The pattern of Cleveland’s roads and bridges alter the city’s fortunes as much as they follow its ebb and flow. In the transition from horse-drawn buggies to trains to cars—and in the clusters of industry on the lakefront and riverbanks—the way for our modern transportation system was paved.

Expansion happens as a result of hundreds of small decisions. In 1942, for example, the city demolished the old, four-lane Central Viaduct Bridge, built in 1888 to connect fast-growing Cleveland to its 'suburb' Tremont (probably before rival Ohio City could claim it).

The Central Viaduct gave residents of Tremont easy access to institutions and businesses downtown. As a result, the 1890s were a time of rapid growth in Tremont, with the construction of apartment buildings, single-family houses, double houses, and commercial buildings proceeding rapidly.

Today, the $1 billion Innerbelt redevelopment project motors along through the Cultural and Architectural Resources Survey. In it, ODOT is required to examine what’s left of the tattered fragments Cleveland’s once-bustling factory neighborhoods—from Tremont north through the industrial Flats to the newly-designated National Register warehouse district along Superior Avenue—rendered inert by economic and social forces, and then decimated by the modern freeway.

At issue is the proposed widening of the Innerbelt, which will require taking and demolishing more buildings, some of which have historical significance and may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1951, to make way for the eight-lane Central Viaduct Bridge we know today, large numbers of single-family houses, tenements, rooming houses, and some apartment buildings were demolished for the interchange in the area around Scovill and Webster Avenues and E. 9th, 14th, and 20th Streets, according to the Survey.

By mid-century, the Flats and the southeast bank were morphing from densely developed with residences to small industrial shops, factories, and warehouses like the Broadway Mills building and the Marathon Gas Station on the Central Viaduct, which survived and are caddycorner from Jacobs Field.

Heading east along Central Avenue, teeming slums were razed for high-rise apartments—beginning in the ‘30s with a wave of market-rate Deco style apartments like the 1900 block at E. 30th Street, but most prominently in the 1940s under the federal bulldozer known as the Urban Renewal program.

The Innerbelt tore through neighborhoods like Tremont, marooning industrial operations like Ferry Cap & Set Screw Company on Scranton Road and the Distribution Terminal Warehouse. By the time the highway was complete by 1975, 19,000 residents had been displaced. It bisected downtown: at Superior and E. 30th, the Loft Building and Ohio Boxboard Company were cut off from today’s historic district where garment makers toiled away in similar four-story brick warehouses.

Each of the 24 buildings that made the short list for the National Register and that ODOT wants to raze for the Innerbelt has its story to tell. Cleveland Landmarks Commission and a local ‘consulting party’ group, including preservation historians Carol Poh Miller and Cleveland Restoration Society staffer Sarah Beimers, have been digging into both the city-wide context and the small-scale human dramas that unfolded inside. These history detectives are trying to get the State Historic Preservation Office’s stamp of approval, a step before the National Register, to save the already registered Mather Mansion and Trinity Cathedral, but also less conventionally pretty buildings.

For example, the Tactical Rescue Station at 312 Carnegie is a small, wedge-shaped structure built in 1953. On the surface, it might be hard to love. But, the local group painted a picture of when it was the brain for the city’s Safety Signal System, housing a big, lighted board connected to the blue emergency boxes in city neighborhoods. An around-the-clock surveillance squad bunked there until 1999. Hearing the story convinced State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to rule in favor of eligibility, over ODOT objection as well as the Ohio Boxboard warehouse. SHPO cited it as an early and rare surviving example of architectural firm Christian, Schwartzenberg, and Gaede, which practiced in Cleveland from 1909 to 1972.

The National Register is not always a stay of execution. In fact, even though the state agreed with the locals to list the Cold Storage building (the massive warehouse that is known by most Clevelanders as a billboard for CVS ads), Broadway Mills and the Marathon Station, they are directly in the path of ODOT’s northern alignment for its proposed new Central Viaduct Bridge.

If ODOT has its way, these (and others on the list) will be knocked down, leaving the transportation agency responsible for a mitigation fee for the loss of cultural resources. But, it’s not as easy as calling in the bulldozers. Being eligible triggers a review process known as Section 106 (of the National Historic Preservation Act). While it cannot halt the Innerbelt, Section 106 holds ODOT accountable for exploring alternatives to avoid or reduce harm caused by the Innerbelt to the city's architectural resources.

Section 106 looks at a building’s location, design, setting, materials, workmanship feeling or association as factors in its preservation. All of the buildings—those on the National Register and those eligible for it—carry the same weight.

“If you demolish the Tastebuds building (in the Superior warehouse district), you’re impacting its location because you’re taking it away, and the feeling as part of a historic district,” says Beimers, who pragmatically looks ahead to the possibility that ODOT will have its way.

“We can use the loss of buildings for expanding awareness and getting something larger,” she says. “Part of the mitigation is, ‘what are we going to do to benefit the rest of the district or city?’”

In the past, mitigation often meant photographing it or putting up a simple plaque where the building once stood. More recently, Section 106 agreements have stipulated that transportation agencies follow context sensitive design, Beimers says, which means designing roadways to consider the capacity and safety issues while addressing its physical and human environmental setting.

Context sensitive designs allows for major public participation and for transportation designers to accept and try alternative solutions as well as to deviate from “standard” designs. Case studies include Lexington, Kentucky’s Euclid Avenue where bike lanes and pedestrian accommodations were added to a highway project, and North Carolina’s Smith Creek Parkway which was reduced from a six to a four-lane highway to spare a wetland.

Examples of context sensitive design for the Cleveland Innerbelt Project could include a bike/pedestrian path on the Central Viaduct (aka Innerbelt) bridge to connect Tremont and downtown for 25% of Clevelanders without a car. Or, keeping downtown exit ramps open because of local economic development factors. For example, the County’s Juvenile Justice Building is eligible for the National Register, but would be demolished if the Carnegie exit ramp stays. Beimers agrees with Midtown’s business groups that location trumps design and that a single building should be sacrificed (“especially if the county’s not going to be there much longer”) if access to a large swath of downtown can be saved.

Resources

• Protecting Historic Properties using federal regulations
• Context sensitive design case studies
• How do we preserve history: Tools for preservation