Cleveland Arcade — covered passageway
Image by 12019 from Pixabay

Cleveland Arcade

  • 2 min read
  • 41.500° N 81.690° W

Interesting facts

  • The ironwork was supplied by the Detroit Bridge Company, which was run by Stephen V. Harkness, one of the Arcade's own financial backers.
  • The Arcade opened to the public on Memorial Day, 30 May 1890, after about two years of construction.
  • In 1939 the Cleveland architecture firm Walker and Weeks remodelled the building, half a century after it first opened.
  • When Hyatt redeveloped the building in 2001, the original glass skylight was replaced as part of the conversion.
  • In 2024 DC Studios used the Arcade as a filming location for a scene in the film Superman.
  • Its skylight stretches more than 300 feet, about 91 metres, making the covered passage longer than a football field.

Why it is worth it

Step in from the traffic of Euclid Avenue and the street disappears behind you: a long, luminous hall rises five storeys to a glass roof, its walls lined with four tiers of balconies. Opened on 30 May 1890, the Cleveland Arcade — simply "the Arcade" to the city — is one of the earliest indoor shopping arcades in the United States, and one of the most complete survivals of the Victorian taste for streets under glass.

The idea came from Europe. Its architects, John Eisenmann and George H. Smith, looked to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, but they had to solve a very American problem: the plot ran between two avenues that did not line up. Their answer was two nine-storey office blocks, one facing Euclid Avenue and one Superior Avenue, linked by a five-storey arcade. From the Euclid entrance the passage swings off at 23 degrees towards a rotunda, and the whole length is covered by a skylight more than 300 feet long and around 100 feet high, made up of some 1,800 panes of glass. The ironwork was built by the Detroit Bridge Company, a firm of bridge builders, and it shows in the confident, lightweight trusses overhead.

The Arcade cost $867,000, an enormous sum at the time, and its backers read like a roll-call of Gilded Age Cleveland: John D. Rockefeller, Stephen V. Harkness, Marcus Hanna and the inventor Charles F. Brush among them. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and a National Historic Landmark two years later. In 2001 the upper floors were converted into a Hyatt Regency hotel, while the two lower levels were kept open to the public with shops and cafés, so the hall can still be walked through as a passage between two streets — the purpose it was built for.

Getting there

The Arcade stands in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, between Euclid Avenue and Superior Avenue. Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE) is about 17 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Squares, Streets and Monuments 8The Most Beautiful Shopping Arcades and Passages 12The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in the United States 14The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173

From the encyclopaedia

The Arcade in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, is a Victorian-era structure of two nine-story buildings, joined by a five-story arcade with a glass skylight spanning over 300 feet (91 m), along the four balconies. Erected in 1890, at a cost of $867,000, the Arcade opened on Memorial Day, and is identified as one of the earliest indoor shopping arcades in the United States. The Arcade was modified in 1939, remodeling the Euclid Avenue entrance and adding some structural support. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975.

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