8. Gathering the Circle: Art, History, and Music for the Public

The life histories of the nonprofit institutions that came to be located in or near University Circle follow a pattern that reflects the themes of this book: community, philanthropy, and planning. The institutions came into being largely at the insistence of wealthy Clevelanders who had concerns about the need to serve particular segments of the city’s population. Often they were moved by a desire to care for the especially needy: the sick, the disabled, the aged. Just as often they wanted to serve the cultural and spiritual needs of a range of citizens in the community, including their own class.

The institutions were created and sustained almost entirely by philanthropy, often by the individual generosity of one member of Cleveland’s business elite. The closeness of the institutions to the city’s upper class is symbolized by the frequency with which their former residences became the initial (and sometimes permanent) locations of the institutions. Certainly the early founders and directors knew there were advantages to acquiring large, well-built houses for institutional purposes, especially when they often had designs easily adapted to institutional use, such as the distinct separation of service functions (kitchens and laundries) from bedrooms and dining areas, and the spaciousness of large entertainment and reception rooms that could be adapted to offices and classrooms. Moreover, these residences were often given or sold at low cost to nascent institutions in order to provide them with suitable quarters.

The institutions gravitated to the Circle over time largely because the planning activities of those interested in the area — the businessmen of the Chamber of Commerce in the early 1900s and, later, the administrators of the existing Circle institutions — tried to create a setting favorable to culturally-oriented and other nonprofit institutions. At first through land allocation by the Wades and the University Improvement Corporation and, later, with the creation of the University Circle Development Foundation in 1957, through the provision of special services such as parking and private police, there developed a kind of centripetal force that pulled nonprofits into the Circle.^[1]

Overall, the nonprofits that eventually found their homes in the Circle showed a fairly consistent pattern of geographical movement. Virtually all those established in the 1800s or very early 1900s were first located either in the heart of the downtown to serve the truly needy who lived there or, if culturally-oriented, the institutions were located along the Euclid Avenue corridor where many of the city’s wealthy lived.^[2] In any case the siting of the institutions was convenient to the homes and workplaces of the early directors and trustees, who often served as the institutions’ first operating staffs or otherwise exercised almost day-to-day supervision over programs.^[3]

As the population of the city continued to expand outward from the downtown, and as many of the city’s wealthy moved eastward along Euclid Avenue or even into the University Circle area, the institutions followed. They relocated largely according to their clienteles: if they served the middle and upper class (with music and art education, for example) they tended to move out earlier and go out to the neighborhoods where those groups had moved. Thus the School of Art and the Western Reserve Historical Society arrived in the Circle very early. Those institutions that served a broad range of the city’s population, or particularly needy groups, often had a slower eastward progress as those groups lagged in the general outward movement.^[4]

After nonprofit institutions reached the Circle they tended to remain there even as the eastward-moving wave of city population washed past the area and as many of those served lived well out into the city’s suburbs.^[5] This retaining power of the Circle had several facets. The most important appears to be the conscious planning to make the Circle attractive to nonprofits. The increased provision for parking after the 1950s, for example, made it less convenient for institutions to be located in or near neighborhoods containing the people they served. Other factors were the interrelationship of functions (e.g., institutions serving the aged found it helpful to be in an area with excellent medical facilities), and the substantial investment that many institutions have made in their Circle facilities, that they would find difficult to recover if they moved.

*   *   *

The Cleveland Museum of Art: Elite Management and Mass Appreciation

Historian Carl Wittke has remarked that Cleveland, in its early years, experienced a cultural vacuum that was characteristic of frontier settlements. Art did not contribute to winning the daily struggle for survival.^[6] Cleveland’s support for the fine arts of painting and sculpture through the mid-19th century generally fit Wittke’s description. Still, as early as 1830, when there were only a few thousand souls in the town, a traveling exhibition of a historical painting was a significant event.^[7]

As the century wore on some Clevelanders acquired the wealth and leisure for collecting art. A benefit art show in 1878 drew on the possessions of such leading families as the Hays, Haydens, Eells, Wades, Mathers, Nortons, Severances, and Hurlbuts, but the show was an inconsistent melange of curiosities, creations of local artists, and European works. Two decades later the newly-formed Cleveland Art Association sponsored exhibitions, in 1893 and 1895, to raise money for the relief of those suffering from the economic depression of the time. Again, paintings and art objects were loaned by wealthy Clevelanders, but this time reflecting assiduous attempts to collect European art. The director of the so-called 1893 Loan Exhibition, Charles F. Olney, had already found sufficient interest and appreciation of art in Cleveland to support the small private museum on West 14th Street that he opened in 1892.^[8]

Such events, and such private collecting, had little relationship to the artistic interests or needs of the vast number of Clevelanders. The occasional exhibitions showed that art as defined by Cleveland’s elite consisted mostly of the products of widely recognized painters and sculptors from Europe; socially-acceptable depictions of historical and religious scenes (again, mostly European); and American portraiture.

These artistic interests had a curious relationship to the citizenry of the city, which included growing numbers of immigrants in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. The upper and middle-class European immigrants, such as many Germans and Jews, often had classical educations and may have been better equipped to appreciate European art than the industrialists of Cleveland (often of ascetic New England stock). In fact, the first organization of professional artists in Cleveland (the Cleveland Art Club, founded in 1876) was nicknamed the Old Bohemians because the majority was of German extraction.^[9]

Many other immigrants to Cleveland, especially those from southern Europe, arrived poorly-educated but from peasant societies where crafts and folk art were highly-developed. There is evidence that immigrant Clevelanders cherished those examples of native art which they brought with them from their homelands, but there is little to show that such art was of interest to the early art collectors of Cleveland.^[10]

There was a continuing interest in creating a public art museum in Cleveland. As early as 1852 a farsighted newspaper editorial argued for one, stating that Cleveland, “the Philadelphia of the Northwest, enjoys a larger influx of strangers, who come either for business or pleasure, than any city west of New York. Now is the time to lay hold of this matter, while room is yet here to erect buildings for that special purpose.”^[11] However, Clevelanders did not successfully “lay hold of the matter” for about sixty years,  well after most other major cities of the Northeast and Midwest had created art museums.

Meanwhile, separate bequests in the wills of Hinman B. Hurlbut (1884), Horace Kelley (1890), and John P. Huntington (1893) provided money for an art museum. Each of these men had made his fortune in the industrial-commercial expansion of Cleveland and had become educated in the fine arts by traveling abroad. (Hurlbut also had served as a trustee of Western Reserve University.) Since the bequests had varying conditions, and the disposition of the Huntington estate (the largest) was contested in court, it took some time for the trustees of the estates to agree on joint proceedings. In the end the Cleveland Museum of Art was established as the operating agency, and the distinctiveness of the bequests was preserved by formally designating one wing of the museum as the Huntington Galleries and the other as the Kelley Galleries, while the Hurlbut funds were devoted to the purchase of works of art.^[12]

The trustees decided that new museum was to be located in Wade Park on the site Jeptha Wade had long before designated for an art gallery. In 1905 Wade’s old friend Liberty Holden was selected to head the building committee.^[13] After eight years were consumed in negotiations with the city over the use of the Wade Park site, and in considering architectural plans, the trustees selected the Cleveland firm of Hubbell and Benes to design the building and ground was broken in May 1913. Completed in 1916, the museum presented a simple neo-classical front to the north side of the Wade Park pond, while its interior was a maze of galleries surrounding two sky-lighted courts.^[14]

The first director of the museum (1913-1930) was Frederic Allen Whiting, whose skills and direction rapidly established the Cleveland Museum of Art as one of the best in the United States. Whiting (1873-1959) came from a New England family, and early in life trained for and entered a business career. However, he turned to social work among the textile workers of Lowell, Massachusetts, and became interested in promoting their financial independence through the development of handicraft skills. In 1900 he became secretary of the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, and subsequently organized and became the leader of the National League of Handicraft Societies.^[15]

In choosing Whiting as the first director the trustees showed that they were willing to define art broadly. In the words of the museum’s historian

Whiting was not an artist or an art historian nor had he had any formal training in art education. He approached the problems of the Museum from the point of view of the social worker and was especially interested in children and in making the Museum a service to all elements in the Cleveland community… Museums were to be “community schools for the soul,” laboratories for the development of art appreciation, not simply mausoleums in which to store buried treasures.^[16]

Whiting lost no time informing the public of his philosophy and of what sort of program he expected to carry out. He instituted the publication of a museum Bulletin within a year of his hiring, and in the first issue announced that “the Museum’s collections should grow in accordance with the special needs of the community, and certain collections should be formed for the special benefit of our industries. It would seem advisable, for instance, that Cleveland — with its important clothing and weaving industries — should have the advantage of a splendid collection of textiles and laces and a library sections devoted to costumes and fabrics.”^[17] In this stance Whiting had the early support of trustee Dr. Dudley P. Allen, a distinguished Cleveland physician, who sat on both the executive and accessions committees of the Museum. Allen believed that a department should be devoted to exhibiting examples of household items manufactured to the highest artistic standards as models for the skilled workers of Cleveland.^[18]

Whiting’s philosophy also led him to create a large education department intended not only to provide classes and lectures within the museum, but to reach out into the neighborhoods and suburbs of the city. This program was immensely successful and the Cleveland Museum of Art continued to be recognized as a leader in museum education.^[19]

For all of Whiting’s interest in making the museum part of the social fabric of the city he put an equal amount of energy into building its collections and mounting important exhibits. For the museum’s opening he combined the existing collections accumulated under the Huntington and Hurlbut trusts, more recent gifts by John L. Severance, Liberty E. Holden, Jeptha H. Wade II, and others, with a range of objects begged and borrowed from other art museums.^[20] Visitors at the opening of the museum on June 6, 1916 found the enormous building filled with art from a range of eras and cultures.^[21] Thereafter Whiting reserved three of the galleries for temporary exhibits, and in the first six years of the museum’s life there were 131 of them, typically small showings of prints, drawings, engravings, and bronzes.

The permanent collections grew apace. In the early years there was a particular fascination with prints and with textiles. The prints were largely acquired and donated to the museum by the newly-created Print Club; later a Textile Arts Club followed the same course. These categories of art did not cost a great deal to purchase and were appreciated by a broad audience of museum-goers.^[22]

The traditional staples of museums, paintings and sculpture, were much more costly to acquire. In the 1920s the trustees and other wealthy Clevelanders engaged in a lively competition, purchasing and donating a series of valuable pieces to the museum. William Milliken, then curator of decorative arts and painting, recalled in his memoirs that John L. Severance and his sister Mrs. Severance Prentiss (Frances Fleury Prentiss) had a particular rivalry: “If Mr. Severance bought an early Rembrandt, Mrs. Prentiss promptly bought what she felt was a better one … The same pattern was followed in French and English furniture, in tapestries, in prints, and in Chinese porcelain.”^[23]

While trustees Severance and Prentiss competed in traditional forms, modern art and non-European art had a more limited appeal to both collectors and the public. They had to be educated to accept new forms. Whiting and the trustees seemed to agree with Langdon Warner, the museum’s earliest curator of oriental art, that the business of the museum was “to get the public in such a receptive condition that mere strangeness will not repel them.”^[24] An exhibit of contemporary Japanese paintings in 1921, for example, helped to stretch geographically the definition of art for the average visitor; chronologically it was stretched by the de facto policy of using the Jeptha H. Wade II endowment (established in 1920) to enlarge the museum’s holdings of medieval art.^[25]

The latter practice was reinforced in 1931 by the purchase of nine items of the so-called Guelph treasure, a collection of medieval Germanic gold-work, all made for use in Christian worship. When the treasure’s owner (a son-in-law of the last German kaiser) decided to sell it, he put the precious relics on a tour of American museums, hoping to find a buyer. The three-week stopover in Cleveland was an immense success, bringing nearly 100,000 visitors. William Milliken, appointed director the year before on Whiting’s retirement, subsequently convinced the trustees to part with $570,000 to acquire the treasure.^[26]

Collection development in the 1930s continued to be strong, despite the depression. The foundation was laid for a major emphasis on pre-Columbian art by regular purchases, and donors such as Leonard Hanna (prints), and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (sculpture) made major gifts.^[27]

That the Cleveland Museum of Art had become one of the most important institutions in Cleveland was perhaps best symbolized by the success of its exhibit held in conjunction with the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland in the summer of 1936.^[28] The special exhibition, which included 400 objects, helped bring 418,505 visitors to the museum in 1936, the largest attendance to that point in the museum’s history.^[29] This great success accentuated the growth of the museum’s program, a growth which, Director Milliken dutifully pointed out in the same year as the Exposition, had made “the physical facilities of the Museum increasingly insufficient for the demands upon them.”^[30] There is perhaps no greater affirmation of institutional achievement than a shortage of space.

Cleveland Institute of Art: Supplying the Need for Designers

The Cleveland Institute of Art began operations in 1882 under the name of the Western Reserve School of Design for Women. Founded by, and initially located in, the home of Sarah M. Kimball, the school’s original purpose was training women to work as designers of furnishings, textiles, and household products in local industries. That purpose remained fundamental even though the school soon admitted a few male students, and developed a substantial program in the fine arts.^[31]

The early survival of the school was ensured by the support of leading women and men of the city, many of whom were industrialists and civic leaders. Their support undoubtedly came from a mixture of motives and concerns, ranging from a general belief in the education and improvement of women to an interest in ensuring the competitiveness of Cleveland’s manufactured goods.

Support notwithstanding, the school struggled to balance its books in the first years, and financial problems were probably behind the school’s merger with Western Reserve University from 1888 to 1891. But the school’s trustees backed out of the arrangement (which joined the art faculties of the institutions) when it became clear that the University did not support their interest in the industrial application of the arts.

The school reorganized on a firmer foundation in 1892 when the trustees, led by Stevenson Burke and his wife, Ella M. Burke, hired Georgie Leigh Norton (a graduate of the Massachusetts Normal Art School) as director, and acquired the former Horace Kelley residence on East 55th Street for classrooms and studios. Kelley’s estate had been designated for the support of a future city art museum, so the sale of his house to the school of art was very appropriate. Norton reconstituted the curriculum for the 85 students enrolled that year, bringing in talented Cleveland artists, such as Louis Rorimer, a furniture designer, to supplement the regular instructors.

In 1904, as the school’s increased enrollments and need for studio space pressed against the limits of the Kelley mansion, Jeptha H. Wade II donated to the school a parcel of land in the Wade Allotment at the corner of Magnolia Drive and Juniper Road. Wade was about to begin selling residential lots in this area, and the presence of an art institute was probably regarded as an attraction to prospective buyers. Discussions leading to the location of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Wade Park were also beginning, and the school’s trustees probably wanted to be nearby.

A sturdy brick Italian Renaissance building was dedicated on the site early in 1906: the architects were Hubble and Benes, who had designed the Western Reserve Historical Society’s new building in the Circle just six years earlier, and who a decade later were the architects of the nearby Cleveland Museum of Art. Half of the construction costs were paid by the Burkes, with the remainder donated by other board members.^[32]

The school’s new location provided opportunities for program expansion and for cooperative ventures with other Circle institutions. A public school teacher’s training program began in 1906, and a juried exhibition for Cleveland-area artists was held the same year. Ceramics and commercial illustration were soon added to the curriculum, and in 1909-10 an addition was built for a clay modeling studio. Annexes were added in 1921 and 1923, the first with the aid of a $100,000 gift from Cleveland industrialist Worcester Warner.

The Cleveland Museum of Art opened in 1916, just a few blocks away from the school, and the next year the school’s new director, Henry Turner Bailey, began serving as an advisor to the museum’s education department. Bailey offered a half-year course in art appreciation at the museum in 1918 — enrolling 506 students and 97 auditors!^[33] Throughout the 1920s the school tried to develop closer ties with the Art Museum and Western Reserve University. Bailey explored with them the mutual benefits of a new site for the school, an architecture department (Bailey established one in 1921 which was expected to evolve into an independent institution), and an industrial arts museum to be operated by Western Reserve and Case.

The proposed new school site (which indeed became the location of the art school eventually) was at the corner of East Boulevard and Bellflower Road, and its proximity to the Museum of Art led the dreamers to plan for a tunnel to connect Cleveland’s major art institutions. Being nearer to Case and Western Reserve more of their students were expected to enroll in art school courses. The College for Women already had a regular arrangement. These plans were one of the major considerations leading to the formation of the Cleveland Conference for Educational Cooperation, a loose affiliation of Circle institutions that in the latter 1920s attempted to draw up a coherent design for institutional growth and development in the Circle.^[34]

The grand plans for cooperation quickly dissipated with the onset of the Great Depression. From 1930 to 1933 enrollments dropped by 40% at the school, fund-raising was stifled, and faculty salaries were cut drastically. Bailey resigned as director in 1930 and his successor, Henry Hunt Clark, spent much of his fifteen years (1931-46) in the position seeking to maintain the school’s standards in the face of uncertain enrollments (reduced first by depression, then war) and strained finances.

The school was sustained through these difficulties by continuing philanthropic support. For example, George Gund, a Cleveland businessman and banker, who had initially become a major donor in 1923 by establishing (along with his mother) an annual travel prize for an outstanding graduate, gave regular gifts until his death in 1966. The school also relied heavily on philanthropic support in the early 1950s when, under a new director and new name — the Cleveland Institute of Art (adopted 1948), it raised funds to erect a $3 million building on East Boulevard. Opened in 1956, the new facilities included expanded studios for painting, sculpture, weaving, metalwork, and many other activities, a 600-seat auditorium, two exhibition galleries, and (for the first time in its history) adequate library space. It was twenty-five years until additional permanent studio space was needed, and then the old Ford Motor assembly plant (“The Factory”) at Euclid Avenue and E. 116th Street was purchased and renovated.

The Cleveland Institute of Art continued to have a strong focus on industrial design and on craft skills, and joint programs with the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University were an outstanding example of the fulfillment of the visions of the early leaders of Cleveland’s cultural organizations.

Western Reserve Historical Society: Assembling a City’s Memory

The Western Reserve Historical Society was founded as a department of the Cleveland Library Association in 1867, and is the oldest surviving cultural institution in Cleveland. It may seem strange that residents of a region just nearing its 70th anniversary of settlement wanted to preserve its “history,” but several processes conspired to make Clevelanders aware of the need to conserve the records and artifacts of the past.

One consideration was that by the 1860s the youngest of the settlers of the Western Reserve, and their children, were near or past their biblically-allotted threescore and ten years, if not already dead. If their old letters, diaries, maps, and artwork were to be preserved, there was no time to be wasted. Moreover, the recent Civil War was generally regarded as the end of an era for the nation, and afterward was a time for forging a new national identity. There was both a sense of loss, and a recognition that the war in which so many had died or been maimed for life would be a major reference point for those who had survived.

The task that the Historical Society set for itself from the very beginning was “to discover, procure and preserve whatever relates to the history, biography, genealogy, antiquities and statistics connected with the City of Cleveland and the Western Reserve.”^[35] The society was largely the brainchild of Charles C. Baldwin, a lawyer and judge, and Charles W. Whittlesey, a civil engineer and military officer, each of whom had strong amateur interests in geology, archaeology and history.

In an era of less specialization there was considerable overlap between natural history and human history, especially in the study of the American Indian, to which much of Whittlesey’s work related. Whittlesey served as the society’s president for its first 20 years, and published over 200 local and regional studies. Baldwin’s central interest was cartography, and he amassed and donated to the society a large collection of maps dating from the early French explorations of the Great Lakes. He also showed substantial skill in interesting prominent Clevelanders in the society and in raising funds to sustain it.

The Historical Society’s first home was the third floor of the Society for Savings building on the northwest edge of Public Square (or, as it was then called, Monumental Park). In 1892 (the same year that the Society received its own charter, becoming independent of the Library Association) the society was able to purchase the entire building, since the Society for Savings had moved into a much larger structure it had built on an adjacent lot. Major donations by Baldwin, John D. Rockefeller, Jeptha H. Wade II, Rutherford B. Hayes, and other trustees and officers funded the acquisition.^[36]

Only three years later the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce offered to purchase the society’s building. The terms of the purchase indicate how pivotal the University Circle area had become to the business and cultural leaders of the city, who had seen the Case and Reserve campuses established and part of Wade Park definitely set aside for an art museum. The Chamber’s offer included both a lot at Euclid Avenue and 107th Street, and $55,000 in cash to erect a new building there. The society agreed to make the trade and hired the Cleveland architectural firm of Coburn, Barnum, Benes and Hubbell to design a fireproof building with a museum, library, and auditorium. However, John D. Rockefeller intervened because of his behind-the-scenes acquisition of the properties that he donated to the city in 1896 as Rockefeller Park, and insisted that the Historical Society be located adjacent to the new park at Euclid Avenue and 105th Street on land that he had purchased. The new building opened in 1898, adding a third imposing building to the row across from Wade Park begun by Adelbert College and Case Main in the 1880s.^[37]

The society grew smoothly in its collections of books and artifacts over the next several decades. In 1913 it hired its first paid director, Wallace H. Cathcart, who had previously been a president of the society. Some of his efforts went toward increasing the society’s endowment, reported as $10,000 in 1891. It was not much larger in 1915 when the trustees decided to raise enough to bring the total to $250,000, the interest of which was expected to cover the society’s expenses. The largest step toward that goal was Ambrose Swasey’s gift of $50,000 in 1920.^[38]

As Cathcart focused on acquiring an outstanding collection of manuscripts and newspapers, and the interest of the public in museums became more apparent, the society’s building on 107th Street became increasing inadequate for housing the collections.^[39] In 1938 the society purchased the Hay-McKinney residence on East Boulevard, on the north edge of Wade Park, thus acquiring a second building with 26 exhibition rooms, an assembly hall, work rooms, and storage space. Major exhibits on the history of the Western Reserve were soon installed. Two years later the society exchanged its 107th Street building (which was soon demolished) for the Bingham-Hanna residence adjacent to its new museum property, and moved its library there. The two buildings were joined in 1959 by the construction of a central addition.^[40]

In this new location the society flourished as never before. It became more of a community resource, and less a club for the historically-minded wealthy. It also began to carry out more fully its mandate as the custodian of the heritage of the Western Reserve, and began to preserve a record of the built environment as well as memorabilia and documents. In 1957 the society opened Hale Farm, south of Cleveland, as an operating homestead of the early 1800s, and in 1965 opened the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum adjacent to its other East Boulevard buildings. The museum’s automobile collection was the most visited site in the Circle in the 1970s and 1980s.^[41]

Cleveland Music School Settlement: Music Outreach with Quality

The Cleveland Music School Settlement was founded in 1912 by Almeda C. Adams. Adams was the daughter of a Baptist minister in Ohio, Rev. James Adams. Losing her sight within a few months of her birth in 1865, she obtained an education at the Ohio School for the Blind, including training in vocal music. Wanting more specialized training, late in 1891 she decided to seek the scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music which Ladies Home Journal had offered to a woman who could raise a large number of subscriptions. In the course of seeking subscriptions she came to Cleveland and had her story published in the Plain Dealer. Through her persistence and the publicity, Adams easily achieved her goal.^[42]

In 1892 Adams matriculated at the Conservatory, where for two years she continued voice studies and was trained in music education in public schools. Afterward she taught for five years at the Nebraska School for the Blind, and then went to New York for further training. In 1901, stocked with experience, education, and sound references from her teachers and employers, she returned to Cleveland to assist her ailing mother, and began teaching music at three settlement houses — the Central Friendly Inn, Hiram House, and Alta House.

Working at Alta House, which had been founded by John D. Rockefeller, undoubtedly reintroduced Adams to Rockefeller, who had given her some financial support while she was at the Conservatory. Now he began to give her occasional gifts to further her musical programs, and he paid for her parent’s admission to the Baptist Home for Old People. Adams joined the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, which was a leading missionary church in the city and well-supported by Rockefeller’s philanthropy since he had been a member there throughout his Cleveland years.^[43]

Rockefeller’s approval of her work (he told her that she was “constantly giving sunshine to all about [her]”) undoubtedly gave Adams heightened credibility with those Clevelanders interested in music institutions, and when in 1911 she decided that she would like to start a settlement house devoted to music, she presented the idea directly to Adella Prentiss Hughes, the leading musical promoter in the city.^[44] Hughes asked Adams to address the Fortnightly Club on the subject, and that group — which sponsored regular concerts — set up a committee in February 1912 which only two months later founded the Cleveland Music School Settlement. Its purposes were to provide excellent instruction to musically talented youths without regard to their ability to pay, and to contribute generally to the musical life of the city. From the beginning the settlement served students from a mix of social and economic backgrounds.