Cleveland, beyond Rock (Part II)

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio

"Everywhere else is Cleveland."  -Tennesee Williams

I've spent most of my adult life living either in Baltimore City proper, or in the immediate suburbs.  I still teach there.  Baltimore is a rust belt town, accidentally located on the Chesapeake Bay.  And whether you really like professional football, the NFL's grouping of Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh (along with Cincinnati) into the NFC North division was a brilliant stroke of playing on the natural rivalry of cities that are very much alike.  (Never mind that near death-match fight over the Browns two decades ago.)

Last summer I spent a week in Cleveland, shuttling back and forth between my downtown hotel and the University Heights district that includes the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University.  To understand what you see is to understand a lot of cultural history of America writ large since the Gilded Age.

Driving east past Cleveland State University, the first cultural monument is Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.  Built in 1901, it is the first of several grand edifices along Euclid Avenue heading towards the Heights.  I walked in on a summer morning- the doors were open before 8 AM.  The sheer grandeur of the space is overwhelming- while not as large as its Washington and New York counterparts, this feels like a cathedral, not simply the seat of the bishop but holy ground set apart.   

What is set apart, though, still is affected by the outside world.  Churches line Euclid Avenue, between warehouses and industrial buildings.  This isn't an accident.  A century ago this was "millionaires row."  John D. Rockefeller owned a home here, along with other wealthy industrialists, almost all of which are gone now.  As the African-American population nearby increased, the practice of red-lining grew with it, as white families sold their mansions and moved further out to University and Shaker Heights.  The mansions were typically sold for industrial development, and their churches were left behind, sold to the poorer residents left behind, who were typically African-American.  Jewish families also moved, eventually selling or leasing their synagogues to churches or educational institutions.  This is a story so familiar that by simply changing a few names, I have just told the story of Baltimore.  Trinity Cathedral is an exception to the rule; it has evolved and weathered the change, offering a variety of services from Jazz mass to high mass.

Most notable among the churches left behind is the Shrine of the Conversion of St. Paul, formerly St. Paul's Episcopal Church.  Sold by the Episcopalians to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in 1931, the church is the site of a Franciscan convent.  Although altered slightly to give the nuns a private chapel area in the chancel area, the Victorian decoration has been maintained, and perhaps even improved.  To step in is, like the Cathedral, to step into another world.  (I attended services at the "new" St. Paul's in University Heights; a stripped Gothic structure with impressive carillon, it otherwise lacks the transcendence of this space.


Other markers along Euclid include imposing brick fortress of the Masonic Auditorium, former home of the Cleveland Orchestra, active and abandoned churches and synagogues, and even the forlorn tower of the former St. Agnes Church, standing alone in an empty field.

To the eye of a Baltimorean, the urban decay along Euclid Avenue is less pronounced, more dissipated, and not as bleak.  This neighborhood is not comparable to the blight in east Baltimore that has surrounded Johns Hopkins Hospital for many decades.  The story, though, is much the same-one of white flight, poor zoning, and lack of investment.  The growth of Cleveland Clinic is a bright spot: while some historic buildings have been lost in its expansion, the potential for these neighborhoods to be revitalized through the health care industry is greater than ever before.  Furthermore, the economic anchor of Case Western Reserve University, adjacent to Cleveland Clinic, offers the potential for revitalized urban living in the three miles between CWRU and downtown.  One can hope our decisions going forward will be better for communities than those of the past.

Looking west down Euclid Avenue from the Cleveland Clinic's rooftop pavilion.