100 Years in 100 Days: The Van Sweringen Brothers and Terminal Tower

Shaker Heights Patch is celebrating the 100 years of Shaker Heights history by creating an online scrapbook. Each day for 100 days, we'll feature a photograph that helps tell the story of Shaker Heights.

The Van Sweringen brothers were visionaries, without a doubt. That vision extended past the old North Union Shaker settlement, into the heart of Cleveland itself. Like Shaker Heights, Cleveland's Terminal Tower is a monument to, and legacy of, M.J and O.P Van Sweringen.

Here's how Louis Seltzer, renowned editor of the Cleveland Press recalled the building of Terminal Tower.

One day O.P. was looking out the window of his office on the tenth floor overlooking the Square.

"A very shabby skyline," he said. "Cleveland needs to change itself from an overgrown small town to a metropolis."

Standing there he outlined his dream for a great tower whose summit could be seen for miles around -- surrounded by a group of buildings which would become the centerpiece of Cleveland...

When his dream of the Terminal Tower for Cleveland began to take shape, The Cleveland Press got the first architect's picture of it. There was nothing on Page One that day but the Terminal Tower that O.P. Van Sweringen dreamed of. It now stands majestically over Cleveland.

Source: "The Years Were Good: The Autobiography of Louis Seltzer" - Cleveland Memory Project

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