The Cleveland Mall is a landscaped public park in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. One of the most complete examples of City Beautiful 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 territori ...

, 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 (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 ...

(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 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 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 Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel, 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 h ...

. 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 geometric square, used for community gatherings. ...

, 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 com ...

. 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 ...

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' ''

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 a ...

'', 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 Administration Building across from Mall B. The new Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland opened in 2013 and has underground connections to

and the Global Center for Health Innovation. 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 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 physically acce ...

installations on Mall B. In 2004, New York 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 anch ...

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 a ...

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 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