Cleveland in HDR – The 6th City Collection

Today’s photo is of St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Cleveland, Oh. St. Theodosius is located on Starkweather Ave in the citys historic Tremont area. Tremont is one of the most accessible neighborhoods in the city of Cleveland. It is considered one of the finest examples of Russian church architecture in the U.S and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For more info on this fabulous church please visit: http://sttheodosius.org/home_1.html

Today’s Quote: “All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince”.-
Plato

Todays photo is of the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). This beautiful new building is within walking distance of both Little Italy and Wade Oval. Here is some information directly from MOCA’s website about the new building:

“MOCA’s new building is designed to serve as a catalyst for creativity and growth in a cosmopolitan Cleveland neighborhood, which is home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of cultural, educational and medical institutions.

The nearly 34,000-square-foot structure, which is 44 percent larger than MOCA’s former rented space, demonstrates that a museum expansion need not be large in scale to be ambitious in all respects. Devised for both environmental and fiscal sustainability, the design is at once technically inventive, visually stunning and highly practical.

The dynamic structure was designed by Iranian-born Farshid Moussavi of London, formerly with Foreign Office Architects (FOA) and now principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). This is her first U.S. commission and her first museum.

In addition to FMA, the design team includes executive architects Westlake Reed Leskosky, headquartered in Cleveland and designers of more than 50 cultural buildings throughout the United States.

Moussavi says that museums today are not just homes for art, but serve multiple functions and host a variety of activities. “Our design for MOCA Cleveland aims to provide an ideal environment for artists and visitors and to foster creativity and variety in exhibitions and programs.”

Because MOCA is a non-collecting institution – one of the relatively few such contemporary art museums in the country – its new building does not need to accommodate collection galleries, says MOCA Executive Director Jill Snyder. “This building’s design is a perfect expression of the museum’s philosophy and programs. Flexibility is key to a program like ours that embraces aesthetic, conceptual and cultural diversity, and displays works in a great variety of media and genres.”

The four-story building, which anchors the Uptown district, rises 60 feet from a hexagonal base to a square top, where the primary exhibition space is located. All four floors contain areas for either exhibitions or public programs.

Clad primarily in mirror-finish black Rimex stainless steel, the façade will reflect its urban surroundings, changing in appearance with differences in light and weather. Three of the building’s six facets, one of them clad in transparent glass, will flank a public plaza designed by James Corner Field Operations, a New York-based landscape architecture and urban design firm. The plaza will serve as a public gathering place and will link MOCA to Uptown attractions and amenities, including the expanded Cleveland Institute of Art, designed by Burt, Hill with MVRDV, and new commercial space and residential units, designed by Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects Inc.

Upon entering the building, visitors find themselves in an atrium where they can see the dynamic shape and structure of the building as it rises. This space leads to MOCA’s lobby, café and shop, and to a double-height multi-purpose room for public programs and events. From there, visitors may take MOCA’s monumental staircase, a dominant architectural feature of the building, to the upper floors. On the top floor the 6,000-square-foot gallery space has no fixed dividing walls, allowing for a variety of configurations. This floor also contains a gallery designed for new media work and the Dick and Doreen Cahoon Lounge, which overlooks the plaza and Uptown.”

For more information about this great museum click here:

http://www.mocacleveland.org/

Today’s Quote: “Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs”. – Ansel Adams

The history of industry in Cleveland has always interested me. Samuel Mather, Henry Chisholm, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles Brush were just a few of many great men to bring industry to Cleveland. Some of that industry is still around today. Arcelor Mittal now employes some 1,850 people at its Cleveland steel works and a short drive away you can visit Charles Brush’s Nela park (now GE).

For some more great information on Clevelands industrial past and present please visit:

http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=I4

http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=IASI

Today’s Quote: “There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.”  Charles F. Kettering

This photo of downtown Cleveland was taken from the Columbus Rd. Bridge. From Wikipedia: “Cleveland obtained its name on July 22, 1796 when surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company laid out Connecticut’s Western Reserve into townships and a capital city they named “Cleaveland” after their leader, General Moses Cleaveland. Cleaveland oversaw the plan for what would become the modern downtown area, centered on Public Square, before returning home, never again to visit Ohio. The first settler in Cleaveland was Lorenzo Carter, who built a cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River. The Village of Cleaveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814.  In spite of the nearby swampy lowlands and harsh winters, its waterfront location proved to be an advantage. The area began rapid growth after the 1832 completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal. This key link between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes connected the city to the Atlantic Ocean via the Erie Canal and later via the St. Lawrence Seaway; and the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. Growth continued with added railroad link. Cleveland incorporated as a city in 1836”.

Today’s Quote: “Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe”. –  Voltaire

Blue Angels doing a low level pass at the Cleveland Air Show. For more info on the Air Show or the Blue Angles:

http://www.clevelandairshow.com/

http://www.blueangels.navy.mil/

The Cleveland Cultural Gardens are a collection of public gardens located in Rockefeller Park in Cleveland, Ohio. The gardens are situated along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive within the 276 acre of wooded parkland on the city’s East Side. In total, there are 31 distinct gardens, each commemorating a different ethnic group whose immigrants have contributed to the heritage of the United States over the centuries, as well as Cleveland.

For more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Cultural_Gardens

http://www.culturalgardens.org/

From The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History:

“ERIE ST. CEMETERY, preserving E. 9th St.’s original name, has been a municipal cemetery of controversy since 1826. Cleveland village trustees, desperate to replace the informal community burial ground south of Public Square with a permanent site, purchased the location for $1 from Leonard Case. So remote and spacious was the land that the council permitted a gunpowder magazine (1836) and a poorhouse-hospital on the unused portion. Disgruntled heirs of the original lot owners, claiming infringement of a covenant restricting use to burials, fruitlessly sued Cleveland in federal court (1836-42).For Progressives, beginning with Mayor Tom Johnson the cemetery mocked an efficient city. His administration, which developed Highland Park Cemetery (1904), reinterred bodies there, not without opposition, and reclaimed land from Erie St. for city streets. The struggle resulted in the Pioneers’ Memorial Assn. (1915), which was influential in the decision of City Manager William Hopkins in 1925 to build the proposed Lorain-Carnegie Ave. Bridge around rather than through Erie St. Cemetery. Following this, serious attempts to remove the cemetery ended. Complaints of neglect inspired WPA action, including erecting a fence fashioned from the demolished Superior Ave. viaduct’s sandstone. In 1940 the refurbished cemetery of historic graves, including that of Sauk Chief , was rededicated.”

For more info: http://ech.case.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=ESC

“On the recollection of so many and great favours and blessings, I now, with a high sense of gratitude, presume to offer up my sincere thanks to the Almighty, the Creator and Preserver. “- William Bartram

From Wikipedia: “The lower Cuyahoga River has been subjected to numerous changes. Originally, the Cuyahoga River met Lake Erie approximately 4,000 feet (1.2 km) west of its current mouth, forming a shallow marsh. The current mouth is man-made, and it lies just west of present-day downtown Cleveland, which allows shipping traffic to flow freely between the river and the lake. Additionally, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers periodically dredges the navigation channel of the otherwise shallow river to a depth of 27 feet (8.2 m), along the river’s lower 5 miles (8.0 km), from its mouth up to the Mittal Steel Cleveland Works steel mills, to accommodate Great Lakes freighter traffic which serves the bulk (asphalt, gravel, petroleum, salt, steel, and other) industries located along the lower Cuyahoga River banks in Cleveland’s Flats district. The Corps of Engineers has also straightened river banksand widened turning basins in the Federal Navigation Channel on the lower Cuyahoga River to facilitate maritime operations”.

The Henn Mansion is one of those treasures that more Clevelanders need to know about. It is vaguely Tudor Revival in style with Bungalow/Craftsman overtones. It is a beautiful home and thanks to some wonderful volunteers it is still around to be enjoyed today. You can even rent it out for special occasions.

From the Henn Mansion Website:

Albert W. Henn was born at New Britain, Connecticut, January 26, 1865. His parents were Francis A. and Barbara Wilhelmy Henn. His father was born at Baden, Baden, Germany, April 1, 1825, came to America a political refugee in 1859. He was a gunsmith by trade and after coming to New Britain found employment in some of the big
hardware manufacturing houses, notably the firm of Russell & Erwin and Landers, Frary & Clark.

Albert W. Henn went to school until he was thirteen years of age completing the eighth grade. The boy went into the factory of Landers, Frary & Clark, covering a period of four years. At the age of nineteen he came to Cleveland and here secured a position as entry clerk with the wholesale dry goods house of Root & McBride, where he remained for thirteen years. During this period he had, apparently, little use for the mechanical knowledge he had secured in his boyhood, but when the opportunity came he found himself thoroughly interested and quite able to apply it.

Mr. Henn was married in Cleveland, April 17, 1889, to Miss Gertrude Jeannette Bruce, and they had six children, their first two sons, Jesse and William died in infancy
leaving three sons and one daughter surviving. Edwin C., a graduate of Cornell University; Howard R. a graduate of Yale University, Jeannette, a graduate of Vassar College; and Robert B a graduate of Cornell University.

Mr. Henn and his brother E. C. Henn patented the Multiple Spindle Lathe, (EC’s invention) which revolutionized the machine tool industry. Then they organized the Acme Machine Screw Company, with E. C. Henn as president and Albert W. Henn as secretary and treasurer. In 1902 they merged their enterprise with the National Manufacturing Company of Cleveland and changed their caption to the National-Acme Manufacturing Company.

Mr. Henn became Secretary of the concern at that time (1908), became treasurer, and was elected president in 1918. He was also treasurer and a director of the Maynard H. Murch Company, investments; president of the Goodhold Farm Company, vice president of the Ohio Muck Farm Company, and a director in the Lincoln Electric Company and the Winton Hotel Company.

For more photos inside the Henn Mansion:

http://www.hennmansion.org/

Today’s Quote: “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy”. – Norman Vincent Peale

Today’s Photo: The Pink Flamingo

From the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo website:

What’s remarkable about a flamingo? Plenty. These birds are pink, have exceptionally long necks and the longest legs, in proportion to body size, of all birds. The beak is uniquely shaped and adapted for pumping and filtering water while feeding on crustaceans and algae in marshes and lagoons. Both in water and on land, flamingos are able to lock their long legs into position for resting and sleeping on one leg.

For info on how you can see more of these amazing birds:

http://www.clemetzoo.com/tour/exhibit.asp?exhibit_id=25

Today’s Quote: Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? –  Rose Kennedy