Smell The Metaphor

The demolition of this ugly hulk of a building is more than progress. It's metaphor. The building, itself, loomed precariously on the southern edge of the Cuyahoga river valley for generations, just west of the southern departure of the current I-71/I-90 Innerbelt bridge. It has now been removed to make room for a new bridge across the valley.

I drove past it each morning as it eclipsed the city. It was, by all accounts, a vacant, useless building designed as a refrigerated warehouse in the earliest days of that technology, but it made money for someone as a billboard. Massive, stupid, ugly advertisements covered it's sides. It may have been some coveted commercial space, but it was a cynical, shameful one, abusive to passing traffic. If anyone ever hated a building, I hated this one.

After civic planners decided to destroy it, the inevitable court case ensued. Somehow the case revolved around who actually owned the facade of the building - the advertising space. Of course, every party involved got a piece of the pie.

In as much as it was an eyesore, it was also a blind spot. The monolithic cube with bank and drugstore adds precluded passers-by from seeing the true Clevelandia, physically and psychologically, in its past, present and future tenses.

Here's how: at the very spot where these moments were filmed, another bridge that crossed the Cuyahoga river valley existed a century ago. At the very spot where the new bridge will be build, seventeen citizens perished on November 16, 1895, when the lift over the river malfunctioned. They plunged and died. Forgotten. A mass transit tragedy that no one remembers.

Blind spot, indeed, Clevelandia.