A Free Walkabout of Downtown Cleveland, Ohio!
Downtown Cleveland area is a wealth of education, history, and adventures waiting to happen! There is so much to see and do!
If you only have a half day and want to spend almost nothing, then downtown Cleveland is a wonderful place to be. Just the sight can keep you busy with little or no cost just walking around and seeing free museums and exhibits. It can take all day if you really just relax and enjoy the surroundings.
I am listing these in the way to visit as they are in a great circle back to the car. Note: the City Hall pictured above is right next to the World’s Largest Rubber Stamp.
World’s Largest Rubber Stamp
Parking is available just down the street as you come off the freeway or the metro is just up the way. This stamp is just gigantic! It is a great photo shot with a relaxing little park.
The Free Stamp was commissioned by Standard Oil of Ohio and donated to the city in 1991 by BP. It sits in Willard Park which has a great little rain garden.
Cleveland Public Auditorium
The Cleveland Public Auditorium is just a great building to look at. It is across the street from Cleveland City Hall and the Free Stamp and if you walk along the Hall up 6th street you will run into the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
The Cleveland Public Auditorium boast a 10,000 seat auditorium, 3,000 seat music hall, and a 600 seat theater plus meeting rooms. The event calendar for 2020 include Sneaker Con, United Way Annual Meeting, Ohio Bridal & Wedding Expo, Wizard World, and lots of different conferences. See if something you want to attend is going on when your in town.
Past events include the Republican National Conventions (1924 & 1936). Concerts for the Cleveland Orchestra, Elvis, the Beatles, Hendrix, Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. And for the home court of the Cleveland State Vikings basketball team for several years before the opening of the Wolstein Center.
The Cleveland Public Auditorium was opened in 1922, and could seat 13,000. It also held the largest E. M. Skinner pipe organ built at the time with 10,010 pipes. It was considered so advanced at the time that other major city used it as a model for their public auditoriums.
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland-Leaning Center and Money Museum
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has turn itself partial into a Learning Center and Money Museum. The building itself is prestigious stimulating in gold awe-inspiring painted ceilings, pink Sienna marble, and black iron work.
The building also has gun ports and other placement for the guards before security cameras, computers with wire transfers, credit cards, and for the days of Bonnie and Clyde.
It still is the Federal Reserve Bank but most of the work is done through email, phone, and other forms of communications.
The exhibits are great with a money tree, a film about money, and other items. This is a great place for children. They can have so many interactive items for them and the child in all of us.
The museum can take a very short time to go through or forever depending on your mood. Their website says about 1.5 to 2 hours.
The Reserve is located at 1455 East 6th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44114. It is free and open Monday to Thursday from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm but closed for special events and Bank Holidays.
Visitors over 16 must have a valid ID for admission and all items will be subject to x-ray and they have a metal detector.
Learn about how the L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was all about the Federal Reserve Banking system.
Brief History
In 1913, Congress passed The Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve Banks were set up to control the monetary system to create a safer, flexible, and more stable system of money in the United States.
The system has 12 regional banks across the nation. Most of those bank are on the east coast due to the fact that most of the money, population, and political influence was on the East Coast during the creation of the banks.
New York’s Reserve is only for Wall Street. The San Francisco branch covers Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona which now covers over 35% of the nations land and over 20% of the nations population today.
But most of the money and industry was in the Upper Eastern part of the United States with Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston, Richmond, and Washington DC each having it own bank.
Today, most of the twelve banks have branches in their covered areas. For example, Cleveland’s Federal Reserve has a branch in Pittsburgh as it is in Cleveland area.
The Federal Reserve Bank job is to control inflation, maintain low unemployment, and a healthy economic growth. Two of the tools that they use to do this is controlling the supply of money and determining the National Interest Rate.
The Federal Reserve Bank is the most misunderstood system in the U.S. as most of what they do is keep under wraps.
Cleveland Public Library
The Cleveland Public Library downtown branch has a wonderful historical building and a modern building with a garden in between. The historical part was build in 1925.
The architecture of the building is wonderful and it is just around the corner from the Federal Reserve at 325 Superior Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.
The Library also holds a collections from John G. White of Chess and Checkers Collection which includes 32,000 chess books and over 6,000 bound volumes of chess periodicals. They have the largest chess library in the world. They also have a lot of very great chess sets. The second largest is in the Netherlands and the third is in Melbourne.
John G. White also donated a collection of Folklore and Orientalia. The Library also includes John F. Puskas Miniature Books Collection, a Tobacco Collection, and a Schweitfurth Collection of rare architectural publications.
As you walk into the library, the cold marble takes your breath away. Walk up the first bit of stairs and then go to the right of left and up the flight of stairs to the collection or take the elevator. But take both on your trip as the elevator is a look into the past and the stairs are also wonderful.
The collections are free to see but stop and chat with the librarians as they are a wealth of information on the collections, Cleveland, and a lot of other information.
Brief History
William Howard Brett was the head librarian for Cleveland Public Library from 1884 until his death in 1918. He was considered one of the 100 most important librarians of the 20th century.
During his time at the Cleveland Public Library, he introduced the “open shelf” library system and increased the libraries collection to over 3 million books. The Cleveland Public Library was the first large library to implement the “open shelf” system which allows patrons to walk among the bookshelves and find their own books.
He arranged his library into collections separated the reference and circulation books by major categories with a dedicated staff assigned to each subject. At the time, this was considered impractical but this is the current systems that libraries use the world over.
He was also known as the “greatest children’s librarian”. Under his direction, he developed children’s rooms in the public libraries, in schools, and had librarians that were trained to work with children and youth in the children’s areas.
Mr. Brett was also a veteran of the Civil War. He worked with the American Library Association’s (ALA) Library War Service. Just before his death, he started a chapter in Ohio and was collecting funds and books for the war effort. This campaign would later be donated and help establish the American Library in Paris with the help of other U.S. librarians’ volunteer services from across the nation.
Mr. Brett also was helped create a series of training and development courses with the help of his staff and professors from Western Reserve University. In 1924, the Western Reserve University became the School of Library Science.
Mr. Brett was instrumental in solicited Carnegie for funds to building branches across the city. By 1918, he had created 25 branches, 17 libraries in schools, 487 classroom libraries, 42 deposit stations, 66 delivery stations, 7 children’s stations, a library for the blind, and so much more before his untimely death from a drunk driver.
Cleveland Arcade
The Cleveland Arcade was once a thriving mall which opened in 1890. It was also the first indoor shopping center, i.e. mall, in America. It was nicknamed Cleveland’s Crystal Palace by locals as the design was modeled after the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele II in Milan, Italy.
The massive Victorian era space with street like lamps, gold trims, marble stairs, wood and iron work, five floors, and a glass skylight that spans over 300 feet just screams out luxuriously decadence.
The Arcade currently has a few shops, dinning, and a spa but the top three floors have been taken over by the Hyatt Regency Cleveland at The Arcade which rooms overlooking the Arcada starting at $131 and suite starting at $183.
This is just one of those places you stay for at least a night if your going to be in town. It is also located just blocks from everything in this blog and the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Science Center, and other attentions. (PS I am not getting paid for this. I just thing that it is a neat place to stay for at least a night and look at the Arcade. Take in a show.)
Located at 401 Euclid Avenue and directly across the street from the Cleveland Public Library. But note that is it in the middle of the block and goes straight through to the next block so best to look across the street and walk through then use the GPS, if you are walking from the library to the Arcade.
Also, walk all the way through as you get the the next stop, 5th street Arcades which is directly across the street.
Brief History
The arcade is actually a succession of contiguous arches designed to provide a shelter walkway for pedestrians but have been brought inside as architecture features of the Romanesque or Gothic tradition. From the Roman Colosseum to the Catholic churches to the Islamic mosques as prominent features of architecture styles.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, arcades were built for shopping to attract the genteel middle class. Arcades were places to shop but more importantly, a place to be seen and to see others.
The arcades offered shopping a place away from the dirty and dangerous streets in a warm dry place allowing shoppers to spend time under a glass roof allowing for natural light.
It also allowed shoppers a one stop shopping area for most of their needs and a place to grab a cafe or a snack. The arcades are the predecessor of the Mall.
5th Street Arcades
In 1898, the Colonial Arcade opened next to the Colonial Hotel. In 1911, the Euclid Arcade opened. In 2000, the Colonial and the Euclid Arcade were connected and are now the 5th Street Arcades.
They include lots of great shops, services (T mobile), and lots of food shops. It is a nice place to get a cupcake, popcorn, or cookies to enjoy either in the Arcade or to take to the Public Square.
Cleveland’s Public Square
Cleveland’s Public Square host a ice skating rink in the winter and a host of events during the year including concerts, fireworks for Valentine’s Day and other days, a holiday light show, Summer Splash with daily activities including playing in the fountain, and so much more.
The Square also holds the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, a coffee shop, and wonderful places to just take a seat and relax on a nice day. Plus a place to pick up the local buses.
Jack Cleveland Casino
Jack Cleveland Casino is in the former Higbee Building which was a department store founded in 1860. The building is 192 foot tall and is beautiful inside. Even if you don’t gamble, just walk in and see all the old architectural items.
If you do gamble, get a players card and see all that they have to offer on discounts and other item. I only take in what I am going to leave with the Casino. So, I don’t gamble but use it as entertainment expense.
Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument
The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument is in the Cleveland Public Square. It is larger then life and looking up can give you a bit of whiplash. The monument is made from granite blocks, sandstone, and is topped with a bronze statue of the “Goddess of Liberty”.
On the outside, their are four sculptural with different dramatic depictions of the Civil War which are gut wrenching. On the outside you can see the stained glass windows but they are very dull looking but check them out from the inside. They are spectacularly breathtaking.
The Inside marble was meant to provide peace and tranquility with walls having over 9,000 names of the men who fought in the Civil War that served with the Cuyahoga County regiments or were from Cuyahoga County.
In the center of the building, there are four bronze panels marking the beginning and ending of the war and another panel which has over 100 names of women of the Northern Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Relief Society.
The inside of the memorial is closed on Monday’s and other days so check the schedule. The hours are 10 am to 5:30 pm.
They also have a free tour of the tunnel under the monument but this is only once in a while but check if they are when you are going to be around.
Fountain of Eternal Life
The Fountain of Eternal Life was to be for Vietnam Veterans but ended up honoring all those who died or declared missing in all the wars from 1900 to current.
Currently, the granite base includes Cuyahoga County residents who died during WWII, Korea, Spanish American War, WWI, Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars.
The Fountain is directly behind the Public Library and can be seen from the Cleveland Public Square and is behind the Cleveland Auditorium which will take you back to the car with a walk on the other side of the Cleveland Auditorium.
Also, look around this park area as it has a bit more items around it.
Other neat Buildings and Churches Downtown
As your walking downtown. Look around for other very neat building and churches. A few pictures.
The Drury Hotel Company now owns this building but it was built in 1931 and was the Board of Education Building.
As you walk around town you can see building from the began of the town history to today and side by side.
