Panoramic Cleveland
Description
Panoramic photographs can provide simple, fixed understandings of place at a specific moment in time. They can also reveal layered narratives of particular streets and buildings, demonstrating how place can also serve as an intersection of multiple narratives across time. Uncovering and revealing the narratives from three neighborhoods found within a 1921 panoramic photograph of Cleveland help us to better understand the grand narrative of the city's growth.
Credits
Christine Mitton
Sections
Contextualizing Cleveland
Understanding the relationships between the neighborhoods captured in the panoramic photograph requires a deeper understanding of how the neighborhoods developed historically.
Industry in the Flats
By 1900, the proliferation of streetcars and the growing retail, finance, and service industries had begun to change residential and economic patterns across the city, including the core business in and near the Flats and Public Square.
Immigrant Neighborhoods
Residential neighborhoods, such as Irishtown Bend on the left of the panaoramic photograph, ringed the river valley adjacent to the Flats and housed its largely immigrant work force.
A City Beautiful
Public Squre served as the central hub for the city's streetcar lines, and eventually was identified as the site for the city's main passenger rail terminal.