Forest Hill Park Footbridge

Under Construction, 1939-40

For better or for worse, I am a runner. There are a number of short routes which take me from my home in Cleveland Heights and through the neighborhood or the city, though many of those will include inclines which, depending on the day, can be welcome or not.

Some time ago I realized how close I was to Forest Hill Park, which spans both the Heights and East Cleveland. It’s almost exactly a mile there (and a mile back) and once there, I can take a few different paths to create a 5K, a four or even five miler. And the entire route is mostly flat.

Once upon a time, Forest Hill was the home of John D. Rockefeller. Featuring a bluff from which you could view the city of Cleveland, the estate was a summer retreat for the family until the mid-1910s. In 1939, J.D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the property to both cities for public recreational use. It was at that time that Works Progress Administration funds were employed to create a footbridge to span a 350-foot valley, through which runs Forest Hill Boulevard.

It’s a lovely bridge, built with a steel skeleton and faced with locally quarried Euclid bluestone. More recently, a cage-like addition was added to the middle section for safety. It has also kept the bridge free from tagging.

Photo: J. Mark Souther

I will often take the bridge from East Cleveland to Cleveland Heights and back on my runs, and once even incorporated the bridge into a script I wrote, a play which is intended to be performed live via cellphone, while running through the park.

Over recent years, the bridge at either end had been damaged, the stone walls knocked over, possibly by careless motor vehicles in the park, or in some cases, probably pushed over by mischievous hands.

A couple years ago, however, repair workers replaced and repaired the damage and now they look good again. I stopped in the middle of a run in October, 2021 to thank and compliment the guys who were employed for the project, for their work.

Sources:
Cleveland Historical

Cleveland Memory Project
Daddy Runs Fast Blog
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

Cleveland Aquarium

Sculpted glass by Michael Yates
Designed for the Cleveland Aquarium, 1957
Now on display in Primates, Cat & Aquatics House
at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
(Spotted it there with the kids today.)
The Cleveland Aquarium opened at Gordon Park near East 72nd Street on September 6, 1954, owned by the city of Cleveland and operated by the Natural History Museum. It occupied space that was once a WPA constructed bathhouse. Yes.

The Natural History Museum converted the bathhouse into a Trailside Museum, but the construction of Interstate 90 cut the CMNH property in half and they relocated their main exhibits to the (present) University Circle location and closed this building. Completion to that section of I-90 made the building accessible again, and it was made into the aquarium.

The entire endeavor was accomplished by the volunteers of the Cleveland Aquarium Society, offering thousands of hours of their time to create this modest-sized exhibition space.

They featured "sharks, swordfish, sawfish, eels, squid, octopus, and coral."

And at least one alligator (see right.)

For thirty years it was a very popular place to go, but prices were kept intentionally low and it never created much profit. In 1985 the building closed due to structural problems, a year later its exhibits were transferred to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

UPDATE: The not-for-profit Cleveland Aquarium Society still exists today. However, they are not associated with the Greater Cleveland Aquarium opening in the Powerhouse in Flats on January 21, 2012 which is a for-profit venture developed by New Zealand-based Marinescape.

Sources:
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Cleveland Aquarium website

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.

My Day

"Eleanor Roosevelt's "My Day" was a syndicated newspaper column published from 1935 to 1962. During those years, Eleanor wrote the column consistently six days a week, the only interruption being when her husband died, and even then she missed only four days. The column allowed Eleanor to reach millions of Americans with her views on social and political issues, current and historical events, and her private and public life. Dealing with subjects far out of the range of the conventional first lady's concerns, "My Day" is an outstanding example of the breadth of issues and activities which occupied Eleanor Roosevelt's life." - The American Experience, PBS

March 12, 1936

If one thing more than another on a trip of this kind reminds you that you are not just an ordinary lecturer and that you can not separate yourself from being the wife of the President of the United States, it is the beautiful flowers that greet you wherever you go. You can not wear more than a certain number and you can not take them with you, so you tentatively suggest that the hotel be kind enough to send them to a hospital and pray that some one else will continue to enjoy them as much as you do during the time that you have them with you.

The other thing which is quite amusing is the tremendous anxiety to take proper care of me—policemen and plain clothes men spring out of the ground at every turn. In Washington or New York City an occasional policeman will say "hello" or salute with a smile but that is the extent of the excitement which I arouse. In short away from one's usual haunts one is much more conscious of being the wife of the President than one ever does at home!

The train trip to Cleveland this morning was uneventful. I read a plan for helping us out of the depression, submitted by some one in Iowa. I also read the whole of the National Student Federation's magazine and the morning papers. A few people waved to me from the station platforms on the way and when we pulled into Cleveland there was quite a crowd at the station. The committee met us and as usual the photographers and the press were our first visitors after we reached the very comfortable Cleveland Hotel. Then we lunched with the committee and from two-forty-five to four-thirty I visited WPA projects. Miss Nell Moley and Mrs. Samuel Halle came to call for a few minutes and I enjoyed very much talking to Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Burke at luncheon. Mrs. Clark was particularly interesting in describing a new form of community agency which she hopes will render civic work much more efficiently. There was quite a little mail here which we have been hurriedly going through and in a little while we will dine and after my speech tonight, we take a train for Dayton.

- E.R.