12. Oasis Years, 1970-1985

In the 1970s and early 1980s in University Circle appeared to regain the stability and sense of mission which had eroded in the 1960s. While serious problems remained, there were two factors which helped restore confidence in the Circle. One was, ironically, the rapidly accumulating difficulties of Cleveland’s city government, school system, and industrial base, which put into sharp relief the outstanding achievements of the Circle’s institutions. The Circle seemed to be a cultural oasis in an urban desert. The other factor in the Circle’s revived self-confidence was the growth and new initiatives of many of its institutions. Most visible was the transformation of the University Circle Development Foundation into University Circle, Inc.

By the end of the 1960s it was clear that UCDF’s style of operation had alienated the administration, as well as the students and faculty, of the newly-federated Case Western Reserve University, the keystone of any inter-institutional cooperation in the Circle. In 1969 Paul Carré, a consultant hired by UCDF, critically analyzed UCDF’s faults and suggested that only an entirely new organization would cure them. He argued for a broader-based institution which would include in its governance representatives of virtually every Circle institution and business, as well as the adjacent neighborhoods.

Carré addressed his arguments not only to Morse, but also the chairman of the UCDF’s trustees. Raymond Q. Armington.^[1] Carré was a talented writer and impressed people as perceptive, and his vision was supported by a group as diverse as Anthony J. Garofoli, the city councilman for the area, and James Ireland, the son of Mrs. William G. (Elizabeth Ring) Mather.^[2]

The first sign of the transformation was in March 1970 when William Treuhaft, a Cleveland industrialist and civic leader, was elected the chairman of the board of UCDF. In May the organization’s name was changed to University Circle Incorporated (UCI), and Joseph D. Pigott, a vice-president of CWRU who had earlier been elected, took over as president. UCI immediately began to expand its membership. A year-and-a-half later it had a board of trustees of 136 members, although the executive committee of the trustees was only a third that size.^[3]

The transition from UCDP to UCI almost got off on the wrong foot when even before officially entering office Pigott announced that the loop road would be built after all, and the CWRU student newspaper quoted him as saying that “crossing the Loop Road on the south campus will be a minor inconvenience.”^[4] But this revival was soon dropped, and by the fall an officer of UCI told the students that their proposals for new and future uses of Circle facilities would be welcomed.^[5]

The major blueprint for UCI’s new role came from a study done by Raymond, Parish and Pine, an urban planning firm from White Plains, New York hired by UCI In November 1970.^[6] In light of the new attitude at UCI it was appropriate that one of the firm’s most visible acts was to survey student needs for housing and shopping. The campus newspaper editorialized that the students might yet motivate UCI to bring new businesses into the Circle.^[7]

In one sense this view was naive, since neither UCI nor UCDP had ever financed new businesses; but to those who blamed UCI for the disappearance of commercial activity in the Circle, it seemed logical that it could bring it back.^[8] By the spring of 1971 there was also some interest at UCI in the re-commercialization of the Circle, particularly as a result of prodding by Paul Carré, who had joined the CWRU administration as an assistant to the president.^[9] But those discussions led nowhere: in October 1971, the plans for a new center for campus religious organizations called for tearing down the Campus Supermarket.^[10] When opened, the Interfaith Plaza was an architectural gem: but the sole grocery store in the Circle had vanished.^[11]

When the Raymond, Parish and Pine study was completed in October 1971 it proposed a five-year plan to radically improve the University Circle environment and to improve its relationships with the adjacent communities. Its report on housing noted that the Circle contained thousands of people during the day, but only 7% of them lived in the Circle at night. Housing in the Circle was relatively cheap, yet unattractive, because of a perceived high crime rate and a lack of amenities in the area.^[12] An important aspect of the study was its call for a Circle Center for Community Programs, an attempt to create greater contact between the Circle and the residents of surrounding areas by bussing children to the Circle institutions.^[13]

Pigott successfully implemented the new agenda for UCI. During the 1970s a variety of partnerships between UCI, community agencies, and government resulted in the creation of over 1000 subsidized housing units, some within and some adjacent to the Circle. Richard Tullis, who joined the board of UCI in 1970 and later became its chairman, had a personal commitment to building low-income housing. In the latter 1960s he was the keystone of an independent project in Hough that built 36 family units. Later Tullis directed UCI’s work with the Hough Area Development Council to construct Community Circle One and Community Circle Two — apartment complexes on the eastern end of Hough Avenue.^[14]

The Raymond, Parish and Pine study’s proposal for the Circle Center for Community Programs was quickly implemented by UCI, aided by a three-year $75,000 grant from the Gund Foundation in 1983. From the late 1970s into the 1980s the Center was bringing 60,000 children and adults into the Circle annually.^[15]

There was irony in UCI’s greater outreach to the neighboring communities because at the same time they were undergoing a rapid depopulation, part of the general demographic trend in Cleveland and some other American cities of the Northeast and Midwest that suffered significant population loss in the 1970s. Cleveland’s population dropped from 876,050 in 1960, to 750,879 in 1970, and 573,822 in 1980, a 35% decline in 20 years.^[16] The core area of the Circle lost 28% of its population from 1960 to 1980, declining from 4,758 to 3,449. Areas adjacent to the Circle were hit harder: the population in the Hough area declined more than 65% from 1960 to 1980,^[17] and Murray Hill’s population fell 40% during the same period.^[18]

The loss of residents could be directly correlated with the loss of housing units in the neighborhoods, many of which were torn down in the name of urban renewal,^[19] but those who left were also seeking to avoid startling poverty conditions. The neighborhoods adjacent to the Circle (except Murray Hill, which was mid-range) were among the poorest in Cuyahoga County by the 1980s, and Hough, Glenville, and Fairfax experienced family poverty rates above 60%.^[20]

The city government failed to cope with declining population and increasing poverty during the 1970s and early 1980s. Both factors created a weakening of tax revenues, and contributed to the city’s inability to maintain services at previous levels. By 1978 the city’s budget was a shambles and it defaulted on its loans, becoming known nationally for its financial failure. The voters approved a 50% increase in the city income tax in 1980, and restored the city to solvency, but the long-term decay of the parks, streets, and buildings was barely arrested, let alone reversed, in the next few years.^[21]

The Circle became a visible oasis amid the decaying city in part because UCI and other organizations began to assume what were formerly city responsibilities. In 1970 the city gave UCI a 99-year lease on Wade Oval in return for UCI’s acceptance of the responsibility for keeping Wade Park landscaped,^[22] an astonishing admission by the city that it could not maintain a park in the heart of one of the city’s showpiece areas. In UCI’s view the city’s near paralysis forced it to “negotiate and cajole” improvements in University Circle that helped create and maintain an environment in the Circle worthy of the institutions located there.^[23]

UCI’s work in Wade Oval was successful. David Swetland of the Lester M. Sears Foundation brought in a landscape architect who laid out the plantings in a simple but elegant design, and the three institutions adjacent to the park (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Garden Center of Greater Cleveland) agreed to share the costs of annual maintenance. In the 1980s UCI coordinated the rehabilitation of Rockefeller Park along the western border of the Circle with the aid of an anonymous philanthropist.^[24]

The general improvement of the Circle was aided by a 25-member University Circle Council established in 1983 and largely composed of prominent Cleveland women who identified areas that were eyesores or safety hazards. They promoted the development of better lighting, and the removal or replacement of overgrown shrubbery and fencing in order to discourage nighttime crimes in the Circle.^[25]

Crime in University Circle was perhaps one of the most vexing problems which UCI had to face. Despite the fact that the Circle was one of the safest districts in the city, and that the UCI police force provided more intensive coverage than the city police department could, the Circle had a reputation as a dangerous place to be, particularly at night.

The image of the Circle as dangerous became current in the 1950s as Hough and Doan’s Corners became areas of racial mixing. The six unsolved bombings in residential areas adjacent to the Circle in 1952-54 were thought to be a racially-motivated response to that change.^[26] Then in 1966 a woman who was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra chorus was raped and murdered at the south end of the lagoon as she walked to a performance at Severance Hall one evening. The ensuing widespread newspaper publicity tended to suggest that the murderer (though he was never found) was a male from the Hough neighborhood, playing on the volatile issue of Black men victimizing white women.^[27] In any case the violent death of a cultured women in one of the most picturesque spots in the city verified for many Clevelanders and suburbanites their growing fear that no one was safe anywhere in Cleveland, and that visitors to the Circle were particularly vulnerable. This fear persisted into the 1980s.^[28]

The largest nighttime population on the campus was the students. When a committee of students and the university administration considered safety in 1968 they seemed most daunted by being “accosted by Negroes” as they walked to the bank or post office on the eastern edge of the Circle. In a revealing statement of the “them” and “us” situation as they saw it, the committee argued that

[UCDF police] officers must be physically able to thwart the attempts of Hough toughs to operate criminally within the Circle. They must also possess the patience, intelligence, and discretion to deal with exuberant students and eccentric faculty members without alienating the academic community.^[29]

Considering this suggested policy, whereby Hough residents were to be coped with by force, but faculty and students humored, it is no wonder that a 1977 study of American urban life which recognized the great cultural value of the Circle, also stated categorically that “a pall of fear has lain over [the Circle], and its value as an open space has been negated.”^[30] Clearly, for many citizens crime in the Circle was conceived of primarily as a racial matter, and so long as it was, the actual extent and causes of crime received secondary consideration.

Perceived changes in the crime rate of the Circle probably were related largely to the same forces that drove rates up throughout urban America in the 1960s and 1970s: a large increase in the population of 18-24 year-olds (who committed most of the crimes); skyrocketing drug usage; and high unemployment rates in inner-city neighborhoods.^[31] To combat these trends UCI increased the size of its police force to twenty-eight officers and employed increasingly sophisticated technology for communication and surveillance. While the already modest crime rates in the Circle did decline in the mid-1980s, that may have been largely the result of the depopulation of the surrounding neighborhoods rather than increased policing.^[32]

While UCI under the leadership of Treuhaft, Tullis, and Pigott adjusted to the new realities of urban America by developing better relationships with the neighboring communities, by working with an almost moribund city government, and by struggling to control crime, the institutions within the Circle generally thrived. UCI helped make the Circle an oasis of stability within a city otherwise undergoing painful changes.

The Cleveland Museum of Art continued to flourish under directors Sherman E. Lee (1958-83), and Evan H. Turner (appointed in 1983). Lee emphasized Oriental art, making Cleveland world-renowned in that area, but purchased major works in almost every recognized area of art. Time magazine called Lee’s $5 million in acquisitions in 1966 “unparalleled in U.S. museum history.”^[33] Lee described his collecting policies as based on the assumption that “in the long run our judgment depends on discrimination — itself the result of a consciously exercised catholic taste, resting on a touchstone of nuance.”^[34]

This statement indicated that the museum, under Lee, took the position that the museum was to be guided by aesthetic principles and not social needs. Neither the trustees nor Cleveland’s ethnic groups received special attention: there was no attempt to attract attention by “happenings” in the Fine Arts Garden, flower-arranging courses, trips abroad for members, balls or cocktail parties in the galleries. As one local writer put it; “Cleveland’s museum is convinced that its aristocratic defense of the faith serves the public good better, in the long run, than the mélange of programs served up in the name of democracy.”^[35]

When Lee left the museum in 1983 it was ranked one of the best in the world. It was the largest American art museum without an admission fee and had a strong education department. But in the judgment of a major art world publication Lee had “made relatively little effort to reach out to the community and build new audiences for the museum.”^[36]

Evan H. Turner did not announce an immediate change in museum policies, but some differences in style were soon apparent. There was a greater emphasis on nineteenth-and twentieth-century art, although Turner shared Lee’s interest in Oriental works. In 1984 the museum opened a new wing, permitting a considerable expansion of its library and adding nine galleries to the exhibition space.^[37]

One of the unique programs of the museum was its joint graduate studies program with Case Western Reserve University. From 1968 to 1984 the program awarded over a hundred graduate degrees in art history, providing the students with both classroom preparation and curatorial experience in the museum galleries. Its alumni were teachers and museum staff at leading institutions in the United States and abroad.^[38]

The Cleveland Orchestra also flourished during the 1970s and early 1980s. Certainly the death of conductor George Szell in 1970 was the end of an era, because no one could easily match the eminence he had reached during his twenty-four year tenure with the orchestra. His disciplined approach to music gave the orchestra a distinctive sound that was admired world-wide: many observers argued that under Szell’s direction it was simply the best modern orchestra.^[39]

Under director Lorin Maazel (1972-82) the orchestra struggled to maintain that distinction. In the style of many other modern performers, Maazel’s commitment to Cleveland was only part-time: he was also director of the Vienna State Opera. Some critics saw a deterioration of the orchestra’s quality and traced it to Maazel’s divided loyalties. On the other hand, a world-wide surge in funding for music, and the growth in the number of American orchestras in this period made it far more difficult for any orchestra to remain incomparably excellent. Maazel was succeeded as director by Christoph von Dohnanyi, who seemed to bring a new clarity to the orchestra’s image and program.^[40]

Perhaps the orchestra’s most important new direction was its performances at the Blossom Music Center in the Cuyahoga National Recreation Area south of Cleveland. One of the new American outdoor performance pavilions (such as Wolf Trap Farm and Tanglewood), the opening of Blossom by the Musical Arts Association in 1968 permitted summer performances in which thousands could hear the orchestra (and popular entertainers) in a bucolic setting.^[41]

The Musical Arts Association also attempted to draw new audiences (and new income) to Severance Hall by sponsoring ethnic nights.^[42] Fundamentally, however, the Orchestra was a money-losing proposition into the mid-1970s. General Manager A. Beverly Barksdale noted in 1971 that “Before the orchestra plays a note, we are thirty thousand dollars a week in the red.”^[43] In 1978 the Musical Arts Association (the orchestra’s parent organization) raised $1 million to match an equal grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which gave the orchestra a stronger financial base.^[44] Four years later the National Endowment from the Arts gave a $1 million grant provided that the Musical Arts Association would raise an additional $3 million for the orchestra’s endowment.^[45]

Fund-raising generally became a major concern of the Circle institutions, since the city itself was no longer the residence of most potential donors, and their loyalty could not be taken for granted. The residents of the city’s suburbs, businesses, and local and national foundations became important sources of funding as professional fund-raisers were hired and development offices were created.^[46]

This preoccupation with finances had been foreshadowed at Case Western Reserve University with the forced departure of President Morse in 1970. In the latter 1960s the university had consistently outspent its income, and had begun to invade its endowment. Morse blamed these problems on unavoidable rises in costs and reductions in income, such as cutbacks in federal student aid, the reduction in federal research funding, general price increases, and necessary increases in salaries and benefits. He argued for greater financial stringency, but believed that educational priorities superseded financial ones.^[47] He went so far as to say that “a university with a deficit is a university worth caring about.”^[48]

In the fall of 1970 the executive committee of the trustees of the university met to vote on a motion that Morse be asked to resign, noting that he had refused to further reduce the planned budget deficit for that year, and that in their opinion “the president cannot cope effectively with his fiscal and fund-raising responsibilities.”^[49] The trustees shortly backed up the executive committee and Morse resigned.

The new acting president of the university, soon to be president in fact, was Louis Toepfer, Dean of the School of Law who had shown financial probity by bringing in the just-completed building for the School under budget during a time of inflation. He justified the faith of the trustees by making every effort to balance the budget, and by making his commitment clear to the entire community by such measures as reducing lighting in hallways and classrooms and turning off the hot water in non-residential buildings.^[50]

Paper-thin budget surpluses were achieved after 1972, but many questioned the cost in terms of the educational mission and staff morale. Toepfer’s successor in 1981, David Ragone, continued the policy (apparently a dictum of the trustees) of achieving an annual balanced budget. Neither president was known for sustaining leadership in academics; in fact, both chose the elimination of departments and programs as one of their major austerity measures.^[51] But those who believed that the survival of the university had been at stake in the financial crisis in 1970 saw the continued viability of Case Western Reserve as confirmation of higher education’s need to place fiscal responsibility (some said corporate values) before educational vision.^[52]

It was in fact the apparent stability of the university, the Museum of Art, and the Orchestra in the face of the general decline of Cleveland, which led many to regard the Circle as a comparatively fertile oasis which could sustain new ventures. There were several new directions visible in the Circle by the mid-1980s which brought a sense of optimism to the area that ran counter to the general tenor of the city.