Playhouse Square

  

 

You never forget what got you started. I was in Grad School working on a Masters in Library Science when I realized working in a public library was not going to be for me. Wasn't going to happen. Don't get me wrong, I've got a lot of great friends who are librarians and I spend a fair amount of time in Libraries myself, but it just wasn't for me. I had recently closed a couple of camera stores I owned  and was looking for a new career. I already had a Masters Degree in English (Literature, those compositions guys are weird-who gets a Masters in whether a comma or semi-colon should be used?) and figured working in a Library sounded like a cool idea. But I was wrong, that happens a lot with me.

Luckily I took an archiving class, and luckily the Cleveland Memory Project let me do my practicum with them. I'm a big believer in luck, it's done well by me over the years. A good thing considering the being wrong a lot thing..

So somehow I convinced the folks at Playhouse Square I was the guy they should trust to spend the next couple of months digging through the cabinets full of stuff they had collected over the years. By the time it was over I had found pictures of W.C. Fields in the 1920s when he was more juggler than comedian, a copy of George Burns and Gracie Allen's Wedding License, pictures of the artwork in the theaters from the weekend they opened, and just about a million cool photos and programs. There were photos of Euclid Avenue from the 1890s and menus from restaurants that served the theater district in the 1950s, and the program from opening night at the Hanna Theater. I was hooked.  Pictures like this one of the Allen Theater in 1928 are just fun to come across. This one was in a filing cabinet in the Playhouse Square offices and can be seen on the Playhouse Square Page at the Cleveland Memory Project hosted by Cleveland State.

A lot of folks in Cleveland don't really understand the jewel we have in Playhouse Square. Those beautiful old theaters that will be celebrating their 100^th birthdays in a couple of years are the 2cd largest performing arts center in the country. Denver also claims that honor, but frankly they have the play a little fast and loose with the numbers by including some theaters really outside their district.

It's one of the great stories of Cleveland. The five theaters opened between February of 1921 and November of 1922 and were one of the prides of Cleveland for decades. By July of 1969 four of them were closed and it seemed the golden age of theater in Cleveland was over. But then in the 1970s some civic leaders stopped the destruction of the Ohio and State and started the revitalization of the area.

It took quite a while but in October of 1998 all four marquees on Euclid Avenue burnt at night again for the first time in 30 years. These days Playhouse square welcomes over one million visitors a year.

And while “these days” is quite a triumph it's the history of those couple blocks that interested me a few years ago, and still does now. Oddly enough my sometimes writing partner Thomas Kubat was working on a project for the Cleveland Playhouse at the same time. Guess it was fate we'd team up to write a book on Burton, Ohio and another on Cleveland Area Disasters 1900-1950. Thomas did include a pretty large section about a couple of plays the folks of Burton had put on in the 1950s and 1960s. So it wasn't completely unrelated.

The offices of Pursue Posterity where Thomas and I ply our trade is in the ideastream building in the Playhouse Square District. So I get to hang out in the area whenever I want.

But like I said, it was my first project and when I saw my name on the website, this website http://www.clevelandmemory.org/playhousesquare/ I was knew what I was going to be doing for quite a few years. Take a look at the online collection I put together, It's pretty interesting I think. More importantly get down to Playhouse Square if you get the chance. The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, The Broadway Series or Cinema on the Square. Fantastic events in amazing settings.