Public Square has been the heart of the City of Cleveland since its founding in 1796.

Cleveland rose to prominence after the building of the Ohio & Erie Canal in the late 18th century.

Beginning in the early 19th century, the development of the Ohio & Erie Canal insured Cleveland’s place as a location for trade and commerce.

The Warehouse District, often called Downtown’s First Neighborhood, is Cleveland’s 19th century commercial center; the Downtown of that era.

A pre-Civil War settlement that was nearly given up for dead after the freeways carved it up in the 1950s and 1960s, Tremont has become the hottest place for redevelopment and renewal in Cleveland.

University Circle emerged in the late 1880s when Western Reserve College and the Case Institute of Technology moved to the Circle.

The area now known as the Gateway District has always been the southern and eastern entry point into Cleveland.

Euclid Avenue, the residential “showplace of America” had a brief but glorious run from 1870 to 1910.

Beginning in the late 19th century, Public Square emerged as a commercial hub of Cleveland. In 1898, May Co. bought Hall & Dutton and in 1919 Higbee’s moved from East 12th Street to Public Square, setting the stage for eight department stores on Euclid Avenue.

The grand architecture period in Cleveland was from 1890-1930. This set the stage for many opportunities of adaptive reuse. Besides housing, hospitality is a potential other use.

Conceived in 1903, Cleveland’s Mall Plan is the second most intact City Beautiful Movement Plan after L’Enfant’s Washington D.C. Proposed by Mayor Tom Johnson, Daniel Burnham’s Group Plan resulted in six iconic structures being built between 1912-1931.

The five historic Playhouse Square theaters first opened in the early 1920s. After avoiding the wrecking ball in the 1970s, Playhouse Square began to come back to life in the 1980s

Cleveland has a Great Lakes shipping history that took off after the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1957.

In the early 19th century two competing settlements vied for prestige and investment on both sides of the Cuyahoga River; Cleveland to the east and Ohio City (or City of Ohio as it was known at its 1818 founding) to the west.

The development of Cleveland’s Grand Civic Space, Daniel Burnham’s Mall and Group Plan and Public Square, were complimented by notable monuments and sculptures by artists of national significance and creativity.

Cleveland rivaled New York and Chicago as a garment manufacturing center in the 19th and early 20th century.