Centennial!

The Plain Dealer - Thursday, July 23, 1936
32,720 Visit Expo As City Has Birthday
75,000 watch parade
Mayor Starts Cleveland on Second Century

Cleveland at midnight last night formally ended its first 100 years as a corporate city and turned to face its second century.

From her sister Great Lakes cities of Lorain and Erie came delegations to help Cleveland celebrate. At the formal anniversary ceremony in the Mall plaza the leaders of those delegations, Mayor E.A. Braun of Lorsain and J,.D. Parent, “Ambassador of good will from Erie,” told Clevelanders that their cities were vitally interested in the growth and progress of Cleveland: that the bond that shipping had created among the three would, they hoped, bring them even closer together in the next 100 years.

Speaking at the ceremony in the plaza, (Mayor Harold H. Burton) urged Clevelanders to look ahead with confidence, pointing to the progress and accomplishments of the city since 1836.

“Let us look into the future after our first 100 years. Our ancestors fought with courage and determination to gain control of this land. Now we must fight with the same courage to rid ourselves of the osbatcles in our path to future progress.”

The parade was a conglomerate of almost every parade that has ever been devised. It was led by the conventional mounted police and by infantrymen. There followed bathing beauties in jinrichishas, a lion in a cage, a midget band and midget performers, elephants, monkeys in tiny automobiles, actors from the Globe Theater dressed in Elizabethan costume.

Pygmies from the Belgian Congo there were and several hundred men and women in the costumes of the various communities respresented in the Streets of the World, and palmists and a Chinese dragon, Indians, dinosaurs, Yeomanettes, Conestoga wagons, streamlined trucks and busses, the original steam engine Tom Thumb and a replica of the Wright brothers’ first airplane from the Parade of Years.

Actors parading in Shakespearean costumes? How gay is that?

Also on tap for Cleveland's Centennial celebration:

Ness Orders Full Report In Bet Probe
Told 3 Sons of Deputy Inspector Worked At Track
Officer Defends Self, Family
(Deputy Police Inspector Timothy J.) Costello told a reporter last night that he thought it “highly unfair and unjust” to question his conduct as a police officer because three of his children worked at a dog track.

Seek Name of 5th Headless Corpse
Police Hunt Maniac Killer; Coroner Not Sure Man Was Murdered
“There is nothing to indicate that there was any violence on skull or body,” (Cornoner A.J.) Pearce said. “ The whole thing was so decomposed that it is possible for the head to have dropped off and have been carried a few yards by a dog or other animal.”