Description: This image is a sweeping view of Burnham Mall, Cleveland, Ohio, looking toward Lake Erie. On August 1903, architects Daniel H. Burnham, John M. Carrére, and Arnold W. Brunner presented Mayor Tom L. Johnson and the City of Cleveland with a plan that epitomized the City Beautiful Movement in America. The Group Plan envisioned a grand landscaped mall surrounded by public buildings in the Beaux-Arts style. The plan would create a monumental civic center, influence the design of buildings throughout the city, and lay the foundation for a city planning commission. The first of its kind in the nation, the Group Plan, as built, was the most completely realized of Burnham's city planning efforts. When the city approved the Group Plan of 1903, it was believed that the Mall would become the city's functional and symbolic center. The long stretch of park would beautify a former slum area, while the series of grand, neoclassical government buildings that surrounded it would impress the city's population and instill a sense of civic pride and duty. These goals fit the aims of the "City Beautiful" reform movement, whose proponents worried about the effects that tenements and slum districts had on the European immigrants streaming into American cities. Burnham, who played a leading role in designing Cleveland's Group Plan, was a major figure in City Beautiful and is today best remembered for constructing the White City at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Many of the buildings along this long public park were built over the following three decades, including the Metzenbaum Courthouse (1910), Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1912), Cleveland City Hall (1916), Public Auditorium (1922), the Cleveland Public Library main building (1925), and the Cleveland Public Schools Board of Education building (1931). Other buildings include Key Tower, the Cuyahoga County Administration Building, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The Mall was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The photograph's original caption reads: "Panoramic View of Mall (Looking North)." A second caption, which was covered over, reads: "Taken from roof of Federal building. Cleveland, Ohio." This image of Burnham Mall is among the photographs produced by the Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) between 1935 and 1943. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AL06403
Subjects: Cleveland (Ohio)--Buildings, structures, etc.; Brunner, Arnold W. (Arnold William), 1857-1925; Burnham, D.H. (Daniel Hudson), 1846-1912; Carrère, John Merven, 1858-1911; National Register of Historic Places; United States. Work Progress Administration
Places: Cleveland (Ohio); Cuyahoga County (Ohio)