CLEVELAND — The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is marking a major milestone this month; the bank’s iconic building at East 6th Street and Superior is marking 100 years since it first opened its doors in August of 1923. As part of the celebration, the bank’s Education and Learning Center, formerly known as the Money Museum, debuted Monday a new exhibit celebrating the occasion. The exhibit is open to the public Monday through Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
At 100 years old, the bank building is as awe-inspiring today as it was when it opened its doors. It is a celebration of art and architecture, strength and stability. Designed by Cleveland's Walker & Weeks, it is an adaptation of an Italian Renaissance Palazzo or fortress-palace. Built in the era of celebrated bank robbers like John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd, among others, it offered just a few well-protected entrances and no windows at street levels.
The East 6th Street statues created by Henry Hering of the Guardians of Traffic fame even once housed gun turrets hidden in their bases. The revolving turrets, covered up in the early 2000s, were made of steel and could hold two guards with small cannons and machine guns. Hidden gun ports also existed in other parts of the bank, such as under the steps on the 6th Street entrance.
The 13-story building itself was actually constructed after the completion, in a sense, of a smaller building inside that housed the bank vault. A two-story structure with walls of concrete, armor and reinforcing steel 6.5 feet thick. The vault door, which is 10 feet in diameter, comes in at 100 tons balancing on a 19-foot hinge. It was meant to send a message that not only the bank but the banking system was safe and secure.
“Banking panics happened from 1865 to 1913 probably every 15 years, and so this was a sense in which we're going to stop that,” said Ellis Tallman, Executive Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
The Federal Reserve System was created by an Act of Congress in 1913, and Cleveland, then the largest city between the East Coast and Chicago, was chosen as the site of one of just 12 such banks in the entire country. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland said up shop in rented space off Public Square after being selected in April of 1914 while plans for their new home were drawn up and this palace-fortress built.
Yes, much like cathedrals and grand places of worship were built to make you feel small amidst the greatness of the God that was being worshiped there, this building looked to do the same. It looked to inspire faith of a different kind, faith in the banking system.
“I do think it was meant to inspire confidence and stability,” Tallman said. “If you think about banks around the turn of the century, from the 19th to the 20th century, banks wanted to convey this sense of awe and solidity like we're going to be around forever, and I think that was a sense in which the establishment of the Federal Reserve system that you can come to this bank and be sure it's going to be here tomorrow, it's not a fly by night institution.”
The building is also an art gallery featuring the works of artists of all kinds who hail from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia, the four states the bank's district covers, including several different works by Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol, Ohio's Victor Schreckengost and Cleveland's Perris Mackey. The real artwork, though, is in the bank's old lobby with its Italian marble floors, the ironwork throughout and the ceiling of carvings and artwork using real gold leaf.
News 5 was even given exclusive television access on this 100th anniversary to some of the areas of the building the public never sees, like its eighth-floor offices where the office of the bank's president exists. Its teakwood floors and black walnut paneling look the same as they did at the building's opening, and don't be confused though what looks like wallpaper on the walls; it's all hand stenciled.
Being home to one of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank cities gives Cleveland a seat at a highly exclusive table and its business community here a say in shaping the nation’s monetary policy now and well into a second century.
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