The Mall (Cleveland)
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The Cleveland Mall is a landscaped public
park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are urban green space, green spaces set aside for recreation inside t ...
in
downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...
Cleveland, Ohio. One of the most complete examples of
City Beautiful The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. It was a part of the ...
design in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, the park is a historic site listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


History

The Mall was conceived as part of the 1903 Group Plan by
Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the '' Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been, "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ...
, John Carrère, and
Arnold Brunner Arnold William Brunner (September 25, 1857 – February 14, 1925) was an American architect who was born and died in New York City. Brunner was educated in New York and in Manchester, England. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wh ...
as a vast public space flanked by the city's major civic and governmental buildings, all built in the neoclassical style. Many of those buildings were built over the following three decades, including the Metzenbaum Courthouse (1910),
Cuyahoga County Courthouse The Cuyahoga County Courthouse stretches along Lakeside Avenue at the north end of the Cleveland Mall in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The building was listed on the National Register along with the mall district in 1975. Other notable buildings of t ...
(1912),
Cleveland City Hall Cleveland City Hall is the seat of government for the City of Cleveland, Ohio, and the home of Cleveland City Council and the office of the Mayor of Cleveland. It opened in 1916 and is located at 601 Lakeside Avenue in the Civic Center area of Dow ...
(1916),
Public Auditorium Public Auditorium (also known as Public Hall) is a multi-purpose performing arts, entertainment, sports, and exposition facility located in the civic center district of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The 10,000-capacity main auditorium shares its stag ...
(1922), the
Cleveland Public Library Cleveland Public Library, located in Cleveland, Ohio, operates the Main Library on Superior Avenue in downtown Cleveland, 27 branches throughout the city, a mobile library, a Public Administration Library in City Hall, and the Ohio Library for the ...
main building (1925), and the
Cleveland Public Schools Cleveland Metropolitan School District, formerly the Cleveland Municipal School District, is a public school district in the U.S. state of Ohio that serves almost all of the city of Cleveland. The district covers 79 square miles. The Cleveland ...
Board of Education A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional are ...
building (1931). Other buildings include
Key Tower Key Tower is a skyscraper on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Designed by architect César Pelli, it is the tallest building in the state of Ohio, the 39th-tallest in the United States, and the 165th-tallest in the world. The buildi ...
, the
Global Center for Health Innovation The Global Center for Health Innovation, also known as the Medical Mart, is a $465 million joint venture by Cuyahoga County and MMPI to construct a permanent showroom of medical, surgical and hospital goods along with a new Huntington Convention ...
, the
Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel The Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel ''(HCDH)'' is a skyscraper on the corner of Ontario Street and Lakeside Avenue along The Mall in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It opened in 2016, has 600 rooms and is 32 stories high. It is one of f ...
, and the
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is the Cleveland-based headquarters of the U.S. Federal Reserve System's Fourth District. The district is composed of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky, and the northern panhandle of West Virginia. ...
. In the spirit of the City Beautiful movement, formerly seedy areas were transformed into a "magnificent
civic center A civic center or civic centre is a prominent land area within a community that is constructed to be its focal point or center. It usually contains one or more dominant public buildings, which may also include a government building. Recently, the ...
", which was supposed to be crowned by the Union Terminal at the north end of the mall, on the shores of
Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...
. However, the location of the station was eventually moved south and west, to
Public Square A town square (or square, plaza, public square, city square, urban square, or ''piazza'') is an open public space, commonly found in the heart of a traditional town but not necessarily a true square, geometric square, used for community gathe ...
, where it was finally born as the
Terminal Tower Terminal Tower is a 52-story, , landmark skyscraper located on Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Built during the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and 1930s, it was the second-tallest building in the world when it was comple ...
. Even though the plan was never fully carried out, it was one of the few City Beautiful plans to be realized to a large extent, and remains one of the most complete examples in the country. The Mall was added to the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1975. The Mall is divided into three sections, known as Malls A, B, and C. Mall A, the southernmost, is officially named Veterans' Memorial Plaza, and Mall C was dedicated as Strawbridge Plaza in 2003. The Memorial Plaza, between Rockwell and St. Clair Avenues, is the site of
Marshall Fredericks Marshall Maynard Fredericks (January 31, 1908 – April 4, 1998) was an American sculptor known for such works as ''Fountain of Eternal Life'', ''The Spirit of Detroit'', ''Man and the Expanding Universe Fountain'', and many others. Early life a ...
' ''
Fountain of Eternal Life The ''Fountain of Eternal Life'', also known as the ''War Memorial Fountain'' and ''Peace Arising from the Flames of War'', is a statue and fountain in downtown Cleveland, Ohio designed by Cleveland Institute of Art graduate Marshall Fredericks ...
'', also known as the ''War Memorial Fountain''. The Cleveland Convention Center was built underneath Malls B and C in 1964. In 2010 the county purchased the underground convention center from the city as part of a project to completely rebuild it in conjunction with constructing the Global Center for Health Innovation and the Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel on the former site of the
Cuyahoga County Cuyahoga County ( or ) is a large urban County (United States), county located in the Northeast Ohio, northeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. It is situated on the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the Canada–United States border, U.S.- ...
Administration Building across from Mall B. The new
Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland The Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland is a convention center located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Built by Cuyahoga County, Ohio, beneath the Cleveland Mall, it opened on June 7, 2013. The older Cleveland Conventio ...
opened in 2013 and has underground connections to
Public Auditorium Public Auditorium (also known as Public Hall) is a multi-purpose performing arts, entertainment, sports, and exposition facility located in the civic center district of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The 10,000-capacity main auditorium shares its stag ...
and the
Global Center for Health Innovation The Global Center for Health Innovation, also known as the Medical Mart, is a $465 million joint venture by Cuyahoga County and MMPI to construct a permanent showroom of medical, surgical and hospital goods along with a new Huntington Convention ...
. The Hilton officially opened in June 2016. Mall B and Mall C reopened after construction as predominantly grassy areas, with Mall B reaching above sidewalk level over the entrance to the Cleveland Convention Center along Lakeside Avenue.


Public art

Cleveland Public Art sponsored a series of temporary
public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...
installations on Mall B. In 2004,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
artist Brian Tolle installed ''For the gentle wind doth move Silently, invisibly''. The work featured eight nine-foot-tall
styrofoam Styrofoam is a trademarked brand of closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam (XPS), commonly called "Blue Board", manufactured as foam continuous building insulation board used in walls, roofs, and foundations as thermal insulation and water barrie ...
neoclassical
urn An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...
s standing atop pedestals, warped to reflect actual wind data collected from Lake Erie. The sculptures were taken down in 2006. In May 2008, Peter North and Alissa North of North Design Office in
Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
installed a work titled ''The Verdant Walk''. It featured plantings of native
grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns an ...
es and seven fabric-covered sculptures. The sculptures were illuminated at night via a
solar-powered Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic ef ...
LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...
system. They remained in place until 2010. After the reconstruction of the Mall, Stephen Manka's sculpture ''City of Light'' was installed on Mall B. The illuminated steel sculpture was created for the 2013 National Senior Games. Manka described it as intended to "simulate the flames of the classic games with a wash of programmable light" and "part petal of a flower, part heavy duty turbine".


References


External links


The Group Plan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mall, The Parks in Cleveland Urban public parks National Register of Historic Places in Cleveland, Ohio Protected areas established in 1903 Historic districts in Cleveland Tourist attractions in Cleveland
Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
Downtown Cleveland Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio 1903 establishments in Ohio