55 Public Square (formerly known as the
Illuminating Building, after the Illuminating Company, the building's primary tenant) is a 22-story
skyscraperA skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper...
located at number 55
Public SquarePublic Square is the central plaza in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It takes up four city blocks; Superior Avenue and Ontario Street cross through it. Cleveland's three tallest buildings, Key Tower, the BP Tower and the Terminal Tower, face the square...
, the
town squareA town square is an open area commonly found in the heart of a traditional town used for community gatherings. Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, Platz , plaza , piazza , place , and "maydan" A town square is an open area commonly...
of
downtownDowntown Cleveland is the central business district of the City of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Reinvestment in the area in the mid-1990s spurred a rebirth that continues to this day, with over $2 billion in capital projects slated to involve the downtown area over the next few years...
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
. Designed by Carson Lundin & Shaw Architects, it is 300 feet (91 m) tall, was completed in 1958, and was the first new skyscraper built in Cleveland since the
Terminal Tower complexTower City Center is a large mixed-use facility located on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The facility is composed of a number of interconnected office buildings, including the landmark Terminal Tower, a shopping mall, two hotels, and the main hub of Cleveland's three rapid transit lines...
was completed in 1930. It was also the first tall
International StyleThe International style was a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modernist architecture. The term had its origin from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson written to record the International Exhibition of Modern...
building in the city and the first to use a
reinforced concreteReinforced concrete is concrete in which steel reinforcement bars , plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen a material that would otherwise be brittle.-History:...
frame.
55 Public Square (formerly known as the
Illuminating Building, after the Illuminating Company, the building's primary tenant) is a 22-story
skyscraperA skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper...
located at number 55
Public SquarePublic Square is the central plaza in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It takes up four city blocks; Superior Avenue and Ontario Street cross through it. Cleveland's three tallest buildings, Key Tower, the BP Tower and the Terminal Tower, face the square...
, the
town squareA town square is an open area commonly found in the heart of a traditional town used for community gatherings. Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, Platz , plaza , piazza , place , and "maydan" A town square is an open area commonly...
of
downtownDowntown Cleveland is the central business district of the City of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Reinvestment in the area in the mid-1990s spurred a rebirth that continues to this day, with over $2 billion in capital projects slated to involve the downtown area over the next few years...
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
. Designed by Carson Lundin & Shaw Architects, it is 300 feet (91 m) tall, was completed in 1958, and was the first new skyscraper built in Cleveland since the
Terminal Tower complexTower City Center is a large mixed-use facility located on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The facility is composed of a number of interconnected office buildings, including the landmark Terminal Tower, a shopping mall, two hotels, and the main hub of Cleveland's three rapid transit lines...
was completed in 1930. It was also the first tall
International StyleThe International style was a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modernist architecture. The term had its origin from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson written to record the International Exhibition of Modern...
building in the city and the first to use a
reinforced concreteReinforced concrete is concrete in which steel reinforcement bars , plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen a material that would otherwise be brittle.-History:...
frame. The consulate general of
SloveniaSlovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central Europe bordering Italy to the west, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north...
is located in the building.
Like other
modernistModern architecture is art with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. The first variants were conceived early in the 20th century...
office towers of its time (including the
Seagram BuildingThe Seagram Building is a skyscraper in New York City, located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. It was designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with the American Philip Johnson and was completed in 1958. It is 515...
, built in the same year), it is
set backIn land use, a setback is the distance which a building or other structure is set back from a street or road, a river or other stream, a shore or flood plain, or any other place which needs protection. Depending on the jurisdiction, other things like fences, landscaping, septic tanks, and various...
from the street by a small pedestrian
plazaPlaza is a Spanish word related to "field" which describes an open urban public space, such as a city square. All through Spanish America, the plaza mayor of each center of administration held three closely related institutions: the cathedral, the cabildo or administrative center, which might be...
, which is interrupted only by a single-story restaurant at one end. The tower was initially intended to employ a
steel frameSteel frame usually refers to a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame...
, but reinforced concrete was used for the upper 12 floors because of a steel shortage. A seven-story parking garage adjoins it on the north side. The building was built at a cost of $17 million, and was first owned by
Vincent AstorWilliam Vincent Astor was a businessman and philanthropist and a member of the prominent Astor family.-Early life:...
and the Brooks-Harvey Co. of
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Willett Properties LLC. of
Rye, New YorkRye is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is separate from the town of Rye which is larger than the city. Rye city, formerly the village of Rye, was part of the town until 1942, when it was received its charter as a city, the most recent to be issued in New York...
purchased the building in late 2003, and owned it until July 2008 when it was sold to Optima International LLC.. It is classified as
class B office spaceClass A Office Space describes the highest quality office space locally available. The architecture of Class A office structures always prioritizes design and visual appeal over cost, and sometimes over practicality - a Class A building can be considered a monument and a testament to the success...
.
55 Public Square is reminiscent of
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
's
Lever HouseLever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, is the quintessential and seminal glass box International Style skyscraper. It is the pioneer curtain wall skyscraper in New York City. The 92 meters tall building features an...
which was designed by
Gordon BunshaftGordon Bunshaft was a 20th century architect educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Born in Buffalo, New York where he attended Lafayette High School, an architecturally significant building, Bunshaft was a modernist whose early influences included Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier...
. The Lever House and 55 Public Square are almost identical looking with its
curtain wallA curtain wall is a building façade that does not carry any dead load from the building other than its own dead load, and one that transfers the horizontal loads that are incident upon it. These loads are transferred to the main building structure through connections at floors or columns of the...
. A main difference is that Lever House has while 55 Public Square has .
In 2005, there was small fire on the building's 18th floor which according to the Cleveland Fire Department was caused by a piece of overheated office equipment. The Cleveland Fire Department had contained the fire to the 18th floor, the only thing lost was a piece of glass window and a few smoke covered panels. The office was renovated and cleaned up.
The structure was built on the site of
Charles F. BrushCharles Francis Brush was a U.S. inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.-Biography:Born in Euclid Township, Ohio, Brush was raised on a farm about 10 miles from downtown Cleveland...
's first
arc lampAn arc lamp or arc light is the general term for a class of lamps that produce light by an electric arc . The lamp consists of two electrodes, typically made of tungsten, which are separated by a gas. The type of lamp is often named by the gas contained in the bulb; including neon, argon, xenon,...
, which in 1879 was the world's first electric
street lightA street light, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road, which is turned on or lit at a certain time every night. Modern lamps may also have light-sensitive photocells to turn them on at dusk, off at dawn, or activate automatically...
, and a replica of the lamp hangs outside the restaurant. Also previously on the site were the third and fourth
Cuyahoga CountyCuyahoga County is a county located in the state of Ohio, United States. It is the most populous county in Ohio; as of the 2000 census, the population was 1,393,978. Its county seat is Cleveland. Cuyahoga County is part of Greater Cleveland, a metropolitan area, and Northeast Ohio, a...
courthouseA courthouse is a building that is home to a local court of law and often the regional county government as well, although this is not the case in some larger cities. The term is common in North America...
s. The third was built in 1860, and was replaced by the fourth in 1875, which in turn was replaced by the current
Cuyahoga County CourthouseThe Cuyahoga County Courthouse stretches along Lakeside Boulevard at the north end of the Cleveland Mall in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The building was listed on the National Register along with the mall district in 1975...
on Lakeside Avenue in 1912. Courthouse number four was demolished in 1931 for a
parking lotA Parking lot , also known as "car lot", is a cleared area that is more or less level and is intended for parking vehicles...
.
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