Central High
This theatre mask sculpture made me stop. It is above the boarded up north front entrance, and the ivy is high.
This sculpture is further along south on the building, a scholar with a big book?
The sign is gone. Perhaps a year stone is somewhere on the building under ivy.
Central High was the first secondary school in Cleveland. Its first home was the basement of an Universalist church in July 1846. A political fight ensued because there was no tuition, and there were people upset with government spending on such a matter. The world's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller went there; the molder of the Republican Party of the turn of the XXth century, Marcus Hanna; Samuel Mather and other future millionaires. In 1856, 1878, and 1940 new school buildings were opened to new addresses. In 1952 it became a junior high, and the students went to East Technical. Thereafter it became a junior high for thirty years. Now it is one of the many closed schools.
I thought Central High was possibly named after the street, it wasn't, although it is on the corner of E.40th & Central. For a year, i worked at Beachwood Post Office. It was the second largest post office east of the Mississippi, people said. Over eighty percent of the people at that post office were Black Americans, and the really old guys used to talk about their old Central High days. Central Avenue was the first Black neighbourhood in Cleveland.
At the property line, this brick column is hostage to weather and nature.
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