Cleveland Subway (8/19/2017)

Saturday, August 19, 2017

West Side Market Mural (2017) on the Market Brewery building,
by Sean Higgins and Nicholas Rezabek of The Bubble Process

The City of Cleveland has not opened the "Subway" since 2013, but today they held an "Open House."
The Detroit-Superior Bridge (1912-1917; since 1989 named the Veterans Memorial Bridge) was the first fixed high level bridge in Cleveland with a single steel span providing 28-29 m/93-96' of clearance above the water with a total length of 877.8 m/2880'. The upper deck handles vehicular traffic.

Veterans Memorial Bridge, a metal braced ribbed through arch bridge
(the road deck has the arch above and below it) with concrete
open spandrel deck arches for the approaches

During Cleveland's street railway era, the lower deck of carried streetcars across the Cuyahoga River, as part of a plan to linking subway lines to be built on the east side and west side. Underground stations were built at the east and west approaches of the bridge.
In 1919, the Van Sweringen brothers began building the Terminal Tower with its underground network of tracks to handle passenger and freight trains, as well as future rapid transit lines. The plans for a subway system were halted by the Great Depression in 1929.
Cleveland once had 425 miles of streetcar lines. In 1925 they began replacing the streetcars with buses, and in 1954 the last streetcar line was converted. Since then, the lower deck of the Detroit-Superior Bridge has not been used, except for the occasional festival.

Welcome to the Veterans Memorial Bridge and Subway

The west approach is only three arches long below the deck,
but the lower deck arches are numerous!

Looking southwest, you can just about see
 the tower of the West Side Market

If it wasn't for the infrastructure of utlities,
you could almost think you were in a cloister

Now on the steel arch span (180 m/591'), the view from
the south side toward downtown (KSS)

Looking down at the Cuyahoga River

View south to the Carter Road Vertical Lift Bridge (1939-1940)

View southeast from the metal span (KSS)

Bench made from boards and the curved corrugated metal
that once covered utility pipes and lines

Older and newer columns with square Tuscan capitals

The west approaches sits on nine arches, with one of the arches
extending above the lower deck as it crosses a road

Looks like a shunt engine to me!

Posing with the Blue Trolley
(what you see in the photo is all there is to it!)

Looking east where the tracks went under Superior Avenue

10 points if you can name this object!

Looking west along the north side of the east approach (KSS)

Settlers Landing Rapid Station below

Abandoned B&O Railroad
Cuyahoga River Bridge #463 (1959)

Lorenzo Carter Cabin (replica) of the first permanent settler (1797)

Stone with a Celtic Cross? The Irish Famine Memorial
(dedicated in 2000 on the 150th anniversary of the "Great Hunger"

Panoramic view of the remains of the Superior Viaduct (1875-1878, closed in 1920),
a roadway bridge connecting Cleveland and what was then Ohio City

View to the north from the west approach, where all
you see are the Stonebridge Waterfront Condos (2001)

Catenary bracket?

Subway station at W 25th Street

Light fixture in column

The subway still functions as a utilidor (utility corridor)!

Station doorway to the former Forest City
Savings and Trust Building (1903-1904)

Back in November 2016 we saw the former Forest City
Savings & Trust Building; the arched doorway leads to the subway

Some flooding in the subway station

A replica of a Peter Witt streetcar,
designed and manufactured in Cleveland

W 25th Street Station

Exiting the subway station; lots of subway tile!

It was lunch time, and back next to the West Side Market, St Emeric Roman Catholic Church was having a St Stephen's Day Hungarian Festival.

St Emeric Church (1924)

The social hall is below the church

Next to the Sacristy is the Cardinal Mindszenty Memorial Room,
with artifacts from his visit in 1974

A former classroom

St Emeric interior

Below the stained glass window is the
Millennial Mural (1973) celebrating the
millennium of Christianity with symbols of
Hungary and the United States, with the
Apollo 8 stamp showing an important
historic event of the time

After sampling töltött káposzta/stuffed cabbage and a Debreceni szendvics/Hungarian (from Debrecen) sausage sandwich, we finished with a couple palacsinta/thin crêpes and a tepertős pogácsa/bacon biscuit.

The palacsinta booth