Jan 12 2013

Clevelands Little Italy

Brent

Clevelands little italy

Today’s Cleveland photo was taken in Cleveland’s Little Italy:

From About.com: “Clevelands Little Italy neighborhood, located on Mayfield Road, just south of Euclid Ave., grew up in the late 19th century, fueled by scores of immigrants that came to the area to work as stone-cutters for nearby Lake View Cemetery and to work in clothing factories.

Early residents included Joseph Carabelli, who donated the land for Holy Rosary Church and helped to found Alta House, a charitable organization that still thrives.

Today, Clevelanders of Italian descent are located all over the city, but Little Italy retains that “Old World” flavor with restaurants, art galleries, and the popular “Feast of the Assumption” festival each August”.

For more info on Cleveland’s Little Italy visit:

http://cleveland.about.com/od/neighborhoods/ss/littleitalywalk.htm

http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=LI1

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt


Dec 29 2012

The Alta House

Brent

Alta House Cleveland

Today’s Cleveland photo is of the Alta House. Here is some of the history of the Alta House from their website:

The Alta House Social Settlement, founded in 1895 by John D. Rockefeller, began as a support organization for Italian immigrants to the Mayfield-Murray Hill area, known today as Little Italy, of Cleveland, OH. The Alta House initially provided a nursery and kindergarten for the community, adding a library, youth campus and playground in the early 1920s. The goal was to provide services to families in the area, giving the youth of the community a place to learn and socialize while their parents worked.

By 1970, many renovations had taken place including addition of a banquet room, kitchen facilities, lounge area, lobby and preschool. In the 1980s, as the Little Italy population grew older, the Alta House expanded its Elderly Services Program that included: Meals-On-Wheels, homemaking support, transportation, shopping and field trips. In the 1990s, the Alta House focused on diversifying funding, community outreach and program expansion beyond Little Italy into the greater Cleveland area. These expansions included comprehensive senior services, youth services, community services and recreational programs.

In 2000, the Alta House created a five-year, organizational plan. The Alta House dedicated itself to be an established leader, partner and advocate among community organizations, and provide high quality programs to all community members.

Today, the Alta House continues its commitment toward social, educational, recreational and supportive services and development, for all ages, in the greater Cleveland area.

For more info please visit: http://www.altahouse.org/index.html

Today’s Quote: “If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it”. – John D. Rockefeller


Dec 15 2012

Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art

Brent

Moca Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art

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