Cleveland's Ameritrust Tower Receives Death Sentence
Friday March 30, 2007
After two years of discussion, the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission voted yesterday 2-1 to demolish the 1971 Ameritrust Tower at E. 9th St. and Euclid Ave. in downtown Cleveland. The building was designed by Hungarian-born architect and furniture designer, Marcel Breuer, called by many the "father of modernism." Breuer, born in 1902, was a principal in the 1920s Bauhaus movement and taught a generation of noted architects, including Philip Johnson. Among his most famous works are the 1953 UNESCO Buidling in Paris, New York City's Whitney Museum of Art, and the 1971 extension to the Cleveland Museum of Art (which CMA decided to save in their rennovation project). Marcel Breuer died in 1981.
Like many who have written on this subject, I find the trend of tearing down relatively new, salvagable buildings disturbing. Is the Ameritrust Tower Cleveland's most attractive building? No, not necessarily. Will the proposed new Cuyahoga County Administrative Building be any better? Again, probably not. But we, and Cleveland, lose a little bit of our past each time we lose one of these structures.
(© J. Muscatello/cc license)
Comments
It’s Tipical of the Cleveland Politicians to get rid of a peace of history and erect something that you probably won’t even see in the Skyline…Thats a Great Building and just about any other city would find good use for it…thats why Cleveland is not even on the Map anymore….so lets get rid of a 28+ story building and put up something you can’t see….way to Cleveland Politicians….
Oh By the way Public Square has prime land for a New Building…but our guys would rather keep it a parking lot just like most of Cleveland….
Thanks for getting rid of History…..can’t wait to move.
Im surprised by the seemingly total lack of intrest your city has for finding a solution to the tower issue. You have one of the only Breuer high rises in existence and even with the help of Kohn Peterson Fox and Perkins & Will architects you still cant solve it? Sounds like hired guns to back up the commissioners’ intents.
A group called MAPA has recently successfully helped save a Breuer Library in Gross Point Mich not by saying lets preserve it as it is - but by holding a design competition to show what could be done - and it worked. Unfortounately theyre attempts to get local support for such a competition in Clevland has gone unoticed.
I hate to be so negative but wuold you expect anything less from the city of Cleveland? its amazing this is not a town of loosers but the decision makers are almost always a bunch of idiots.
Mayor Jackson - wheres you common sense. Perhaps we should knock down the Terminal Tower because the top is pointed.
This is almost unbelievable that a use for the “Cleveland Trust” Tower cannot be found. I started my career in that building, met my wife in that building and worked there for 17 years almost from the day it opened. Its a great building from an apearance standpoint and any city should be proud to have it. It is also attached to an even more historic and beautiful structure - the Cleveland Trust Rotunda banking office where I once was a teller. I’m not sure one can be demolished without the other. I have such great memories from there. This is really a shame! Chuck
Much later… What is the decided outcome of this brutalist building??
Has there been a final date on the demolishment? I haven’t seen anything in the news, and have moved to california from cleveland since…
Didn’t they learn from the Larkin buildling in Buffalo to leave these gems alone?!
Destroy the building, and destroy Cleveland. The City of Cleveland wouldn’t know a masterpiece if it struck them in the face. This action is taken right out of the Cleveland Browns playbook. Never a contender, always a loser.