Reflections from a Downtown Walk

From time to time, Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia J. Taller submits an essay of memories she has from taking in Cleveland on foot. She'll tell you there's no better way to help your kids appreciate our great city than with a Cleveland walk on a beautiful day -- whether during a special event, or simply as an event itself. If a walk can conjure these memories, imagine what it will do for your own Cool Cleveland kids. Taller's latest installment appears this week:

The summer sun makes the city I call home, Cleveland, shimmer. Outside my downtown office window, Lake Erie is sun-tipped, glorious in its rippled surface, a great lake as vast as the ocean. From the 49th floor of Key Tower, the miniature-sized Rock and Roll Hall and Museum and teeny Science Center reflect their shine of white and gold. Browns Stadium is lit within from above.

Lake Erie, smoothly rippled inside the break wall, waves cresting in whitecaps beyond, appears cool and refreshing, like ice in a tall glass. Dark blue-gray water touches a clear blue sky, glossy to matte. To the west, Gold Coast towers rise above the contoured shore, but nearer, hills of salt rise from the ground and the marina of stilled sailboats follows the landscape. The mouth of the Cuyahoga is crossed with dark industry, and the meandering River, center of our economy, disappears from my view as it crookedly finds its way south to Akron and then north again.

On warm and sunny days, when the water is dressed with sparkle, I am drawn to where the water begins. I put my laptop in the cabinet and grab my purse, but I don’t change my shoes because I am a daughter of the city, of office buildings and memories of shopping at Woolworth’s and May Company. After I leave the elevator and pass through the doors to the Mall area, my mind wraps around the rhythmic drumming of my heels on the cement. I walk past Mall A toward the open horizon, the building-less shoreline claimed by our forefathers near a river called Cuyahoga because of its crazy path through the land. Heading across St. Clair, through Mall B and past the green expanse where fountains used to murmur and the Convention Center, I jaywalk across Lakeside and feel the lake breeze. I know where north is--we Clevelanders use the lake as our compass.

The walkway to Cleveland Browns Stadium passes underneath the Shoreway and over the railroad tracks. All modes of transportation meet here on the waterfront where planes, trains, cars, and boats share the space. Slick and clean and exposed to the City, the Stadium is an architect’s dream. The interior is offered to me as I pass by. The hills of empty orange seats recall an office party in a glassed loge, drinking and eating while watching the players on the green field. Seats in the Stadium bring forth memories of World Series of Rock concerts in the old stadium during the 1970s: teenagers drinking beer in the hot sun; the smell of urine in the line-crowded bathrooms; band after band playing rock ‘n roll; shirtless boys and haltered girls.

On the other side of the Stadium, the Lake’s blueness startles me. I walk past the private-party tents and VIP gates and bounce down the stairs in my heeled leather shoes. I cross to the other side of the street which is graced by flowered plots along the perimeters of the Port of Cleveland grounds, the place where much action takes place behind the scenes. Before me are the Science Center and the Inner Harbor, and I am surprised by a firefighters’ monument in the green between the Port and the Science Center, and then remember the spot was a subject of debate. I understand that bit of debate better, seeing it with my eyes.

The steps near the monument take me, finally, down to water’s edge. I walk to where the cement ends and look down at the darkness of the close water lapping against the walls. It’s clean. Today, I could stand in clear water at Edgewater Beach and see my feet four feet down. During my childhood, Y swimming classes in Conneaut were often cancelled as we stood on the beach and looked at this same Lake filthy with oil and dead fish in flakes of dried earth and wood. We know its partly environmental controls, partly industrial awareness, and partly foreign-landed zebra mussels that have cleaned up our water.

The city-made path winds along the water to naturally end up under the eaves of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Janis Joplin’s flower-child car sits behind the glass. I turn the corner, feet heavy on concrete, and come to the seasoned expanse of the East Ninth Street Pier, the port of the Goodtime III, which awaits its next trip at its dock. I conjure up a romantic evening my husband and I spent on the Goodtime, entertained by a one-man band, on a long-ago rare evening alone. Our family viewed an Air Show from the Goodtime II as it floated on the Lake and down the River, past thriving commerce, during a narrated tour. On my left, preventing an eastward view, is the docked Mather Museum, a ship of industry, with its open drawbridges beckoning visitors to stop and find out what it’s like to be on a working ship.

In Voinovich Park, women sunbathe on the steps, couples talk on the benches, and men sprawl on the seats of their speedboats temporarily anchored along the wall. I walk to pier’s end, and the yawning Lake broadens in front of me.

The East Ninth Street Pier is the former location of Captain Frank’s Seafood Restaurant which commanded lines of waiting patrons during the summer. On noontime walks in the 1980s, I ordered ice cream cones from an outside window. Inside they served good food at lunch time, and the lines to get inside for dinner with a Lake view stretched halfway up the pier. I thought I had forever to take a picture of Captain Frank’s, and then one day it was gone.

I turn to my left and, on seeing the Science Center from this angle, am swarmed with memories of an Omnimax movie that frightened my youngest daughter with its big screen largeness. The children and I made music made by stepping on floor circles and created waves at a boxed ocean replica exhibit. The Rock Hall, from this angle, is tied to the Lake, like a house whose back yard slopes gently to the shore. Right after the Rock Hall opened, Paul and I attended a black tie affair and enjoyed live music and free roaming of the museum after a sit-down dinner. We returned later for a Yoko Ono tribute to her late-husband John Lennon’s life. The buildings of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the Science Center are monuments on our skyline, treasures to our city. They reflect our people’s tenacity in the face of economic downturn, our tribute to and remembrance of our city leader’s pride at the turn of the century when we were a commercial center.

Turning around I remember many lunchtime walks across the red-bricked harbor area in intimate conversations with friends. Will and I commiserated about work and love and read the names on the newly-dedicated bricks soon after the plaza was installed. Cynthia and I discussed vegetarian meals and yoga as we sat comfortably back on the black-metal park benches. Debbie and I took a moment to pray together before we opened up our brown bag lunches. Phyllis and I traded intimate secrets before heading back up the hill to our jobs.

After tracing that walkway, I turn to the left at the corner of Marginal to walk past the USS Cod submarine museum and Hornblowers’ floating restaurant down by the Burke Lakefront Airport lot. I feel the breeze blow through my hair and hear the planes take off and land not far above me. Parking is free for lunch at Hornblowers, the favorite spot for Dad and me to have lunch when he came downtown because he didn’t need to look for parking on the city streets.

I sigh, missing the people, some who have moved away, and others who no longer visit downtown, and think about how I’m still here, here for over twenty years, working in this City. I turn around and as I reach Ninth Street again, the Coast Guard behind me, I am overwhelmed by the magnificence of the skyline of Cleveland. It is not New York, Chicago or San Francisco, but the buildings I see I know, many from their conception, and I love them, and the City, in that knowing.

North Point, where I worked for a time and the lake and multiple modes of transportation were close by, sits where the Plain Dealer building once was. The Galleria opened with high praise from our community, a gem of openness. The green glassed Erieview complex was an experiment in a blighted area of seedy bars and storefronts on nearby E. 9th Street, but its success lead to the building of the chrome One Cleveland Center. When I worked at IMG at the corner of E. 9th and St. Clair, right out of college, much of the skyline was new or not yet to be, the building of the Justice Center, the BP Building, Key Tower, National City Bank Building, the Renaissance, and Bank One Center not yet conceived. We remember the imploding of the Hollenden House and the clearing of rumble-tumble buildings and open lots at the Gateway site.

I have worked on projects around our city—Gateway, Key Tower, Tower City, the Powerhouse, Warehouse buildings—so I know the political and monetary issues faced with acquiring the lands, getting the financing, architectural bids, corporate structure, and leasing. I’ve been in the elevators, offices, conference rooms, and lobbies of the Leader Building, the Terminal Tower, the MK Ferguson Building, the Huntington Building, the old Cleveland Trust Building, many of the old and the new, and those experiences have made the city mine.

It’s time to head back to work, and my mind is cleared for the afternoon’s tasks. Next time I’ll bring a friend out in the urban sunlight. I’ll sell the walk by saying a good noontime walk brings me back to myself and my connection with the City where I work and those who are part of my life. Life is short, get out and be part of the City! (:divend:)