A Chronology of Cleveland Cultural Context for Architecture

(1945-2007)

Including General—Cultural—Cleveland Regional Contexts

General factual material for historical aspects is derived from America Chronicle: Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century, eds. Lois and Alan Gordon. (Yale University Press 1999); area dates taken from Cleveland: A Bicentennial Timeline (Case Western Reserve University http://tech.case.edu/timeline.html). First compiled Larry Smith, Bottom Dog Press (2007).

Cleveland Architecture History:

1903- The Mall Plan-a plan for the Cleveland’s civic buildings. Developed under the progressive leadership of Tom Johnson, mayor. Designed in Beaux Arts and Second Renaissance modes, executed in stone and similarly scaled to prove a unified look. Charles Schweinfurth was Cleveland’s first major architect and designed some of the first of these homes for Cleveland’s industrial leaders such as Samuel Mather.

Between World War I and World War II:

1925-26 – The Van Sweringen brothers persuaded the city to allow the development of the Rapid Transit from downtown to the suburbs to be developed for the wealthy Clevelanders opting to move from the city as a means of escaping from the new immigrants and city industrial pollution. Homes in Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, Lakewood and Bratenahl (summer homes) – usually in colonial, English or French styles were designed by the leading architects of the times: The firms of Abram Garfield, J.Milton Dyer, Walker and Weeks, Clarence Mack, Small and Rowley, designed some of the most distinguished. These firms also designed some of the most distinguished public buildings: The Union Club, Trinity Cathedral, Severance Hall, Cleveland Public Library, Federal Reserve Bank. Cleveland City Hall.

 

1930s – In 1930, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and his then fellow architectural historian Philip Johnson, anxious to bring European modernism to America, published their seminal work, “The International Style”. In 1932, expanding on this mission, they co-curated an exhibit, Modern Architecture; International Exhibition that was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where Philip Johnson had become Curator of Architecture. Not only did it show New Yorkers what significant design changes were occurring in Europe, it extended its significance by traveling beyond the east coast. Cambridge, Boston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Rochester, Worcester, Buffalo and three from Ohio: Cincinnati, Toledo and Cleveland.

 

1930s – Several designers for Walker and Weeks design modern homes when they go out on their own.

 

1935 - Out of 2100 entries, J Byers Hays wins national competition for houses sponsored by General Electric. Lakeview Terrace, designed by Joseph Weinberg, with Conrad and Teare is noted as distinguished public housing by Louis Mumford in The Brown Decades.

 

1936 – In Cleveland Heights, Chester Lowe designs first “open plan” house here.

1935-6 - Great Lakes Exposition – several architects involved.

 

1938 - Harold Burdick builds home for himself in Cleveland Heights.

1940s – Artist Lawrence Blazey builds steel house in Rocky River; George Dalton builds house in Moreland Hills in envisioned community of modern homes.

1942 – General: War in Europe and Pacific; U.S. Conscientious Objectors’ Camps, Victory gardens, internment of Japanese-Americans in U.S. camps. Cleveland: Cleveland Transit System begins era of municipal operation of Cleveland's public transit system 28 April. Cleveland Ordnance (Cadillac tank plant) (now I-X Center) opens at Municipal Airport.

1943 – General: Eisenhower made Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe; women move into the workforce; food and goods are rationed in U.S. for war effort. Race riot in Detroit, fire-bombings continue on October 29th every year.

1944 – General: World War II throughout Europe and Philippines; D-Day landing of U.S. and allied troops at Normandy; United Nations is established; D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley’s Lover found obscene in U.S.

1945 – General: Harry Truman takes over presidency after death of Franklin D. Roosevelt; first atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (189,000 casualties), then Nagasaki; end of WW II. Culture: Abstract Expressionist art is thriving throughout the Beat Era with such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey gathered in the Greenwich Village scene.

 

Cleveland: Cleveland Community Relations Board formed to promote racial harmony.

1946 – General: First U.N. General Assembly Meeting in London; national strikes in coal, railroad, General Electric industries. Post-War Baby Boom (birth rate in U.S. increases by 20%); Dr. Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care; advent of television, use of commercial jet airlines; popularization of Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism.

 

Cleveland: Cleveland Browns begin play in All-American Football Conference.

1947 – General: Fear of Cold War with Communist China and Russia grows; Marshall Recovery Plan for Europe; Taft-Hartley Bill enacted to curb unions, House: Un-American Activities Committee begins hearings on Hollywood communists; college enrollment reaches all time high of 67.1 million; television becoming popular. Literature: Bud Schulberg's The Harder They Fall. Poetry: Poet Laureate: Robert Lowell; Pulitzer Prize to W.H. Auden's Age of Anxiety.

 

Cleveland: Operations begin at the Cleveland’s Lakefront Airport. First successful defibrillation of a human heart by Dr. Claude S. Beck and colleagues at University Hospitals in Cleveland. First telecast by WEWS, Ohio's first television station.

1948 – General: Truman is elected president; Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated in India; national strikes of coal miners; publication of Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Culture: Art: Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper; Literature: Albert Camus’ The Plague, Norman Mailer’s war novel The Naked and the Dead; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Leonie Adams; books by John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Robinson Jeffers, William Carlos Williams (Patterson Book Two).

 

Cleveland Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright designs usonian Weltzheimer-Johnson house.

 

Cleveland: The Cleveland Indians win baseball World Series.

1949 – General: North Atlantic Pact is signed, NATO is created; Apartheid begins in South Africa; 500,000 steelworkers strike; minimum wage rises from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour; fear of Cold War with Communist China and Russia intensifies. Culture: Literature: Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, George Orwell's 1984. Poetry: Poet Laureate: Elizabeth Bishop; Pulitzer for Gwendolyn Brooks.

 

Cleveland: City is named an All-America City for first of five times.

1950 – General: Korean Police Action involvement, UN forces to be lead by General MacArthur; Senator Joseph McCarthy charges Communist infiltration of State Department; many professors at Universities of California refuse to sign noncommunist pledge oath (are dismissed) Culture: Literature: William Faulkner's Collected Stories, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Poetry: Poet Laureate: Conrad Aiken; Pulitzer to Carl Sandburg's Complete Poems;

 

1950s - Cleveland Architecture History: Robert A Little and Ernst Payer lead vision for Cleveland’s modern architecture from their training at Harvard with Gropius and Breuer.(see Time Line based on national publications). Their mantra is about the interaction of nature and the interior of the house. Windows become walls of glass; spaces flow for ideal family living. Importance of setting and position of the sum/ Philmore Hart and Jerry Weiss design houses for developer that appear on cover of Building magazine. Jack Bialosky designs houses that push the envelope of stylistic design restrictions of suburbs.

 

Cleveland: City’s population—914,808 (highest ever, 7th largest city in nation); Cuyahoga County population—1,389,532. Browns football team enters the NFL and wins the title. Cleveland City Council passes a Fair Employment Practices law, the first such city law in the United States. City’s infrastructure declines with aging and is not kept up, giving the sense of a city on decline for decades to follow.

1951 – General: Korean War involvement; draft age lowered to 18; U.S. conducting tests of A-Bomb; suspected Russian spies the Rosenbergs are found guilty of treason and sentenced to death, despite protests. Cold war continues with schools conducting “bomb alert” drills in which school children practice kneeling under their desks or lining up in hallways; some Americans begin building home “bomb shelters.”Poetry: Pulitzer to Marianne Moore's Collected Poems;

1952 – General: Truman orders seizure of U.S. steel mills to avert strike (later ruled as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company vs. Sawyer decision); Eisenhower elected president of U.S. with Richard Nixon as V.P.; supposed subversives are barred from teaching school in U.S.; England has A-Bomb and new Queen, Elizabeth II. Culture: Literature: Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (Pulitzer), Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Steinbeck's East of Eden; Poetry: Poet Laureate: William Carlos Williams appointed to two terms, but did not serve because of FBI investigation and illness

1953 – General: Death of Stalin; Health, Education, and Welfare Department is created; Rosenbergs are executed as spies; Charlie Chaplin leaves U.S. complaining of persecution by "vicious propaganda"; Screen Actors Guild adopts by-law banning Communists from the industry. Culture: Literature: James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Saul Bellows' The Adventures of Augie March, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (fiction).

 

Cleveland: Development of Southgate Shopping Center is launched.

1954 – General: Joseph McCarthy probe of the Army for Communists begins, finally results in Senate hearing disputes, Edward R. Morrow's expose of McCarthy for slander tactics in Army-McCarthy hearings on television’s "See It Now," and Senate condemnation of McCarthy methods; Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Alan Fried promotes “rock-n-roll” music nationwide. Culture: Literature: William Golding's Lord of the Flies; Poetry: Pulitzer to Wallace Stevens for Collected Poems;

 

Cleveland: Last streetcars run 24 January. Infamous Marilyn Sheppard murdered in her Bay Village home, husband Dr. Sam Sheppard is chief suspect.

1955 – General: Nikita Khrushchev becomes Soviet Party Secretary; Martin Luther King Jr. leads Civil Rights Movement; rebel actor James Dean (24) dies in auto crash. Culture: "Pop Art" of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, et al; Literature: McCarthy's A Charmed Life, Mailer's Deer Park; Poetry: Pulitzer to Elizabeth Bishop’s Poems: North and South—A Cold Spring. Lawrence Ferlinghetti launches City Lights Books with Pocket Poets Series: #1, his own Pictures of a Gone World, #2 Kenneth Rexroth's 30 Spanish Poems, Kenneth Patchen's Poems of Humor and Protest.

 

Cleveland Rapid Transit System begins operation in March. Mayor declares “Rapid Transit Inaugural Celebration Week”; system links the inner city with the suburbs, while also dividing it by bridging over inner city Cleveland, allowing suburban travelers to get downtown without seeing the ghetto. Marilyn Sheppard murder trial is in all the news in Cleveland and nationally. Elvis Presley's appearance on "Ed Sullivan Show" starts protest against rock-n-roll.

1956 – General: Salk vaccine for polio meningitis is distributed; Eisenhower wins landslide election, Richard Nixon as V.P.; marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Grace Kelley and Prince Ranier of Monaco. Culture: Art: Georgia O'Keefe and Helen Frankenthaler; Literature: Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side, Baldwin's Giovanni's Room; Poetry: Richard Wilbur’s Things of This World (Pulitzer); books by John Berryman, Marianne Moore, Donald Hall; Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems published by City Lights Books creates national attention over controversy when it is seized by censors, then exonerated in trial that follows.

1957 – General: Eisenhower proposes two-year test ban of nuclear weapons; Russia launches "Sputnik," first space satellite prompting “space race” between countries, emphasis on math and science in U.S. schools. Culture: Picasso exhibit in NY, Chicago, Philadelphia; Literature: Bernard Malamud's The Assistant, Morris's Love among the Cannibals; Durrell's Justine; James Agee's A Death in the Family (Pulitzer); Poetry: Poet Laureate: Randall Jarrell; books by James Wright, W. H. Auden, Denise Levertov, Nellie Sachs; West Coast poets Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Kenneth Patchen doing poetry-and-jazz performances in the West Coast.

1958 – General: Strategic Air Command is formed; U.S. and USSR begin cultural exchanges; V.P. Nixon is stoned in Caracas while on Goodwill tour; Russian Sputnik III orbits Earth, brings on U.S. study of "Crisis in Education" in U.S.; Fidel Castro rebels seize capital in Cuba; John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society portrays materialism and conformity of U.S., argues for fair distribution of wealth to end poverty. Beat Generation art and lifestyle has cultural impact. Culture: Literature: Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, John Barth's The End of the Road;

 

1959 – General: Castro takes Havana, Batista flees; Pope John calls for Ecumenical Council; Khrushchev threatens U.S. with military superiority; Ike's call for on-site missile inspection is rejected; Laos asks for U.S. aid against North Vietnam; Ike and Khrushchev meet at Camp David. Culture: Literature: Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s The Sirens of Titan, Leon Uris' Exodus; Allen Drury Pulitzer for Advise and Consent.

 

Cleveland emerges as primarily a working-class city with homes for working and middle class near the lakefront.

1960 – General: Blacks sit-in at Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) created on campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, a spearhead for civil rights movement. Russians and Fidel Castro sign economic agreement; Kennedy wins narrow election victory as president; Democrats sweep Congress. New York Circuit Court of Appeals rules that D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover is not obscene.

Culture: Literature: William Styron's Set this House on Fire, John Updike's Rabbit, Run, Harper Lee's.

 

Cleveland Architectural History: Robert Madison designs first home by and for African-American family in Cleveland Heights; John Terence Kelly designs American Society for Metals headquarters building—geodesic dome.

 

Cleveland population—876,050 (8th largest city in nation). Cuyahoga County population—1,647,895. Final issue of the Cleveland News published 23 January. French film The Lovers (1958) by Louis Malle is censored in U.S. as obscene, including in Cleveland, where Jasper Wood fought the censorship (and was later to help d.a.levy and Jim Lowell in their court battles). Many Cleveland suburbs achieve city status.

1961 –General: John F. Kennedy at inauguration calls for “Grand, Global Alliance for Progress,” creates Peace Corps. U.S. severs relations with Cuba; then anti-Castro Cubans fail in assault on Bay of Pigs. Freedom Riders are attacked by mobs in Birmingham, Alabama. Beginning of Vietnam War as French are being driven out; Minimum wage raised from $1.00 to $1.25/hr. Culture: Music: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and others singing folksongs in Greenwich Village; Literature: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Louis Untermeyer; Charles Olsen’s The Distances: Poems, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, and Other Poems, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Starting from San Francisco, Leroi Jones’s (Amira Baraka) Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, Diane DiPrima’s Dinners and Nightmares.

1962 – General: U.S. Embargo of Cuba, John Glenn orbits earth, Mississippi governor bars black man James Meredith from University of Mississippi; Kennedy sends in federal troops to enforce integration. Culture: Literatue: Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur; Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson; Poetry: Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems Cleveland: Cleveland mayor Ralph S. Locher (1962-1967; becomes Common Pleas Judge in 1968). Fenn College Poetry Forum is launched by faculty members Dave French, Lewis Turco…does workshops and readings; d.a.levy meets writer Russell Salamon there (born in Yugoslavia, comes to Cleveland in 1953), and they become friends, sharing walks and talks around Cleveland.

1963 – General: Birmingham, Alabama’s Sixth Street Baptist Church is bombed, killing four children, Blacks riot; Kennedy sends in troops. March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August); Astronaut Gordon Cooper orbits the Earth twice. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas; Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested and later murdered in jail; Lyndon Johnson takes office as President. Nation mourns death of John F. Kennedy. Culture: Literature: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Cat’s Cradle; Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time;.

Cleveland: d.a.levy buys used letterhead hand press and prints from it at his aunt and uncle’s place in Cleveland as Renegade Press. Kent Taylor, John Cornillon, Grace Butcher, Eric Albrecht, and d.a.levy; Free Lance magazine is perhaps Cleveland’s first alternative “little magazine.” Asphodel Book Shop is opened by Jim Lowell in the Old Arcade, 465 Euclid Ave. April 11, 1963, carries fine and alternative edition poetry books and magazines. Cleveland radio show "Poetry Seminar" with host Jau Billera interviews many poets including Kent Taylor and d.a.levy.

1964– General: President Johnson calls for a “War on Poverty” and an end to racial discrimination. Mass demonstrations for civil rights. Blacks riot in Harlem and Brooklyn. Nobel Peace Prize to Martin Luther King, Jr. U.S. bombs North Vietnam. New York World’s Fair motto “Peace through Understanding.” LBJ and Barry Goldwater contend for presidency. Hell’s Angels motorcycle groups receive national attention. Beatlemania. Marshall McCluen’s “the medium is the message” theory of art is extolled.

Cleveland: Cleveland State University established 18 December. Fenn College of Engineering becomes part of Cleveland State University. Alberta Turner is appointed as new director of Cleveland State University Poetry Center, following Lewis Turco’s direction of the Cleveland Poetry Forum at Fenn. At Case Western Reserve University Robert Wallace launches their poetry program; some of his students include Bonnie Jacobson, Lolette Kuby, Peggy Lally, Sudie Nostrand. Alfred Cahen, a graduate student at Case and instructor in the English Department takes over editing of literary journal American Weave (1967-1971), assisted by professors Roger Salomon and Robert Ornstein who work to take poetry to the people of Cleveland, poet P.K. Saha at Case.

 

Cleveland Architectural History: John Terence Kelly,William Koster, Fred Toguchi William Morris design modern houses that original families still occupy. Don Hisaka wins national AIA honor award for his residence in Shaker Heights.

1965 –General: Malcolm X is assassinated in Harlem; U.S. combat troops land in Vietnam, and 25,000 march in Washington, D.C. against the war in Students for a Democratic Society’s first anti-war protest (April 17). Watts Ghetto riots (34 die); civil rights march on Washington D.C. HUD is created for fair housing. Ginsberg coins term “Flower Power” for hippie movement and era. Culture: modern jazz thrives. Literature: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Reader, Arthur M. Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House, Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed on auto industry; Poetry: nationally Black Sparrow Press is launched; poet Frank O'Hara is killed in motor accident on Fire Island.

Cleveland: WVIZ, public television station, begins operation 7 February. Cleveland State Poetry Center (Forum) opens to public under Turner’s direction; poets involved include d.a. levy, Jau Billera, Russell Salamon, Grace Butcher, James Kilgore, Russell Atkins, Cyril and Lynn Dostal, Barbara Angell, Muriel Ticktin, Clara Pfister, William McLaughlin, John Gabel, Linda Monacelli, Diane Kendig, Bob McDonough, Christopher Franke and others. November, early reading at The Gate by levy with Adelaide Simon, Grace Butcher, and Kent Taylor (basement of Trinity Cathedral, 22nd St. and Euclid Ave.).

 

Cleveland Architectural History: Jerry Weiss and Robert Blatchford design first condominium development in Ohio.

1966 – General: Stokley Carmichael elected head of Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. U.S. troops killed in Vietnam 6,358; Vietnamese dead, 77,115. War resistance is growing; Black Power Movement, Ken Kesey’s San Francisco Trips Festival; National Association of Broadcasters attempts to ban all records containing drug or obscene messages. Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Mothers of Invention, electric guitar rage. Ed Sanders' Peace Eye Bookstore, E. 10th Ave. C, NY, is busted by the police in a raid for obscenity in his magazine Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. ACLU defends Sanders, who is eventually proven not guilty in courts in "summer of love," 1967. Culture: Literature: Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer; Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation, Truman Capote’s nonfiction-novel, In Cold Blood; Poetry: Poet Laureate: James Dickey; books by Dickey, Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery.

Cleveland: 18-24 July. Hough Race Riots in Cleveland’s Hough area bordering Euclid Ave. and E. 105th St.—fires, arrests, shootings, martial law declared. d.a. levy with rjs and others organize the “Poets at the Gate ”open reading series at Trinity Cathedral; levy and friends hang out at alternative scene: Adele’s Bar, Stan Heilbrun’s headshop, “The Headquarters,” and later, the Coffehouse at the corner of Euclid Ave. and 115th St. Also East Cleveland art scene develops around levy: The Well coffeehouse (13923 Euclid) and the Continental Art Theatre (13931 Euclid, managed by Cleveland artist George Fitzpatrick), which showed erotic art and foreign films. Gallery 1-2 opens by Cleveland beat artists, near 306 W. Superior, organized by Al Diamondstein and included Ralph and Diedre Poplar and cartoonist R. Crumb. Summer 1966, Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders do reading at Amassa Stone Chapel (Western Reserve University); meet with T.L. Kryss and others at Euclid Tavern before reading.

1967 – General: Three astronauts perish in fire in Apollo space craft, Thurgood Marshall is first Black appointed to Supreme Court, War escalates as do protests. Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara resigns. First “Be-In” at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, “Summer of Love” hippy generation nationally.

Culture: Art: sculpture of George Segal and Claes Oldenburg; Broadway: Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming and The Birthday Party, Albee’s A Delicate Balance. Film: In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate, In Cold Blood, Elvira Madigan; Music: Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heartclub Band; Fiction: William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner; Nonfiction: Mailer’s Armies of the Night (on war demonstrations).

Cleveland: Cleveland Mayor Locher turns over keys to Carl B. Stokes, first Black American elected to mayor of a major city (1967-1971). First successful coronary artery bypass operation performed at the Cleveland Clinic by Dr. Rene Favaloro. Cuyahoga Community College opens its Metro Campus. Folksinger Odetta plays at La Cave (10615 Euclid). National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities awards Ohio poet Kenneth Patchen for "life-long contribution to American letters." levy: Jan. 5,an arrest warrant is issued for levy indictment for possession and distribution of obscene literature; Jan. 16, levy surrenders. He pleads not guilty in Criminal Court. Judge Frank Celebrezze insults levy as poet, asks how much he makes a day; levy answers, “I sell poetry for 89 cents a day.” Judge sets bail at $2500, declares, “Maybe you should charge more than 89 cents.” Case Western Reserve University law professors and students conduct picket at Criminal Court Building to free levy; March 30, Dick Feagler in Cleveland Press writes positive article on levy. May 14, Mother’s Day, Benefit Reading for levy and Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and The Fugs, including Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg. It is moved from Masonic Temple on Euclid to Strosacker Hall on Case Tech’s Campus, because Temple had thought it was for a war veteran.

1968 – General: Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive in January; Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy each announce candidacy for president. President Johnson announces he will not run for a second term. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis; riots in 100 cities. Civil Rights Act passes; May ’68 student strike in Paris becomes a general strike paralyzing parts of the country. Robert Kennedy is assassinated in California. Prague Spring is brutally ended by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Yippie Movement is launched by Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Ed Sanders, Albert, Dick Gregory, Phil Ochs, David Peel, et. al; they lead major resistance at Democratic Convention in Chicago where Mayor Daly’s police force oppression resulted in riots and arrests; Hubert Humphrey is nominated. Nixon is elected by small margin. Vietnam: U.S. dead at 30,857; Vietnamese at 422,979. Feb. 4, Beat figure Neal Cassady dies of exposure on railroad tracks in San Miguel de Allende. Robert Bly uses National Book Award to criticize U.S. intervention in Viet Nam, gives funds to the Resistance, to encourage conscientious objection to war. Culture: Broadway: The Great White Hope, Hair. Music: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, The Fugs, Filmore East and Filmore West rock ballrooms. Film: Faces,Yellow Submarine, Planet of the Apes. Fiction: Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, Gass’s In the Heart of the Heart of the Country.

Cleveland: Saturdays at midnight the Continental Art Theater runs the “Underground Cinema 12.”; La Cave (10615 Euclid) features The Blues Project, Canned Heat, Iron Butterfly, Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, The Steve Miller Band, Blood Sweat and Tears, Doc Watson & Son, John Hammond, The Fugs.

 

Cleveland Architectural History: William Morris designs homes for Walden, first area architected development. Peter van Dijk designs Blossom Music Center

1969 – General: James Earl Ray pleads guilty to Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, is sentenced to 99 years; Senate ratifies anti-nuclear proliferation policy; Ted Kennedy admits to part in death of young woman in Chappaquiddick; Apollo 11 Moon landing: Neil Armstrong is first man to walk on moon; Charles Manson and ‘Family’ are charged with murder of Sharon Tate Polanski and others; Vietnam Moratorium is held; Lt. Calley tried in My Lai massacre; first draft lottery is held in U.S.; the Woodstock Festival and Concert (Woodstock, NY). Death of Jack Kerouac. Culture: Art: Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella; Films: Midnight Cowboy, Alice’s Restaurant, Easy Rider, The Wild Bunch, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.

 

Cleveland: The Palace Theater, last operating movie house on Playhouse Square, closes 20 July. A burning oil slick on the Cuyahoga River attracts national attention, 22 June. Euclid Beach Amusement Park closes 28 September. Cleveland American Indian Center is founded.

 

1970 – General: President Nixon pledges to bring troops back in next year, yet admits to sending troops in Cambodia; student protests around the country, National Guard opens fire on students at Kent State University, kill four, two more students shot and killed at Jackson State University; Earth Day launched. Culture: Literature: Saul Bellows’ Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Hemingway’s Island in the Stream; Kate Millett Sexual Politics, Studs Terkel’s Hard Times; Poetry: Poet Laureate: William Stafford; Pulitzer to W. S. Merwin for The Carrier of Ladders, books by Robert Creeley, Nikki Giovanni, Philip Levine, Philip Whalen.

Cleveland: Caveliers (NBA) basketball team is organized.