Abstract
In this 2005 interview, William Becker, University Archivist for Cleveland State University, discusses his career as an archivist at CSU since 1974 and also talks about the history of Fenn College. Mr. Becker points to his retrieval of the President's records from Fenn College as one of his most memorable accomplishments as CSU's Archivist. Mr. Becker has also taken oral histories of many professors and administrators from Fenn College. Mr. Becker describes how YMCA technical college at E.22nd and Prospect became Fenn College in 1930; how the College acquired Fenn Tower, formerly the National Town and Country Club building, in 1937-38; and how eventually the State of Ohio took over Fenn College and made it a public university, Cleveland State University, in 1964-65.
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Interviewee
Becker, William (interviewee)
Interviewer
Clayton, Richard (interviewer)
Project
History 400
Date
11-10-2005
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
49 minutes
Recommended Citation
"William Becker Interview, 10 November 2005" (2005). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 400006.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/12
Transcript
Richard Clayton [00:00:02] Today is Thursday, November 10, 2005, and this is the start of an interview with William Becker at the story booth at Cleveland State University. My name is Richard Clayton and I will be the interviewer. This interview is done in connection with Cleveland State University and the Euclid Corridor project. Mr. Becker, are you ready to get started?
William Becker [00:00:20] Yes, sir.
Richard Clayton [00:00:22] First question, Just tell me a little bit about yourself. Where were you born and raised?
William Becker [00:00:26] I am a native of Cleveland. I was raised in Parma, Parma Heights. I graduated from Valley Forge High School, 1969, and I came to Cleveland State, graduated in the summer of ’73, spent a year Case Western Reserve, earned my master’s degree, and then came back to CSU as the assistant to the archivist in that fall of ’74. And I’ve been here ever since. I’m now a university archivist at the university, and I’ve been here now 31 years.
Richard Clayton [00:00:58] Have you worked on any projects in regards to Fenn College or Fenn Tower, more specifically?
William Becker [00:01:03] My whole career has been the university. Most of my career has been dealing with the university records. And yes, we’ve done a number of things with Fenn Tower.
Richard Clayton [00:01:16] What sort of archival material do you have that pertains to Fenn College or Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:01:24] When Cleveland State became Fenn became Cleveland State, there was some reluctance on the part of CSU to really embrace its Fenn identity. And there were a lot of records that weren’t kept. Unfortunately, CSU wanted, in the early days, there was a need to establish its own identity because it didn’t want to be Fenn State. And when I came into CSU, I started trying to track down a lot of the old records. My favorite achievement was making friends with G. Brooks Earnest, the last president of Fenn College. After he was at Fenn, he left and became the executive director of the Fenn Educational Foundation, which later became the Fenn Cleveland Foundation. And through meetings with him and talking with him, I was able to secure the president’s records from Fenn College. That consists of about 30 boxes of records dealing with everything from board of trustees to personnel matters and the acquisition of buildings. So it’s all over the place. But there was a lot of good material in there which might have been lost if I hadn’t retrieved it. That was my favorite thing. Another thing I did with Fenn was we did a series of oral histories with Fenn. There were a number of old Fenn faculty we talked to. Most of them are now dead, unfortunately. My boss at the time, Millard Jordan, who was the archivist, he had a career of 50 years here before he retired. Major Jenks started out in the History Department, became the Dean of Arts and Sciences and then became executive assistant to the president. He had a long career here, over 40 years. G. Brooks Earnest. Now I got a couple of the trustees who were also alumni, like Clayton Hale. So we did a number of oral histories and I learned basically my history of the school at their knees, listening to them and talking to them, doing an oral interview, like we’re doing right now.
Richard Clayton [00:03:35] What was your. Looking back on it, what was your most favorite archive over the years?
William Becker [00:03:42] Well, I have to be proudest of getting the president’s records. That was something that was let go and they let them walk away with. It was just unfortunate that happened. But it turned out well, the university got them back and they’re there and they’re now available. The latest thing we got, which was really neat and relates to the project you’re doing on Fenn Tower, was a couple of years ago when they were moving out of Fenn, when they were going to shut it down for the renovations they’re doing right now. A couple of the women in the cashier’s office were going to the records downstairs and they came across a box and had the original deed to Fenn Tower, which they turned over to us. So we have that, the original deed to the tower itself. Nobody knew what happened to it. Nobody really cared about it. But now we got it back in our hands, we know where it’s at.
Richard Clayton [00:04:35] Is there any controversy over the years with Fenn College or Cleveland State University?
William Becker [00:04:41] In what sense? There’s always controversies in a university.
Richard Clayton [00:04:44] Noteworthy.
William Becker [00:04:47] Well, I’d rather not go into those because the noteworthy ones are always negative.
Richard Clayton [00:04:54] Well, let’s talk a little bit about Fenn College.
William Becker [00:04:56] Okay.
Richard Clayton [00:04:57] How did Fenn College come to be?
William Becker [00:04:59] Fenn College is an outgrowth of the YMCA program back in the middle of the 19th century. The YMCA is more of a hellfire, damnation, you need salvation type organization. After the Civil War, there’s a change in their focus and it progresses towards more like the idea of the social gospel. Not only improve the spiritual man, but but also the physical man. And they start offering, not only in Cleveland area, but nationally, the Ys start offering educational programs, free courses. A lot of it’s directed to immigrants, people new to the country. And if you go and see the old pictures, you know, you see the women in the long black skirts and the babushkas, you know, they [have an] Eastern European look to them. And in a number of cities, including Cleveland, this educational program keeps growing and it develops first into a high school program. And it was called the YMCA Preparatory School. They also had one for accounting. But these programs sort of aim at students who fall through the cracks. Somehow in the public school system they dropped out and they’re looking to help the poorer students. In a number of schools they actually develop into colleges. And I’m using information I got from a woman in Virginia who’s doing research on this. She was trying to do a book on the YMCA school programs that developed into universities, colleges and still exist. I think there was like 13 of them, one of which was Fenn. And so in 1923 they upgraded the program to a college level. So there’s one, only more than a dozen in the United States that does this. And it’s called the YMCA School of Technology. And that name lasts for about four years, the first graduating class. And the problem with that is YMCA on your diploma, that’s not very prestigious, that’s not Harvard. There’s a feeling that’s second rate. Now Mr. Fenn comes into the picture not through the educational program, but Fenn had a long career with Sherwin Williams. He started out with the Big Four Railroad, but they wanted him to work on Sunday. And Mr. Fenn had strong religious convictions. He wouldn’t work on Sundays. The railroad said bye. Well, he got fired. And he’s on his way to the YMCA convention in Kansas City, I believe. And he’s with this guy from Cleveland named John, I think it’s John Sherwin. And they get to be talking. Sherwin’s going to the Y convention. Sherwin is Sherwin Williams. And Fenn ends up with a job at Sherwin Williams. He eventually becomes treasurer of the company and a partner. And Mr. Fenn is very active in the Y. And their story goes that for either 24 or 25 years he teaches Sunday school every Sunday and never misses a day. Well, Fenn was married but had no children. And when he died, he left his money. He left a large endowment to YMCA for the educational program. And so that money he left was the endowment for the school. They named the school after him even though he had nothing directly to do to it. But it was sort of honoring him for this donation. So that’s how Fenn came into being. And they adopted that name in 1930.
Richard Clayton [00:08:55] As Fenn College came into existence, what were some of the significant achievements, achievements that they made early on?
William Becker [00:09:06] You have to realize the mission of the school. Back then, the idea of getting an education, a college education, was to help prepare you for a job, not just make you a better person, but for a career. The school, when it starts out, has two schools, the college. One is business and one is engineering. They had arts and science courses, but it isn’t until the middle of about ’33, ’34 that they actually have a school of arts and sciences before. They have a junior college called Nash Junior College, named after Augustus Nash. And it becomes the School of Arts and Sciences. And what the Fenn’s focus is is not on the same type of people that you normally expect a college to be looking at. Where’s Fenn located on Euclid Avenue? What’s less than three miles down the road? Case Institute of Technology, a very highly respected engineering school. We got engineering. You also have Western Reserve University. We’re not going after the same people. They’re not looking at that, you know, they can’t compete. They’re looking at the type of students who can’t really afford a college education. And they’re the second college in the state to adopt the co-op program. That is the focus of that. That’s their catch. The idea is they would recruit students and get the student through the first year. The student goes on co-op. All the day students are on co-op. That’s part of it. You’re a night student, part time, you don’t have to be on co-op, day student, you’re on co-op. And so for the next three years you’re alternating: work, classes, work, classes, work, classes. Three years, you got two years done and you got your years experience. It takes you five years to earn your degree, but you end up with a college education, one year experience. So when you go out there with your resume, you have some experience to put in there and you got a track record. And Fenn, you look at what the Fenn faculty did today compared to what college teachers do, it’s like you shake your head in wonderment. They taught five and a half days a week. They taught both morning and evening sessions. Their schedule looked more like a high school teacher. Like six classes they taught. And then on weekends during the Depression, these guys were going out door-knocking. On doors of prospective students. Trying to convince people to come to the college. So just the fact that they kept their existence is amazing. But they developed and they did have serious growth. The program did grow. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the man who ran the show, the president, Cecil Vincent Thomas, from what I understand people talking about him, he was charismatic. I mean, he. You know, this is something he wanted to do. He really believed in this. And you got around him and you believed in it, too. I just got done talking to William Patterson, who was the provost, first provost of the school, but he came in the 30s. He came out of Ohio State. And just listen to him talking about Dr. Thomas. You know, Patterson and many of the other guys could have gone other places and gotten more money, but they bought into Thomas’s vision and they stayed. And you had a lot of these guys who stayed their career here at Fenn because they believed in what Thomas was doing.
Richard Clayton [00:12:52] We’ll shift gears a little bit back to Fenn College, but I want to ask you about the National Town and Country Club.
William Becker [00:12:58] Now there’s a good case of timing. The National Town and Country Club was a national organization. It’s named National. They had branches in a number of different cities throughout the United States. And it was like membership in an athletic club. And they sold subscription memberships. Unfortunately, their timing was not good. This is what the place looks like in 1929. You see construction going on when you finish a building in 1929. Unfortunately, it looked good when they started. Then October came, the Depression started. A lot of people could not afford to pay their membership, and it went bankrupt. The story goes they only held one function when their new building was called the National Town and country Club at 24th in Euclid. And then it just sat vacant many years.
Richard Clayton [00:13:59] Well, coming back to Fenn College, how and why did Fenn College pursue the vacant building?
William Becker [00:14:05] Now let’s set up Fenn’s campus for you. We’re not on nuclear. We’re back on Prospect. Over on Prospect. YMCA at 22nd and […] Prospect, that would be the southeast corner. Directly to the east of it, there were three homes which the Y purchased over the years. They were named the Johnson House, the Edwards House, and the Medical Library. That’s the names of the family that owned the houses. And they converted these into classrooms. The medical library building was used by doctors. There was like a medical library in there when they purchased it. And it had a small auditorium in it, too. But they used these for their classes and laboratories. Now directly behind the Johnson Building to the south, and so it would be southeast of the YMCA, the main YMCA building. They built the first building for the school. It was called the Y building, not the Y building, excuse me, but the Fenn Building. And that had a lot of the laboratories in it. And that still stands today. The three homes have been torn down over the years. But that building still stands. As I said, Fenn was successful. And they started. They just got crowded. Too many kids in too small spots. And they had their eye on the Fenn Building. Fenn Tower, or the National Town and Country Club because it sat for years. Ownership fell to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, part of the federal government. And it just sat there vacant.
[00:15:41] And Thomas is sitting over in the Johnson Building. You walk out on the main porch of the building. You look out there and you see this big tower sitting there vacant. You know, it’s like, wow, wouldn’t that be nice? Well, they recruited and, you know, to kind of have a big building like that on Euclid Avenue, and it’s sitting there vacant, that doesn’t really do much for the image of the street. That doesn’t help much. But they did gain support to have the government sell it to the school. And they got it at a bargain price, basically. They got it for the back taxes. The school was able to move in there. I think it was 1937 or ’38, they moved in. They were able to purchase it and move it into the Fenn Tower, but that’s what it was. It was just a matter of need. They needed to expand.
Richard Clayton [00:16:32] Do you know originally how much it cost cost to construct National Town?
William Becker [00:16:36] No, I’m sorry, that I don’t.
Richard Clayton [00:16:39] Do you happen to know how much Fenn College actually purchased it for?
William Becker [00:16:45] It was less than three quarters of a million. I think it was 600,000. Something around 650, I believe.
Richard Clayton [00:16:54] Well, now that Fenn College has a skyscraper, how did they use the 21 stories?
William Becker [00:17:01] Well, you know, one of the interesting things I found out about it was it was one of four colleges that had skyscrapers in the United States. This was one of the articles. One of them was University of Pittsburgh. One of them was University of Chicago. And I forget the fourth one, but it was like the fourth one, they have a skyscraper. Whatever height turns a building into a skyscraper. But now in the front corner here, it was all windows. There was retail. It was supposed to be retail space. After they purchased it, took out the storefront, the glass front windows, and put in the stone. They sold this. This became the icon. This building, Fenn Tower became the icon for the university. You know, you saw Fenn, there was always somehow an image of Fenn Tower, if not just a silhouette of Fenn Tower behind it. So it became the mascot, the symbol, and they sold it as the campus in the clouds. Skyscraper. No, and literally that’s what it was. Everything was there you expect on a campus. The bookstore’s on the first floor. You have the cashier’s office. You have registrations held on second and third floor. The registrar’s office there, the office there. The president’s office is on 10th floor. You have classrooms. On the fifth floor there’s a swimming pool if you can believe it? You know, fifth floor swimming pool. When I came here I had a class swimming my first semester, first quarter here in fall quarter ’69. And it’s like, you know, like a swimming pool on the fifth floor, you know, like, you know, I could imagine it in the basement, but you know, I’m working on the fourth floor there’s a pool, but no. And then on the sixth floor they had the gym and they had a handball court and a squash court. But the gym was, the gym was small. Bandbox. To give you an example, I think in basketball they have the three point line. I don’t think you could make a three point shot if you cross the half court line. I mean it was small, it was really a small gym. But I had my second quarter here, in the winter of ’70, I had a basketball court for phys ed. That was my phys ed. I was like what? This is so small. The locker rooms are up on the fifth floor. The health services were on the fifth floor right next to the swimming pool. The athletic office were in the building. It had everything. There were classrooms in there and I think 13 to 20 was dorms. So third floor had a cafeteria. Everything that was in a campus was in that building up. It was a horizontal rather than a vertical campus. There was a couple labs down too, engineering labs down in the basement. And one of the remarkable things that they did in the building that was notable was in. I think it was in ’39. Walter Schaefer, one of the engineering students and Dr. Willard Poppy in the physics department constructed the largest pendulum in North America at the time. They strung it from the 20th floor. They found the air shaft going all the way to the basement. It was there for years. It was like you had to walk by it. There was like a foot by foot window you could see it on. And if somebody remembered to replace the light bulb, you could actually see the pendulum, the weight at the bottom of it. And I understood that they were going to try keeping that when they were doing the remodeling of the building. But it was one of the world’s largest pendulums. But nobody knows about it. It’s one of the well kept secrets of Fenn Tower. And if you try to look for it, you have to look for it going along the walls, looking for this little window to see it.
Richard Clayton [00:21:17] So we have a small college that all of a sudden has a very large building.
William Becker [00:21:25] Yeah.
Richard Clayton [00:21:26] What did that do for the college’s reputation at that point?
William Becker [00:21:30] It changed its mailing address. That was significant. That was significant. From Prospect Avenue to Euclid Avenue. Euclid Avenue has gone down. Okay. This is no longer the millionaires row. I mean, this is Millionaires Row, but it’s no longer, the millionaires have up and left. But yet Euclid Avenue does have a more prestigious address than Prospect Avenue. And still today, Euclid Avenue’s, you know, considered the main street of Cleveland. So that address gave it a boost in prestige. That was one of the major things it did. Besides relieving overcrowding more than anything.
Richard Clayton [00:22:16] Over the next 30 years. What were some significant events that took place within Fenn College? Now that they had their new location, a little more prestigious address.
William Becker [00:22:31] Prestigious. It was just its development. The third floor. Were you ever in Fenn?
Richard Clayton [00:22:38] No.
William Becker [00:22:38] Before they. Okay, third floor had a beautiful area called Panel Hall. And they had a number of. That’s where their events would take their cultural events. There were dances held there and concerts held there. It wasn’t an auditorium, but they had receptions there. The president’s reception at the end of each year for the graduating class was held there. It was like the formal meeting place. And it was across on the other side from the cafeteria. But it was sort of a dignified place. They had their music concerts there. And in the book on Fenn College, there’s a picture of one concert they had. They did some recordings. In 1960, they did one of civil war songs. And Fenn had some notable faculty. The men’s chorus was singing the songs, and they had a narrator who was Bill Randall. Bill Randall was big time disc jockey in Cleveland. He had a very strong influence on the development of rock and roll throughout the United States. At one time, was probably one of the most powerful disc jockeys in the country, but he just didn’t want to be a disc jockey. Mr. Randall was like a renaissance man. He got a degree, doctorate in education. He got a law degree, had a history degree. He was teaching history at CSU part time, so he was on the staff. And there’s a picture of Bill Randall doing the narration during the concert. We had other people, like Dr. Blake Crider in the psychology department. He was notable. He had, like his own column in the Plain Dealer. And he was a regular appearance on the TV shows and the local TV shows like the One O’ Clock Club, which was one of the icons of Cleveland television was Dorothy Fuldheim, who was like, started out as a reporter in radio and came to TV and was, you know, missed Cleveland television for a long time. And she’d be on the show with him. And he was sort of like a no nonsense psychiatrist. You know, like you ask him a question, when somebody wrote in, asked questions, what do drivers do while waiting for a red light? His response was, they pick their nose. He had a lot of notable people, but it was just that Fenn just kept to their mission. And one of the odd things about Fenn was their enrollment at night was larger than the day, the head count. So you had a lot of people who were coming to Fenn and I think that was because of its location downtown. That helped. You could be downtown work, come to Fenn at night and then go back home because of the central location downtown. That helped it a lot, especially in attracting the evening students. And of course there will always be a problem in an urban university. And Fenn was no different. Parking. Parking is always a problem in an urban university. Unless you give everybody your own personalized parking spot, then you’re never going to get everybody happy.
Richard Clayton [00:26:05] How did Fenn College become associated with Cleveland State University?
William Becker [00:26:13] Now Cuyahoga County, largest county population wise in Ohio, going into the 60s. Closest state university is Kent State. Why? Well, there’s five good reasons. Western Reserve University, Case Institute of Technology, Baldwin Wallace, John Carroll and Fenn College. They’ve been members of the Greater Cleveland Commission of Higher Education. And we don’t need a state university. We’re covered. We got all these great schools here. Yeah, there was pressure to keep it out. Nobody wants the competition. Kent’s close enough. The break comes in the wall with the passage of the levy for approving the creation of Tri-C. Cuyahoga Community College. And it’s like everybody, the five colleges are all going, well, that’s a great idea. And behind their back they’re going, just don’t put it near me. We don’t want it near me. The 60s is also the time of urban renewal. And the area where Tri-C now is right down the street on 22nd street by St. Vincent Hospital is a slum. And great idea. The idea was to clear out the slum, clear out the houses, the people, and put a college there. So in effect, Fenn lost to this now inexpensive two year college who’d be going after the same types of students as Fenn and is less than a half mile away. Fenn had always ran on a shoestring. Now I’ve listened to some of the corporation dinners. Every year they’d have a corporation dinner and the president would get up there. It was basically the same routine talking about the budget and how they went into the budget with a projected deficit of so many thousands of dollars and how they, you know, to hear Brooks talk about it and they made these savings here and these savings here and you know, he’s happy to report at the end of the fiscal year they had a savings of a thousand, twelve hundred dollars. They were in the black or something, you know, a couple thousand dollars, you know, and you know, you hear the applause, everybody’s applauding it. But Fenn, with the creation of Tri-C now, was really going to hurt. And they came up with what’s called the Fenn Plan. Basically it’s like waving to the states, hey, take us over. It didn’t really go anywhere until about ’62. James Rhodes was elected governor. And part of Rhodes platform supposedly was he wanted a state university within a 30 mile radius of everybody. You didn’t have to go more than 30 miles to get to a state university. One day his director of development, Warren Chase I think it was, calls Brooks Ernest. Confidentially talking about the idea of maybe possibly of taking over. Such a confidential phone call it ends up on the front page of the Press that afternoon. Contributions to Fenn tank. Now the attitude becomes, oh, the state’s going to take it over. You know, Brooks Earnest got egg on his face and it was like this was supposed to be. Somehow the state leaked it. But so Fenn was sort of put in a position where it was not going to survive financially. It was sort of taken over. In December of ’64 there’s an emergency legislation passed which was emergency only in the sense that it allowed them to pass it real quick. There’s nothing critical about it. But they revised the Ohio revised code for the sections that named the universities, which universities and their locations and their trustees and all this technical stuff. And they admitted it by adding Cleveland State University. So they created a Cleveland State University. Rhode signs it I think on December 18, 1964. That’s why you see on our seal 1964. But at the end of the year there’s nine trustees and a secretary and a rented room in a hotel for an office. But that’s it. There’s a negotiating committee formed from the trustees and Fenn. By mid spring they reach an agreement and the state takes over Fenn. The advantage to the state is that they have the physical plant, they have the curriculum in place, they have the degree-awarding authority. Everything’s there, the personnel is all there. And so it’s, you know, plug-and-play for the state to use the expression. Now they got this, you know, because basically it’s a change of name and a change at the top, a few things and they just go on. September 1, 1965, Fenn College becomes CSU. And then there’s a, you know, like the people at the top get replaced. That’s most of them, some didn’t, some were able to stay on. A lot of it was political who got what but basically it was just for most of the people, the people who worked here. And there was a couple left. Amazingly, it was not much different. Maybe some as far as their benefits, it even improved. So that’s how Fenn became CSU.
Richard Clayton [00:32:27] Now that we have the creation of a new state university, how was Fenn College able to maintain its presence within the university?
William Becker [00:32:36] One of the agreements were. Part of the agreements were one they named the engineering [school], Fenn College of Engineering. The engineering college became known as that. And you even see that mistake made in like the latest Cleveland State or they had a reference to the old school and they called it Cleveland State. They called it Fenn College of Engineering. It wasn’t, it was just Fenn College. There was a school of engineering there, but it was never called that, of engineering. They kept the co-op program. Those were basically the two main things, concessions to the school. But you know, they kept the faculty. Everybody who stayed on, kept their. Grandfathered in anything they had in the past, they were able to keep to the present. You were allowed to select whether you wanted to go to the public employee retirement system or you wanted to continue on TIAA-CREF, the teacher’s retirement program that Fenn had set up.
Richard Clayton [00:33:38] What role did Fenn Tower play?
William Becker [00:33:40] Fenn Tower is basically well, to set up the university when it started you had Fenn, a couple Quonset huts to the north of it on 24th Street. Then to the east of it on Euclid is Foster Hall. You probably don’t know Foster Hall. You know where the health science building is, the one that sits down. That was the site of Foster Hall and it was really an engineering laboratory building. And then you had Stilwell Hall, you know where Stilwell is behind the science building now. Well, where the Science building is now is a used car lot. Stilwell Hall starts out as a car dealership. With the offices above. Fenn bought it and they gutted it, except for the front facade and reconstructed it as a classroom building. And the car dealer show. The car dealer new car showroom becomes the cafeteria. And so that was, basically, those three buildings made a fence. By that time, they’d cut their ties with the YMCA. They had to because of the North Central Association for Accreditation. They had to have their own board of trustees in that they had to be completely separated from the Y. But that was basically the school and CSU starts adding other things to it. They buy Bell Motors across the street, which is the bookstore now, our bookstore. They bought the building next to it, which is torn down to the west of it. That was called the Euclid building. They start this massive construction program. You go anywhere west of 24th Street. When I came, it was like construction fence. You know, you wanted to see what was going on. And you know, you looked at the great wire fence between the slats, between the pieces of fencing. The main classroom was being built. Rhodes Tower was going up. There’s the big crane sitting up at the top. It was just first years. It was like all construction. Fenn was used heavily. What they did to alleviate the problem with students was they rented or leased these Modulux buildingsthat sat on the site where the phys ed building is now. They were these temporary classroom buildings. There were seven of them. And they purchased the Mather home, Mather Mansion. But they didn’t get that until ’70 because the triple A was in it. American Automobile Club [AAA]. And their new facility wasn’t ready yet out on the Shoreway at 55th Street. So the university is saying, hey, come on, get out, we need the space. AAA is going like where? We don’t have any place to go yet. They stalled enough and they finally got their new facility done and they moved out and Fenn moved in. But Fenn, the tower at that time is like the focal – still remains – the focal hub of the early university. You don’t really have the campus to the west until you have Rhodes Tower open up. And really not even then, because University Center is not up. It’s like Rhodes Tower is sitting out there at the west end of the university at the time. And you know, way west at 18th Street is the law school that comes up a little bit later. But you know, it’s only after UC opens up that the focus, the activities all started centering over to the western portion, where it does now. And finally they start moving everything out of Fenn Tower over into the university. Not too long ago. Only after they decided to close Fenn. It took until about the late the mid-90s before they moved the president’s office over to Fenn. From Fenn to Rhodes, rather. So it stayed, as I said, an important part of the university, at least administratively. The classrooms are basically out of there. And when the phys ed building opened up, the gym classes were held over there. But administratively, the offices, Fenn was the place.
Richard Clayton [00:38:15] Well, obviously if we take a walk out on Euclid Avenue right now, we can see that Fenn Tower is undergoing a major renovation. What is its role going to be for the future?
William Becker [00:38:24] What they’d like it to be, they want, is a living space. Dorms. And the idea is, you know, if you had the people, you’re going to get the commercial development around it. That’s what they’re hoping for. You know, it’d be nice if it happened, get more activity, commercial activity around here. It’s one thing it’s lacked. I mean, even if you go back now, if you lived in Fenn Tower and you had two choices, you know, you had the dorm plan for food, you got 20 meals, seven days. Oh, you know, one day you only get two meals. Oh, that was Sunday. What do you do on Sunday night for meals? They had two choices. Across the street on Euclid Avenue, there was a Streetcar Diner. And then on 24th Street, just a little bit south of Chester was a bar called Saad’s. And that’s the only place in the nearby area, unless you wanted to walk down 18th Street. There was a Tasty Burger down there, which like a cheap version of a hamburger stand. But there wasn’t really much and there’s never been. One of the complaints had been, there’s really not much off-campus to eat. It’s better now than it was when I was here as a student. Rascal House is better and you got some more places to choose from. But the early days of Fenn, there wasn’t much off of campus. Nobody ever liked campus food. And so it’d be nice if there are better places to eat and places to shop too.
Richard Clayton [00:40:15] Kind of speculating with this next question. Do you see Cleveland State University trying to attract a different type of student? I mean, for the most part, as is with me, I’m a commuter student. And now that we have more room and the college has grown bigger and is offering degree programs, do you see them trying to reach a broader base of students in addition to the commuter?
William Becker [00:40:37] The commuter is still going to be the hub of this place. I was a commuter, got on the bus every day, come and go home. I only drove a couple times, but you’re going to have it. But they’re competing, the universities are competing for a shrinking college market. Yeah, you know, you’re going to have to change and I think the university is headed in a good direction. If that’s what it takes. It’s not going to hurt attracting the commuter. The more different types of students you have, the better we’re going to be. More offerings. And it’ll be interesting to see how it works.
Richard Clayton [00:41:32] Well, this interview that we’re conducting is about Fenn Tower and its relationship to Euclid Avenue and thinking along the lines of the Euclid Corridor project. What importance does Fenn Tower or Fenn College have in relationship to Euclid Avenue in Cleveland?
William Becker [00:41:55] Ask the development department. They like to brag about how much the university contributes economically to downtown Cleveland. The amount of money. I wish I had looked that up because there’s been a couple reports out, done by the university, showing the wages that are generated, the amount of commercial activity that the university engages in and it really provides a big chunk of the economy downtown Cleveland. Imagine you just didn’t have all these students coming down here, all the people, you know, the faculty and staff not earning the money here, the taxes we pay, the money we spend coming to work, the money we spend shopping down here, that was gone. Let’s say they moved it to a suburb. That would hurt. The university existed in its operations. And now. Plus the fact that one of the things they talk about is the cost, the wages somebody will earn with having a college education, the extra taxes they pay on the extra income and the extra money they earn spending that, you know, generates the rollover effect. And like I said, I wish I would have remembered to look that up. Sorry. Yeah. But the university likes to point out its economic impact on the Cleveland economy. And you know, when Fenn was built, it was at the end of the time of the mansions. Mather was only twenty years old. 1910, I think it opened, Mather moved in there. But a lot of the other houses, you see pictures of the houses around there, even on the south side of Euclid. And a lot of these are turned into multi family units, apartments, for a while until eventually people just couldn’t afford to keep them up. The people who didn’t keep them up, they were torn down for other things. But when they built it, they expected that that area was going to bloom and they would have been part of it. It would have been interesting if a town and country club had succeeded, what would the effect have been rather than having a college here? But that’s one of those what ifs, we don’t know. I like what ifs. Just imagine it and you know, like the bookstore was a car dealership. Would having that have increased commercial activity there, would there have been a sports car dealer there? You know, used car lot across the street from where Tom Johnson’s house used to be. Would that have been there? Would they build a gas station there? There’s pictures showing a gas station across the street where the science building is. There was a gas station there at one time. Looked like a golf station, but they always block out the letters. But it had that round ball. Looked like a golf station. But interesting what might have happened.
Richard Clayton [00:45:21] Mr. Becker, I’ve run out of questions for you. I would like to ask if there’s anything else you would like to add to the interview.
William Becker [00:45:29] No, I think I’ve rattled on enough.
Richard Clayton [00:45:31] I’ll ask our facilitator if there’s anything he would like to add.
Mark Souther [00:45:34] No, I think you’ve covered it well.
William Becker [00:45:37] Okay, good.
Richard Clayton [00:45:39] Well, this concludes our interview and I just want to thank you very much.
William Becker [00:45:42] You’re welcome. Glad to do it.
William Becker [00:46:08] Oh, there’s one other thing I’d like to amend to the conversation. You know, we’ve got the model here. Brought the model with me. I want you to draw your attention to the backside. What is the east side of the building? Now? It’s different in construction from the other three sides. The bottom portion, the blockhouse portion of the building. It was said to be that that building was the original plans, that they were going to do an addition to it. And I’ve never been able to track that down, anything seriously about it. But the idea, there are some rumors that they’re going to build a second tower, a twin tower next to it eventually. But, you know, you look at that back and that it’s just not. It doesn’t have the same facade. It looks like incomplete and like it shows here in the model. And yeah, you know, it does have the evidence that they were going to one day at least build off, extend that building to the east. So I guess I’d bring that out. So, you know, the original designers of a building looked like they had plans that this was just the first step for this building. This building was going to get bigger in some direction, whether it was just moving out towards the east or going to the east and up again. So I guess I’d like to draw your attention to that one, because that’s one of the unique features about it. Also, you know, the building had solariums on it. And up on the 20th floor you did have the radio club. That was the home of the radio club where they did early transmissions of radio. But it was used for student activities too. But I guess forgot all about that and I apologize for it. But. But just note the extraordinary east side of the building. Okay, thank you.
Mark Souther [00:48:04] One other thing that I thought of. Could you say a little bit about the ballrooms and perhaps about the art deco designs?
William Becker [00:48:11] Oh, the design. The architectural design, I believe it was Millard Jordan wrote a letter to an architect in New York asking about the design. And he came back and the guy basically said it was Beaux Arts design, which was a type of art that was architecture that was prominent in the 20s. It’s the same kind of design you got on the statues on the Lorain Carnegie Bridge, but that whole design period in the twenties. And this is an example almost sort of like a semi wedding cake too. You know, it’s tiered, look, not to the same extent. You have like a terminal tower, but you have it coming up as it gets smaller as you keep going up. Almost picture a man and a guy, a woman standing at the top, let’s cut the cake, yeah.
Mark Souther [00:49:12] And the ballrooms.
William Becker [00:49:13] The ballroom, I don’t remember ballrooms. That was the Panel Hall. That’s where they held dances on the third floor. That was like their formal reception area. I think I mentioned that, but that’s where those things were held. They had dances in there. And the ballroom. There was a ballroom over in Mather, but we didn’t get that right then.
Mark Souther [00:49:40] Okay, thank you.
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