John Hay High School

Built in 1929, this neoclassical structure underwent an extensive $36 million redesign between 2001-2006 creating a 21st century learning facility for the CMSD students lucky enough to go there. I love working with the kids and teachers at John Hay (I am substituting for one of our performers there today) and am constantly delighted by the way they remodeled this old-timey school without altering its original design elements.

As a reminder of things past, however, two large portraits stand in the main hall, shabby and ill-treated over the past seventy years. One is of progressive Cleveland Mayor Thomas L. Johnson, the other of Commodore Oliver Hazard "Don't Give Up the Sip" Perry. They stand before important Cleveland buildings and landmarks, unrealistically overlapping each other at dramatic angles which was all the rage for artists producing work for the W.P.A.

These are, in fact, W.P.A. paintings. Water-damaged, graffitied, slashed, begging for restoration. It has been suggested that the works were created by Clarence Carter, who created murals for post offices around Ohio, but whether he did in fact create the John Hay High murals is in dispute, and other candidates are unknown.

Oxford Elementary Murals

My daughter just started her first session of indoor soccer, which is led at one of the local elementary schools - but not hers. The last time I visited Oxford Elementary School was to hand out information before an election ... Jesus, was that in 2004? Never been inside.

So we're walking from the gym (where they held scrimmage) to one of the classrooms (where they would be conducting strategy, complete with an animated smartboard - classy!) and pass this wide, brightly painted mural.

"Wait," I said to the parent walking with me, "did that say W.P.A.?" I doubled back and sure as hell, there it was ...


"Federal Art Project
W.P.A. In Ohio"
Finding info on it online was not hard, and led me to a website I was previously ignorant of, a website for the Cleveland Heights Historical Society and an article about the numerous Federal Art Project murals and ceramics to be found at Oxford Elementary, an article written by Mazie Adams, the parent of one of my kid's schoolmates.

Oxford Elementary applied for and received funding for the creation of "two hydrocals (a type of extra-hard plaster) and thirty-five ceramics." In early 1937 the murals were painted directly to the walls by artist Gladys Carambella, the one I saw and that is featured above is of The Pied Piper of Hamlin.

In the 1970s as certain Heights schools were being torn down or renovated, the other mural, depicting the tale of Cinderella was almost destroyed. A little research revealed the forgotten origin of the works - and how federally-funded art is actually protected by the Federal Government. A layer of glue was applied to "save" the artwork, which made the formerly brightly colored work look much worse, and yellowed over the next quarter century. A grant from the Cleveland Foundation led to their proper restoration in 2000.

Source:
"National Art Treasures in Cleveland Heights" (Mazie Adams)
Cleveland Heights Historical Society

The City in 1833

The Cleveland Main Public Library on Superior at 3rd Street opened in 1925. The great first floor reading room, Brett Hall, is named for William Brett, librarian for the CPL from 1884 until 1918. It is a grand room, a real old-school research hall with desk lamps, long wooden tables and stylish, curved chairs.

In 1934 the Public Works of Art project (WPA) unveiled a mural over the North Door by the sixty-six year-old William, Sommer, The City in 1933, depicting the Public Square of 100 years earlier. Of the buildings presented (The Court House, the Hotel) the one that remains today is the Old Stone Church. The lake is visible in the background, and indications of Cleveland as a (former) agrarian society, and (at that time) an industrial one.

Other murals were due to join it presently, but no new works were successfully commissioned until the 1970s.