Cleveland Trust Company Building, Cleveland

Cleveland Trust Company Building, Cleveland (must see)

The Cleveland Trust Company Building is a 1907 building located in downtown Cleveland. The building is a mix of Beaux-Arts, Neoclassical, and Renaissance Revival architectural styles. The building is famous for its artistic exterior sculpture, beautiful interior stained glass dome and mural paintings. When completed, the four-story Cleveland Trust Company Building was the third largest bank building in the United States.

The exterior sculpture was done by well known Austrian-born American sculptor Karl Bitter. Named Finance, the sculpture depicts a female goddess of commerce and finance seated on a throne, while other gods bring her the products of land and sea to sell.

The dome of the building consists of numerous panels of stained glass. The double-paned glass panels depict an intricate, repetitive, green and yellow floral pattern. A series of small lights, set in bronze rosettes, illuminated the dome from below at night.

The walls inside are decorated by murals designed and painted by American painter Francis David Millet who later died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. Millet named the set of the 13 murals "Development of Civilization in America". Each mural was 15.5 by 4.5 feet in size and each was given its own name, such as "The Norse Discoverers", "The Puritans", "Exploration By Land", "LaSalle on Lake Erie", "Father Hennepin at Niagara Falls", and etc.

To ensure that the paintings could be seen from the ground floor 40 feet below, Millet designed them to be simple, with broad fields of deep blue, deep green, and bright red. Each mural used the same color scheme, and the horizon line in each mural aligns with the horizon line in the adjacent murals.

The Cleveland Trust Company Building is arguably the most beautiful old banking building in the US and a long time Cleveland landmark. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Today the first two floors of the building is occupied by Heinen's Grocery Store. It is worth the time to step in the store to look at the beautiful stained glass dome and murals even if you do not plan to buy anything.
Sight description based on Wikipedia.

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Cleveland Trust Company Building on Map

Sight Name: Cleveland Trust Company Building
Sight Location: Cleveland, USA (See walking tours in Cleveland)
Sight Type: Shopping
Guide(s) Containing This Sight:

Walking Tours in Cleveland, Ohio

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