Discovering Cleveland in Photographs

June 1, 2011.

It’s June 1st, and I’ve come to the end of this project. I’ve spent my month discovering Cleveland: wandering its streets, riding its buses and trains, waiting out its rain under awnings and storefronts. What I’ve learned I can very easily tell you, though I’m sure you will remain skeptical of these beliefs no matter how persuasive I am until you too walk through Cleveland. But none-the-less,  here it is: comparing Cleveland with other cities is like comparing apples and oranges. If we compare Cleveland directly to Chicago or New York, we will always be the lesser. We don’t have the population to become those cities or the business or economic centers. I know people always ask why Chicago, a bad-weather lake-front city, can do so much better that Cleveland, a city who emits the same qualities. It’s not the fact that we’re similar in that sense, it’s the fact that we’re serving a different function and we have a different history. To understand this, you must understand one other important thing: Cleveland is alive. The trains still run, the river still carries boats, the factories still move. We haven’t lost the dirt and grime that once existed nationwide during industrialization. All that’s changed since our golden age, is that Cleveland has become quiet.

Its silence is perhaps once of the single most thing that surprised me about Cleveland. That and its emptiness. Photographs of Cleveland always seem still, as if they aren’t real or have been frozen in time. There’s no people in them, maybe one, but if one, then one alone. There’s no sense of urgency, no sense of rush or panic. It’s as if the city’s asleep. But I’ve realized one thing that I know is absolutely certain: Cleveland may seem asleep, but it’s more likely that it’s just patient, and quiet. Always quiet. The reason why our river front will never develop fully into only high-end houses is because our river is industrial and that industry is still alive. No matter how quiet that industry is and how invisible it seems to the public, it is still making up a viable source of economy for Cleveland and to simply raze the flats because we no longer hear the sounds of metal clanging or men shouting would be a mistake. Our history as a city is of an industrial foundation and epicenter for this country. We have made and carried for this country iron ore, steal, coal, and gasoline and we have done so from the beginning in 1796 until this very moment when trains are still hauling away coal and boats are bring in ore. We have not developed into a Chicago because we have not been called on to do so. I know we get ragged on for our lagging economy and our depressing weather and somehow this chalks up to make us a mistake on the lake but this phrase dismisses everything in Cleveland that still lives – and it dismisses a lot.

I will not sit here and write forever of what still grows and develops because I will have a hard time convincing you of how beautiful this city is. It’s a hard city to grow up in. I’ve often felt as if it’s never really been there – that instead of all these suburbs centering around something bright they’ve been centered around a hole. The people here have faces worn like leather, cool and distant with a determination to make it through in a city that often has a hard time convincing itself that. But underneath those faces is a fierce, fierce loyalty to the city. It’s people like them that make the city survive and it’s them that will be the turning stone for the future of this city.

We should not dismiss Cleveland simply because it’s become quiet over the years or recount it because we feel as if its industrial nature is beneath us or this country. We should believe in it. We should believe in it because it’s still here, after everything everyone said about it, after everything we said about it; it’s survived. We should believe in because the city has hope still and though those dreams might still be unspoken or unplanned, there’s always time and there’s always tomorrow. I’m not saying Cleveland’s perfect, and I don’t think it will ever become a Chicago, but then again, it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to be a Cleveland. It’s supposed to be our home.

My Home

May 27, 2011. Starting at Tower City, I take the Healthline east until I can see the steeples rising above the trees and the glass

Cleveland Clinic

buildings shimmering in the half sunny day. I’ve entered a whole other domain of Cleveland that has created a stable economic base for the city. I can’t imagine what would happen if the Cleveland Clinic or the University Hospitals or any of the others disappeared. I know that blocks and blocks of Cleveland would suddenly become empty and a hole that large would be nearly impossible to fill again. The streets a filled with white-coat doctors, patients, families, food vendors, and locals who are just out enjoying the day. Here the streets are lined with trees and beautiful brick walls and flowers and the buses are running back and forth. Spread out amidst the clinic buildings, old stone churches are tucked in nicely adding a level of comfort to the area.

Liberty Hill Baptist Church

Some of them are newer, some of them have been here for centuries. Some have been converted: a Jewish temple now a Baptist Church. Some are so old that they appear to be closed. The churches make me feel safe, as if nothing can hurt me if I’m near a church – as if they’re so sacred that no one would ever dare to do wrong near one. A lady asks me for the time, I tell her. A boy asks me what I’m taking pictures for, I tell him. The combination of the bustle of the clinic and the fortitude of the churches strengthens me. I don’t feel nervous here. For once I don’t have to focus on the city or the reality of it all, I can just admire the magnificence of the churches and the dedication of the clinic. It is a rather beautiful road after all.

Wendy Park, Battery Park

Wendy Park

May 24, 2011. Flush to the western bank of the Cuyahoga and bounded by railroad tracks and the Cargill factory, Wendy Park is quiet. Dedicated to Dan Moore’s daughter Wendy who died in a skiing accident, Wendy Park provides a little green in the midst of one of Cleveland’s most industrial area. The park isn’t large or particularly beautiful: it’s more natural than anything. The rough grass slopes down to the lake’s edge, where it shrinks into driftwood covered dirt and then into the rocky bottom of the Lake Erie. A boulder pier extends out into the lake about twenty yards where an old man fishes. A little ways down on the coast, sitting on a

Sam Laud, Cuyahoga River

rotten log, a young woman reads. To the west is a marina for several small yachts and boats and just over I can see the tops of the conveyor belts and mineral piles belonging to several companies. A few picnic tables and grills linger about the premise, a few clangs of workers fixing boats echo through the air, yet overall the park is calm – an oasis, a vestige of that time when explorers first landed at Cleveland and called this place home. Moving further inward towards the chain link fence that bounds the park from the river and the railroad tracks, I see a large ship, much like that one I had witnessed yesterday, pull out towards the lake. It moves slowly, ghosting under a raised bridge , steadily heaving its empty belly back into the open waters of the lake. Men move around aboard the decks. They too wait for the freedom of the lake again.

Train Engineer

Not long after the boat has reached the lake, a short sequence of horns is heard and the bridge starts to lower. It reminds me of the model train set I have in my basement, as if the bridges are lowered and raised by a child’s hand and the rest of the flats is just decoration. I look down the track and a train approaches – cars first, engines last, a man standing on the platform of the first car watching the draw bridge approach which has now returned to its lowest position. I watch the cars until the engines arrive and the engineer – who is traveling backwards – waves at me from his seat. Then the train passes over the river, turns a bend, and is gone. The whole scenario gives me a little thrill of excitement, as if it was the model train set and that all of this was just a game, a cool, innocent, childish game. I forget about the economic depression or decrease in companies in Cleveland and for once I just think about how cool that bridge is that it just raised for a boat to go under and then lower for a train to go over. I look at the little bulldozers and trucks like Tonka trucks and the buildings as hollow on the inside and held together with superglue. But no matter how cool this little scene is, it’s even cooler knowing that the boat is going to Canada, and the train is going east, and the river flows south, and the people in the trucks go home at night, and the buildings have floors and lights and desks inside of them. It’s cool knowing that all of this is real and not just a movie scene or a toy. I realize after awhile that I know longer am confused by the flats and the river and the railroads. I no longer view the riverfront as dead or the railroads as useless or the factories silent. I see it as working and still a large part of Cleveland industry. I am no longer baffled by the number of bridges crossing the river or the roads that always seemed to lead to nowhere. I get it now: it’s not a set design or prop. It’s real.

Train to Cleveland

Warehouse District; Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument; Old Stone Church

May 23, 2011. Out of Terminal Tower, I turn left down Superior Avenue towards the river. Whenever I’ve imagined the warehouse

W. 10th Street

district, I always thought it was miles away from downtown Cleveland and that it was cold and dark and filled with great aluminum buildings with echoing floors. I imagined it to be another failed dream of Cleveland’s – rarely-frequently shops and sketchy barrooms. At first I was right, but only because of the time I visited. I walk all the way to the river’s edge first, down Old River Road which follows both the river and the waterfront RTA line. It abuts the Settler’s Landing Park which though a nice green space isn’t much of a park. Old River Road holds all the night clubs of Cleveland which I’m sure at night must be something but during the day I can’t help but think that the street looks like an amusement park, closed down for the winter yet it hasn’t yet snowed, so the fairgrounds are brown and bare and you can make out all the rusting iron tracks now that they are silent and empty. The street feels haunted and desolate. A few people jog by, which shows at least

The Calumet up the River

some signs of life in the surrounding apartment buildings and lofts. As I watch, a large freighter makes its way up the river, but it’s come to the bend and take ten minutes turning before it continues on. I later find out that the large ladder-like contraption on its deck is to move the ore trapped in its belly.

I leave Old River Road and move up one street to W. 10th. Here there is life. It appears that I’ve arrived during lunch hour, because the streets are moving with people and the restaurants are buzzing with co-workers out to lunch and the sky is blue up above. The warehouses here have been converted into loft apartments and office buildings and in one case a small market with prepared foods and local produce; and the smaller buildings have remained in their historical structures and house cafes and grilles and small offices. It feels like a small little town yet I know just a few blocks up is Tower City and just a few blocks over is the lake and some industrial factories where the warehouses are still warehouses. In this moment, Cleveland seems all right. It’s a small step in the rejuvenation of Cleveland, but it’s a step none-the-less. The main challenge that Cleveland will face is keeping those businesses and corporations in town whose workers and employees visit these small restaurants during their lunch breaks and who keep the streets alive. It’s a cycle between growth and consistency that has to be maintained in order to keep life in Cleveland but also to let it grow.

Tremont

Little Italy, University Circle Houses

May 19-20, 2011. The first thing I notice about Little Italy is that it smells good. And I don’t mean this just because the rest of the city sometimes smells like the bus exhaustion or sewage, but because of the amazing smells of pastries and breads and cookies wafting out of all the little bakeries and cafes down the street. (Naturally I stop by one and have a cinnamon roll.) If you come

Murray Hill, Little Italy

down Mayfield, Little Italy is the first taste of Cleveland you receive, yet you would have a hard time believing you didn’t just  stumble into a small town. Not one store is vacant and people are outside sweeping off shop stoops and washing windows. Little Italy is one of the few places of Cleveland that has not lost its original architecture. It is also one of the first places I’ve seen so far where I can actually see myself living one day. The place feels homey. Perhaps it’s because of the people walking down the streets, or the occupied storefronts, or the way the trees hang nicely over the brick roads, or perhaps it’s just the nice effects of a sunny day, but something about Little Italy just doesn’t scream Cleveland. It’s condensed and maintained and yet if you look down Mayfield you can see the tops of the Key Bank building and Terminal Tower in the distance. I turn off Mayfield and up Murray Hill, a historic side street of Little Italy and I find myself thinking that this must be what Italy looks like. The road is still red brick and the houses still original. They are clustered together almost as if haphazardly, slowly climbing the hillside. Shops filtering in amongst the houses – small cafes and bistros in house fronts, a grocery market and a dog groomer in buildings of their own. Little Italy functions without the help of Cleveland, and yet despite the quiet and peacefulness that exists it in the district, there’s also a comfort knowing that University Circle is just down the road and that the tall buildings of downtown seem to be protecting it. Little Italy doesn’t have the isolation of a country village nor the clutter of a downtown city. It’s its own entity peacefully coexisting with the broader city.

If you follow Mayfield across Euclid where it becomes Ford, there exists another group of houses. These houses start out similar to the one at Little Italy – smaller, closer together. I first turn down Hessler Street, famous for its Hessler Street Fair. The houses here are like Tudor row houses, tall and beautiful, shaded by heavy oak trees and connected by a single brick road. The houses look lived in: old couches on the front porch, bicycles and cars in the streets, cluttered little messes on the front stoop. Yet nothing about it screams shabby, it just looks like home. Neighbors talk to other neighbors on the sidewalks; a dog wags its tail at me as I pass; I can hear people talking from one of the balconies upstairs. It’s quiet here, sleepy, as if the history of the street keeps it stable and tranquil. Walking out I notice that the road beneath me isn’t actually made of brick paving stones, but of wooden ones.

The Bingham-Hanna Mansion now the Western Reserve Historical Society

I can make out the rings on each block. Continuing forward into University Circle, I keep away from the museums and instead focus on the houses surrounding them. While none of the old Cleveland houses are no longer lived in my individual families, they have all be converted into schools and religious centers, museums, University Hospital offices, and Case admissions buildings and fraternity houses. None of them have lost their original structures, instead they have grown to fit the new surrounding area. It’s still remained a beautiful high-end neighborhood, but has accepted a new role as an educator, a supporter, and a home base. They’ve been converted to fit the needs of the city, but unlike the mansions of Euclid, they weren’t torn down and forgotten. They were memorialized in such a way that they are useful and historic. That’s the reason why this section of Cleveland is thriving while the rest of it seems to be crumbling before our eyes. University Circle and Little Italy have managed the balancing act between function and beauty perfectly so that it attracts both tourists and business. It has let beauty come from beauty, and function come from function, and success from the combination of the two. It has not tried to split them apart or to tear one down and rebuild it again in hopes that the only way to succeed is to continually raze and rebuild. It has developed as needed and remained beautiful when not.

Tremont Church

Across the river exists another section of Cleveland, similar to Little Italy yet perhaps not as culturally specific. Tremont remains largely isolated from Cleveland due to the fact that despite the many bridges spanning the Cuyahoga, not one leads directly into Tremont from Cleveland. The city itself is cornered in by the river the east, and interstates 90 and 490 to the north and south, both of which provide the main source of access to Tremont. On our way home, my mom and I try to find a way back to Cleveland without using the highway. We have to go up West 3rd Street, right on Canal Street, right on Commercial Street (at this point we’ve descended into the river valley), right on Central Viaduct and then finally we arrive back at Carnegie Ave. right outside Jacobs Field. Yet because of this seclusion from the city, Tremont holds that same sense of home that Little Italy does. Not all the shops are filled and we when get there nobody is out. It’s a more residential neighborhood, with many churches spread throughout the area – Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Catholic, Spanish-speaking, Greek Catholic, Slovak Evangelical Lutheran, Korean, Zion Evangelical, and many more. Tremont developed as a immigrant neighborhood, especially Russians, Hungarians, Greeks, and Slavs. These immigrants sought a place where they could continue their religions and speak their native languages all the while living close to where they worked down in the nearby industrial flats. Today Tremont exists as a largely artisan neighborhood with numerous art galleries, coffee shops, and popular restaurants. The area is slow moving, basking in the peacefulness of its isolation. Shops don’t open until near noon and people come from their houses as they slowly wake up. It’s a sleep town, laid back, as if living the country life despite their proximity to Cleveland. Here too I can see myself living. I feel safe here, comfortable.  Here too the town has managed to keep its history intact while still renovating houses and old store fronts into functioning businesses. The coffee shop is located in an old drug store. The old Herald Publishing House has been converted into loft apartments. While Tremont perhaps lost its function as a home for working immigrants, it has found a different use as being one of Cleveland’s prime cultural and artisan spots. It will survive and will only continue to prosper at it immerses itself even deeper into this role.

Cleveland from Tremont

May 18, 2011. When you look at Cleveland, it’s hard to imagine it being anything else than the run-down structures and vacant lots that fill up most of its streets today. It’s hard to imagine that some of America’s biggest millionaires once lived down Euclid in grand old mansions and it’s even harder to imagine what went through their heads when they tore them all down. It’s hard to believe that there use to be an amusement park here or that there was a hippodrome or great exposition or people flocking to go to the Elysium. Michael DeAlhoia, author of Lost Cleveland: Seven Wonders of the Sixth City, gives us seven structures that were both monumental and landmark achievements, all of which but one have vanished from the streets of Cleveland.

The only remaining wonder of the city is Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra. Founded in 1918, the Orchestra had

Severance Hall Today

spent most of its time battling out for rehearsal space at the Grays Armory, which though impressive and elegant, was overbooked and ill-fitting for an orchestra. Adella Prentiss Hughes, who had founded the Musical Arts Association in 1915 and three years later the Cleveland Orchestra with the soon-to-be first conductor Nikolai Sofoloff, realized that an orchestra of this scale and prestige needed a grander stage and by 1929 had been granted a dollar-a-year land lease from the Western Reserve University where, along with the help of Dudley S. Blossom, built Severance Hall. John Long Severance’s million-dollar donation to the hall ensured its grandeur and timely completion even despite the Great Depression. The building still stands proudly today as the home of the one of the world’s finest orchestras.

Elysium Postcard

However, the remaining six “wonders” of Cleveland have been demolished and forgotten. The

Indoor Ice-Rink

first wonder was called the Elysium and was built as a source of indoor entertainment for when the parks and beaches closed during the winter. It was opened in 1907 at the corner of East 107th and Euclid Ave., where today stands parts of Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, and the University Hospital, which back then was called “Doan’s Corner.” Opposite of the beaches, the Elysium housed America’s first permanent concrete ice rink floor, invented by Dudley Humphrey, where people could skate, watch ice shows and hockey games, and listen to rink-side music concerts. Up until the 1930s, the Cleveland Barons hockey team played there. However, lack of spectator space (it could only seat about 2,000 fans) forced the Barons to relocate to a new arena in 1937. After that, the building switched hands time and time again until in 1951 in order to widen Chester Road. That old line about paving paradise to put up a parking lot floats through my mind as I think about the once beautiful structure now flattened and erased from memories.

Hippodrome

The demise of the Elysium is similar to the fate of the Hippodrome Theater. The remaining theaters of Cleveland are few: the Ohio, the Palace, the State, the Hanna, the Allen, and a few smaller ones dotted here and there. However back in the early 1900s, there were ten other major theaters and opera houses – the biggest and grandest being the Hippodrome, or more affectionately known as the “Hipp.” One of the largest theaters outside of New York, the Hipp boasted seating for 4,500, hydraulic lifts on the stage, a 455,000 gallon water tank located beneath the stage available for water sports, a thirteen ton, completely fireproof drop curtain, a proscenium arch that extends forrty-five feet beyond the edge of the stage to act as a amplifier, and a stage itself of 13,528 square feet area. The Hippodrome was completed in 1907, taking up much of the eleven-story building it occupied and surrounding block with lobbies, private hotels and dressing rooms for the actors, and stables for the show animals. However, the Great Depression hit the Hippodrome hard, and it passed into many hands all the while rapidly-declining. It even shortly passed into the hands of Warner Brothers before it was sold again to the Telenews Chains who had no interest in reinvesting in it. However, by 1972 the Hipp was the last movie house in Cleveland and its last owner had closed down the offices above the Hipp, whose revenues were insufficient to maintain the building. When years passed with nothing to save the magnificent theater, it was torn down in 1981 and replaced with a parking lot.

Luna Park

While the Elysium and Hippodrome provided indoor entertainment, Luna Park was the perfect way to spend an afternoon. One of five amusement parks within Cleveland’s city limits, Luna Park along with Euclid Beach, White City, Puritas Springs Park, and Gordon Gardens, offered attractions and rides for small fees. While all of the attractions and rides of the parks have now closed, a few of the actual parks still remain while others have been claimed as other businesses: Euclid Park, which closed in 1969, is now part of the Euclid Beach State Park; White City, which closed after a massively destructive storm in 1907, is now the site of the Easterly Sewage Disposal Plant; Puritas Springs Park on the west side was closed after two severe fires, the first in 1946 and

Luna Park

the second in 1958; Gordon Gardens, with the main roller coaster called the Big Dipper, caught fire in 1927 and is now part of the Shoreway and Lakefront State Park. Luna Park was opened in 1905 as a close copy to Coney Island with fantastic light displays and use of Japanese, Italian Renaissance, Egyptian, and Gothic architecture. Along with amusement rides, there was an airship that stunned the visitors, boxing matches, dancing competitions – especially in the 1920s – and Labor Day celebrations. Eventually the park also had a Casino with food and arcades and, unlike their fierce competitor Euclid Beach, Luna Park served beer and also stayed open all the way to midnight. There was also a baseball park and a football stadium and a motorcycle racecourse. However, Prohibition in the 1920s removed the biggest source of revenue for Luna Park, which held on until the Great Depression swept its last leg out from underneath it. Luna Park was dismantled finally in 1931 and is now the site of public housing.

Great Lakes Exposition Poster

However, perhaps the crowning achievement of amusement in Cleveland was the Great Lakes Exposition in 1936. The Exposition was to celebrate both Cleveland’s centennial as well as to honor the eight states that bordered a Great Lake together referred to as the Rust Belt. The fair was designed to run for only 100 days in 1936, but its success encouraged its second opening in 1937. Spanning from West 3rd Street to East Twentieth, the Exposition offered daily concerts, G.E. Lighting offered magical light displays and shows – one which displayed the world’s largest lightbulb (50,000 watts) – as well as the four main events of the exposition. The Hall of Progress, the Automotive Building, the Horticulture Building, and the Marine Theater were all housed in

Exposition as seen from the Air

magnificent structures; the first two showed off new technologies of the future, especially from the Ohio Bell Telephone company while White Motor Company showcased its own line of products such as trucks and buses. The Horticulture Building had 3.5 acres of plants right along the lakefront, which had recently been widen and extended out into the water for the Exposition itself, and boasted a gigantic fountain that projected colorful rays of light through the water jets. The gardens remained even after the Exposition ended until they were destroyed to make way for the Browns Stadium. Great ships docked in the harbors, other states showcased displays along the streets, such as Florida’s display of oranges and palm trees, amusement rides circled the grounds, Hollywood performers like Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, and other comedians as well as jazz performers and Olympic athletes toured. Spectators observed 30-foot monsters, monkey auto-races, and snake shows. Latest fashions were on display and many people saw their first TV during the Exposition or watched plays including many abridged Shakespeare plays. However, the party had to come to an end eventually, and, with a crowd belting out the song Auld Lang Syne,  the Exposition closed on September 26, 1937.

Superior Viaduct

The loss of the Superior Viaduct marked one of the great tragedies of magnificent feats of

Veterans Bridge, background; Viaduct, foreground

engineering. The bridge was designed to connect Ohio City to Cleveland for commerce in 1875 but also as way to operate the growing  trolley lines. The bridge itself was a marvel: the western portion of the bridge spanned 1,380 feet over the bank with ten sandstone arches where it met in the middle a 332-foot rotating center that connected to the eastern portion. When boats would sail down the river, the center would swivel to turn parallel with river so they ships could pass. While the bridge was designed to help trade across the river, the amount of time that cars and

One of the remaining arches

pedestrians would have to wait as the middle portion pivoted to let ships pass became increasingly annoying and the demand soon grew for a second bridge. After forty years of service, the Veterans Memorial Bridge was built as the first fixed bridge to span the river with two decks, allowing traffic to go on top while the street cars remained below in 1917. This helped unclog the traffic yet by 1920 however, the Superior Viaduct was officially closed and torn down. The city had outgrown the architectural feat.

Andrew's Home

The last and final lost “wonder” of Cleveland is by far the most symbolic of the decline of the city as a whole. If you were to drive down Euclid Avenue now, you would not realize that this street was once Millionaire’s Row and boasted the grandest and most elaborate mansions of Cleveland’s industrial giants. With a neighbor like John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Andrew of Standard Oil sought to build a bigger house that Rockefeller’s on Euclid, which also housed names like Mather, Wade, Severance, Gund, and Hanna. Then, it was nationally known as the “most beautiful street in America.” Andrew, after selling off his investments of Standard Oil for only a measly one million compared to Rockefeller’s soon-to-be billions, hired architect George Horatio Smith to build a house that would impress Queen Victoria so much that she would stop by and visit (Andrews was born in England.) The house had thirty-three rooms, three floors with the third floor having a ball room, and needed over a hundred servants to maintain it. The family moved out two years after the construction was finished. Andrew’s son, Horace, too resident in the house after 1904 but found the house simply unlivable and left the house for the cockroaches. After fifty years of vacancy, the house was torn down in 1923. Sadly however, Andrew’s home was not the only one with a similar fate: Rockefeller’s home was torn down in the 1930s and replaced with a gas station and parking lot, and likewise very few other mansions remain on Euclid anymore. If they are still there, they are hidden among giant warehouses and ugly buildings, or have been nearly abandoned.

If you wondering why I’m giving you this giant history lesson, it’s because to understand Cleveland, you have to know what once was. The biggest mistake Cleveland made was tearing all those houses down, and the amusement parks and theaters, and the bridges. It demolished some of the most important facets of Cleveland and of the city’s history and by doing so only hurt itself in the long run. Where other cities like Boston and Washington D.C. and Philadelphia seem to have a stable focusing point around their historical architecture and city, Cleveland has lost focus and because of it has had to start rebuilding all over again. Because it was such a industrial giant, the city was subjected to this strange urge to build immediately what was in demand – a new bridge, wider roads – and to tear down what was in the way. It doesn’t let anything remain as a memorial of it’s origins, but gives it up for the common good. Yet now the city is left with nothing: empty warehouses which could have been beautiful mansions, parking lots which were once amusements parks, concrete roads which were once nationally-renowned theaters and buildings. It’s the worm that’s bitten its own tail. Luckily, Cleveland has learned. Instead of tearing down great warehouses, they’ve been converted into lofts and apartments and stores, in what is now the Warehouse district. If we destroy our past, we’re left with nothing because in the end, it’s the past that we remember the most.

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