Able to Leap Fenn Tower in a Single Bound!
Bill Becker, the CSU Archivist, just shared this document with me, which is a 1942 letter from the Dean of the School of Business at Fenn College, to the instructor of a drawing class, letting him know that Joseph Shuster, the illustrator of Superman comics, was enrolling in his class. He said:
Feb. 19, 1942
Mr. Hans Busch:
Yesterday I registered for the class in freehand drawing Mr. Joseph Shuster who is the artist who draws the SUPERMAN comic strip in our newspapers. I think you will probably find Mr. Shuster an interesting student and will be glad to work with him in terms of his individual needs and interests.
If you do not read SUPERMAN, please call at this office and I will introduce you to this particular branch of Literature.
P.R.A. [note, this is Dean Paul R. Anders]
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland OH, Fenn College, Joseph Shuster, Superman
Superman Signature Bridge
Howard Maier, Executive Director of the
Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency, recently sketched a whimsical drawing of a new signature bridge to replace the Innerbelt Bridge, where the iconic element is Superman, astride the deck, holding fistfuls of cable stays in his hands. The idea was to honor the Man of Steel in his birthplace, the City of Steel, as other supporters of Superman have been trying to realize.
I'm sure it's a well-received slide for his presentations, but it got me wondering how feasible it would be.
The current Innerbelt Bridge is 95 feet above the Cuyahoga, so let's say the new one has to be at least 100 high. Using the
proportions of the ideal human body, which Superman certainly should be, we find that the middle of the figure's thighs should be 3/8 of the total height. If the deck is passing mid-thigh on Superman, that means he'd be 267 feet high overall. The
Statue of Liberty is 151 feet high, without the pedestal, the
Colossus of Rhodes of ancient wonder was 107 feet high, the
Washington Monument is 555 feet tall, the
Terminal Tower is 708 feet high, and
St. Louis' Gateway Arch is 630 feet high. One structure the same size was
the original Ferris Wheel at Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition, at 260 feet, so Superman would certainly stand out, as Howard's drawing suggests, but not necessarily be impossible to construct.
Back to the ideal proportions, a figure that tall would have arms about 116 feet in length, hanging down to about the bridge deck. Angled out 45 degrees to either side, the span from one fist to the other would be some 164 feet and they would be 34 feet above the deck. I'm no bridge designer (and my trig may not even be up to this challenge), but I wonder if these fists would be in a position to properly support the river span section. Maybe a civil engineer will tell us.
Superman's crotch would be 33 feet above the deck, so the
federal standards for minimum overhead clearance of 17 feet is no issue. I doubt that there'd be any way to save the cape, however.
I'm sure this would be far more interesting than anything ODOT has planned for the bridge.
Labels: bridge aesthetics, Cleveland bridges, Cleveland OH, Innerbelt Bridge, signature bridge, Superman
Public art to identify Cleveland's past and neighborhoods
Last summer I went to New York on business and while touring Manhattan, I noticed that several districts had iconic art pieces, representing their function and/or their history. The large black bull of Wall Street is the best known example, but I also saw a oversized spool of thread and needle sculpture in the garment district and several other neighborhoods had site-specific art. I say this because recently I was looking at
photographs of Playhouse Square and despite the prominence of the theater marquees, historic black-and-white shots of the whole block don't really dramatically capture the idea of what is going on there (though maybe modern color ones do better). The marquees are surprisingly hard to detect against the background of the large buildings. Consequently, I'm imagining some sort of public art (Janus masks?) hanging suspended over Euclid Avenue at East 14th, as a means of announcing the location of the theaters from many blocks either way up Euclid.
That Manhattan trip was to talk to a library group out on Long Island and I started off telling them I was there to rescue some native Clevelanders who'd been captured by New York and take them home. One was John D. Rockefeller, another was Superman, and the third was Hart Crane, who while probably not a native, nevertheless probably started writing
"The Bridge" while looking at the Detroit-Superior Bridge, not the Brooklyn Bridge as it became later. Then last week, looking at the opening credits of the movie "Trading Places" I saw a montage of shots of Philadelphia neighborhoods and sculptures. A big one of
Ben Franklin operating his printing press, the
Rocky Balboa statue on the steps of the art museum, etc. All this tells me that we need to do more about our favorite sons and daughters than putting them in chairs in parks (
Hanna and
Johnson). I'd love to see a dynamic Superman statue somewhere* (
I realize that this has been proposed before) and one of crafty JDR, probably down by the river where the oil business started, although several other places around town are associated with him. Margaret Bourke-White and Garrett Morgan are a couple other names that come to readily to mind. Perhaps outdoor sculptures of people is passé, artistically-speaking, but the city needs something besides some of the abstract sculptures I see around that could be explaining more about Cleveland's history and operations.
* (Perhaps a spot along Euclid Avenue on the CSU campus would be a better spot for Superman than Playhouse Square, as it would be a better fit with the student population and would symbolize success though personal effort.)
Labels: Cleveland OH, public art, Superman
