The Park Building is a historic

commercial building Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

Public Square A town square (or public square, urban square, city square or simply square), also called a plaza or piazza, is an open public space commonly found in the heart of a traditional town or city, and which is used for community gatherings. Relat ...

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English 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 district ( ...

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. It was named a

historic site A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been re ...

in 1996. Nine stories tall, the Park Building abuts a four-story building to the south and the taller May Company Building to the rear; the side facing Public Square is several times the length of the Ontario Street-facing front. The walls are primarily brick, covered with an

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

roof and resting on a concrete foundation. Concrete construction is a distinguishing feature of the architecture; the Park Building was one of Cleveland's earliest office towers with floors constructed of

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

. This usage reflects the tastes of the architect, Frank Seymour Barnum, one of the region's pioneers of twentieth-century architectural methods. Among its architectural details are large

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. A bow window is a form of bay with a curve rather than angular facets; an oriel window is a bay window that does not touch the g ...

s with bronze and granite components, floors mixing

terrazzo Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured with a cementitious binder (for chemical bind ...

with stone, and carefully formed woodwork.Downtown Living Just Got Cooler

WKYC WKYC (channel 3) is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. Its studios are located on Tom Beres Way (a section of Lakeside Avenue in Downtown Cleveland named after the station's lo ...

, 2014-02-17. Accessed 2015-06-24. For much of its history, the Park Building was used by small service businesses, including dentists, barbers, architects, and lawyers, but some spaces were used for purposes ranging from insurance sales to periodicals publication to foreign consulates. It was owned by the same family from construction in 1904 until a 2006 sale to developer Matt Howells, who later converted it into condominia; the first residents moved into the building in early 2009.Kroll, Kathryn.
Park Building Condos Put Homeowners Back on Public Square for the First Time in a Century
''

The Plain Dealer ''The Plain Dealer'' is the major newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio; it is a major national newspaper. In the fall of 2019, it ranked 23rd in U.S. newspaper circulation, a significant drop since March 2013, when its circulation ranked 17th daily an ...

'', 2009-04-17. Accessed 2015-06-24. Thirteen years earlier, it had been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

because of its architectural significance.

References

External links

Building website
{{authority control Residential buildings in Cleveland Office buildings completed in 1904 Buildings and structures in Cleveland Chicago school architecture in Ohio Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Cleveland, Ohio Residential condominiums in the United States