The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the foremost art museums in the world, having internationally renowned collections that span the globe. Local industrialists Hinman B. Hurlbut, John Huntington, and Horace Kelley underwrote the museum's original endowment, and Jeptha H. Wade II (grandson of the Western Union Telegraph founder) donated the land. Planning for the museum unfolded in a series of fits and starts over nearly twenty-five years before construction finally proceeded. Designed by the Cleveland-based architectural firm Hubbell & Benes in the Neoclassical Revival style and faced with white marble quarried in Tate, Georgia, CMA opened to the public on June 6, 1916.

Wade's original donation of land for the museum included the stipulation that it be used "for the benefit of all the people forever," a vision that CMA embodied. From its inception, the museum was free two days each week and later became free year-round, apart from special exhibitions. Of similar importance, CMA embraced education as a focus. Whiting shepherded the formation of an educational department that offered many programs for children and adults. Later museum leaders continued to emphasize educational programs, including innovative uses of technology.

Inside the museum, notable features included the Armor Court, an enduring exhibit that resulted from the original museum director Frederic Allen Whiting's insistence on having a prominent collection of armor near the center of the new museum. Another important space, the Garden Court, featured a fountain pool, palms, and tropical plants, but nearly a century later it was transformed into a gallery of Italian Baroque paintings and sculptures.

Outside, the setting for the museum reflects early work by the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland (now Cleveland Botanical Garden), which originated in a boathouse on the east side of Wade Lagoon. The Garden Center hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.'s landscape design firm to fashion the Fine Arts Garden to complement the museum. The resulting design created a series of two outdoor "rooms" and otherwise embellished the sweeping vista from Euclid Avenue to the museum's south facade. Among the original installations were Chester Beach's Fountain of the Waters, a marble fountain and sculptures, and his twelve plinths representing signs of the Zodiac. The Fine Arts Garden opened in 1928. Ninety years later, the Nord Family Greenway opened a perpendicular vista that encourages people to move between the museum and the Maltz Performing Arts Center across Doan Brook.

In the post–World War II years, CMA became a fixture in the international art collecting circuit as a result of substantial bequests, including from the John L. Severance Fund. The arrival of Sherman Lee, who became the third director of CMA in 1958, did much to elevate the museum's stature. Originally from Seattle, Lee, who attended Western Reserve University and started his career as a curator of Asian art at the Detroit Institute of Art just before the war, oversaw a major expansion of CMA's Asian collection during his quarter-century tenure as director. Fortuitously, in the same year he became the director, CMA completed its first expansion and received a large bequest from Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Midway through Lee's time as director, the museum expanded again. Hungarian-born Modernist architect Marcel Breuer designed the addition, which opened in 1971.

Near the end of Lee's directorship in 1983, the museum opened its third addition. From there, the collection continued to grow — so much so that by the early 21st century, such a small proportion of CMA's collection could be displayed that another major expansion was necessary. This time, museum leaders opted to remove the 1958 and 1983 additions, neither of which was considered as architecturally significant as Breuer's 1971 wing. The museum's $350 million expansion, designed by Rafael Viñoly and completed in 2014, included the massive new Ames Family Atrium between the 1916 and Breuer buildings, flanked by new East and West Wings. The expansion, one of the largest construction endeavors in the city's history, reinforced CMA's stature among the leading art museums on the eve of its second century.

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The origins of Cleveland State University date to 1870, when the Cleveland Young Men's Christian Association began offering free evening classes in French and German. After a decade of sporadic course offerings, the YMCA's evening educational program became firmly established in 1881. In 1906, the YMCA combined its newly created day school with the evening program under the name Association Institute. Fifteen years later, it was renamed the Cleveland YMCA School of Technology.

The need to achieve accreditation led the YMCA to reorganize its educational program in 1930. At that time, the school was renamed Fenn College, in honor of Sereno Peck Fenn, who had served as president of the Cleveland YMCA for 25 years and as a board director between 1868 and 1920. College lore holds that another motivation for the name change was students’ desire for a more prestigious-sounding diploma.

With several private colleges in Cleveland, including Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, Fenn College focused on serving students for whom college otherwise would be financially unattainable. It offered a low-cost, high-quality education and became the second college in Ohio, after the University of Cincinnati, to adopt a cooperative education program. This model of alternating classroom study with paid employment was required for all day students and optional for evening students. Fenn also operated Nash Junior College, the first such program in the state, for a few years in the 1930s.

In 1937, Fenn College purchased the 22-story National Town and Country Club building at Euclid Avenue and East 24th Street. The tower had been conceived during the height of Cleveland’s Roaring Twenties prosperity. Composed of many of the city’s leading businessmen and professionals, the club broke ground only days after the 1929 stock market crash. Designed by George B. Post—the architect of the New York Stock Exchange and the Cleveland Trust Company—the building reflected the Art Deco style with strong Mayan motifs. 

Its lower floors contained resort-like amenities, including six bowling alleys, an English pub, formal dining rooms (one of them paneled with Macacauba wood from East Africa), a Turkish bath, a natatorium, a gymnasium, and handball and squash courts. Upper floors served as guest rooms for members and their guests from out of town. The tower’s crown featured a terrazzo-tiled solarium that even provided “ultraviolet ray equipment” to counter Cleveland’s dreary winters.

The club held only one event in the building before the Great Depression forced its dissolution, leaving the tower vacant until Fenn College acquired it. Renamed Fenn Tower in 1939, the former club provided much-needed classroom and office space and gave the college a prestigious Euclid Avenue address. Variously nicknamed the "Skyscraper Schoolhouse" and the "Campus in the Clouds,” the reconfigured Fenn Tower contained classrooms, a library, a gymnasium, a pool, student lounges, and other amenities—all within its vertical confines.

Throughout its history, Fenn College never operated at a deficit. By 1963, however, increasing operating costs, competition from the new Cuyahoga Community College, and rumors of a possible state takeover placed the institution under severe financial strain. That year, the college released A Plan for Unified Higher Education in Cleveland–Northeastern Ohio, calling upon the state to charter a public university in Cleveland, using Fenn College as its nucleus.

In his 1962 campaign for governor, James A. Rhodes proposed that every Ohioan should live within 30 miles of a state university. At the time, the nearest such institution to Cleveland was Kent State. On December 18, 1964, Governor Rhodes signed legislation creating Ohio's seventh state university, Cleveland State University, and announced the appointment of a board of trustees with James Nance as its first chairman.

For the next forty years, as CSU expanded westward along Euclid Avenue, Fenn Tower continued to serve a variety of functions, including classrooms, offices, and a class-registration and health center. Until the conversion of a former Holiday Inn into Viking Hall in 1986, the tower also housed the university's then-small residential population for about twenty years. In 2006, this once self-contained skyscraper “campus” for commuters became a dedicated residence hall, marking CSU’s first step toward developing a substantial residential student population.

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The demolition of Cleveland Municipal Stadium officially began in November 1996 and was complete by the following spring. In the fall of 1995, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell decided to move the city's football team to Baltimore. Angry fans began the demolition process themselves during the Browns' final home game in 1995, tearing out seats and taking other pieces of Municipal Stadium with them as souvenirs, knowing it might be their last time in the stadium. Part of Mayor Michael White's deal with the National Football League to bring an expansion team to the city included the building of a new stadium. The old stadium would be torn down to make way for a new lakefront facility. Coincidentally, Cleveland's Osborn Engineering Company, which, along with architectural firm Walker and Weeks, had been the main designer of Municipal Stadium, oversaw the demolition of the stadium that it had so proudly helped build more than 65 years earlier.

The construction of Cleveland Municipal Stadium was completed in 1931. It had a seating capacity of slightly more than 78,000, which gave the stadium the largest outdoor seating capacity of any stadium in the world. In 1928, Cleveland voters approved a $2.5 million bond to help pay for its construction, one of the first instances in which the public helped finance a sports stadium. The final cost of construction came in at around $3 million. On July 3, 1931, the first event at the stadium was held when heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling defeated Young Stribling. This also marked the first time that a heavyweight boxing bout had taken place in Cleveland.

The Cleveland Indians played their first game at the stadium on July 31, 1932, and played all of the 1933 season there, as well. Until 1947, however, the team played its weekday games at the smaller League Park, opting to play at Municipal Stadium only during weekends and holidays when a larger crowd could be assured. In 1948 and 1954 the stadium hosted Major League Baseball's World Series.

The Cleveland Browns began playing at Municipal Stadium in 1946 when they were a part of the All-American Football Conference (AAFC) -- a short-lived rival to the NFL. The Browns won all four of the AAFC's title games, three of which ('46, '48, '49) were held in Municipal Stadium. The Browns also had a perfect regular season (14-0) in 1948 and won the AAFC championship at the stadium that year by defeating the Buffalo Bills, 49-7.

After moving to the NFL in 1950, the team continued their success. The Browns played host to the NFL Championship Game (the precursor to the Super Bowl) in 1950, 1952, 1954, 1964, and 1968, winning each time except for the last. Today, the new Cleveland Browns Stadium (opened in 1999) sits on the site of Municipal Stadium.

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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 Bank (now W. 6th) Street, Lincoln walked onto the second floor balcony to greet the crowd of Clevelanders: "To all of you, then, who have done me the honor to participate in this cordial welcome, I return most sincerely, my thanks, not for myself, but for Liberty, the Constitution and Union." In 1931, the room in which Lincoln stayed during his visit was turned into a shrine to the late president. The public was welcome to visit, and fifteen presidents were among the many who visited the room. Other notable people who stepped through the Weddell House doors include the General Philip H. Sheridan, General George A. Custer, Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, and many others.

The famous Weddell House opened in 1847. Its 200 rooms were used for offices, stores, parlors, dining, a tavern, and overnight lodgings. Important and historical events took place in the five-story, brick and sandstone structure. In August 1851, the Weddell House exhibited the first sewing machine, an invention that would soon help expedite Cleveland's industrialization. Another example of the hotel's historic significance occurred on November 13, 1869. An organization for teachers that promoted educational and professional improvements — the North Eastern Ohio Teachers Association (NEOTA) — was formed and still operates today. By 1853 the popularity of the Weddell House was so great that a four-story addition was built on Bank Street to accommodate for the high demand for rooms.

In 1903, John D. Rockefeller became owner of the Superior Avenue portion of the Weddell House. After two years of construction, the original section of the historic hotel had been replaced by the Rockefeller Building, a design by Knox & Elliott, a local firm whose partners got their start working for Daniel Burnham in Chicago. The design emulated the celebrated Chicago School skyscrapers of Louis H. Sullivan. In 1910, four more sections were added in the same "Sullivanesque" architectural style. Offices in the new seventeen-story building were dedicated to iron, coal, and lake shipping. John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought the million-dollar Rockefeller Building from his father for one dollar. It was later passed into the hands of Josiah Kirby in 1920 who renamed the building after himself. The Kirby Building did not keep its new name for long. Rockefeller repurchased the property simply to change it back to its original name.

In recent years, the vacant Rockefeller Building has suffered from repeated vandalism and break-ins. The forlorn skyscraper is in desperate need of investors who see its historic value and adaptive reuse potential.

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When people think of the auto industry, they usually think of Henry Ford and Detroit. What most people don't know is that in the 1890s Cleveland was the automobile capital of America. One reason for this was a Scottish immigrant and bicycle company owner named Alexander Winton.

The Winton Motor Carriage Company went into business on March 15, 1897. Their first automobiles were built by hand. Each vehicle had fancy painted sides, padded seats, a leather roof, and gas lamps. B.F. Goodrich made the tires for Winton. By 1897, Winton had already produced two fully operational prototype automobiles. In May of that year, the 10-horsepower model achieved the astonishing speed of 33.64 miles per hour on a test around a Cleveland horse track. However, people were still skeptical of the new invention. To prove his automobile's durability and usefulness, Alexander Winton had his car undergo an 800-mile endurance run from Cleveland to New York City.

On March 24, 1898, Robert Allison of Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, became one of the first men to buy an American-built automobile when he bought a Winton for around $1,000. Allison had seen an advertisement for the car in Scientific American. Later that year the Winton Motor Carriage Company sold twenty-one more vehicles. One of those customers was James Ward Packard, who would later become the founder of Packard automobile company. It is believed that Packard was not satisfied with his car and complained to Winton. The story goes that Winton challenged him to do better. That same year, Leo Melanowski, Winton's Chief Engineer, invited Henry Ford to come to Cleveland for an interview at the Winton Company. Alexander Winton was not impressed with Henry and decided not to hire him. Henry went back to Detroit to continue working on his second Quadricycle. These miscues would eventually come back to haunt Winton.

More than one hundred Winton vehicles were sold in 1898, making the company the largest manufacturer of gas-powered automobiles in the United States. By 1901, widespread publicity continued to increase interest in the Wintons. That year, news that members of the wealthy Vanderbilt family had purchased Winton automobiles boosted the company's image substantially. It was around this time that Winton built a new factory complex at 10601 Berea Road, on Cleveland's far west side. Later that year, however, a Winton automobile lost a race near Detroit to one of Henry Ford's cars. Winton vowed to come back and defeat Ford. He produced the 1902 Winton Bullet, which set an unofficial land speed record of 70 mph in Cleveland that year. Despite its speed, 'The Bullet' was defeated by another Ford later in the year. The company received some positive publicity In 1903, though, when Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson made the first successful automobile drive across the United States in a Winton. The trip took 64 days, including breakdowns, delays while waiting for parts to arrive, and the time it took hoisting the Winton up and over rocky terrain and mudholes.

In the 1910s Winton continued to market his expensive, custom-made cars primarily to wealthy consumers. This would eventually lead to the company's downfall, as by the 1920s Winton was unable to compete with the less expensive, mass produced cars like those made on Henry Ford's assembly lines. In 1922, Winton made only 690 cars, and on February 11, 1924, the Winton Motor Car Co. ceased car production.

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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 Cleveland was built already had a long and proud history of lodging and hospitality. A popular tavern and hotel had existed on this site since 1812, the year that Phinney Mowrey opened Mowrey's Tavern. Mowrey sold the inn in 1820, and it was renamed twice (Cleveland Hotel and then City Hotel) before being destroyed by a fire in 1845. 

City Hotel was rebuilt in 1848 as the Dunham House, and in 1852 it underwent an expansion and assumed the name Forest City House and then remained largely unaltered for the next six decades. By 1915, the aging building was run down. In an attempt to revitalize the Public Square area, investors closed the old hotel and built a new 1,000-room Hotel Cleveland at a cost of $4.5 million. The Van Sweringen brothers purchased the hotel to make it part of their Cleveland Union Terminal complex in the 1920s. They reinforced the structure and dug a tunnel underneath the building to accommodate their rapid transit project. Subsequently, Hotel Cleveland became an integral part of the Union Terminal complex. The exterior of the hotel also served to balance the Terminal Tower building which was set at an angle on Public Square.

The fortunes of both the hotel and the Van Sweringen brothers diminished during the Great Depression. Whereas the Vans' empire fell apart, Hotel Cleveland and the Terminal Tower both survived the economic tempest. In 1958, the Sheraton chain acquired the hotel. The new owner promptly renamed the hotel the Sheraton-Cleveland and installed a new $5.2 million ballroom as part of its renovation. New owners and a new name did not guarantee success, however. The changing nature of Cleveland's downtown — transitioning from a retail focus toward offices and services — soon began to take its toll, causing the hotel to falter during the 1960s.

The hotel kept up its tradition of changing names and owners. Beginning in 1978, and managed by Stouffer Corp., the refurbished hotel reopened as Stouffer's Inn on the Square. In 1989, anticipating the opening of a new shopping mall in the old Terminal concourses, it was renamed the Stouffer-Tower City Plaza. Only four years later, in 1993, the hotel changed hands yet again. Purchased by Renaissance International, it became known as the Stouffer Renaissance Cleveland Hotel. In early 1996, the hotel dropped the Stouffer affiliation and became simply the Renaissance Cleveland, part of Marriott's Renaissance brand. After losing this affiliation for a few years, it underwent an extensive remodeling before reopening in 2024 as part of Marriott's Autograph Collection under its original name, Hotel Cleveland.

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As the clock neared midnight on Halloween in 1897, a band of boys armed with hatchets and axes descended on the intersection of Scranton and Clark Avenue. In the spirit of the holiday, the weapon-toting youths began their vicious attack on the neighborhood's most peculiar structure--a 23 foot-high fence. The eyesore had been constructed three weeks prior as part of a dispute between neighbors D. Z. Herr and M. Moon. Following Moon's raising of a barn, Herr stacked boards to build the absurdly tall wall in an effort to block the view. Herr, convinced that his neighbor was attempting to strong-arm him into purchasing his property, refused to remove the barrier until the barn was removed. Moon declared that the fence did not bother him. As the vandals chopped away at the "spite fence," Herr emerged from his home and tried to intervene. Quickly restrained by the hoodlums, Herr watched as the structure was torn down and transported to a nearby vacant lot. The noise generated by the disturbance had attracted a crowd of hundreds from surrounding blocks, who idly looked on as the boards were doused with coal oil and set on fire. By the time the police arrived, the neighborhood had joined the boys in singing and dancing wildly around the flames. The police sat by and watched, but strangely were unable to identify any of the boys despite their best efforts. No arrests were made. When the fire finally died down, a sign was erected on the site: "Here lies the remains of the fence that Herr built."

At the turn of the 20th century, Halloween in Cleveland offered a night of excess and structured chaos for the city's children and young adults. Similar throughout the United States, this ancient holiday that symbolically transgressed the boundary between life and death provided communities a moment of release from social norms. Mischievous acts that would generally be deemed as impermissible by community standards were overlooked, and even encouraged. Adults openly reminisced on their past exploits, and children were expected to aid fairies, witches and imps in a night of delinquency. Reflective of the festivities that occurred at the intersection of Scranton and Clark avenues, a perceived shift in communal roles underpinned the holiday tradition. Most often, though, Halloween night offered an outlet of revenge and sense of retribution for the city's powerless youth. It would have been no surprise to any adult that had crossed local children to experience the wrath of vengeful spirits come Halloween night.

Every November 1st, Cleveland newspapers provided a familiar list of pranks and acts of vandalism that had occurred during the prior evening. A description of a "quiet" Halloween by the Cleveland Police in 1905 recounts what was fairly standard fare for the night of celebration. Iron and wood gates were torn from their hinges, doors were tied to verandah posts, windows in grocery stores were broken for some light looting, a wagon was rolled down an embankment and set ablaze, an occupied chicken coop was relocated to the roof of a home, a six-foot tall barricade was placed in a major intersection, bonfires were set in residential streets, and Wade Park pond became a receptacle for stolen items of all sorts. Other Halloween traditions included chalking doors, ringing house-bells, pelting homes and policemen with produce, leading livestock into church steeples, and throwing dummies in front of automobiles and streetcars. Arrests were uncommon, and generally reserved for the most disruptive offenders.

While hooliganism would remain a public expectation through the mid century, a tradition of "handouts" became commonplace in Cleveland by the late 1930s. Masked children began to show up on doorsteps, chiming "we want a handout." While this tradition of blackmail can be traced to Old-World roots of the holiday, it first found favor in some Cleveland neighborhoods at about the time of the first World War. The costumed beggars were treated with cookies, popcorn balls, candy, doughnuts and cider. This precursor to "trick-or-treat," however, was just one aspect of a much larger change in how the holiday was celebrated. Largely due to the effects of Halloween's commercialization following the turn of the century, the holiday was gradually co-opted by adults; the popularity of costume parties and festive public events grew, and traditional festivities were increasingly sanitized. By the end of the 1950s, Halloween had ceased to be a night for hell-raising throughout the city. The holiday tradition of flipping social roles did not completely disappear, however, as the pranks and vandalism of yesteryear provided credence to the empty threats of masked marauders extorting payment from their community.

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Art Modell. The very mention of his name in Cleveland still stirs up vitriol. In 1963 he angered many by firing legendary Cleveland Browns coach Paul Brown, only two years after Art assumed principal ownership of the team. Most was forgiven in 1964 when the Browns won the NFL championship; but for decades after, Art was regularly criticized for meddling in on-field affairs. More bridges were burned in 1986 when the Ohio Supreme Court declared that Modell had enriched himself unfairly through the buying, operating and selling of Stadium Corporation, a company he founded to manage Municipal Stadium. Acrimony reached the stratosphere in 1995 when Art announced that he was moving the Browns to Baltimore.

The loss of the Browns — a blow from which many Cleveland sports fans have not fully recovered (even though the team name, colors, and traditions were salvaged when the NFL awarded Cleveland an expansion team in 1999) — is inseparable from the history of Jacobs Field, as the new stadium was known before Progressive Insurance acquired naming rights. That history is filled with perennial disappointments on the playing field for the Browns and Cleveland's professional baseball team, the Indians.

From the beginning of the 20th century, Cleveland Indians home games were played at League Park (also known as Dunn Field) at Lexington Avenue and East 66th Street. Beginning in 1932, some Indians games were staged in the newly built Cleveland Municipal Stadium on the city's lakefront. After 1947, the Indians used Municipal Stadium exclusively. Built as a multipurpose facility, Municipal Stadium began hosting football in 1946 — the year the Cleveland Browns came into being as part of the All-America Conference (the team joined the National Football League in 1950). By the early 1970s, the forty-year-old stadium was aging and needed major repairs, which the financially strapped City of Cleveland could not afford. In 1973, Art Modell agreed to lease the stadium and take responsibility for its upkeep. Over the years his Stadium Corporation made much more money from the stadium than it paid the city in rent, in part because Modell refused to share with the Indians any of the revenues from the 108 loges he added in the mid-1970s.

By the early 1980s, plans surfaced for a domed stadium that might house both the Indians and the NBA Cavaliers. At the same time, Cleveland State University was planning a convocation center for its basketball team, concerts, and university events. At Governor Richard Celeste's urging, the university agreed to study the feasibility of building a larger domed stadium that would serve CSU’s needs as well as those of Cleveland’s pro baseball and basketball teams. Researchers subsequently concluded that such a combination facility would lose money unless the Indians dramatically improved their dismal attendance. Advocates claimed a domed stadium would stimulate downtown revitalization and boost civic pride. Skeptics noted that the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, and the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans had fallen short of expectations and required constant public subsidies to break even. Many believed that the Indians didn't deserve a new home and that any money spent on the franchise should be used to field a team worthy of attracting larger crowds. Unsurprisingly, voters refused to foot the bill—rejecting a property tax issue to fund the dome in May 1984.

The Indians had threatened to leave Cleveland before, in 1958 and 1964, prompting emergency campaigns to "save the Indians." And when owner F.J. “Steve” O'Neill died in 1983, the Cleveland Indians’ tenancy was once again under threat. Salvation came in the form of sibling developers Richard and David Jacobs, who acquired the team in 1986. The newly formed Greater Cleveland Domed Stadium Corporation began assembling land around the former site of the old Central Market, just south of Prospect Avenue at East 9th Street and Carnegie Avenue. But even though the Jacobs family pumped new life into the Indians franchise, Art Modell continued to demand a new 20-year lease on Municipal Stadium in return for his agreement to make much-needed improvements. Among the most serious problems were structural concerns, antiquated restrooms, a paucity of concession stands and poor field drainage. The situation was chaotic: Art was adamant. CSU was going forward with its convocation center. And now the Domed Stadium group was proposing two stadia: an open-air baseball field and an adjacent arena to lure the Cavaliers back from suburban Richfield.

In May 1990, voters approved a 15-year "sin tax" on sales of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes to help fund what was now being called the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex. Combined with Jacobs money, the new Jacobs Field was built in what has sometimes been called the "retro-modern ballpark" style first used a few years before for Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Like Oriole Park, Jacobs Field aimed not only to revive a city's fan base, it also sought to stimulate downtown development and build upon Cleveland's "comeback" under George Voinovich, Cleveland's counterpart to "messiah mayor" William Donald Schafer of Baltimore.

On April 4, 1994, President Bill Clinton threw the ceremonial first pitch at the new Jacobs Field. Roughly 18 months later, the Indians appeared in their first World Series since being swept by the New York Giants in 1954 (the Tribe lost the ’95 Series to Atlanta in six games). Jacobs Field enjoyed a record 455 consecutive sold-out home games between 1995 and 2001. That same period marked the demise and rebirth of the Cleveland Browns. Art Modell, who had steadfastly refused to participate in the effort to build the Gateway complex, incurred millions of dollars in revenue losses when the Indians departed for Jacobs Field. Already burdened with excessive debt, Art turned his back on the crumbling Municipal Stadium and reestablished the Browns as the Baltimore Ravens in 1996.

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In 1979, the year that Ian Hunter released “Cleveland Rocks,” the Wall Street Journal proclaimed Cleveland the nation’s “Rock and Roll Capital.” The city had earned this reputation through the influence of WJW disc jockey Alan Freed, Record Rendezvous owner Leo Mintz, jukebox supplier and, later, Agora Theater operator Hank LoConti in breaking emerging talent. It didn’t hurt that downtown Cleveland also housed many of the leading record companies’ warehouses, which supplied a seemingly insatiable demand for rock among Cleveland youth. Despite the city’s strong reputation as a rock and roll town in the 1970s, Cleveland was suffering a dismal decade economically. At a time when Cleveland had become the butt of jokes on national television, few could have imagined the city’s landing one of the world’s most iconic shrines to rock and roll.

The idea for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was conceived by Atlantic Records founder and R&B producer Ahmet Ertegun. Ertegun and other music industry luminaries formed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983 in hopes of creating a permanent shrine to rock music. The Foundation planned to locate the new facility in Manhattan, close to the heart of the recording industry, and at first few outsiders had any inkling of the plan. In Cleveland, Hank LoConti and his friends separately envisioned a museum to honor the city’s seminal role in popularizing rock music, particularly local disc jockey Alan Freed’s coining of the term “rock and roll” and hosting the first rock concert, the Moondog Coronation Ball, in 1952.

Through Norm N. Nite, a Cleveland native with close ties to New York’s music scene, LoConti learned of the Foundation’s plan for a rock and roll shrine. Nite agreed to present Cleveland to Ertegun as an alternative site for the Rock Hall. Nite opened the door for a contingent of Cleveland boosters to present their case to the Foundation. Armed with letters of support from Cleveland’s leading cultural institutions, the group highlighted Cleveland’s claim as the cradle of rock—including Freed and the Moondog Coronation Ball; the role of LoConti’s Agora and radio station WMMS in breaking new talent (including David Bowie, Rush, and Bruce Springsteen); and longtime music businesses like Record Rendezvous and Record Revolution—as well as the fact that a Rock Hall would be a singular tourist attraction in Cleveland but only one among many competing points of interest in Manhattan.

After a July 1985 visit to Cleveland by Foundation leaders, the Foundation decided to hold a national competition to host the venue. The race to land the Rock Hall was on, with Cleveland, Memphis, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Philadelphia as leading contenders. All cities vying for the Rock Hall pointed to the star power behind their respective bids. San Francisco used (Jefferson) Starship’s hit “We Built This City” as a theme song for its bid. Cleveland claimed support from Michael Jackson, the Kinks, and some 50 other musicians. As the selection process progressed, the choice narrowed to Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Spurred by WMMS, 120,000 listeners voted for Cleveland as the Rock Hall site in a USA Today poll. Then Cleveland backers gathered 600,000 signatures on a petition that the Greater Cleveland Growth Association presented to the Foundation in New York. They banked on more than just the city’s preeminent historical stake in the genre—turning to the city and state governments and local Foundations, which collectively raised $26 million to lure the Rock Hall. Thanks largely to these efforts, the Foundation selected Cleveland in May 1986.

Once Cleveland got the nod, attention turned to a site. Early prospective locations for the Rock Hall included the lakefront, Public Square, the Flats, Playhouse Square, the Mall, and a couple of sites along Huron Road behind the Terminal Tower. Ruling out the adaptive reuse of an old building, Rock Hall officials opted for a “signature building” at the urging of architect I. M. Pei, whom the Foundation retained to design the hall despite his public admission that he knew little about rock music. The Foundation selected Tower City as the preferred site. Pei’s original design included an 18-story glass tower overlooking the Cuyahoga River with a concourse connecting to the Tower City Center complex.

Relations between Cleveland and New York soured by 1989, notably when the Foundation announced it would keep induction ceremonies in Manhattan rather than moving them to the Cleveland Rock Hall. In addition, Clevelanders’ tax dollars would be required, thus diverting millions of dollars away from the city’s school system—a stark contrast to what a Plain Dealer editorial called “a rock ’n’ roll industry grown fat on its successes.” The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s construction cost ballooned to $100 million, four times the original budget. When a record store opened inside Tower City in 1990, Rock Hall officials became angry and began to look at other sites besides Huron Road, which they now claimed was too small to permit construction. After several anxious months, a new site was chosen on city-owned land at North Coast Harbor. With the new location came a reduction in height. Pei’s glass tower was too tall to place so near Burke Lakefront Airport. Instead a shorter tower and glass pyramid design emerged, evoking the slanted glass wall of his Louvre design. The Rock Hall opened in September 1995.

While Cleveland civic leaders rightly lauded the Rock Hall as a coup for the city’s image and economy, many musicians and fans were ambivalent; a few were outright hostile to the very idea of a museum for rock and roll. In contrast to the music industry leaders who saw the Rock Hall as a means to foster mainstream appreciation for rock and roll’s cultural impact, many saw irony in the formal enshrinement of rock and roll, an art form often associated with rebellion and counterculture. As one reporter observed of the first induction ceremony in New York in the 1980s, “Once the sole-soul property of gifted wild men who shocked America with their three-chord songs, rock ’n’ roll is now so middle class it was accorded a most civilized honor…. It was given a dinner.”

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Kenyon V. Painter (1867–1940) grew up on the 25th block of Euclid Avenue. His father, John Vickers Painter, a wealthy banker, railroad man and associate of John D. Rockefeller, purchased 8.5 acres in Cleveland Heights and hired Frank Skeel to design a summer home for his family. After the elder Painter’s untimely death in 1903, his wife and son Kenyon continued construction. The 65-room Jacobean-style house, completed in 1905, was situated on a property covering more than 50 acres. After serving as a summer refuge for more than a decade, the estate became the family's permanent home in 1915. Mr. Painter followed his father into a successful banking career with Cleveland’s Union Trust Company.

Painter was a product of the Gilded Age. His wealth and stature afforded him many luxuries and hobbies, including expensive automobiles, big game hunting in Africa, and flirtations as an inventor (Painter sought a patent for a novel golf ball design in 1903). As an automobile enthusiast, Kenyon received one of Cleveland’s earliest speeding tickets for traveling along Rockefeller Parkway in 1901 at twice the 10 mph limit. In 1903, he “ran over” a young boy at a downtown intersection, breaking the boy’s collarbone and shoulder. Painter’s chauffeur took the boy to Lakeside hospital. The police arrested Kenyon, who posted bond, claiming the boy ran out in front of his car. It is plausible that Painter's social status helped his case. Among his well-connected friends was former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he shared safari resources during his frequent hunting trips to the African continent.

Despite his seemingly freewheeling nature, Kenyon Painter also sought to establish familial roots. He married Mary Chisholm in 1889. They had one daughter who died in 1894. Mary died in 1901, and soon after, Painter married Maud Wyeth. They would have four children but again suffer the loss of a daughter in 1921 – somewhat ironically, in an automobile accident.

Painter's globetrotting safaris often mixed leisure with business. Kenyon and Maud honeymooned for three months on a safari in German East Africa, one of 31 extended hunting trips between 1907 and the 1930s. During these trips, Painter established investments near Arusha, Tanganyika, where he developed an 11,000-acre coffee estate, and built Arusha’s first post office, church, hospital, hotel, and coffee research facility with an $11 million investment.

Kenyon Painter's passion for wild animal trophies and specimens manifested itself on his Cleveland Heights estate grounds. In 1928, Tudor details were added to the mansion in addition to a garage, a stable, zoo and aviary, playhouse, and a small house for Painter's secretary. His trophy room surpassed any other and his two aviary facilities were filled with specimens personally secured when visiting foreign countries. The New York Zoological Society documented his bird collection in its September 1913 bulletin. The writer lauded “Painter’s aviaries as excellent examples of what can be done in private enterprise… Everything possible was done for the comfort of the birds…” He went on to document the birds in the collection, noting it “is cared for by a very intelligent Italian woman, and the uniformly perfect condition of her charges attests her skill in handling them.” In time, Painter would donate birds to the Cleveland Natural History Museum and to Cleveland Brookside Zoo to support the ornithology collections.

Like many fortunate sons, Painter may have taken for granted the privilege that his father's fortune afforded him. In 1935, he was involved in a notable financial fiasco. As the director and major stockholder of the Union Trust Bank, Painter borrowed nearly $3 million and was unable to pay it back, causing the bank to fail. He was sued and sentenced to prison in Columbus but fell ill and was hospitalized. Ohio Governor Davey pardoned the conviction and Painter returned to the estate where he lived quietly until his death in 1940.

Painter's life was marked by adventure and intrigue, loss and disgrace, excessive wealth and financial disaster. Philanthropy is perhaps his most lasting legacy. Painter's donations to the Natural History Museum and Cleveland Zoo helped both organizations start their ornithology collections with contributions following his early safaris. The Natural History Museum documents letters of thanks for the donation of a Turaco and parrot in 1930 and cites catalogs of his earlier donations. The zoo indicated Painter's donations included a Japanese robin, two black-headed parrots, two Indian geese, an Australian parakeet, two cranes, four Singapore doves, a silver pheasant, a South African golden oriole, and a South African black-breasted dove. Upon the sale of his estate in 1942, Painter's widow, Maud, donated his remaining aviary of 500 birds to the Cleveland Zoo.

Likewise, the sprawling Painter Estate found a new life. Shortly after Kenyon Painter's death, the Ursuline Academy (a school for girls at East 55th Street and Scovill Avenue in Cleveland since 1893) was in need of more space. On February 21, 1942, Maud Painter agreed to sell her Cleveland Heights mansion and property to the Ursuline Sisters for use as an educational facility. The sisters modified the house for classrooms and a library and used auxiliary buildings for related school facilities, including a gymnasium in the main trophy room where Kenyon had once kept his prized specimens. In 1943, they renovated the Aviary building. By 1964, the sisters built a new school building on the property with classroom space for 540 students, a new gymnasium, dining room, chapel, and administrative offices. The Aviary and Trophy Rooms were converted to house the Fine Arts Department. As the school progressed through the 20th century, additional facilities were added on the grounds and the mansion was used to house the nuns and for administrative offices and functions.

In 1979, the Painter Estate was declared a Cleveland Heights Landmark. It also has been featured on the Heights Community Congress’s “Heights Heritage Tour.” Despite its historic significance, the future of the Painter Estate is unclear. By the turn of the 21st century, studies were commissioned to explore options to renovate and utilize the mansion for schooling functions once again. Cost estimates to maintain or convert the mansion space were prohibitive for the nuns. They sold the property and building to Beaumont School in July 2009 and some administrative functions remained in Painter’s house. By 2017–18, Beaumont School administrators and directors removed staff from the building for safety and maintenance concerns and subsequently adopted a plan to demolish the mansion and use the land for athletic facilities. The City of Cleveland Heights resisted action on the plan but ultimately granted the school's request for demolition in 2026.

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Youth culture writer Jane Scott noted, in an article for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a handwritten sign hung in the broadcast booth at the first WMMS office that read, “Never play three electric tunes in a row. Never play three acoustic tunes in a row. Be real. Be good. Have fun. Be tight!” The sign was penned by Billy Bass, one of the first disc jockeys employed by the station. The article, published in early 1972, provided a glimpse into the mindset driving one of Cleveland’s newest cultural phenomena. WMMS was, at the time, an underground, progressive-rock radio station gaining traction among the city’s youth for its unique catalog and culture-savvy deejays, who were boldly airing music that reflected the period’s anti-war, anti-establishment, and anti-conservative sentiments. The station would continue to grow, and would later be responsible for breaking such acts as David Bowie, Rush, and Bruce Springsteen. Bass, and the rest of the WMMS crew, would revolutionize the radio industry – and mark Cleveland as the “Rock and Roll Capital of the World.”

Rock and roll, as a genre, was not born in Cleveland. But the genre was forever linked to the city when Cleveland deejay Alan Freed coined the term for the rhythm-and-blues records he was playing on his radio show for WJW-AM. Following his Moondog Coronation Ball in 1952, regarded as the first rock ‘n’ roll concert, the city was flooded with bars and clubs boasting live music, attracting the coming-of-age Baby Boomer population, and creating a prevalent youth culture within the city. In August of 1968, local AM station WHK debuted its first FM sister-station under the name WHK-FM. A few weeks later, the call letters were changed to WMMS. This new station became the first in Cleveland to feature full-time progressive rock programming.

The crew solidified their format in the early 1970s, officially becoming an album-oriented rock station and challenging the standards of radio broadcasting. They began airing “Coffeebreak Concerts,” mid-afternoon acoustic performances from popular local, national, and international artists, free for all listeners. They played songs that, subliminally or overtly, criticized war or politics. They quickly gained a loyal following of young rockers who, bored of their declining Midwest city and empowered by the student, feminist, and civil rights movements of the previous decade, were finally seeing themselves embodied in public media. The mid-’70s saw the debut of several on-air acts who would become household names in Cleveland, including Matt “the Cat” Lapczynski, later host of the Coffeebreak Concerts, Lawrence “Kid Leo” Travagliante, afternoon-drive host, late-night rocker Betty “Crash” Korvan, and Jeff Kinzbach and Ed Ferenc, cohosts of the “Buzzard Morning Zoo,” also known as “Jeff and Flash.”

The bizarre, irreverent antics of these deejays became a source of power for WMMS and were reflected in multiple aspects of the station’s programming and persona. The station ran PSAs promoting safe abortion services, much to the dismay of local conservatives. When corporate management insisted that they run more commercials, deejays discreetly fought back by playing humorous sound effects over the ads. Outside of the studio, WMMS staff made appearances at local events such as sponsored concerts and community gatherings, including a rally at nearby Cleveland State University advocating for youth voices and participation in government.

The station’s mascot itself exemplified their cheeky brand of humor. After a failed run of advertisements featuring the call letters as signifiers of the phrase “Where Music Means Something,” orchestrated by corporate leaders (leading some locals to adopt instead the phrase “Weed Makes Me Smile”), WMMS personnel took the reins and employed an artist to create an official logo. This artist, Jane Tiburski Elliot, drew a logo featuring a large mushroom shading a blissful-eyed alien as he smokes a joint. This, however, obviously did little to negate the claims that WMMS promoted drug use and it was dropped by management in 1974. Again, the station needed something new. As the story goes, program director John Gorman was driving home through the east side of Cleveland one night contemplating his work and its role within the city when he was struck by the first idea for what would become the buzzard. He describes it in his memoir as “A bird of doom for a dying city whose centerpiece was a crumbling building with the name ‘Terminal Tower.’” Gorman employed American Greetings card illustrator David Helton to create what is now one of the most recognizable mascots in rock radio history. With a sly grin, a mane of blond hair, and his common accessories of guitars and mushrooms, the Buzzard became the face not only of WMMS, but of Cleveland. The figure would later be printed on merchandise of all kinds – apparel, keychains, stickers, and so on – and stood as a symbol of the city’s perseverance.

In the station’s glory days, generally considered to be the mid-’70s through the late 1980s, it enjoyed soaring ratings. Music director and deejay Denny Sanders claims that of the 1.7 million people living in the Cleveland metropolitan area at the time, around 700,000 of them were WMMS listeners. Outside of Northeast Ohio, WMMS gained national recognition. It won the Rolling Stone magazine nationwide readers’ poll for “Best Radio Station” nine years in a row. Wall Street Journal writer Robert Werner noted in a 1979 article that “The primal energy of hard rock and roll apparently captures and abounds here [in Cleveland] more effectively,” largely due to the influence of WMMS. In the 1980s, it was WMMS deejays leading the lobby for the newly-conceived Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to be built in Cleveland, promoting on-air and to any Rock Hall board members that would listen that Cleveland was really the rock and roll capital of the world (a nickname coined years before by deejay Billy Bass), and in the late ’80s, the Rock Hall was constructed on the shores of Lake Erie.

WMMS, however, saw a period of decline in the 1990s, in both popularity and credibility. Increasing corporate oversight led to format changes and employee turnover as a few of the station’s most recognizable names, including Gorman, Sanders, “Kid Leo,” and “Jeff and Flash” departed. A Cleveland Plain Dealer article published in 1988 exposed an in-office memo addressed to staff from upper-management demanding they fill out hundreds of Rolling Stone poll ballots, leading to local outrage and a loss of national respect. The station is still in operation today, though new management has moved away from much of the station’s classic branding.

Though WMMS never quite recovered from corporatization or scandal, the legend of WMMS remains. The WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s revolutionized radio. The WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s gave a new, heartfelt nickname to a city once commonly referred to as “the mistake by the lake.” The WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s was progressive, was loud and obnoxious, was obscene, and was one-of-a-kind. But the WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s had to come to an end. “Kid Leo” was quoted in a Cleveland Plain Dealer article in 1989 saying, “We were a family that lived, worked, and played together… The station was like a family dinner table that went on 24 hours a day.” That same article quotes John Gorman: “These kinds of utopias don’t last.” It’s true – WMMS did not, in essence, last – but its influence on the culture of Cleveland is everlasting.

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James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens, widely considered to be one of the greatest American athletes of the 20th century, was born in 1913 in Oakville, Alabama. His parents, Henry and Emma Owens, were sharecroppers who, like thousands of other African Americans living in the South in the post World War I era, decided to leave and migrate to one of the industrial cities of the North. By 1922, Henry and Emma and their eight children had moved to Cleveland and were renting a house on Hamilton Avenue near East 21st Street. The area was home to a small enclave of African Americans who lived within a larger ethnic neighborhood composed predominantly of immigrants from Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and Serbia.

Jesse, as he would later come to be called, was the family's youngest son. According to an interview he later gave in 1961, he made friends with the Polish boys in the neighborhood who were his age, saying that the color of his skin did not seem to matter to them. Like his father and older brothers who worked in the nearby steel mills, Jesse also worked in his new neighborhood, finding employment as a shoe shine boy at a nearby shoe repair shop on St. Clair Avenue.

In 1926, when he was 13 years old, his family moved to a house on East 90th Street, just south of Cedar Avenue. The move may have been prompted by his mother's discomfort in the Hamilton Avenue neighborhood. Years later, Owens remembered her keeping the window blinds closed all day and rarely venturing from the house unless accompanied by a member of her family. The family's new house was located in a part of the Cedar-Central neighborhood, east of East 55th Street, where many middle class and professional black families were settling in the 1920s.

The Owens family's relocation to East 90th Street would make all the difference to Jesse's future. He was enrolled in the sixth grade at nearby Bolton Elementary School and it was there that he acquired the name "Jesse" when his teacher asked him what his name was and he responded, with a Southern drawl, "J.C. . . Owens." Even more importantly, it was at Bolton where Owens was introduced to Charles Riley, a playground supervisor there. Riley was also the track coach at Fairmount Junior High on East 107th Street, the school where Owens would be attending the following year. Riley devoted himself to working with underprivileged youths and soon took Owens under his wing, training him every day before school started, often also bringing breakfast to the underweight boy. When Jesse started seventh grade at Fairmount the following year, Riley, seeing his potential, convinced him to try out for the track team.

It didn't take long before Cleveland began to take notice of track star Jesse Owens. Local papers reported in March 1928 that he took first place in the high jump at the annual Cleveland Athletic Club Indoor Meet held at Cleveland Public Hall. A year later, as an eighth grader competing at the same meet, he won three events--the high jump, the 40 yard low hurdles and the 40 yard dash--setting meet records in two of them. In March 1930, he returned to the Cleveland Athletic Club indoor meet at Public Hall for the final time as a junior high student, setting a new record in the high jump, besting the old record by more than two inches.

In the fall of 1930, Jesse Owens started high school at East Tech on East 55th Street. The joy of beginning high school may have been tempered, as it likely was for many other Cleveland students, by the deepening of the Great Depression which had struck America the year before. Just prior to its onset, Jesse's father was injured in a car accident and lost his job at the steel mill. Even after he recovered, he was not hired back. Jesse's older brothers also lost their jobs at the mill as the national economy slowed. To survive, Henry and Emma, along with the families of several of their adult children, moved in together into a two-family house at 2211 East 95th Street. Later, this extended family moved into a larger house at 2178 East 100th.

While his family struggled to just survive, Jesse thrived in high school, especially in sports. By this time, he was the only one of Henry and Emma Owens' eight children who had not dropped out of school to work and help support the family. Although he excelled in several sports in junior high, Owens was persuaded by East Tech's principal to now focus exclusively on his best sport, track and field. He also gave up the high jump--at the time arguably his best event--because East Tech already had a good jumper in future Olympic silver medalist Dave Albritton. Owens believed that he could best contribute to the success of his team at track meets by concentrating on the broad jump and several of the sprint events.

After a string of victories and record-setting performances at various track meets during his first two years at East Tech, Owens decided to try out for the 1932 Olympic team. At the tryouts held in June in Chicago, he found himself competing against older and more seasoned athletes and, despite performing well for a high schooler, he did not make that Olympic team. In his senior year, the high schooler bounced back, especially at the National Interscholastic Championships, where he won the long jump, as well as the 100 and 220 yard dashes, setting new national interscholastic records in all three events. The City of Cleveland honored Owens afterwards with a parade and a personal meeting with Mayor Ray T. Miller, who presented him with a laudatory city resolution.

As his high school years at East Tech came to a close, Jesse Owens publicly announced in August 1933 that he had decided to attend college at Ohio State University, where he planned to continue his amateur track and field career. It was a decision that angered leaders in the black community in Cleveland and elsewhere who referred to the university as "color-line Ohio State," because of its unfair treatment of black students at that time. According to Owens' principal biographer, however, Owens made his decision based solely upon which college he believed would best enable him to continue to contribute to his family's support.

Jesse Owens' support obligations had increased at the beginning of his senior year in high school when his girlfriend Ruth Solomon gave birth to their first child. From that point on, Owens added the obligation of supporting his child to what he felt was a continuing obligation to help support his parents. In the 1930s, colleges did not offer athletic scholarships in track and field. Therefore, for a track and field athlete like Owens, the only way to both attend college and meet family support obligations was to find a job that would enable him to do both. Ohio State offered him such a job, arranging for him to be hired as an elevator operator at the State House in Columbus while attending college. According to Owens, he made enough money at this job to not only pay his school tuition and personal living expenses, but to also send money home every week to both his mother and to Solomon, whom he married in Cleveland in 1935.

At Ohio State, Jesse Owens continued to win and set records in the long jump and sprint events. In May 1935, he achieved international fame and became a favorite for the 1936 Olympics to be held in Berlin, Germany, as a result of his performances at the Big Ten Championship Meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, just days after being hospitalized for a back injury sustained in a fall down a flight of stairs on Ohio State's campus, he won the long jump, the 220 yard low hurdles, and the 100 yard dash, setting world records in all three events. One year later, at the Berlin Olympics, Owens won four gold medals--in the long jump, 100 and 200 meter dashes and as a member of the 400 meter relay team. He returned home to the United States to parades in New York City and in Cleveland. While some writers at the time contended that Hitler had snubbed Owens at the Olympics, historians have subsequently noted that the real snub he received was from President Franklin D. Roosevelt who, fearing to offend Southern Democrats, failed to even congratulate Owens, much less invite him to the White House.

Jesse Owens' Olympic victories signaled the beginning of the end of his days in Cleveland. After being honored with a parade in Cleveland for the second time, he looked for work in Cleveland but found very little that provided compensation commensurate with the level of success he had experienced at the Olympics. Since 1933, when not attending classes in Columbus, Owens had worked in Cleveland as a filling station attendant at Alonzo Wright's Sohio gas station at East 93rd and Cedar. He now hoped that Cleveland would give him a better paying and more prestigious job, but the City instead offered him a position as a playground supervisor which paid an annual salary of only $1,600.00. He later referred to the combination of grand parades which honored him and the meager jobs which were offered him as "parades and poverty."

For several years following his Olympic experience, Owens explored businesses opportunities in Cleveland and elsewhere. One was the Jesse Owens Dry Cleaners store, which he and several business partners opened at the corner of East 100th and Cedar in 1938. Within a few years, however, the business failed, bankrupting Owens and causing a bank to foreclose on the house at 2187 East 87th Street which he had bought for his parents in 1936. According to a Call and Post news article, Owens was able to later buy a second house for them on Westchester Avenue in the Glenville neighborhood. However, just two weeks after moving into this house, Jesse's mother died. Two years later, his dad died, and, shortly after that, Jesse Owens departed Cleveland for good, accepting a management job in Detroit with the Ford Motor Company. Later, he moved to Chicago where he lived for most of the rest of his life. In 1980, Jesse Owens died at age 67.

In 1982, Cuyahoga County honored Jesse Owens by commissioning a statue of him which was placed in Huntington Park, just to the west of the Cuyahoga County Court House. More recently, in 2022, University Circle unveiled plans to honor Owens by constructing the Jesse Owens Olympic Oak Plaza at Wade Park. The plaza, located just north of the Rockefeller Lagoon, is (as of May 2023) partially constructed. Its centerpiece is an oak sapling which was cloned from the last of the surviving oak trees given to Owens by the German Olympic Committee in 1936 to commemorate his four Olympic gold medals. Were he alive today to witness these postmortem honors from the County and now University Circle, Inc., Jesse Owens might thank them but at the same time remind them that "parades" alone will not reduce "poverty" in underserved communities like the ones he lived in when he called Cleveland his home.

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The ten-story Rose Building took its name from its developer, an English immigrant and pioneer in the meatpacking industry. In 1854 Benjamin Rose and Chauncey Prentiss established Rose & Prentiss, later renamed Cleveland Provision Company, which embraced refrigeration and other innovations early and was the city’s largest packinghouse for more than a century. With the fortune he amassed selling cuts of meat, in 1898 Rose commissioned architect George Horatio Smith to design what would become Ohio’s largest office building.

When the Rose Building was constructed, Erie Street (now East 9th), was on the eastern fringe of downtown, but Rose cleverly dubbed the intersection “The New Center” and used this slogan to entice businesses that might otherwise have considered the location too distant. Indeed, the Rose Building stood out. Its first five stories were sixteen feet high, while floors six to ten were eleven feet high. The choice to make the ceiling height of the lower floors so much higher than usual was reportedly Rose’s wish. 

Upon its opening in 1900, the building’s primary tenants on the lower floors included Lederer Furniture, Scott Dry Goods, and offices of the White Sewing Machine and Cleveland Gas & Electrical Fixture companies. The upper floors contained doctors’ and dentists’ offices, an artist’s studio, a correspondence school, and the offices of fifteen oil companies. In its early years the Rose Building also hosted many exhibitions, including the works of Cleveland artists, a Slavic craft fair, and even a mock Congressional session.

In 1908 Rose was poised to stake out the next speculative “new center” of downtown. He bought out the St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church on East 9th across from Erie Street Cemetery with plans to build a twelve-story office building, but before he could carry out the plan, he died during a trip to England. Instead of burnishing his reputation in life as a visionary developer, in death Rose seeded the legacy for which he is known today. In 1909, the Rose Building gained a new tenant. Tucked away in small, sparely furnished office on the tenth floor was the Benjamin Rose Institute. Funded by Rose’s $3 million bequest, it used the office to review applications for small pensions to enable elderly men and women to afford to remain in their own homes.

In 1984, the Institute sold the Rose Building to Medical Mutual of Ohio, which had located its headquarters there in 1947. Medical Mutual owned the building until 2000, when it sold it to California-based BentleyForbes and leased its space. When the owner fell into foreclosure, Medical Mutual bought the building back in 2017, but its future in downtown was anything but certain. After much deliberation, Medical Mutual vacated the Rose Building in 2023 and merged its operations in its Brooklyn, Ohio, offices in the former American Greetings headquarters. While pessimists might quip that Benjamin Rose's doubters were ultimately proven right, the Rose Building's now much more central location makes it a likely candidate for a new lease on life.

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— Louis Jordan, 1946

Sylvester G. Crosse, known to many as Gay Crosse, was born in 1916 in Mobile, Alabama. The exact year that Crosse and his family arrived in Cleveland is unknown. However, by the early 1930s, Crosse attended Central High School, where he played in the school's marching band. Crosse was known for being a talented vocalist and saxophonist who had the ability to charm any crowd. Two years after he graduated high school in 1934, Crosse and his band were under contract with the Amusement Service Bureau, which scheduled a small tour for Crosse and his orchestra to play at different local events and venues.

Crosse’s career as a musician in Cleveland skyrocketed in the 1940s. Crosse’s band, by then known as Gay Crosse and His Hellions, had a Saturday night residency at The Lucky Bar, sometimes called “The Lucky Room,” at 9812 Cedar Avenue from November 1941 until 1944. Crosse and his orchestra then played a six-week engagement at the newly opened Blue Grass Club located on the second floor of 2173 East 55th Street from December 1944 to February 1945. After his successful six-week engagement at Blue Grass Club, Gay Crosse and His Hellions were given a contract by Music Corporation of America (MCA), one of the largest agencies at the time with offices in London, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Cleveland. Crosse returned to Blue Grass Club in October 1945 and played for a total of 27 months before parting ways in February 1948 to pursue other engagements. While Crosse grew the crowd of patrons at the Blue Grass Club during his two-year residency, he was also coming into national prominence when Crosse’s idol “the King of the Jukebox” Louis Jordan made him his protege in 1946. Jordan told a Call & Post reporter backstage at the Palace Theater, “Cleveland won’t appreciate Gay Crosse until he leaves here, plays the East, makes a success, then comes back.” Louis Jordan gave Crosse advice throughout his musical career and the two remained friends for many years.

After Gay Crosse and his band left Blue Grass Club in 1948, they began touring in July 1948 and were placed under new management with the Mason James Agency of Asheville, North Carolina. This tour was comprised of several one-night shows in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. Gay Crosse’s tour band included pianist Charlie Ross, bassist John Lathan, vocalist Walter “Mouse” Carson, trumpeter Eddie Harris, and an additional saxophonist Baron Lee. After their tour ended in the fall, Crosse and his band returned to Cleveland and played several nightclub venues. In 1949 Crosse and his band now known as Gay Crosse and his Good Humor Six landed a record deal with Capitol Recording Company. Crosse and his Good Humor Six released their first record for the label titled “Light Up and Relax.” At this time, Crosse noted that his band was trying to abandon the “Louis Jordan” style which they had come to be associated with, for a more modern be-bop style of music arranged by the band's pianist, Charlie Ross.

Crosse played several shows at Frolic Show Bar, a “black-and-tan” establishment in Detroit’s midtown in the winter of 1949. In early 1951, Crosse and his Good Humor Six briefly played at a popular club in Chicago called the Brass Rail and then made their way to Camden, New Jersey, and performed as the house band at Chubby’s, a popular restaurant and nightclub. That same year, John Coltrane began to play the tenor saxophone for the Good Humor Six. In March 1951, with the band's newest edition, the Good Humor Six played an extended engagement at Gleason’s located at 5219 Woodland Avenue. From June to early July of that same year, the band played a nightly show at Prospect Avenue’s Loop Lounge. Crosse and the Good Humor Six then returned to The Lucky Bar for the remainder of that summer. The band at this time which included John Coltrane also welcomed new members late in 1951. Specks Wright joined the band as a drummer and had previously played with Dizzy Gillespie. Crosse also welcomed a new trumpeter, James Robertson, who once played with Earl Hines’s band. These new members along with the band’s veteran musicians, played at Towne Casino, a popular mixed nightclub on Euclid Avenue near 105th Street, from January to February 1952. In early March to May 1952 Crosse and the Good Humor Six played at The Rose Room, previously known as Heat Wave inside Cleveland’s Majestic Hotel. The band played their new record, “Fat Sam From Birmingham” recorded for the Gotham label, which was a popular hit at the Rose Room. The band played at Club Ebony, sometimes referred to as the Ebony Lounge between East 69th and Cedar Avenue in November 1952. Crosse and his Good Humor Six played nightly shows at Club Congo, located on Woodland Avenue beginning in March 1953 to May 1954

While flourishing as a talented musician in Cleveland, Crosse decided to grow in prominence as a successful businessman. Crosse was the owner of Gay’s Hotel and Drive-In Bar-B-Q which was located at 2117 East 83rd. Gay’s Hotel in its early years was referred to as “Gay’s Tourist Home” which opened in April 1954. Gay’s Musicians and Entertainers Club was located next door to Gay’s Hotel at 2123 East 83rd and also opened that same year. Gay’s Drive-In Bar-B-Q opened in the rear of Gay’s Hotel in 1956.

It appears that Crosse and the Good Humor Six had parted ways in the late ’50s. This may be due to Crosse’s focus turning more towards his business pursuits rather than continuing his musical career. Gay Crosse experienced ongoing health issues during the later years of his life, and in 1971, at the age of 54, Crosse passed away due to complications during an open heart surgery performed at the Huron Road Hospital. Gay Crosse established a successful career as a popular jazz musician, both locally and nationally. Crosse became one of Cleveland’s most successful African American businessmen in the mid-twentieth century. His ability to entertain and charm the patrons of the numerous nightclub locations in Cleveland helped maintain Crosse’s image as one of the city’s best musicians of the time.

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From 1877 to 1908, Miss Mittleberger’s School for Girls educated middle- to upper-class daughters from the Cleveland area, as well as those from out of state. The girls who attended Miss Mittleberger’s School received an extensive education while also creating lifelong bonds with their classmates. Many of the young women educated at Miss Mittleberger’s School went on to attend prestigious women’s colleges such as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley.

Headmistress Augusta Mittleberger was born on September 13, 1845, to Canadian immigrant and prosperous coal and produce merchant William Mittleberger and Augusta Margaret Beebe of Oneida County, New York. Mittleberger had two younger brothers, William Jr. and Alexander. Mittleberger’s status allowed her to receive an education, and in 1863, she graduated from the Cleveland Female Seminary, located on Kinsman Avenue between Wallingford Court. (E. 45th Place) and Sawtell (E. 51st Street). Mittleberger was passionate about education and began tutoring students shortly after she graduated. From 1868 to 1869, she taught both History and Latin at the Cleveland Female Seminary. By 1874, Mittleberger joined the faculty of the Cleveland Academy, located on the north side of St. Clair Avenue, where she remained until her father died in 1875 after a battle with Bright’s disease, when Augusta was 30 years old.

Shortly after, Mittleberger decided to independently teach young girls in her private residence on Superior Avenue, where the Cleveland Public Library is located today. In 1877, Mittleberger's School moved to a house on Prospect Avenue just west of Willson Avenue (now E. 55th Street) and then, soon after, to another location on Prospect just west of Case Street (now E. 40th Street). In 1880, Mittleberger’s ability as an educator had captured the attention of many prominent families. To accommodate the growing number of students, she needed a larger location to support the expanding school. One notable family interested in her work was the Rockefellers. John D. Rockefeller and his wife, Laura, had two houses facing the southwest corner of Euclid Avenue and Case Street (E. 40th). One of these remained on the land and served as their home, and the second was relocated to the southeast corner of Prospect and E. 40th. This move was one of the first attempts in Cleveland to be successful, and it had cost the Rockefellers approximately $10,000 to $17,000.

The Rockefellers, who valued education, rented this space to Miss Mittleberger. By 1881, the building had become the home of Miss Mittleberger’s School for Girls, located at 1020 Prospect Avenue (now the 4100 block of Prospect Avenue), until its closure several years later. Fifty students attended Miss Mittleberger’s School that year, and the number of pupils enrolled continued to increase with the larger building in use.

One common misconception was that Miss Mittleberger’s School operated as a “finishing school” for upper-class women to learn the social and domestic etiquette to prepare them for high society and marriage. While courses on deportment and home skills were offered to the “girls of ten-twenty,” there was a rigorous course schedule in Miss Mittleberger’s Academic Department for girls between the ages of 14 and 19. Some of the many courses available included Algebra I-III, Astronomy, Art History, Basic Arithmetic, Bible, Botany, Clay Molding, Chemistry, Drawing, Elocution, English I-IV, French, Geometry, German, Greek Language, Greek History, Gymnastics, Latin, Spelling, Virgil Prose, and Wood Carving.

Mittleberger’s school also accommodated students of all ages. The school also had kindergarten, primary, and intermediate departments. The kindergarten and primary departments were co-ed, and the intermediate department, along with the academic department, was strictly for girls. Students in the academic and intermediate departments documented their daily lives in the school's monthly newspaper, The Interlude. This student paper included poems, fictional pieces, jokes, jingles, updates on staff, and descriptions of day-to-day activities in or around the area.  Miss Mittleberger’s School had many notable alumnae throughout its years of operation. For example, Belle Sherwin was the senior class president in 1886. Fanny Hayes, the daughter of Rutherford B. Hayes, attended before leaving for school in Connecticut, and Mollie Garfield, the daughter of President James A. Garfield, also attended between 1880 and 1883 before leaving for the same school in Connecticut. 

In March of 1908, Miss Mittleberger announced that she was retiring and that the school would be closing. That June was the last commencement for Miss Mittleberger’s School, which was held at the First Baptist Church on the corner of Prospect and East 46th. Festivities and a celebration were held for the graduating class and Miss Mittleberger herself. Additionally, an Alumnae Association was established, and many of the women involved attended the final commencement to pay their respects and share fond memories of their classmates and their beloved headmistress. The Alumnae Association raised approximately $25,000 to endow the Mittleberger Memorial Kindergarten and gifted Miss Mittleberger with a purse of money that they wanted her to use for a vacation to Europe for some much-needed rest. Many of the remaining students who did not graduate that June transferred to the Laurel School to finish their education while still honoring their roots as the girls of Ten-Twenty. 

Augusta Mittleberger dedicated her life to educating young women in Cleveland, Ohio. Her passion for teaching and serving as a role model for her students is evident in the many reminiscences of the women who attended and received a well-rounded education. Even after her retirement, Mittleberger dedicated her time to furthering the Mittleberger Memorial Kindergarten and her memorial scholarship, which supported two Cleveland-area senior students for many years. Augusta Mittleberger passed away on August 3, 1915, and was laid to rest at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio. 

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In 1943, Central National Bank sold its slender 17-story headquarters building at 308 Euclid Avenue to the F. W. Woolworth Co., which later demolished the building for a much shorter retail store (now the House of Blues). The bank continued to lease space in the “matchstick” building until it opened its new headquarters in 1949 in five floors of the Midland Building at West Prospect Avenue and West 2nd Street. Central National also acquired property at 509 Euclid near the northwest corner of East 6th Street to build a “service bank” convenient for downtown shoppers. The separation of main operations from transient services was part of an emerging postwar banking trend in large cities. The bank's purchase of 509 Euclid prompted the termination of Clark's Paul Revere Restaurant's lease, ending the eleven-year run of this replica of the silversmith and Patriot Revere's Boston home. 

The new five-story, air-conditioned Central National Bank Euclid Avenue Office, designed by Conrad, Hays, Simpson & Ruth of Cleveland, opened with fanfare in November 1948. With its facade of imperial red Swedish granite, stainless-steel geometric panels, plate-glass windows, and six-foot electric clock, it could not have been more different from the rustic, log-sided Paul Revere Restaurant. As a Cleveland Press reporter observed, “modernity prevail[ed]” inside as well. The ultra-modern building featured the first “moving stairway” (escalators) to be installed in a Cleveland bank. Its first and second floor lobbies featured terrazzo floors, white oak paneling and furniture, and formica counters in the tellers’ cages under a "luminous ceiling" like that in the United Nations Security Council chamber at Lake Success, New York.

The new building’s cost ultimately exceeded its million-dollar budget by a quarter, leading Central National to lease most of the three upper floors to other firms to offset its expense. Less than four decades after it opened, Central National’s Euclid Avenue branch closed quietly in 1986 after being sold to Ohio Savings Association as a real estate investment. Ohio Savings also acquired adjacent buildings, giving it control of everything between the Arcade and East 6th. Ohio Savings in turn sold to developers who built a parking garage in 2005 and, in 2019, completed the Beacon apartments above it, lending a new ultra-modern look to the block.

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The Shaker Players trace their origins to Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. In 1919, a small group of young church members organized a play to raise funds for a new church building. They could hardly have known that this modest effort would grow into a community theater organization lasting for decades. From the start, the group drew on a wide cross-section of Shaker Heights residents. Business leaders, educators, and civic figures participated both onstage and behind the scenes, ensuring the theater was both artistically vibrant and socially embedded.

The troupe originally called themselves the Shaker Village Players, reflecting their role as a grassroots community project. Their first productions demonstrated a commitment not just to entertainment but also to strengthening the civic bonds of Shaker Heights during its formative years as a suburb. By the 1920s and 30s, the Players had become a fixture of Shaker Heights life. Their productions were staged with professionalism that belied their “non-professional” label, leading the group to be recognized as the oldest non-professional theater company in the region.

Part of their longevity came from a strong set of traditions that reinforced the sense of family within the company. One such tradition was the Women’s Committee'spotluck supper on the Sunday before opening night, where the cast and crew shared food and camaraderie. After the final curtain, the group held a celebratory Saturday night party, a chance to reflect on weeks of hard work. Regular meetings were also held on the second Tuesday of every month in the Shaker Heights High School auditorium, further cementing the rhythm of the group’s activities. These rituals gave the Players stability and continuity. They also reflected the communal ethos of Shaker Heights itself, which valued civic responsibility, social cohesion, and the arts as a marker of local identity.

From the beginning, the Shaker Players benefited from strong organizational leadership. Founders like Rachel Cochran guided the group in its earliest years, while later directors and committee members ensured continuity through decades of change. Many of those involved were prominent members of the Shaker Heights community, which lent credibility and stability to the organization.

Today, remembering the Shaker Players offers more than nostalgia. It highlights the enduring importance of community arts organizations in shaping civic culture. Just as their founders intended back in 1919, theater became not only a means of raising funds or providing entertainment but also a way of building connections among neighbors. From their beginnings as a church fundraiser to their recognition as a cornerstone of community life, the Shaker Players exemplify the vitality of grassroots theater in America. Their story is filled with dedicated volunteers, creative productions, and cherished traditions that spanned decades. While the Players may no longer be active today, their history remains a vital chapter in Shaker Heights’ cultural narrative. They demonstrated how theater, when rooted in community, can thrive for generations and leave behind a legacy that continues to inspire.

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Cleveland’s ethnic rich identity took shape mostly after the Civil War as the Second Industrial Revolution made the city a hub of manufacturing and a strategic location for the distribution of products. Much of the manpower that drove its development came from eager southern and eastern European immigrants seeking new opportunities in the United States. As a result, the city's population came to reflect an increasingly rich mixture of cultures. 

In 1917, the Cleveland Americanization Committee began sponsoring a series of monographs about the city's various ethnic and national communities. The project’s intent was both to teach American customs to new immigrants and to educate Americans about the customs and culture of their new neighbors. As in other American manufacturing cities, Cleveland saw people of like-minded cultures settle in compact geographic areas that enabled them to continue to share their language and customs. Distinct neighborhood ethnic "pockets" emerged between the 1870s and 1920s as Slovaks, Slovenes, Magyars (Hungarians), Poles, Italians, Croatians, Lithuanians, Russians, and immigrants of other origins arrived. The committee served these newcomers in their neighborhoods with citizenship classes and English as a Second Language classes offered in 27 languages.

One of the committee's monographs, The Italians of Cleveland, appeared in 1919 and explored the evolution of Cleveland's Italian communities over the previous forty years. Its author, Charles Coulter, characterized Italy as economically, socially, and culturally divided. Northern Italy was home to the upper class, educated, business-industrial ‘aristocracy’ of the country while the south of Italy was characterized by the uneducated, agricultural and labor peasantry “who form the base of the pyramid of Italian society.” This profile influences our understanding of the story of Cleveland’s Little Italy. Prior to 1870, Cleveland’s population was primarily Anglo-Saxon, with a smaller immigrant population having German and Irish backgrounds. The eastern and southern European migration had not yet begun.

Giuseppe (Joseph) Carabelli was born in April 1850 in Lombardy, north of Milan. Growing up in the northern city of Como, he studied the sculptural and stonecarving trades. At age 20, he immigrated to New York and worked to perfect his skills. He gained early recognition sculpting building adornments as a government employee for both federal--the New York Post Office and state--The Capitol in Albany, the Boston Common Lions, and buildings in Maine. He arrived in Cleveland in 1880 and partnered with James Broggini to form the Lakeview Granite and Monumental Works. The partnership rapidly dissolved and by 1886 the business became the Joseph Carabelli Company. Located across from the main entrance of Lake View Cemetery, the firm capitalized on the growing grave monument market. Broggini later opened his own monument works on Woodland Avenue near a cemetery there.

As Carabelli's business expanded, his need for skilled laborers drove him back to Italy, this time to the southern regions of Abruzzo and Molise to recruit stone masons to Cleveland. The ensuing response was ambitious as families sought to settle and work in the new country. Upon arrival, Carabelli would counsel and guide the immigrants to work and live in his neighborhood south of the cemetery, which was called the East End at that time. They instantly became the backbone of his company, and the neighborhood filled with Italian immigrant families and became known as Little Italy.

While his granite business thrived, Carabelli's civic and social interests excelerated within the community. He was regarded as the leader of Cleveland’s Italians and ultimately known variously in the media as the 'boss', 'leader', and 'ruler' of the ‘kingdom’ of Little Italy. By the late 1890s the community was fully established and Carabelli promoted a neighborhood nursery and kindergarten to assist working parents; with John D. Rockefeller’s help, it grew into the Alta House. He conducted ‘classes’ for young men at his residence in the arts and sculpture and established fraternal societies that live on today, binding the Italian community. Carabelli became influential in local politics and was welcomed by the city’s leadership for his community involvement. He won a term in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1908 and promoted the recognition of Columbus Day as an official Ohio holiday in 1910. He was routinely acknowledged in the local newspapers as a benevolent civic leader; prior to the mass street naming plan in 1906, East 123rd Street was called Carabelli Street.

Although grave markers were the main focus of his business, Carabelli's influence spread further. A number of monuments in the city also feature his work: The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument column on Public Square, Wade Chapel, and the Rockefeller, Brush, John Hay, and Steinbrenner monuments in Lake View Cemetery. Additional monuments in Elyria, Willoughby, and other Ohio cities, as well as in several major U.S. cities outside the state, feature his company's work. One local project that no longer exists was the portico entranceway to the Citizens Building (now Tiffany Glass Building) on Euclid Avenue near East 9th Street. Carabelli designed and carved the work for the original construction, which was removed in a subsequent 1924 facade renovation.

Joseph Carabelli died on April 19, 1911, and is interred at Lake View Cemetery along with his family members. Carabelli Monument Works continued under the leadership of his sons. John Iacobucci Johns worked at the Carabelli Company between 1931 and 1937 and rejoined the Carabellis to merge businesses in 1971 after the death of Joseph Carabelli III. The company is called the Johns-Carabelli Company, and has continued to expand the memorial business under the leadership of the Johns family.

Carabelli's legacy lies in stone monuments but also in the neighborhood he did so much to sculpt. His artistic mentorship, support for newly arrived immigrants, and civic leadership earn him distinction in the story of Cleveland's Little Italy.

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Frank L. Jirouch was born to Czech immigrant parents in 1876 on Case Avenue (later East 40th Street) in a part of the Hiram House neighborhood later razed for the Northern Ohio Food Terminal. He attended the Fowler School in the Broadway neighborhood to the south before leaving at the end of his eighth-grade year in 1892 to work at White Sewing Machine in the Flats. Within a year, a banking “panic” plunged the nation into depression. By 1896, the unrelenting slump had claimed his machinist job, but Jirouch already knew his future was as a sculptor. 

Opportunity knocked in 1900, when he learned that the Prudential Life Insurance Company was expanding its Newark, New Jersey, headquarters and was employing woodcarvers for interior work. Jirouch moved to Newark, working that job in the daytime and studying architectural modeling at night at the Mechanics Institute in Midtown Manhattan. After a year, he encouraged his friend, Cleveland woodcarver George J. Fischer, to join him on the Prudential project. Upon returning to Cleveland in 1902, the friends founded the Fischer & Jirouch Company in a tiny building at the corner of Huron and Middle Streets (now a grass plot across from Rocket Arena). Their specialties included decorative plaster relief sculptures and wood-carved interior elements. As they built their reputation, they soon found their studio too small, so they moved in 1906 to a larger building at Scovill Avenue and Erie Street (where the Innerbelt Freeway passes over East 9th Street today). Continuing to grow, Fischer & Jirouch moved once again, in 1910, to an even larger three-story building on Superior Avenue near East 49th Street that allowed ample space for their factory and a showroom. 

In the first three decades of the 20th century, the work of Fischer & Jirouch appeared in many new downtown office buildings, hotels, and theaters, as well as institutional landmarks. A partial list includes the Union Trust Building, Guardian Trust Building, Hanna Building, Ohio Bell Telephone Building, Cleveland Public Library, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Hotel Cleveland, the Alcazar and Sovereign Hotels, Park Lane Villa, the Hippodrome, Allen, State, and Palace Theaters, John Hay High School, Tomlinson Hall at Case Institute of Technology, Severance Hall, and St. John’s Cathedral. F&J also maintained an architectural modeling department that produced plaster scale models to guide building projects by Walker & Weeks, Hubbell & Benes, and other Cleveland-based architecture firms. 

The company also published catalogs and advertised regularly in the Plain Dealer in the 1910s and 1920s. Its products ranged from architectural features such as brackets, capitals, classical figures, columns, corbels, cornices, crown moldings, finials, friezes, gargoyles, lunettes, mantels, medallions, pilasters, and rosettes to lawn and garden embellishments—benches, bird baths, fountains, lawn furniture, lily pools, pergolas, peristyles, rose arbors, sundials, and urns. Fischer & Jirouch's ads worked to cultivate a public taste for artful living. In one such ad in 1917, the firm acknowledged the role of the lawn mower in popularizing the “undecorated lawn” but urged making “the garden an outdoor part of the home as well as a beautiful setting for the house.” Even if one did not envision outdoor sculpture, another 1918 ad suggested, “Make the birds your friends by placing a bird bath in your garden. It is beautiful, ornamental and instructive for the children.” 

During the years that Fischer & Jirouch was ornamenting some of the city’s most important buildings and filling homes and gardens with decorative sculpture, Frank Jirouch was becoming prominent in his own right as a sculptor. After studying art at the Cleveland School of Art and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts during the World War I years, he continued his studies at Académie Julian in Paris from 1920 to 1924. When he returned to Cleveland, Jirouch began to win many commissions, most notably to sculpt a decorative sundial titled Night Passing the Earth to Day for the Fine Arts Garden overlooking Wade Lagoon. He designed some two dozen busts in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, as well as the fifteen heroic bronze eagles that flanked the bridge entrance to the 1936 Great Lakes Exposition.

The disruption of the housing industry during the Great Depression and World War II, followed by a postwar trend toward simpler contemporary styles, shrank the market for decorative sculptural work. Five ornamental plasterwork companies in Cleveland closed during the depression years, but Fischer & Jirouch survived as a result of its reputation as the city’s foremost such firm. F&J had employed sixty workers at its peak, but by the 1950s only twenty craftsmen continued to produce sculptural works, utilizing only half of the available space. The company’s elaborate showroom closed as a result of the diminished public interest in its products.

In 1956, Fischer and Jirouch sold their business to longtime employee Theodore N. Takacs, whose Hungarian-born father also worked there. After Takacs died in 1966, his wife Helen headed the company for another eleven years, long enough to see an uptick in business following the emergence of historic preservation in Ohio City in the late 1960s. While Cleveland’s nascent restoration movement was hardly sufficient to sustain the firm, F&J’s national reputation—and the fact that by 1978 it was one of only four surviving ornamental plasterwork manufacturers in the United States—enabled it to draw most of its business from out of state. With more than 4,000 molds, the company was able to produce virtually any adornment a history-minded client might desire. In addition to serving home restorers, Fischer & Jirouch also began to supply plasterwork used by movie and television stage set designers. F&J items appeared in Erica Kane’s living room on the ABC soap opera All My Children and in movies including The Age of Innocence, A Bronx Tale, and Ghostbusters. 

In 1977, Corrado Mattei and Louis Cretoni, originally from Italy, bought the business from Helen Takacs. Like Theodore Takacs, Mattei had worked for the company for more than two decades before acquiring it. By the mid-1990s, Fischer & Jirouch was one of only two decorative plasterwork firms in the nation, with a crew of just “four Italians, three Filipinos, and a pair of Romanians.” As had been true for the company’s entire history, the plant operated quietly, with all work still done by hand. The firm continued to use its building on Superior Avenue well into the 21st century under the leadership of Corrado Mattei’s son Robert. In 2024, after the owner retired, the Fischer & Jirouch building was listed for sale, but the illustrious decorative arts firm's legacy did not end. Chicago-based Royal Corinthian acquired the company and still uses 1,700 of its original molds. Although Fischer & Jirouch is no longer based in Cleveland, its legacy endures locally in countless buildings, houses, parks, and gardens, as well as in the surviving molds that continue to introduce the firm's designs into new settings.

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The largest of the railroad brotherhoods which established headquarters in Cleveland in the late 19th or early 20th centuries was the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. Both a labor union and a fraternal benefits society, it represented the interests of almost all of the various classes of railroad employees which were not represented by the other members of the Big Four—the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, and the Order of Railroad Conductors of America. Among the classes of railroad employees represented by the Railroad Trainmen union were flagmen, baggagemen, ticket collectors, dining car stewards, yard masters, hump riders, and car tenders.

The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen was founded in 1883 in Oneonta, New York. Its first national headquarters was in Galesburg, Illinois, and its next in Peoria. In 1899, it decided to move its national headquarters to Cleveland, based upon Cleveland's cheaper rents, better printing and mailing facilities, higher rates of interest on savings accounts, and its very favorable living conditions. At the time the Trainmen union decided to move to Cleveland, it already represented more than 35,000 railroad employees. (By 1921, the year in which construction of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen Building was completed, that membership number skyrocketed to 187,000.)

Upon arriving in Cleveland, the Brotherhood established its headquarters in leased offices on the top floor of the American Trust Building, a building which then stood on the west side of the northwest quadrant of Public Square. The Trainmen maintained their headquarters in this building, which in 1920 was renamed the Ulmer Building, from 1899 until 1921.

In 1920, reportedly because of an increase in rents in the newly-named Ulmer Building, the Brotherhood decided to build their own headquarters building in downtown Cleveland much as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers had on the southeast corner of Ontario Street and St. Clair Avenue in 1903, On January 5, 1921, the Railroad Trainmen purchased land on the northeast corner of West Superior Avenue and West 9th Street, immediately to the west of the Perry-Payne Building, for their new building. 

The purchase quickly made news. Within 24 hours of the recording of the deed, both the Cleveland Press and the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the Railroad Trainmen were planning to build a headquarters building in Cleveland. The parcel of land that the Trainmen had purchased was relatively small—it had less than 50 feet of frontage on West Superior and was only a little more than 100 feet deep on West 9th Street—and on it stood the National Bank Building which had been erected on the land in 1869.

Notwithstanding all that, the land was very historic. On it, in 1806, Nathan Perry, one of Cleveland's first merchants, had built and operated a trading post, one of Cleveland's first commercial businesses. His son, also named Nathan, replaced the trading post a decade later in 1819 with the first brick commercial building erected in Cleveland. The land was also historically significant because it had been in the Perry, or Perry-Payne, family for more than a century. While the land had been put to different uses in the 19th and early 20th centuries, ownership of the historic parcel had always remained in that family.

The Brotherhood purchased land from the Perry Payne Company, an Ohio corporation formed in 1898, following the death of Henry B. Payne, and one to which his heirs had transferred their interests in all of his properties, including this one, in exchange for shares in the company. C. W. Bingham, a prominent hardware merchant, and husband to one of Henry and Mary Perry Payne's daughters, signed the deed as president of that company, transferring the land out of the Perry-Payne family.

At the time that the land was purchased, the President of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen was William G. Lee, a former railroad conductor who had subsequently become a very prominent union leader in the railroad industry. It was said that he always held himself up as a man of honor. When, in 1920, a number of locals had struck a railroad without the Brotherhood's consent, he immediately expelled them from the Brotherhood. He had, at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, also been very instrumental in settling a nationwide railroad strike that had imperiled the nation's transportation network. It was thus likely William G. Lee, on behalf of the Brotherhood, who negotiated the purchase of the land from the Perry-Payne Company, even though the actual deed listed three trustees of the Brotherhood as the purchasers. It was also likely Lee who approached architect Charles S. Schneider in late 1920 or early 1921 with a request that he design an office building for the Brotherhood to replace the National Bank Building then standing upon the purchased land.

Architect Charles S. Schneider was Cleveland-born and Cleveland-educated. He is best known for designing mansions for the wealthy in the early twentieth century. In 1912, he had notably designed the 64,500 square foot Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, which to this day is said to be Ohio's largest mansion. In 1921, he turned his attention to designing an office building for the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. The building that he designed, and which replaced the National Bank Building on the northeast corner of W. Superior Avenue and West 9th Street, is ten stories tall, with its tenth story hidden behind the upper facade of the building, making it appear to have only nine stories. Its exterior is constructed of steel and Bedford limestone. Contractor Sam W. Emerson Co. began construction of the building in early 1921 and completed it by November of that year at a cost of $800,000 to the union. In May, construction work had been temporarily halted as the result of an ongoing strike by Cleveland's building trades. However, while the strike itself continued, the bricklayers and laborers working on the site quickly agreed to return and work for pre-strike level wages, likely in order to help out the members of a fellow union.

Once construction of the new headquarters building was completed, the Brotherhood occupied offices on the top four floors and leased out the remaining six floors to outside tenants. With the completion and occupancy of this building, Cleveland became home to two buildings that were built as headquarters for two of the largest railroad unions.

In the year that the Railroad Trainmen building was going up, there was also speculation that a third member of the Big Four railroad unions—the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen—which was already headquartered in Cleveland as a lessee in the Guardian Building on Euclid Avenue, was planning to build a headquarters building too. It had earlier purchased land for that purpose on the northeast corner of W. Superior and West 6th Street. However, while it continued to maintain its headquarters in Cleveland, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen eventually elected not to build that headquarters building. There was also talk in that year of the fourth member of the Big Four railroad unions—the Order of Railroad Conductors—moving its headquarters from Des Moines, Iowa, to Cleveland, but that too did not materialize at this time.

The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen occupied their building on the northeast corner of W. Superior and West 9th from 1921 until 1944. As early as 1931, according to an article appearing in the Plain Dealer in May of that year, the Trainmen contemplated selling their building because membership had communicated to their leaders that they should devote all of their efforts to labor and not divert any of those efforts to running business enterprises. The Trainmen, however, continued to retain ownership of the building until 1946 when they sold it. Two years before doing so, they moved out of the building and into the Standard Building—owned by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers—citing a need for "more space."

In the eighty years that now have passed since the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen moved from and then sold its historic headquarters building on West Superior Avenue, the Railroad Trainmen building has seen several different uses. From 1946 until 1985, it was leased by the Ohio Bell Telephone Company, initially to serve as offices for the company's northern division and its commercial, traffic and planning divisions, and then later for other offices and divisions of that company. In 1985, the building was purchased by new owners and, with the aid of historic preservation tax credits, it was renovated with the total cost of purchase and renovation amounting to five million dollars. Since that time, the building, now known as the 820 Building, has been a multi-tenanted commercial building for lawyers, architects, realtors and other professionals.

As for the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, in 1957 it joined the newly created AFL-CIO, and, in 1969, it merged with the Switchmens Union of North America, the Order of Railway Conductors & Brakemen, and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen to form a new union known as the United Transportation Union. The UTU was headquartered in the Cleveland area until 2014 when it merged with the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation workers (SMART) whose headquarters were, and still are, in Washington, D.C.

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