The nation’s first gay and lesbian talk radio show, The Gay 90s, aired from downtown Cleveland, Ohio and started off with a bang. Not literally, but given the bomb threat called in before the show’s premier broadcast on WHK 1420 AM it was a possibility. Despite the potential danger, The Gay 90s aired as scheduled on March 26, 1993, and became the country’s first commercial live, “call in” radio program by, for, and about the gay and lesbian community. Given Cleveland’s history of settling disputes with explosives, coupled with the homophobic atmosphere surrounding lesbians and gay men at the time, the threat was taken seriously. Not willing to risk the consequences of ignoring the threat, the Cleveland Police Department provided the show’s staff with personal escorts to and from the radio station for the next two weeks. The police attention and protection was motivated, in part, by the station’s location: Cleveland’s iconic Tower City Center. Thankfully, no bomb exploded at Tower City that night or any of the following nights during The Gay 90s six-year run. It was, instead, the radio show itself that blew down barriers, shattered myths and united Cleveland’s gay, straight and “in between” communities in a remarkably peaceful way.
Looking back, it’s not surprising that the nation’s first gay and lesbian talk show was hosted by Cleveland native Buck Harris, a man at ease being the “first” in a number of public roles. In 1984, Governor Richard Celeste appointed Harris as the Ohio Department of Health’s gay health consultant, the first state in the nation to create such a position in response to the growing AIDS crisis. Shortly after his appointment, The Plain Dealer asked Harris for an interview regarding the crisis, insisting on referring to him as a “homosexual” (as opposed to gay) consultant, as was the newspaper’s policy at the time. Harris told the paper if they did not use his proper title, there would be no interview. The paper relented and, in 1985, for the first time used the word “gay” instead of the inflammatory alternative. A few short months later Harris made the P.D.’s 1986 “Happy New Year” list, the first openly gay person to make the cut. Later that year, Cleveland Magazine named Harris one of the 86 most interesting Clevelanders – again, a first for any openly gay Clevelander. And the bomb threat that greeted Harris and his staff that first radio broadcast? Not a first. As an outspoken and unapologetic AIDS activist, Harris was accustomed getting death threats. Escorted by police and armed with his brave “chin up” attitude, Harris and his crew aired the live broadcast as scheduled.
Bomb threat notwithstanding, The Gay 90s aired during a time of national crisis for the LGBTQ community, as the AIDS epidemic was nearing its worst. In 1993, tennis star Arthur Ashe died (six weeks before the first show’s first broadcast); President Clinton established the White House Office of National AIDS Policy; Tom Hanks starred in Philadelphia, Hollywood’s first major film on AIDS; and the play Angels in America won both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. There was a lot to talk about. Regardless of the topic, which ranged from local politics to the art scene and everything in between, Harris maintains that “a good slice of gay culture” was served, often with a side of humor. The first half of the weekly two-hour program involved guest interviews, and there were notable ones including, in Harris’s words, “movers, shakers and founders of the gay civil rights movement.” Among them were U.S. Congressman Barney Frank; gay rights activist Frank Kameny; two-time Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter Janis Ian, and four-time Tony award winning playwright Harvey Fierstein. Arbitron, the radio ratings agency, estimated that 20,000 listeners tuned in to The Gay 90s on a typical night – perhaps more on a clear night when the AM signal strength was strong enough to reach listeners as far away as Akron or Canton, maybe even the “boondocks,” Harris quips. Some listeners, he believed, were petrified to actually call in – fearing that someone might recognize their voice. Some took the chance, but changed their name. Not all, of course, but the fear of being identified as queer was strong enough to paralyze some listeners, preventing them from calling – and for good reason. Jobs, homes, families – even lives were at risk. One fourteen-year-old gay listener, however, summoned the courage to call in one night. The young man told Harris that he was thinking of suicide but changed his mind after listening to the show. Listening to The Gay 90s, the young man realized there was a “world waiting for him,” where he fit in – brought to him from a radio station in downtown Cleveland.
After two and a half years broadcasting from WHK on Friday nights and getting preempted for sports broadcasting on more than one occasion, Harris moved to another station, WERE 1300 AM. From there, The Gay 90s aired on Sunday evenings – a time slot Harris preferred, believing that his target audience was more likely to be home (and tuned in), not partying in one of Cleveland’s many gay bars. Harris once commented, “Our entrée into the gay community was through the doors of gay bars”. Not that he was opposed to gay bars – after all, he was a former bartender at the locally famous gay bar, Twiggy’s, and knew the bar’s value as a community anchor. But Harris also knew Cleveland’s gay community needed an alternative to the bar scene, and needed, literally, a voice. Seeing the opportunity and the need, Harris offered his voice as he opened the every show with this greeting: “Good evening Cleveland… Welcome to The Gay 90s, the voice of Northeast Ohio’s gay and lesbian community. It is the intent of this show to provide programming that represents the diversity of our gay and lesbian community and reveal the deep cultural and historical contributions that for too long have gone unrecognized. The opinions expressed are those of the host and guest and not necessarily of WERE or its management – as a matter of fact, probably not. If you are a member of our community, a friend, or just a curious listener we certainly welcome you and please give us a call this evening at 578-1300. If you’re not a friend, don’t tune in, don’t call and find some other way to torture yourself. And a word about our advertisers: unless otherwise stated, you can assume their sexual orientation to be either bi or gay or straight.“
If the show started with a (figurative) bang, according to Harris, it “went out with a whimper.” He compared the show’s finale on July 11, 1999, to the last episode of the Mary Tyler Moore television show in 1977 when Moore simply turned off the lights and left the building – sad and anticlimactic. The legacy of the radio program, however, is anything but. In the show’s six-and-a-half-year run, thousands of Clevelanders of every flavor listened, learned, and participated in the nation’s first live gay talk show, bringing together gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, and, importantly, straight listeners. Bringing these diverse groups together to listen and learn from each other bridged, at least to some degree, a very large gap, and along with the work of many, many others, helped lay the foundation for the LGBTQ civil rights momentum we witness today.
When asked if he would consider doing it again, Harris, although flattered by the question, declines to entertain the idea of hosting another gay and lesbian-exclusive radio program. “The world has changed, and I’m not sure we need that today.” Perhaps he’s right.
In an interview several years after the show last broadcast, Harris reflected on how far things have come since the show first aired in 1993. He says, “It’s exciting in this day and age to see organizations like the lesbian and gay service center that are strong, vibrant, and in storefronts. Before…. you would never have the rainbow flag hanging out in front of the Center… it would have been dangerous to do so… I can rest comfortably knowing I had some impact on helping those organizations grow.”
]]>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.
]]>Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen, the brothers responsible for the construction of both the Union Terminal Complex and the Village of Shaker Heights, are two of the least remembered contributors to the development of Cleveland and its suburbs. The shy, reclusive Van Sweringens — absent even from the Terminal Tower's grand opening ceremonies in 1930 — worked their way up from modest beginnings to amass a multi-billion-dollar railroad and real estate empire by the 1920s. Their Union Terminal project helped to revitalize Downtown Cleveland's traditional center, Public Square, while their Shaker Heights development proved to be enormously attractive to wealthy city residents and remains a viable community to this day.
The development of Shaker Heights began around 1905 when "the Vans" began planning a picturesque community where both the design of the houses and the type of people allowed in would be strictly controlled. These restrictions were put in place in order to maintain Shaker's spatial and social distinctiveness from the increasingly polluted and overcrowded nature of big-city life in Cleveland.
The Terminal Tower complex grew out of the brothers' efforts to provide a system of rapid transit from Shaker to Downtown Cleveland for suburban commuters. Their original plan for a small terminal near Public Square morphed into the massive Cleveland Union Terminal project, which included a new central rail station for the city in addition to the 52-story Terminal Tower and three other office buildings.
The brothers died relatively young — and only a year apart from one another — in the mid 1930s. Much of their fortune had dwindled away with the onset of the Great Depression and the unraveling of their complicated series of holding companies. Many younger Clevelanders are likely unfamiliar with the story of the Van Sweringens, and one would be hard pressed to find a building or street in the area bearing their name. Their success at avoiding the spotlight has endured, leaving their contributions to Cleveland's history largely obscured.
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]]>Although today the first sign of downtown that a motorist is sure to spot from any direction is the Key Tower, prior to its completion in the early 1990s the first sight was the Terminal Tower. Despite its eclipse by a later, taller skyscraper, the 52-story, 708-foot-tall Terminal Tower was an instant icon and has arguably remained Cleveland’s most potent symbol. The Terminal Tower, at least as a plan, didn’t start as a tower at all, but instead as a railway station known as the Cleveland Union Terminal. In the early 20th century, as Cleveland grew as an industrial powerhouse, many Northeast Ohioans used railway lines to get to their destinations. Ohio had one of the most extensive interurban networks, with over 2,000 miles of track. However, it was not commuter railways but rather intercity passenger trains that led to the creation of the Terminal. Steam locomotives produced excessive amounts of pollutants when converging downtown, hampering Cleveland’s goal of becoming a modern, attractive city. In the interest of smoke abatement, the Union Terminal project would rely on switching trains to electric engines at outlying rail yards before passing through the city, including its central rail terminal. The only problem was where to place this symbol of Cleveland’s progress. Inspired by Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson and the Group Plan Commission began planning a “civic center” that would run from Superior Avenue all the way to the lakefront. This civic center centered on the Mall and was Cleveland’s dominant expression of the City Beautiful. But the plan to make a new railway along the lakefront as the grand point of entry to the city came to a halt because of unexpected developments. Enter the Van Sweringen brothers, Mantis J. and Oris P., a duo of real estate and railroad tycoons who were keen on connecting their master-planned suburb of Shaker Heights to downtown via a new rapid transit rail line.
While the Van Sweringens originally planned the Shaker Heights line, their ambition expanded. The brothers realized that for the station for Public Square to succeed, they needed to include railways and facilities next to it. After heated debates that lasted a few years, the Terminal cornerstone was set on March 16, 1927, tilting downtown Cleveland’s center of gravity decidedly back to Public Square and ending the concept of a Mall anchored by an imposing rail station. The project was estimated at around $170 million and the Union Terminal had its grand opening in 1930. Travelers to Cleveland found many shops and services inside the Terminal’s concourses without having to step outside, including the elegant English Oak Room, Fred Harvey Company concessions, Higbee Bros. department store, and the preexisting adjacent Hotel Cleveland. The 42nd floor was used as an observation deck, allowing a bird's-eye view of the city. The Terminal’s concept of a multiuse “city within a city” anticipated New York’s Rockefeller Center. The Van Sweringen brothers, never comfortable in the spotlight, did not attend the 1930 dedication, instead spending the day at Roundwood Manor, their country estate in Hunting Valley.
The Terminal Tower itself was built toward the end of the skyscraper craze of the 1920s. When completed in 1930, it was the tallest tower in the world outside New York City. If the “Vans” wouldn’t toot their own horn, there were plenty of others ready to trumpet the Terminal’s superlative status. Walter Ross, president of the Nickel Plate Railroad, effused that the tower was “the symbol of the city’s progress and the prophecy of its future. … Cleveland may be sixth in the census list of cities, but so far as its Union Station is concerned, if that is any consolation, it may regard itself as on a parity with the leading city.”
However, the completion of taller buildings in other cities periodically whittled down this superlative: to tallest in North America outside New York after 1953 and tallest between New York and Chicago after 1964. When Key Bank Tower was completed in 1991, the Terminal Tower became the second tallest in Cleveland and second tallest between the Big Apple and the Windy City. Nevertheless, the Tower’s architecture is something to behold, with the upper portion closely resembling New York’s Municipal Building. Both were modeled on ancient Roman types called sepulchral monuments, a favorite classical nod associated with the Beaux-Arts architectural movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ironically, by the time Cleveland’s iconic tower was built, even the Beaux-Arts style was antiquated as more architects embraced the emerging Art Deco and other modernist modes.
The choice of an older style of architecture may have reflected a desire to make downtown Cleveland appear more well-established. After all, despite the steady rise of skyscrapers on the skyline since the 1890s, Cleveland’s skyline had fallen further behind a handful of the nation’s other largest cities by the late 1920s. Although it was hardly an original and audacious design apart from its towering height, over the next few decades, the Terminal Tower grew to be a defining status symbol for Cleveland. The self-contained “city within a city” of interconnected buildings—all linked to the same central transit station—made for daily interactions with those who worked there. In 1970, the president of Terminal Management, Homer Guren, mentioned how his employees became “sort of a Tower family.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Terminal Tower became a symbolic place in many other ways as well. To support the Cleveland Indians, twelve baseballs were dropped from the roof to the ground below. Only two of the balls thrown by third baseman Ken Keltner were caught by catchers Hank Helf and Frankie Pytlak. The Indians’ special treatment didn’t stop there, as the team’s flag flew atop the Tower during home games. In 1980, after Mayor George Voinovich’s election amid Cleveland’s long, painful slide in the 1970s, the Terminal Tower was illuminated from base to crown at night to symbolize the city’s comeback. The building adorned the logo for Yellow Cab taxis for many years, frequently found its way into Harvey Pekar's comic books, and was featured in the background of many television shows and movies, most notably the 2012 hit The Avengers.
More recently, the Terminal Tower has taken on a modern aesthetic, not just for the look, but to show support for the community. Thanks to the addition of LED lights in 2014, the Tower is lit up every night in a range of different colors: for the Cleveland Cavaliers, wine and gold; for the annual Pride celebration, rainbow; and even colored images like the Leg Lamp from A Christmas Story, which was filmed in Cleveland. During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, the Tower staged a special light show to signal hope for the city. The ever-changing colors of these lights keep Clevelanders’ eyes focused on the skyline, helping reinforce the Terminal Tower as an enduring symbol of the city.
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