of a giant outdoor chandelier, signal the latest stage in the nationally admired revival of the city's theater district.
The late Ray Shepardson, who died on April 14 at age 70, changed the course of Cleveland history and helped launch a local historic preservation movement in 1970 when he spearheaded the preservation of Playhouse Square's then-abandoned movie palaces and vaudeville houses.
With its 11 stages, and more than 10,000 seats, Playhouse Square now ranks as the second-largest unified arts complex in the United States, after Lincoln Center in New York.
Over the decades, Playhouse Square’s success helped anchor the revitalization of the rest of downtown Cleveland.
Without the theater complex, “we’d have some wonderful parking lots, and we’d have a hole in the eastern part of downtown Cleveland,” said Art Falco, PlayhouseSquare’s president and CEO since 1991.
After leading the revitalization in Cleveland, Shepardson worked on more than 30 similar projects around the United States, spreading a theater revival movement nationwide.
The architecture firm known as Westlake Reed Leskosky, whose former partner, Peter van Dijk, authored an influential master plan for the district in 1976, gained expertise in theater design that it later exported to the rest of the country. As of 2012, the firm had designed renovations of 88 historic theaters across the United States and 44 new theaters.
The district's PlayhouseSquare Foundation is now raising money in the quiet phase of a new capital campaign to renovate mechanical and electrical systems, restrooms and other amenities in its historic theaters in a fresh effort to keep them spiffy and comfortable.
Here’s an admittedly brief sketch of Playhouse Square’s amazing resurrection, based on numerous sources including the district's official history:
- The Palace Theatre closes on July 20, 1969. Of the five remaining theaters at Playhouse Square, the Hanna is the only one that stays open for road shows.
- Shepardson, a Cleveland Board of Education employee, walks into the darkened State Theatre on Feb. 5, 1970, seeking a place for a teachers meeting and discovers its James Daugherty "Spirit of Cinema America" murals. He quits his job and helps form the Playhouse Square Association to save the theaters.
- On Nov. 21, 1971, the association presents its first production in the Allen Theatre, a concert of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. More than a dozen events soon follow.
- The Plain Dealer reports on May 25, 1972, that the Loew’s Ohio and State theaters are to be razed for parking.
- Cleveland lawyer Oliver "Pudge" Henkel soon persuades city officials to deny temporarily a permit for a curb cut on Euclid Avenue for the parking lot, buying time to save the theaters.
- The Junior League of Cleveland, led by its then-president, Elaine "Lainie" Hadden, raises $25,000 in seed money to help save the theaters.
- Shepardson recruits director Joseph Garry to bring "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" from Cleveland State University to a cabaret theater in the lobby of the State Theatre. Expected to run three weeks from its opening on April 18, 1973, it runs two-and-a-half years.
- 1976: The Playhouse Square Operating Co. merges with the Playhouse Square Foundation; architect van Dijk authors an influential plan showing how the lobbies of Playhouse Square's major theaters could all be joined, creating a unified arts complex.
- In December 1977, Cuyahoga County buys the Loew’s Building. The Playhouse Square Foundation secures long-term leases on the State, Ohio and Palace theaters, bringing all three under one management for the first time.
- October 1978: Playhouse Square’s theaters are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- July 9, 1982: The Ohio Theatre reopens.
- June 9, 1984: The State Theatre reopens after a renovation that adds a new stage house.
- April 30, 1988: The Palace Theatre reopens after a renovation.
- In 1999, PlayhouseSquare opens a real estate services division and amasses a portfolio of buildings in the district that functions as a working endowment that serves the organization’s cultural and economic development missions. The foundation’s holdings today include 1.3 million square feet in the theater district, and a million square feet elsewhere across the region.
- June 2006: Ideastream moves into the renovated historic office building at 1375 Euclid Ave. and launches its Westfield Theatre.
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- November 2008: The renovated Hanna Theatre reopens.
- August 2012: PlayhouseSquare Foundation opens the renovated Allen Theatre, along with the Second Stage and the Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre.
- May 2, 2014: PlayhouseSquare schedules the ceremonial lighting of its outdoor chandelier at Euclid Avenue and East 14th Street.
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