Construction on the monument, designed by architect Levi Scofield, began in 1891. Inside the monument are the names of more than 9,000 people who enlisted in the Union army from Cuyahoga County. There are sculptures and images of Union leaders as well as a number of relics. A 125-foot shaft rises above the monument’s roof with a fifteen-foot figure of Lady Liberty on the top.

Outside, the monument features four groups of bronze statues representing the Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry and the Navy, each depicted in battle. In the background are military and naval emblems.

Both Public Square and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument underwent major renovations that were completed in the summer of 2016.

The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument is located in Public Square in downtown Cleveland. It honors local Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument features the names of more than 9,000 local soldiers who fought in the Civil War. 

Website

At a meeting of Camp Barnett, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Society, in 1879, Comrade William J. Gleason suggested erecting a monument to commemorate Union soldiers and sailors of the Civil War Cuyahoga County. It was unanimously approved and opened on July 4, 1894. Today, it is open most days from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and is a popular attraction in downtown Cleveland. Visitors can also participate in the occasional tunnel tour of the moment as well as enjoy the Victorian Christmas display each year. It is operated by the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument Commission. 

Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument

This tour includes twenty museums and iconic downtown Cleveland landmarks. The tour makes a loop, starting at Terminal Tower and concluding at Cleveland's famous Soldiers and Sailors Monument. 

Highlights of Downtown Cleveland Tour

This short walking tour includes stops at a number of historic buildings, monuments, and iconic Cleveland landmarks. Highlights of the tour include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Terminal Tower, Old Stone Church, and the Cleveland Arcade.

Downtown Cleveland Walking Tour

Museums, mansions, and more. This rambling drive along Cleveland's Euclid Avenue includes stops at many of the city's leading landmarks starting in the heart of downtown and making its way to the Case Western campus where it concludes with two of the city's leading art museums. 

Cleveland's Historic Euclid Avenue Tour

After the Cleveland Library’s opening in 1869, it was housed in temporary and rented spaces until the Main Library building was completed in 1925. A contest had been held to decide who would build the new library; the architectural firm Walker &amp; Weeks won. It took two years and nearly five million dollars to construct the beaux-arts style building. Inside, the library recalls the Renaissance style with Italian marble, vaulted ceilings, grand carved staircases, and paintings of mythological figures. The new library was a hit with the community early on, reaching a peak of 12,000 visitors a day in the early 1930s.

In November 1957, legislation was approved for the library to purchase and renovate a building previously owned by The Plain Dealer newspaper for three million dollars. The additional space was necessary for the library’s ever-growing collection. But, the library, like most others in the country, saw a decline in use over the next few decades. Circulation went from a high of 10,374,652 books and materials in 1932 to 3,402,050 in 1970. Because of this, funds decreased also. During the 1980s, the Cleveland Public Library updated its branches before voters approved a ninety-million-dollar bond to improve the main downtown branch.

In 1997, a new building was added the main library: The Louis Stokes Building, named for the first African-American Congressman from Ohio. The Stokes Building features eleven floors of more than thirty miles of bookshelves. It has also been equipped with the latest electronic resources. Meanwhile, the twenty-four-million-dollar renovation of the Main Building in 1999 replaced electrical, plumbing, and ventilation systems. Other parts of the library were updated to meet modern safety codes and to accommodate new technology. Historical features, such as the ceilings and the marble, were refurbished as well.

The Cleveland Public Library, originally called the “Public School Library,” was the first U.S. library to let its guests choose books directly from the shelves. It was located in a number of rented spaces from 1869 until the Main Building was completed in 1925. A new building, the Louis Stokes Wing, was added to the main downtown branch in 1997. Since then, the original building has been updated and refurbished. Today, the Cleveland Public Library circulates one of the largest and most extensive collections in the country, boasting close to ten million items.

Cleveland Public Library, Main Branch

The Fountain of Eternal Life was originally created in 1964 with the goal of being dedicated to soldiers who had died or were declared missing in the Spanish/American War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The Fountain was created by Marshall Fredrick, who constructed a man reaching on the top&nbsp;that, "...expresses the main theme of the Memorial Fountain, namely, the spirit of mankind rising out of the encircling flames of war, pestilence, and the destructive elements of life, reaching and ascending to a new understanding of life. Man rising above death, reaching upward to his God and toward Peace."With its&nbsp;dedication in 1964, the Eternal Life Fountain&nbsp;contained only the 4,155 names of Clevelanders who had served during World War II and the Korean War. In 2004, the fountain was rededicated, and 1,361 names were added to include veterans of the Spanish/American War and World War I and the first six casualties of the Iraqi and Afghanistan War from the Cleveland Area. Further names are expected to be added in the future by the Greater Cleveland Veteran's Memorial Inc. The plaza in which the Fountain is located has also changed its name from Mall A to the Veterans Memorial Plaza.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The Fountain of Eternal Life is a memorial erected in Mall A of Cleveland, Ohio. The fountain is dedicated to the soldiers from greater Cleveland who served in 20th Century wars as well as the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. The memorial is also known as the War Memorial Fountain and the Peace Arising from the Flames of War. The Fountain was created in 1988 and has stood across from a Statue of Abraham Lincoln for decades. 

Fountain of Eternal Life

The First Presbyterian Church was officially established in 1820 by a congregation that had previously met for Union Sunday School in Cleveland’s first log courthouse. The church was incorporated seven years later as the First Presbyterian Society. In 1831, construction of the original Old Stone Church began, and it was completed in 1833 or 1834 (sources differ). This Georgian Revival-style building was razed in 1853 to make way for a new Romanesque Revival stone church. The firm of Heard &amp; Porter (assisted by master builder Wareham J. Warner) designed the updated church, which was finished in 1855. Charles Heard had previously designed several residences in Cleveland while Simeon Porter worked on projects for the Case Western Reserve University. The Old Stone Church is the last of their churches standing today.

The church had to be renovated twice in the 1800s because of two separate fires. The first, in 1857, ravaged the interior and destroyed a 228-foot-tall steeple. Heard and Porter were hired to repair the inside of the church. A new spire was added in 1868 to the east tower, but it had to be removed after another fire devastated the church in 1884. This time, Charles F. Schweinfurth worked to restore the church’s interior to its former glory. During the process, glass windows by Louis Tiffany and John LaFarge and frescoes by Julius Schweinfurth were added. Since then, the Old Stone Church’s exterior sandstone walls have adopted a gray hue due to the surrounding city’s pollution.

The Old Stone Church is the oldest surviving building on Public Square and is home to the First Presbyterian congregation, the second oldest religious organization in Cleveland. The church that stands today was built in 1855 and replaced an earlier church, called by the same name, which was completed in the early 1830s. Major renovations were undertaken in 1857 and 1884 after two fires gutted the church’s interior.

Old Stone Church

Brothers Oris P. and Mantis J. Van Sweringen proposed the construction of a centralized rail station in Cleveland’s Public Square. This was more ambitious than their original plan to build a small station in the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights. One thousand buildings were torn down to make room for the new complex. The Van Sweringens then changed the concept of the building from a modest 14-story office space to a 52-story tower. It took seven years and nearly ten million dollars to complete the project, which was overseen by the Chicago-based architecture firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White. The shy Van Sweringen brothers chose not to attend the opening ceremonies of their legacy, the Terminal Tower, in 1930.

By the 1970s, the Terminal Tower and its surrounding complex sat empty, a symbol of the hard times that had hit Cleveland and other similar cities in the U.S. In 1986, a publicity attempt was held to earn a Guinness World Record by releasing almost 1.5 million balloons from the site. Havoc ensued after “Balloonfest” as winds and rain soon forced the balloons back down to earth, causing a 30-minute closure of Burke Lakefront Airport as well as a few car accidents.

The Terminal Tower is still in use as an office building today, though its observation deck was reopened to the public in April 2018.

The Terminal Tower was the second tallest building in North America from its completion in 1930 until the construction of the Prudential Center in Boston in 1964. The Cleveland landmark, also known as the Cleveland Union Terminal, stands 708 feet tall, 771 feet with its flagpole. The beaux-arts style building (with a steel structure and façade of granite and limestone) was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Today, the Terminal Tower serves as commercial office space.

Terminal Tower

The Arcade was financed by a group of wealthy Cleveland businessmen and cost
$875,000 to build. Because the design was so complicated, regular contractors
could not handle the job; instead, the Detroit Bridge Company began construction
began in 1888. The Arcade was built in the Romanesque style with rusticated
sandstone and brick. It stands five stories tall and features iron balconies
and an actual glass ceiling supported by steel trusses. The 300-feet long
building also connects two streets, Superior and Euclid. Since they are at
different levels, the building has ground-level entrances at two different
heights.

The Arcade was the first building in Cleveland to be put on the National
Register of Historic Places. It later underwent an expensive renovation, ending
in 2001. Today, the Hyatt occupies the top three floors and two towers of the structure
while the bottom two floors feature retail and dining. The Arcade is also the
site of special events throughout the year.

The Cleveland Arcade opened in 1890, becoming the first indoor shopping mall in the country. Within walking distance of most Cleveland attractions, it now features a variety of shopping and dining options and houses the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The Arcade was designed by John Eisenmann and George Smith, who modeled it after a similar facility in Milan, Italy. 

Cleveland Arcade

The fifteen-floor New England Building represents a late nineteenth-century urban trend of skyscraper construction, both in Cleveland and throughout the nation. The New England Building arrived during a time when Cleveland enjoyed a business and building boom. When it opened in 1896, it stood as Cleveland's tallest building and one of the highest in the country. The New England name came from its builders, and that name stuck until 1915 when it became the Guardian Building and then later the National City Bank Building. The building's modern design, along with its status as the city's tallest skyscraper -- a title it held until 1905, inspired several businesses to move their offices to the New England Building. The abundance of companies and active downtown skyscraper construction speaks to Cleveland's economic and building boom. John D. Rockefeller based his prolific Standard Oil Corporation in Cleveland in 1870, helping kick-start the growth. The steel industry also flourished during the 1870s and 1880s as well as numerous companies tied to the automobile industry. The Guardian Savings and Trust Company purchased the building in 1915 and subsequently hired a firm to add an addition to the building that allowed for bank facilities and an additional 250 rooms. The adjacent, shorter Garfield Building, is built on top of that addition. The firm also erected the imposing columns at the building's entrance. The Guardian Savings and Trust Company held ownership of the building for nearly thirty years. Still, the Great Depression took a toll on the bank, and the company was proven to have mismanaged its customers' money by giving insider loans to members of the company. After Guardian vacated the building, the National City Bank moved in and then purchased the building outright in 1944. Five years later, in 1949, the building officially became the National City Bank Building. The historic building's overall occupancy declined substantially during the late twentieth century as far more modern skyscrapers became available to businesses. During the late 1990s, the New England Building transitioned into a hotel, serving the Holiday Inn Express.

The New England Building opened in 1896 as Cleveland's tallest building, a distinction it held until 1905. The building opened after the city enjoyed decades of economic growth. The building largely catered to banks, notably the Guardian Bank and National City. The Guardian Bank moved in and built an addition that now exists under the adjacent Garfield Building, as well as the distinctive Corinthian columns. Similar to older skyscrapers found in large cities, occupancy declined throughout the twentieth century. But, the Holiday Inn Express moved in during the 1990s, helping to revive the historic buildings viability as the city simultaneously enjoyed a civic rebirth after times of decline during 1970s and '80s.  

New England Building (a.k.a. Guardian Bank Building & National City Bank Building)

Renowned architect George B. Post, who also designed the New York Stock Exchange, won a contest for the opportunity to create the building. It was built in Beaux-Arts style with three stories of white granite facing. The building’s rotunda is the dominant feature with an eighty-five-foot dome ceiling. There are Tiffany-style glass panels and fluted columns as well as marble floors and walls. Artist Francis David Millett completed the thirteen murals that adorn the walls just below the dome.

Years later, the bank hired architect Marcel Breuer to add two towers framing the rotunda; only one was built. The collapse of the real estate market in the 1980s substantially hurt the bank, then known as AmeriTrust and one of the biggest institutions in the country. Society Corporation bought out AmeriTrust in 1991 and the building later closed in 1996. It was empty for nearly twenty years.

In 2013, the building and adjacent tower were converted to a hotel and apartments. A Cleveland grocery-store chain turned the rotunda and an adjacent building into a 27,000-square-foot supermarket, which was completed and opened in 2015.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Cleveland Trust Company began in 1894 with $500,000 capital and John G.W. Cowles as president. In 1903, it merged with Western Reserve Trust Co. and outgrew its rented office space. The bank built a new headquarters at the corner of E. 9th and Euclid that opened in 1908. The bank eventually closed, but the building remains. After years spent unoccupied, the building now houses a supermarket, hotel, and apartments on the upper floors. 

Cleveland Trust Company Building

The Halle Brothers Co. (1891–1982) was considered the leading department store company in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded on 7 February 1891 by brothers Samuel Horatio Halle and Salmon Portland Chase Halle, the very first store was located at 221 Superior Avenue near the city's&nbsp;Public Square&nbsp;where the brothers had bought out a hat and furrier shop owned by T.S. Paddock. Two years later, they moved to&nbsp;Euclid Avenue and East 4th Street and added ready-to-wear clothing to the merchandise mix. The firm was officially incorporated in 1902 as the Halle Bros. Co. After growing and moving several times, the company eventually built its main store at 1228 Euclid Avenue by 1910. By 1927, their new $5 million Huron-Prospect Building was opened, creating an emporium in what is now known as the city's Theater District.Halle's was well regarded as a high-end department store, receiving praise for opening stores beyond the usual shopping district of&nbsp;Public Square&nbsp;in downtown Cleveland. When the flagship store expanded in 1927,&nbsp;Time Magazine extolled the business for helping to turn the city of Cleveland into a more metropolitan city and compared Halle's to&nbsp;Lord &amp; Taylor,&nbsp;B. Altman and Co., R.H. Stearns, Marshall Field's,&nbsp;Bullock's, and&nbsp;Maison Blanche.As of 1927, Halle's selling region included western&nbsp;New York, Pennsylvania,&nbsp;Northeast Ohio, and&nbsp;Indiana.On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Halle Bros. Co., the employees presented to Mr. Samuel H. Halle several volumes holding pages, one from each employee. In the upper corner was a record of the name, department, and years of employment. The rest of the page was a letter to Mr. Halle.Although the company sustained losses during the&nbsp;Great Depression, business grew again after&nbsp;World War II&nbsp;as Halle's began developing suburban branches starting in 1948 under the leadership of Walter Murphy Halle, while completing a $10 million modernization at Playhouse Square that included a new service building on Prospect Avenue and the West Wing addition to its original building in 1949. Over time, the store came to be enjoyed by the city's carriage trade society, especially during the Christmas season when the flagship store had its very own popular version of&nbsp;Santa Claus, a man named Mr. Jingleing, who could be found, as a TV and radio&nbsp;jingle&nbsp;reminded kids, "on Halle's seventh floor" serving as Santa's "Keeper Of The Keys."While the company outlasted many other department and specialty stores in Cleveland, the 1960s brought hard times to the family business. With the closing of Sterling-Linder Co.&nbsp;and&nbsp;Bonwit Teller, both located across from the main Halle's store in downtown, and the decline of Cleveland's Playhouse Square theaters, downtown shopping shifted to Cleveland's Public Square where rivals&nbsp;Higbee's&nbsp;and The&nbsp;May Company&nbsp;operated stores with easy access to Cleveland's&nbsp;Rapid Transit&nbsp;system. In 1956, the company attempted to counter this competitive disadvantage by leasing a number of buses from the&nbsp;Cleveland Transit System&nbsp;for the purpose of providing a free shuttle service from Public Square to Playhouse Square, a move initially seen as an interim measure pending completion of a proposed subway line under Euclid Avenue (a project for which voters had approved public financing in 1953). When the planned subway failed to materialize (then-County Engineer&nbsp;Albert S. Porter&nbsp;refused to go forward with the project believing that the future of local transportation was linked to the freeway), Halle's was forced to continue the shuttle service.&nbsp;Without the draw of other stores, and rising crime on Cleveland's near east side, it became more difficult for suburban shoppers to justify a trip to the flagship Halle's store.Suffering from an overbuilt flagship, the abandonment of&nbsp;the downtown area, and overexpansion into outlying areas, the company was sold to&nbsp;Marshall Field's&nbsp;in 1970, under which it deteriorated, falling behind local rivals&nbsp;Higbee's&nbsp;and&nbsp;May Company. Attempts to lure less upscale patrons with mid-priced goods failed, forcing the 1974 resignation of then-president/CEO Chisholm Halle—Walter's son and the grandson of Samuel H. Halle, who had died in 1954. Field's did attempt to modernize Halle's look, investing in a brand make-over campaign in the 1970s, including retiring Halle's traditional Old English Script logo to a new logo that matched Marshall Field's logo, however, store sales continued to slide.In November 1981, Field's sold Halle's (now numbering fifteen stores in&nbsp;Ohio&nbsp;and&nbsp;Pennsylvania) to Associated Investors Corporation, led by&nbsp;Columbus, Ohio&nbsp;businessman&nbsp;Jerome Schottenstein, whose primary holdings included the&nbsp;Value City&nbsp;discount store chain. At first, the sale seemed to hold promise for Halle's. Schottenstein attempted to allay community fears by placing full-page newspaper ads in which he promised to see to the continuation of the chain's traditions.However, Associated Investors subsequently liquidated the company in 1982 with all the stores either sold or closed despite attempts to operate them as a smaller suburban six-unit operation.&nbsp;A location at&nbsp;Randall Park Mall&nbsp;in&nbsp;North Randall, Ohio&nbsp;was planned for the 1970s but was canceled. That space sat empty until a multiscreen&nbsp;cineplex&nbsp;was built there in the late 1990s.Its former flagship store at&nbsp;Playhouse Square Center&nbsp;was redeveloped as offices by&nbsp;Forest City Enterprises&nbsp;with space for retail shops on the main floor and a food court in the former Downstairs Store.&nbsp;During the late 1990s, the building was also used as the main location of the fictional Winfred-Louder store in "The Drew Carey Show" on ABC.Actress&nbsp;Halle Berry, who was born in Cleveland, was named for the famed department store.

Halle Brothers Co., commonly referred to as Halle's, is a defunct department store chain. During most of its ninety-one-year history, Halle's focused on higher-end merchandise, which it combined with personal service. The company was the first major department store in Cleveland to open a suburban branch store. The store was used as the location of the fictional department store, Winfred-Louder, in the television series, "The Drew Carey Show". Actress Halle Berry, a native of Cleveland, was named after the store.

Halle Brothers Company

<blockquote>After WWI, Joseph Laronge had a vision of five theaters on Euclid Ave. With the help of Marcus Loew and others, Loew's Ohio Theaters was formed and the planned district took shape between 1921 and 1922. In February 1921, the first two theaters that opened were the State and Ohio Theaters. The next month, the Hanna Theater opened in the annex of the Hanna Building. In April, the Allen theater opened in the Bulkley Building next door to the Ohio and State Theaters. It was originally dubbed "Playhouse Square", but the Euclid Square Association interfered and wanted to call it "Euclid Square". This was unsuccessful, and so it officially remained "Playhouse Square".&nbsp;The 8-story commercial and office building contained an innovative enclosed parking garage right behind the theater. Compared to other exotic movie palaces in the 1920s, the relatively early Playhouse Square theaters were in a restrained classic style, with the lavish use of marble, murals, expensive woods, tapestries, and plaster relief. </blockquote><blockquote>The Palace Theater was the final theater to be opened in November, 1922 and Playhouse Square was officially opened. After more than four successful decades of stage plays, motion pictures, Cinerama, and vaudeville, the Allen, Palace, Ohio, and State Theaters were all closed in 1969 due to the rising popularity of TV. In 1970, a nonprofit group, the Cleveland Playhouse Association, was formed along with the support from the Junior League of Cleveland, Inc. In 1973, the Cleveland Playhouse Association was created to carry out the operation, restoration, and management of the theaters. By 1991, the Palace, State, and Ohio Theaters were reopened. Three years later, the Allen Theater reopened as well. By 1999, the Hanna Building and Theater were reopened and Playhouse Square came back to life. In 2005, One Playhouse Square Building at 1375 Euclid Ave., was refurbished and reopened as the Idea Playhouse Square.</blockquote>

Playhouse Square is a theater district consisting of five theaters at Euclid Ave and East 14th Street. It was opened in between February 1921 and November 1922. Joseph Laronge worked with business magnate Marcus Loew and others to found a partnership called Loew's Ohio Theaters to develop this theater district. Today, this great and luminous district is owned by a company called the Cleveland Playhouse and is open to all to see any live play, musical, or concert perform for a night of beauty and style and is the biggest theater district outside of New York City.

Playhouse Square

From 1792 to 1903, state and federal law authorized independent militias, private volunteer groups that supplemented the official state militia and served the community in all the ways that the National Guard does today. The Cleveland Grays were established in 1837 and instantly became the city's premier private military company. <div>The unit's original purpose was twofold: to provide assistance and support to the local law enforcement authorities of the time as well as to provide a first line of defense for the city in the event that the fighting in Canada's Rebellions of 1837 spilled over the border and into the United States resulting in a third war with Britain. When president-elect Abraham Lincoln passed through Cleveland en route to his inauguration, the Grays provided the official honor guard.&nbsp; In April 1862, when Lincoln called for volunteers to suppress the Confederate Rebellion, the Grays answered -just two days after Lincoln's call- as Company E, 1st Ohio Volunteer Infantry.&nbsp; When President Lincoln's funeral train came to Cleveland in 1865, the Grays were again part of his honor guard (some of the men standing vigil at the bier in Public Square were war veterans who had been his escort four years earlier). The Grays also served during the Spanish–American War. </div><div> </div><div>The Grays made their home in several different places from the time of their founding until the completion of this armory in 1893. After building this structure, the&nbsp;Grays Armory hosted a number of celebrations and galas&nbsp;during&nbsp;Cleveland's Centennial (1896). </div><div> </div>

The Cleveland Grays were a private military company founded in 1837. Their goals were to support local law enforcement and to protect the area in case of a third war with Britain following the Canadian Rebellions of that same year. The Grays moved around multiple times before the construction of this armory in 1893. Today, the Grays Armory is a Museum, whose four floors trace the Grays' history from their conception to now.

Downtown Cleveland Walking Tour

Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information