Breaking the Bank

The famous Cleveland Trust Ameritrust Society Bank Rotunda at East 9th and Euclid.

Read more about it here!
The Avengers have been wreaking havoc on East 9th Street this week. I am not talking about facelift they gave the street to make it look like Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. I mean literal (fake) destruction on a massive scale.

First off they deface the historic Cleveland Trust building.

Then HULK SMASH!!!

Witnessing the devastation, this woman from Shaker Heights said,
"I think it's fantastic! It's great for the city."

This afternoon I had a lunch date downtown and did my share of rubbernecking to take the sights of big trucks, large bits of fake concrete and no Scarlett Johansson. I thought the large, explosion-dusted billboards for AussieBum swimwear were a gag. But seriously? There really is an Aussiebum?

Sources:
ComicBookMovie.com
WEWSTV5
FOX8

Kay's Bookstore

One afternoon in June, 1955 my father was downtown looking for a summer job. Picture a street teeming with men in hats, suits, skinny ties. On this date like so many others he may have ducked into Kay's on Prospect near East 6th Street.

Owned and operated by Rachel Kowan (Mrs. Kay) Kay's was a three-story bookstore, and its mosaic tiled floors and walls were stuffed and stacked with books. The more I hear it described the more I imagine Lucien's library in the Sandman series, the one that contains every book that was only ever dreamed-of or never-completed. Esoteric and odd, you could find it, and much more, including arcane philosophy, anarchist manifestoes and a surprisingly collection of porn.

Like so many of his generation, you could find Dad perusing "health" magazines espousing the life-extending benefits of nudism. He recently described to me on thought-provoking photograph of a young woman grilling in the rain, wearing only a waist-length slicker.

And, you know, a smile.

On this particular day in question, my father was having little fortune lining up any kind of summer gig. He eventually stepped around the corner up to Euclid and into the Cleveland Trust rotunda, and applied. For his efforts he was hired as an alternate teller and general dogsbody (his words.)

Later my grandfather reported his surprise when a manager approached him in the commissary a few days later to rib him about not telling him that my Dad was now working as a teller. My grandfather replied with equal surprise that he didn't know either!

Source:
Anecdotal Evidence
Read this extended report on Kay's, including more great stuff in the comments section.

George Gund

"Proof that George Gund loves us and wants us to be happy."
- Ben Franklin
George Gund (April 13, 1888 - Nov. 15, 1966) was the son of a Cleveland brewer. Yay! He was in the first graduation class of Harvard Business School, began his career in banking in Seattle before returning to Cleveland to make a killing in the business of processing decaffeinated coffee. Boo.

Gund actually assumed control of the Gund Brewing Company in 1916 ... but that was bad timing. No wonder he turned to coffee.

He invested wisely during the Depression, picking up cheap stocks, was hired by Cleveland Trust Co. as a director and eventually Chairman. In the year 1936 he married his wife Jessica. In spite of having six children to provide for, Mr. Gund eventually left $600 million (1960s dollars) to The George Gund Foundation, which he founded in 1957. As the dedicated servant of the non-profit sector, I am grateful to the George Gund Foundation for paying my mortgage and feeding my children.

Did I mention he also studied animal husbandry and for a time was a rancher in Nevada? George Gund II was an unstoppable American force for all that is good.

Sources:Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
The George Gund Foundation
Brewing in Cleveland (Robert A. Musson)

Cleveland Trust Company

Founded in 1894, the Cleveland Trust Company opened its offices on the corner of East 9th and Euclid in 1908. By 1924 it was the sixth largest bank in America, with Harris Creech as its President. The company survived the Depression well.

The Cleveland Trust building (closed to the public since 1996) was designed by George Post and the famous rotunda features murals by Frank Millet. He and his assistants worked for a year to complete the 13 paintings, depicting the "rise of civilization in the Midwest." Millet lost his life in the North Atlantic in April, 1912 aboard a very large ship.

The stained-glass dome of the rotunda is 85 feet high and sixty feet across, and designed "in the Tiffany style."


Rotunda In Action
For the record, Cleveland Trust employed my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather.

Sources:
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Great Lakes Titanic Society

UPDATE 8/28/2015: The Cleveland Trust Building was destroyed in the Battle of New York.

Dennis Kucinich

Dennis John Kucinich
(born October 8, 1946)
Someone tried to kill Dennis, y'all.

Before communicating with space aliens and marrying a supernaturally hot, young British woman, Dennis Kucinich (six-time U.S. Representative from Ohio's 10th Congressional District - he represents my Dad, which I think is hilarious) was once the boy Mayor of Cleveland.

In 1977 he was elected - at the age of 31 - to the office, and his tenure was distinguished, as Carter's was, for not giving away enough of the store to get everyone out of the terrible hole that was the late 1970s. In particular he was excoriated for not selling Cleveland's publicly owned electrical utility to its main, private competitor to get the city out of debt, a debt which had been routinely forgiven by its main bond-holder, Cleveland Trust. Making his stand for the little people public earned the wrath of Cleveland Trust, which suddenly demanded all debts repaid, plunging the city into default.

Cleveland was not the first major American city (following the Depression) to go into default - that honor belongs to New York City. But as we all know, NYC going into debt would have been a major embarrassment and they were bailed out by the federal government. Cleveland was already an embarrassment, and was so allowed to fall.

Rumor has it that "a hit man from Maryland" (did he have bushy hair?) was sent to kill Kucinich for reasons which are not made clear in Wikipedia, nor why, just because there were a (failed) attempt to recall him out of office that such a hit would be called off. But it was reported that way in the Free Times a few years ago, and we all know where that kind of investigative journalism got them.

The former Muni Light, now Cleveland Public Power, continues to provide electricity at reasonable rates to the people of Cleveland, and Kucinich, after a decade or so of soul-searching, was vindicated for his efforts and is now the political powerhouse we all know and love to watch on Jon Stewart.

Dennis Kucinich was the last Cleveland mayor to serve a two-year term, which was extended to a four-year term during the tenure of George Voinovich.

The New York Spaghetti House

The great, hideous, vacant Cleveland Trust Office Tower was built in 1971 (not to be confused with the majestic and sadly neglected Cleveland Trust Rotunda next to it on the corner of East 9th & Euclid - more on that someday) and my father worked in foreign exchange on the 27th floor. I won't get into the history of that awful, obsidian atrocity, with its hermetically sealed bathtub-like windows, home to the largest spiders I hope I never see again.

The reason I mention it is that on those occasions I would visit my father in his place of work, he would usually take me to lunch at the New York Spaghetti House, just a walk up the street across from what is now Gateway.

Source: Fresh Water Cleveland

The New York Spaghetti House was established in 1927 by Mario Brigotti at 2173 East 9th. The design was very much inspired by a warren-like New York bistro, taking up a less-than Cleveland-sized footprint, with a intimate dining rooms available by walking down stairs into a sub-level.

The building itself was constructed in 1870 as a parsonage to an adjacent church. According to their own website, Mario and his wife Maria were the entire staff in the early days. And during the 30s, as legend has it, they might accept unusual items in lieu of payment. A "life-size" plaster Indian hung from a wall in the bar for 60 years.

My strongest impression of the place (which I last visited in 1992 or 1993) was always the fact that the meat sauce was kind of beige. The family now bottles the sauce for supermarkets, the restaurant closed in 2001.

Source: The New York Spaghetti House website (defunct)

UPDATE: 12/16/2015 (Photo: Bud Hilf)

Henrik M. Hansen

Helen and Henrik, 1932
Henrik Mayer Hansen (May 24, 1904 - May 28, 2005) worked in the IBM division of Cleveland Trust Co. in 1936. Born in Fevik, Norway, Henrik emigrated to the United States while in grade school. He was a boatworker on the Great Lakes for Pittsburgh Steamship when he married Helen Denison in 1932. They had three stillborn children before adopting their first, named John, in 1935. By this time, Henrik's father-in-law Amos A. Denison had convinced him to settle down and get a job at home, which to them was Cleveland.

He was raised in a house which still stands on West 44th Street. When he was a kid he frequented the Y at 49th and Franklin (since burned to the ground) where he learned a motto which lasted a lifetime - C.S., C.S., C.H. or Clean Speech, Clean Sport, Clean Habits. I am sure some of that fell by the wayside in his time on the seas.

Cleveland Trust Co. was the 6th largest bank in the country in 1936, and in its time employed my father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

There is a box of letters from Helen and Henrik to each other at my folks' place in Lakewood, waiting for me to read them. It has taken several years, but I believe I will have the time in 2010 to finally take care of that business.