Public Art at CLE: Part 1
- Paul Soprano
- 6 hours ago
- 12 min read
Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE) does not have a reputation for excellence in public art. However, the airport does have the CLE Art Program with the stated goal: “Through both temporary and permanent art exhibitions, CLE showcases our creative community by showing work from local creative professionals and art institutions.” Throughout its century of operation, the airport has displayed some intriguing artworks, which will be explored in a series of articles. This first article highlights an almost forgotten masterpiece, while the next will delve into a piece with a notably controversial history.
The Early Days
The author was unable to find any reference to artwork in CLE's original two-story administration building/terminal, opened in August 1929, and costing $81,000 ($1.5 million in 2025 dollars). It was designed to serve 250 passengers a day and was a very modern facility for its day, containing a control tower, weather bureau, post office branch, restaurant, airline ticket office, airport management offices and pilots’ quarters. Adjoining the building was a tower with a 500,000,000-candlepower floodlight to illuminate the field.
Practicality and lack of decoration, unlike the art deco masterpiece of the Akron Municipal Airport (https://www.aviationcle.com/post/akron-s-art-deco-terminal), completed just two years later, were the hallmarks of this terminal which very quickly became inadequate to handle the growing airline traffic for the city. Additions were tacked on to the building in 1937 and 1952, but it took more than a quarter of a century to finally design and build a new terminal at the dawn of the jet age.
The 1954-56 Terminal
The first part of the new terminal complex, the West Concourse, was opened by Mayor Anthony J. Celebrezze on May 10, 1954. This gave the airlines serving Cleveland five times more space for passenger facilities, including for international arrivals. The concourse also had the much-loved observation deck along its roof, offering splendid views of airport operations.
The very functional, if bland, main terminal, opened in April 1956, was built in a rather stark mid-century modern style. Its state-of-the art functional design was drafted by the local architectural firm of Outcalt, Guenther & Associates. Architectural Forum magazine (November 1952) praised the terminal as providing "the best circulation pattern of any large US airport...It is surprisingly close to the theoretical best described by CAA." The fundamental design has lasted almost 70 years, of course, with some changes and extensions.
The use of a new type of glazed-face bricks in bright colors was about the only ornamentation in this building. Large sections of exterior walls were built with royal blue, tangerine and gray-green faced brick to form panels of color. The color helped to break up the monotony of expansive concrete ramps and neutral tones common to many air terminals, according to architect Richard Outcalt.
The Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, William M. Milliken, while returning from a European trip, spoke enthusiastically of the city’s airport project. He stated, “Our airport will show great taste and real distinction in the use of color. The use of colored bricks is extremely effective. The airport has a beautiful working plan which will make it one of the greatest in the country, he said. I like the clean lines of the [West] concourse. Its interior is simple and direct and not fussed up. There are no extra signs. Everything is simplified and efficient.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 11, 1954)
The Plain Dealer also gushed about the use of color in an article on the features of the new terminal from April 22, 1956:
“Outside and in, the new terminal is a colorful place. Blue and red outside walls form interesting contrasts to the sea-green expanse of glass in the tower section. Colors inside range from bright robin’s egg blue of lunch counter chairs to a rich brown strip of paneling between ceiling levels. Red, green, gray and yellow glazed brick are used in corridors and entrances. Walls and supporting pillars are finished in marble of varying shades. Aluminum and stainless steel are used generously for trim, and most extensively in the lower-level ticketing area.”
The Major Jack Berry Memorial
There were two important works of art in the new terminal, a memorial to Cleveland aviation pioneer, Major John "Jack" Berry, Cleveland's first airport commissioner, as well as a large sculptural group featuring the signs of the zodiac (to be discussed in greater detail below).
The memorial to Berry was created by local sculptor William McVey, with collaboration from R. Franklin Outcalt, architect of the air terminal. It was unveiled by famed WW-II General James "Jimmy" Doolittle on November 24, 1957. Gen. Doolittle was a "dear personal friend" of Maj. Berry, who served as superintendent of Hopkins until 1953, and passed away in 1955.
The artist apparently was not happy with the pace of things related to the commission, especially the lack of prompt payment. In a humorous letter from December 12, 1956, McVey wrote to Outcalt stating, "Attached a copy of my lost memo to you of some time ago. Motivation at the time was waning strength due to larder shortage due to dollar shortages. Situation has not improved - in fact I am pecking this out with my nose, a letter every ten minutes." (letter in the William McVey Papers, accessed at the Western Reserve Historical Society Library)
The author was unable to locate a clear image of the memorial installed at the airport, but there is one photograph of the work in McVey's studio. The piece featured a half-relief bronze bust of Berry flanked by an emblem formed of three soaring bronze birds with four-foot outstretched wings.
The memorial stood in the main lobby of the airport terminal building at the head of the staircase from the lower level and featured the adage, "If you seek his monument, look about you." It was funded through a $7,500 subscription collected from Maj. Berry's admirers and friends. The fund was started by 76 seniors at Benedictine High School who gave $1 each.
The memorial’s ultimate fate is unknown. However, in an editorial on the opening of the new South Terminal at CLE, the Cleveland Plain Dealer stated, “We hope his modest monument, which has been removed from the old terminal, will be given a prominent place in the new structure. At the moment, part of the monument — three bronze gulls connected at the wingtips—is hanging in the south terminal, unmarked.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 6, 1977). Sadly, the memorial apparently was not saved.
Time and Space
Cleveland's new terminal did have a wonderful set of metal sculptures gracing the façade above the main entrance to the terminal by local Cleveland artist and professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Viktor Schreckengost, and his one-time student, Melvin Rose, of the famed Rose Iron Works. The work entitled, Time and Space, also informally known as the Signs of the Zodiac, was placed above the airport's entrance doors on the upper level of the terminal in 1956. The 15-piece artwork was made from steel rods and aluminum, and depicts the twelve signs of the Zodiac, as well as the Earth, moon and a gold-leaf sun. It was meant as an homage to the way early travelers used the stars to navigate.
Paul B. Metzler offered this description in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Pictorial Magazine (April 22, 1956):
“A new celestial mural symbolizing the framework of our universe greets visitors to the new Airport Terminal. This 60-foot-long astronomical design was executed by Viktor Schreckengost, Cleveland Institute of Art instructor. It is illuminated under the stainless-steel marquee of the terminal's main entrance.
“The aerial forms are suspended in front of corrugated translucent glass with back lighting and trough illumination helping create the illusion of orbits in space.
“The central motif is the earth as seen from a vertical axis at Cleveland in relation to the Western Hemisphere. This area on the globe is in soft, lustrous polished silver and the sea around is in sparkling deep blue enamel. An aluminum horizontal band encircles this earth at the equator. A projected red enamel ball marks Cleveland.
“At the left is the friendly sun in burnished gold leaf backed by halolike corona rays. At the right is the moon illuminated by the sun. Its eight light phases are globes wrought in spun aluminum with blue-green enamels.
“The planets are unified by the age-old astronomical characters of the zodiac, all in hand forged aluminum and enamel. The first sign tracing the sun’s rotation path is Aquarius (the waterman) for January, according to our calendar, and continues through Capricornus (the goat) for December.
“This concept in architectural, three-dimensional sculpture and decoration has precise craftsmanship contributed by the Rose Iron Works. The composition should open a new horizon in contemporary free form ornamentation.”
Bob Rose, the president of Rose Iron Works, is the son of Melvin Rose, who passed away in 2011. He clearly remembers his father and Schreckengost collaborating on the sculptural group during his childhood and taking it to a lab where the design's balls and stars were enhanced with enamel. "My dad later told me it was the first time enamel had ever been applied to aluminum," Rose stated. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 12, 2012).
Who was Viktor Schreckengost?
Here is a brief biography of Viktor Schreckengost’s from The Smithsonian American Art Museum:
"A prolific industrial designer, artist, and teacher, Viktor Schreckengost’s creations have touched on nearly every aspect of American life. The Ohio native designed everything, from children’s toys and pedal cars to trucks, bicycles, furniture, and ceramic dinnerware. Companies such as American Limoges, Harris-Seybold, and Sears carried his work, bringing beautiful design to everyday objects. His work caught the eye of Eleanor Roosevelt, who in the 1930s commissioned several “Jazz” bowls, one of which went with her and Franklin to the White House in 1933.
Schreckengost originally planned to be a cartoonist, but changed his mind after seeing an exhibition of ceramics at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1930 he joined the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he founded the school’s design department and taught for seventy-eight years. In 1958, in recognition of his work, Schreckengost was awarded a gold medal from the American Institute of Architects, and in 2006 he captured the National Medal of Arts, the country’s highest cultural honor. His work is in the permanent collections of major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum."
The Fate of Time and Space
The zodiac sculpture was taken down in preparation for the new terminal in the mid-1970s and placed into storage in “central receiving” at the airport. It had been largely forgotten until questions about its whereabouts and condition arose in the 2010s, 35 years after it was removed. Both Rose and Dean Zimmerman, then chief curator of the Western Reserve Historical Society, called for the work’s restoration. "Since this is a work of art that was paid for by the public, it would be wonderful to have it on view in a place where people could enjoy it," he said.
When city officials re-discovered the sculpture, they found that the years in storage had damaged it, resulting in layers of dust and corrosion. The city in 2012, sought to restore it, with plans to display it somewhere in City Hall. City Council in 2015 approved a roughly $60,000 contract for the restoration work by the Intermuseum Conservation Association (ICA). The painstaking process was complete by 2019, restoring the piece to its original condition with an appraised value of $300,000, according to City Council records and an airport spokesman. The pandemic delayed the reinstallation process by several years, but the work was maintained in ICA’s climate-controlled facility to prevent further damage.
Luckily, Cleveland City Council authorized the reinstallation of Schreckengost’s work at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport by Impact Communications in October 2022, and the work was unveiled to the public on November 17, 2023 (for a video of the ceremony, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6kggxd33hk). Time and Space is literally the centerpiece of the CLE Art Program, hanging above the entrance to the Central security checkpoint on the departure level of the terminal.
Here is a gallery of photos taken by the author on November 19, 2023, of the newly reinstalled Time and Space sculptural group at Hopkins.
Another perhaps better-known sculpture of the zodiac adorned the famous Pan Am Terminal at New York International Airport (IDL), now known as John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). The massive sculptural group was designed by artist Milton Hebald and installed in May 1960. He and Walther Prokosch, the architect who designed the Pan Am Terminal, were good friends and colleagues. Prokosch asked Hebald if he would craft a big sculpture that would go in front of the 200-by-24-foot glass screen that would prevent air and water from going into the oval shaped terminal. Like Cleveland’s sculptures, they were removed from the former Pan Am Terminal in the early 1990's and stored in a hangar at JFK Airport ever since under the aegis of the Port of Authority of New York & New Jersey. Their ultimate fate is unknown.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article that will look at works of art in the 1970s terminal at CLE, including one of the most controversial pieces of public art in Cleveland history. (see preview below).
Comments