad sometimes too, but I think that's a separate issue and the very idea of a skyway is the most disturbing factor here, no?Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland OH, Cleveland Union Terminal, development, Higbee's, planning, preservation, skywalks
Broadway/Rockefeller Bridge to be Demolished
Today's
Plain Dealer announced that the
Rockefeller Bridge, closed since 2003, is slated by RTA to be demolished. This bridge was constructed in 1929 as part of the Cleveland Union Terminal (Terminal Tower) construction project in the '20s and '30s as the
Broadway Bridge. The recently-replaced Adelbert Bridge beside CWRU was another old C.U.T. concrete bridge that time has overtaken.
Labels: Broadway Bridge, Cleveland history, Cleveland OH, Cleveland Union Terminal, Rockefeller Bridge, RTA
Terminal Tower Souvenirs
Here's
a cool blog site about a private collection of souvenir objects that once were sold in the Terminal Tower. The blog says: These Terminal Tower souvenirs are charming reminders of the romance of train travel. And relics of a desire to take with us a sweet reminder of where we have been."
Labels: Cleveland Union Terminal, souvenirs, Terminal Tower
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
Adelbert Road Bridge: then & now
The recent
closing of the Adbelbert Road Bridge, linking CWRU with Little Italy, across the old Short Line, Nickel Plate and Cleveland Union Terminal railroad tracks, reminds me that we have
photographs of its construction in 1929-30, in our
Cleveland Memory Project's C.U.T. Construction Photograph Collection. Looking at these shots, there apparently was an earlier bridge, which was demolished and replaced with a longer, concrete span. It will be replaced by mid-2006, according to the city.
Labels: Adelbert Bridge, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland history, Cleveland OH, Cleveland Union Terminal
