DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... What part of Cleveland History intrests you ?

For native NE Ohioians what part of Clevelands rich history
Captures your attention ?
Maybe it's the Blizzard of 1978...or the World Series of Rock or even the corrupt days of City Hall under Ralph Perk ??
What incidents or events fascinated you ?

I'm mostly interested in colonial times. And maybe early 1900s.

For two reasons:

When my neighborhood in Westlake was being built, as a kid, I used to like playing around the houses they were building. You know, when it was torn up piles of dirt and stuff. And I found some musketballs. So I always wanted to know what kind of battle happened there. Or what was going on.

The other thing was....there used to be a huge vineyard next to my neighborhood. It is a shopping center now. But I noticed, during my advertures in playing in the woods, and visiting the vineyard...there were A LOT of vineyards in ye olden days in Westlake. So I always wondered about that part of the history. Seems it is all gone now.

Oh and the other part of Cleveland history I like is the glacier story.

You know, because when I was a kid in middle school, I always like the explanation for the roads.

Detroit Road
Hilliard Road
Center Ridge Road

All on berms created by the glaciers retreating.

Weird stuff I remember from when I was a kid in school.

Well before my time, but the Danny Greene story has always interested me.

The demise of The Flats is another. Glad to see it re-developed now and thriving.

This is interesting...did you ever find out about the history of that area?

Not really.

I only ever looked up battles in northern Ohio, and none were in that area, so who knows.

Pretty sure there were plenty of explorers/fur traders/native americans....who could have had conflicts there. But nothing official I could find.

There are tons of stuff.

Yeah, I'd like to read about the Flats. It seems when I was a kid in the 60s, that was known as where the bums hung out. Kind of like a skid row or the Bowery.

I'd like to read about Cleveland's "golden age" (~ 30s & 40s?).

About Ohio City. A separate town annexed by Cleveland in the 1800s. (where West Side Market is).

Heck, West Side Market, built in 1912.



I still have an autographed photo of Mayor Perk. That's gotta be worth a lot. (at least in the neighborhood of $0)



He looks like such a nice man.



Wait a minute. Is that a very young Dennis Kucinich on the far left?

Going back millions of years, there's some interesting fossil beds along the Erie shore.

...Championships?

Good Lord! Can you imagine $6.00 Super Bowl tickets!?!?!?

I love telling people Cleveland really "started out" being an Oil town. Rockefeller created Standard Oil in the 1860s. Around the same time the steel industry was created in Cleveland, so it kind of started out as both then turned more into a steel town when Standard Oil moved to NY. But, people know Rockefeller's name and don't realize he started in Cleveland, not NY.

And the Rockefeller\Carnegie\Morgan history is fascinating, though that wasn't Cleveland.

Yes, back when the super wealthy were altruistic and caring individuals, not greedy blood suckers like they are now.

It's easy to end up being altruistic when you start out being a monopolistic greedy blood sucker.

Hey, I just noticed - It is Dennis Kucinich ON THE FAR LEFT.

Get it?

I don't know if he still is, but when he was the mayor of Cleveland (like what 40 years ago?) he was FAR LEFT (off the scale).

I think he's running for Ohio governor this year.

The Ohio and Erie Canals. A link between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes connected Cleveland to the Atlantic Ocean via the Erie Canal and Hudson River, and later via the St. Lawrence Seaway. Also giving the city access to the Gulf of Mexico via the Canal, Ohio, & Mississippi rivers.

CWRU professor explores origins of Cleveland's 'Free Stamp' in new book

Posted Jan 10



By Roxanne Washington, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Although it got off to a bumpy beginning in this town, the bright red "Free Stamp" public sculpture in downtown Cleveland's Willard Park has become a regional icon and a landmark.

"It's a meeting place," says Edward J. Olszewski. "People will say, 'Meet me downtown by the "Free Stamp.'' ' Or, if there is a political rally of some kind, the 'Free Stamp' will become the focus of that rally. That's been quite consistent over the years."

Olszewski is emeritus professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University. He says in the 1980s he was an "agitator" who strongly advocated for the sculpture becoming part of the Cleveland landscape when some, including city leaders, were saying, "No, thanks."

Olszewski lobbied for the controversial sculpture for a number of reasons, he says, namely that Cleveland would be fortunate to join the list of cities, including Tokyo; Paris; Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Barcelona, Spain, that showcased the work of the prestigious "Free Stamp" creators, married couple Claes Oldenburg and the late Coosje van Bruggen.

"I thought the 'Free Stamp' would elevate Cleveland into the international art scene in terms of public sculptures," Olszewski adds.

The retired history professor tells the story of the "Free Stamp," from its conception to its arrival in Willard Park, in his new book, "Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Cleveland's Free Stamp" (Ohio University Press).

Writes Olszewski, "Cleveland's Free Stamp deserves consideration as an unusual project in Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's successful, decades-long collaborations on large-scale, public sculptures. It is the first of their works to include writing. In expansion of size, it is the largest of their public sculptures relative to its prototype. Its genesis was the simplest of their many projects, arrived at with minimal discussion and without complicated explorations of drawings and models."

It's also the couple's most controversial. Here's why:

In 1985, the Sohio oil company commissioned Oldenburg and van Bruggen to design and construct a large outdoor sculpture to sit outside its corporate tower on Public Square, opposite the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. In 1986, British Petroleum bought out Sohio. "Free Stamp" already was underway but, without public explanation, British Petroleum rejected the sculpture.

"I was very disappointed, and at the time it struck me as rather curious," says Olszewski. But he did have some idea why.

"Oldenburg is a Pop artist, and Pop art in London was rather cynical and politically engaged, whereas Pop art in the United States is more whimsical," Olszewski explains. "So I think that influenced the executives coming from London to Cleveland to a certain degree."

Now what?

British Petroleum tried to gift the "Free Stamp" to Cleveland, but city officials weren't interested either. So the sculpture was stored for years in a factory in Illinois awaiting its fate.

"In the interim, I was in contact with them [Oldenburg and van Bruggen], keeping them apprised of what was happening behind the scenes," Olszewski remembers. "In the meantime, they went on to other projects."

After some head-butting between city officials who were pro and con, along with yea and nay input from the public and the media, it finally was decided that "Free Stamp" would be installed in Willard Park, only with the FREE lettering exposed, rather than upright as it originally would have been.

Olszewski recalls van Bruggen's observation: "It's like BP threw it away and it landed on its side."

Olszewski's nearly 200-page narrative, gleaned from interviews with the artists, archival material from city records, in-house corporate memoranda, letters to newspapers and newspaper political cartoons, highlights the artists' illustrations of the "Free Stamp" as it was in progress, from early rough sketches to blueprints, along with scaled-down models in various stages.

There's a chapter about the artists and how, in 1970, they met in Germany at a traveling retrospective of Oldenburg's work.

Van Bruggen died of cancer in 2009. Oldenburg, who lives in New York, visited Cleveland several years ago to pick up an honorary doctor of humane letters degree at the Case Western Reserve University commencement.

Olszewki's book also includes photographs of some of the couple's other public sculptures that, like "Free Stamp," are based on clean, simple common items, presented in gargantuan proportions. There's the artists' "Typewriter Eraser" sculpture at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. There's also the "Shuttlecocks" sculpture at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Of "Free Stamp," Olszewki writes of how it has settled into the city's cultural identity, but it still perplexes and pleases.

"Spectators gather round it," he writes, "like Lilliputians filled with curiosity, to wonder about its dimensions."

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/01/case_professor_explores_origin.html

Cleveland, Ohio Balloon Launch - 1.5 Million Balloons

Are you sure that's not Mr Spocks ugly long lost step brother?

Umm...

Sporok Obama

And what's this thing?

Same for me.

I grew up in Collinwood. I also have a slight family connection to someone who was in the Cleveland mob that was one of the many that made attempts on his life.

I've heard all sorts of stories about Danny Greene, and they are all entertaining. I was born in '81, so by the time I came around, Collinwood was on the verge of falling apart, and the mob was long gone. I still have incredibly vivid memories of that time though.

I thought the Kill the Irishman movie was good, but I hated that they filmed it out of state. For those of us familiar with Cleveland and Collinwood, it was painfully obvious that they used another location.

Before the movie came out, I was hoping Scorsese would have been the guy to make the movie. The story alone is pretty amazing, that it wouldn't even really need that much sugar-coating. Especially with how the story finishes with Danny getting blown up.

Fun fact: My dad played softball basically his entire life up until his mid 50's, and every summer they did various tournaments. Their meeting spot for getting together in the morning before heading out was the Brainard Place building where Danny died, LOL.

The bridges around greater Cleveland have always interested me. I think a coffee table book with photos and historical notes might be neat. (Maybe the front or back cover could open up into the form of a bridge?)

When I was a kid, the Lorain-Carnegie bridge (now the Hope Memorial Bridge) was fascinating and scary to me.



I imagined that those were giant coffins with King Kong-sized mummies in them who might bust out and smash our car or just throw us over the edge into the river. Possibly, I watched too many late Friday night creature-features on the Ghoulardi show.

Anyway, the bridges over the Cuyahoga river valley and the Rocky River / Metroparks area are some real engineering marvels that are a testament to the can-do spirit of the people who settled and developed this part of the country.

Even with inflation it comes to just under $48. Amazing!!!

Exactly my thought as soon as I read the original post.