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Lol. Look, Cleveland is a great city (one of my favorites!), but come on, man, you’re delusional.
The most recognizable structure in Cleveland used to be the Lebron James mural downtown. There is nothing in Cleveland that really has national recognition now. The Rock Hall maybe? But you'd only know it if you've been there. I've never been to St. Louis, but I know the arch. Never been to Seattle, know the Space Needle, etc.
Cleveland Terminal Tower is indeed an impressive building and complex, but were you to show some non-Clevelander or non-architecture buff a photo of it without telling the viewer what they were looking at, they probably wouldn't be able to tell you what it was.
If you showed that same person a photo of the St. Louis skyline, they would instantly be able to identify the Arch.
Jeez, Philadelphia City Hall, a huge Second Empire stone pile, is as impressive as Terminal Tower, and even though the city tried to tear it down, it's now a beloved local landmark. When the American Institute of Architects asked first a group of its members, then the general public, to name their favorite American buildings on its 150th anniversary in 2007, it ranked 21st on the list, higher than any other municipal building in the country and just below the Brooklyn Bridge.
But I suspect that were I to show that same random person a photo of City Hall, they wouldn't be able to tell me what it was either, while they would recognize much smaller and more modest Indpenedence Hall eight blocks to City Hall's east.
By the way, you should look at that list, especially the 20 buildings that rate higher than Philadelphia City Hall.
The Gateway Arch is in 14th place. Most of the 13 structures above it are buildings and monuments many ordinary people could identify if shown photos of them. A few, such as Biltmore, I would consider recognizable but not iconic in that fashion.
Not one structure in Cleveland, not even Jacobs Field, which the architects considered significant but the public didn't, appears on this list.
There are a load of buildings of great beauty, historic significance, or both, that I would not consider iconic. My hometown's City Hall, which IIRC is the second-tallest city hall in the country after Philadelphia's, is one of those.
Apparently you haven't seen City Hall, which was supposed to be the tallest building in the world when work began on it in 1871 but got eclipsed by the Eiffel Tower in the 30 years it took to complete it. (The Washington Monument, which remained incomplete when work began, was also finished before City Hall and is six feet taller.)
Actually, it is the tallest occupiable masonry building in the world still:
Philadelphia City Hall by Toniklemm via Wikimedia Commons, used under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-4.0 license
5) “statement” architecture this is things like Grand Central, Botanical Gardens, Philly City Hall of the Boston Public Library Public to Semi-Public buildings meant to give a sense of Grandure to a place
Quote:
Originally Posted by STLgasm
Lol. Look, Cleveland is a great city (one of my favorites!), but come on, man, you’re delusional.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleverfield
Yeah, I’m from Cleveland and love the city. I’d bet that the majority of Americans could identify the St. Louis Arch, but I’d be shocked if 10% of Americans knew what the Terminal Tower was or where it was located.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
You missed my point completely.
Cleveland Terminal Tower is indeed an impressive building and complex, but were you to show some non-Clevelander or non-architecture buff a photo of it without telling the viewer what they were looking at, they probably wouldn't be able to tell you what it was.
If you showed that same person a photo of the St. Louis skyline, they would instantly be able to identify the Arch.
Jeez, Philadelphia City Hall, a huge Second Empire stone pile, is as impressive as Terminal Tower, and even though the city tried to tear it down, it's now a beloved local landmark. When the American Institute of Architects asked first a group of its members, then the general public, to name their favorite American buildings on its 150th anniversary in 2007, it ranked 21st on the list, higher than any other municipal building in the country and just below the Brooklyn Bridge.
But I suspect that were I to show that same random person a photo of City Hall, they wouldn't be able to tell me what it was either, while they would recognize much smaller and more modest Indpenedence Hall eight blocks to City Hall's east.
By the way, you should look at that list, especially the 20 buildings that rate higher than Philadelphia City Hall.
The Gateway Arch is in 14th place. Most of the 13 structures above it are buildings and monuments many ordinary people could identify if shown photos of them. A few, such as Biltmore, I would consider recognizable but not iconic in that fashion.
Not one structure in Cleveland, not even Jacobs Field, which the architects considered significant but the public didn't, appears on this list.
There are a load of buildings of great beauty, historic significance, or both, that I would not consider iconic. My hometown's City Hall, which IIRC is the second-tallest city hall in the country after Philadelphia's, is one of those.
The OP asked about statement architecture, not iconic architecture. Cleveland has great quantities of statement architecture, of which I've described several of the most prominent examples.
Persons who actually visit Cleveland are very surprised by the city's architecture.
Any architectural survey that ranks Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) as the most illustrious example of Cleveland architecture truly is worthless in judging the heft of a city's significant architecture. Of course, the survey touted in post 63 was America's favorite buildings, as determined by polls of architects and of public.
<<When it was released, critics observed that the list of "favorites" did not reflect the judgments of architectural “experts”. Upon the list's release, AIA president R.K. Stewart acknowledged that the rankings did not represent architects' professional judgments, but instead reflected people's "emotional connections" to buildings.[4] Buildings named by critics as being some that architects consider to be highly significant, but that did not achieve top 150 ranking in the public survey, included the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, designed by Louis Kahn; the Inland Steel and John Hancock buildings in Chicago; Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, designed by Eero Saarinen; and the Seagram Building in New York City, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.[4][5] John King of the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out that in 1991 the AIA had named Eero Saarinen's design for Dulles Airport as one of ten "all-time works of American architects." King noted that the public's ratings were based on seeing just one photo of each building, and pointed out that "There's more to architecture than a picture can convey."[4]>>
Having traveled extensively in the U.S. with a discerning eye for architecture, I'm not going to waste time arguing with ignorant posters who likely have never set foot in Cleveland, visited Severance Hall, the Cleveland Museum of Art, or spent hours exploring the tunnels and buildings of the Tower City complex. E.g., the Cleveland Union Terminal, now converted to retail, was larger than Grand Central Station, and is just a small portion of the Tower City complex. And the fact that the Terminal Tower was the tallest building in the world outside of New York City for most of four decades certainly cements its place in architectural history.
Another example of exemplary Cleveland architecture is the James A. Garfield Memorial in Lake View Cemetery, the largest and most impressive Presidential tomb in the U.S. I was shocked by how inferior the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, IL, was by comparison.
And a few blocks away linking downtown to Lake Erie developments is a 26-acre mall area, featuring three separate malls, two of which are largely lawn area.
A handful of uninformed social media posters arguing about which city has the best architecture is pointless. I just object to those who would argue that Cleveland is lacking in significant architecture. It isn't, and, for anybody interested in visiting Cleveland and making up their minds, posts 59 and this post provide a short guide.
Oh, there's no subjectivity here. Guarantee that there will be about a zillion responses that read to the effect of, "You're full of beans. [Insert City Name Here] has culture we haven't even used yet!"
Any architectural survey that ranks Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) as the most illustrious example of Cleveland architecture truly is worthless in judging the heft of a city's significant architecture. Of course, the survey touted in post 63 was America's favorite buildings, as determined by polls of architects and of public.
<<When it was released, critics observed that the list of "favorites" did not reflect the judgments of architectural “experts”. Upon the list's release, AIA president R.K. Stewart acknowledged that the rankings did not represent architects' professional judgments, but instead reflected people's "emotional connections" to buildings.[4] Buildings named by critics as being some that architects consider to be highly significant, but that did not achieve top 150 ranking in the public survey, included the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, designed by Louis Kahn; the Inland Steel and John Hancock buildings in Chicago; Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, designed by Eero Saarinen; and the Seagram Building in New York City, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.[4][5] John King of the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out that in 1991 the AIA had named Eero Saarinen's design for Dulles Airport as one of ten "all-time works of American architects." King noted that the public's ratings were based on seeing just one photo of each building, and pointed out that "There's more to architecture than a picture can convey."[4]>>
It was that Wikipedia article that I linked to in post 63.
The way the survey was conducted was that the AIA first polled 2,448 of its members, each of whom were asked to name up to 20 structures in each of 15 categories. Those named by at least six members, 248 in all, were then subjected to a poll of 2,214 members of the general public who rated the pictures of the structures they were shown on a scale of likeability.
John King has a point, and so do you: "America's Favorite Buildings" was a popularity poll rather than a ranking of quality, significance or aesthetic merit. And yes, "statement" architecture and "iconic" structures are not the same thing, but I'd like to suggest that the relationship between the two types of buildings are like rectangles and squares: all iconic buildings are statements, but not all statement buildings are iconic.
I realize after making my comments about Terminal Tower vs. the Gateway Arch that I sort of had the relationship backwards: what I think would be more significant would be if the average Joe could identify the city based on the photo of the building, or a photo that included it. I would say that in Cleveland's case, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame would trigger such an association in most ordinary observers more often than Tower City would. (In a similar vein, I think most people would be able to identify a skyline photo of Boston viewed from across the Charles River Basin thanks to the exclamation-point Back Bay office towers, a photo of New York based on not only the Empire State Building but also the density of the skyscrapers, one of Washington based on the Capitol, White House or Washington Monument, one of Philadelphia based on either the front or the back view of Independence Hall, or one of San Francisco based on either the Transamerica Pyramid or the Golden Gate Bridge (with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge a runner-up). The Arch performs the same function for St. Louis.)
There are a few ballparks that would also trigger such associations, in particular Baltimore's Camden Yards, thanks mainly to its signature feature just beyond its left-field wall.. But I have seen photos of Progressive Field and consider it an outstanding facility, but I don't know if someone seeing a photo of it would immediately say "Cleveland" unless they could read the inscriptions on the players' uniforms.
Coda for WRnative: Would that the Reading Terminal Market were housed in such a lovely structure.
But the "wow" space in the building that houses it is the repurposed Reading Terminal trainshed above it, which serves as a giant foyer for the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
List your reason for having St Louis above both Cleveland AND Cincinnati....
Seriously? St. Louis is in another league.
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