Blog

by Ellen Shubart, Class of 2006
Photographs as noted below

Cleveland, with its 19th-century buildings, downtown plazas, and a neighborhood with museums galore, is a fascinating city. Astride the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, the city houses a cemetery chapel with a phenomenal Louis Comfort Tiffany window and wall mosaics. It hosts America’s largest minority-owned architecture firm and a sustainable timber structure located in a “sketchy” area. Despite it all, downtown Cleveland is remarkably empty of people and traffic—it doesn’t “bustle” much anymore.  

An intrepid group of 27 docents, volunteers, spouses, and siblings spent an interesting weekend in Cleveland (May 28 – June 2). The city was established before Chicago. With access to a river and lake, like Chicago, it relied on shipping to develop its economy. And it is a rust belt city that suffers from the manufacturing downturn. But despite its population decline–less than half a million people—and the loss of manufacturing, its citizens are creating a new city with housing reconstituted from old warehouse buildings and lots of adaptive reuse.

The trip was planned by the docent Enrichment Committee. Participants stayed at the Hyatt Regency Cleveland, located at the end of the Cleveland Arcade, one of the country’s first indoor shopping malls. The spectacular structure has a large atrium roof and uses lots of marble and lots of brass fittings on the bannisters. But there are also lots of empty storefronts. 

Nearby was Public Square, laid out as a village green in 1796, part of a settlement of the Connecticut Land Company. Today, it is a mixed-use district of skyscrapers and government buildings. 

We took our first walk with a docent from Take a Hike, a local tour company that uses volunteer guides, many of whom are actors. The tours are a mix of traditional tour narrative plus storytelling with actors in various roles. One tour featured a Daniel Burnham building, and we “met” the man himself. When he finished telling his story, he looked at the group and said, “And, I’d like to leave you with one thought…” Before he could finish his speech, our group called out, “Make No Little Plans!” And he was somewhat taken aback. 

We toured the Warehouse District, sometimes called Downtown’s First Neighborhood. This old, 19^th century commercial center is where adaptive reuse is converting many warehouses to housing. University Circle, an area that developed in the late 1880s when Western Reserve College and the Case Institute of Technology moved there, has become a residential neighborhood, a transit hub, and a concentration of public spaces adjacent to cultural, medical, and educational buildings, including the Museums of Art and Natural History.

Even lunch was a learning experience. Heinen’s Downtown, a grocery chain, was located inside an old bank designed by George Post and retains the stained-glass rotunda dome in the Tiffany style. 

We CAC docents could not miss the river cruise, a two-hour ride along the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie! The Goodtime III is much larger than Chicago’s riverboats; it uses canned narration, which was sometimes out of sync with what we were looking at and at other times was deep (pun intended) into the ecology of Lake Erie.

Moody Nolan Architecture Firm, the nation’s largest minority-owned architecture firm, was founded in 1983. It is designing the gymnasium and activities building at the south end of Chicago’s Obama Center site. We heard from the architect about the new building.

The Cleveland Foundation, the world’s first community foundation, founded in 1914, enhances the lives of Greater Cleveland residents. Its new headquarters sits on 20 acres of land in the needy MidTown and Hough areas. The timber constructed, sustainable building will house seven nonprofit tenants, each serving the communities in various ways.   

And there was more – lots of laughs, lots of good meals, lots of shared stories among friends. Thanks to the Docent Enrichment Committee and our wonderful leaders on this trip: Marcia Ross, Peg Romm, Claudia Winkler, Barbara Foley, and Mary Jo Hoag.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

CLICK HERE for more stories on The Bridge.