Robert Gaede Interview, August 22 2006

Abstract

Robert Gaede, who grew up in Cleveland Heights, has worked as an architect and historic preservationist in Cleveland since the 1950s. In this 2006 interview, Gaede discusses the historical development of Cleveland as an urban space in the context of its architecture and buildings, giving particular attention to the development of Euclid Avenue. After talking about his youth and education, Gaede describes Cleveland's early history as part of the Western Reserve. He extensively discusses Euclid Avenue's significance to the city throughout its history. Gaede goes on to discuss the broad challenges facing the city in the present day, including depopulation, deindustrialization, and the damage done to neighborhoods by urban renewal. Throughout, Gaede laments the destruction of historical buildings, stressing the importance of preservation and the use (and creative reuse) of existing structures.

Interviewee

Gaede, Robert (interviewee)

Interviewer

Gibans, Nina (interviewer); Yanoshik-Wing, Emma (participant)

Project

American Institute of Architects

Date

8-22-2006

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

86 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Robert Gaede Interview, August 22 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 951010.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/218

Related Resources

American Institute of Architects @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Transcription sponsored by Leonard & Betty Boesger

Nina Gibans [00:00:01] Well, Bob, thanks so much for allowing us to interview you for the oral history project of Cleveland State University, focusing on Euclid Avenue and its rival, so to speak. But I want to start by just genealogical things. Are you a Clevelander? Were you born here in this...?

Robert Gaede [00:00:27] I am indeed a Clevelander and was born here late in 1920. And so next November, if I reach that day, will be my 86th birthday.

Nina Gibans [00:00:43] Mm hmm.

Robert Gaede [00:00:43] And my parents were not born here in Cleveland. I should say, more accurately, my father was born of German parents. My mother came from Minneapolis, and they met by sheer coincidence across a backyard fence and in Cleveland's Glenville district these days. And from that blossomed the romance that put me on earth. And so that is the way it began. I should point out, too, that my father was an architect. He had his own firm, which he founded in 1915, along with two other architects. The name of the firm was Christian, Schwarzenberg and Gaede Company, which for quite a long time bore that same title and was, back in those World War One days, one of the leading firms of the city in the field of architectural engineering and vice versa. They did a great number of buildings of industrial nature, some of them quite distinctive. And then the firm did survive the Depression with the usual difficulties of many firms, and it lasted until 1970, when by which time all of the original principals had gone. My father, being the first, unfortunately, quite by sudden, in 1933, and then then Mr. Schwarzenberg next, and finally Mr. Christian in 1970. And the firm today goes by the title of, what shall I say, short-term memory loss takes over, but Christian and Klopper. Now, you may remember last summer that that was in the news when both of the principals were victims of a plane crash in Tennessee. And that didn't stop the firm either. Its chief junior executive, Jim Neville, who has been on Shaker's architectural board or other equivalents, is now leading the firm further into the future.

Nina Gibans [00:03:22] Jim was very active with the Friends of Shaker Square at one point and with the development of Livingston Park.

Robert Gaede [00:03:33] There you are. Yes.

Nina Gibans [00:03:35] Right. Now...

Robert Gaede [00:03:36] So that's how I started.

Nina Gibans [00:03:38] So you really grew up in the architecture world.

Robert Gaede [00:03:42] I did. And I was... I think I had some kind of DNA or a gene benefit that favored my interests in that direction anyway. But my father did not hesitate to encourage it. And so I can remember as a little boy that he would take me downtown on Saturdays to visit the office. And I should tell you that the office in those days—and now I'm telling you about the 19, the very late twenties and the very early thirties—the office was located in the 1836 Euclid building. And it's... And then on another period of time and its neighbor, the 1900 Euclid building, which are side by side and still are today facing Cleveland State University. And so he would take me downtown where I could leaf through the latest architectural magazines and look out the windows at the city beyond. And then he would be so good as to take me down the street to the CAC club for lunch. And for a kid who was only 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, this was pretty special.

Nina Gibans [00:04:59] Let me ask you, though, in those days what were your favorite buildings as you were growing up?

Robert Gaede [00:05:05] Well, I don't know that I knew the buildings well enough to yet identify them and to have selected a favorite one or ones. That kind of decision making and careful analysis of value came a little bit later, I think, in my life, and when I began to easily see which buildings were more perfectly done than others, World War Two interrupted all this, as you might observe. And I also should tell you that I went to school in Cleveland Heights. I grew up on East Overlook Road, if you know that street, but not in the high-rent district down around the lower part of the drop off of Coventry, but in the upper part of the East Overlook up between Cottage Grove and Woodward, if you know those two side streets. And then I went therefore to elementary school at Coventry and junior high school at Boulevard and Heights High School. Of those three, only Heights High School survived, and it survives with considerable alteration. The other two, as far as I remember, they are gone and sadly so because I think those schools in Cleveland Heights were striking pieces of work of the era and could have been upgraded and updated for modern purposes, but were thought to be impossible to alter sufficiently, so they were replaced and... But under a formula that then was completely addicted to the open-plan concept which did not survive.

Nina Gibans [00:07:14] Right. There being... I mean, isn't Coventry going undergoing another...

Robert Gaede [00:07:21] Another iteration?

Nina Gibans [00:07:22] Yes.

Robert Gaede [00:07:23] Is that so? [laughs] I'm not surprised to hear that.

Nina Gibans [00:07:25] I think it's one of the ones that's closing.

Robert Gaede [00:07:27] I see. Okay.

Nina Gibans [00:07:29] Well from Heights High, though, what did you do? Where did you go?

Robert Gaede [00:07:33] Well, Heights High, I graduated midyear in the early fall of '38 and at which point my now widowed mother was willing to risk me going to college. And in those days, you didn't take these things lightly because, not that we do either at this time, although scholarships would not have been available then anything like that would be today. But she allowed me to express my feelings, and I wanted to go to college out of Cleveland. I wanted to get out of town for college, thinking that it would be a well-rounding influence on my life. And I'm sure it was although college anywhere is that to some extent, to be sure. So I chose the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and began my course of work there, which was to be five years in length. That was interrupted by World War Two, and I was inducted into the service in 1942, and I remained three and a half years in the service in the European Theater. Interestingly enough, it was my engineering background within my architectural overall work that gave me cause, an opportunity, to pursue a totally new direction, and that is meteorology. And I offered myself in that field. If I could be accepted, I would become an air cadet. And that appealed to me. And so I petitioned for that and I got in. And so throughout World War Two and my next time in the service, which was the Korean episode, I was... By this time, I was an officer of the Air Corps, United States air forces. If you may remember, those days, they were separate. They were not separate yet. They were part of the Army, if you will. And so I experienced Europe very much during the war. In fact, I had to do some bomb dodging in London to outlive that era. And ultimately, I was present in Europe, of course, for V-E Day, and a number of visitations to European cities profoundly damaged by the events of the war. Visiting France and Germany both and seeing such devastation that you can hardly imagine it. As in the German city of Darmstadt, for instance, which was burnt to the ground. The whole city was firebombed. I don't know that they ever will find out, you know, what the loss of life was. In any case, but I got back home from all of that and went to, back to University of Michigan to conclude my work, which I did in '45 and '46, at which point I was... Now I had a Bachelor of Architecture, and I came home to Cleveland since I knew no other place [laughs] to come home to, and I put myself on the market place, and who should offer me an opportunity but the grand old firm of Garfield, Harris, Robinson and Schaeffer. [laughs] And in that firm I was sort of befriended by Alexander Robinson moreso than anyone else. And I joined them in '46 to '47, and what made it such a short run was the fact that I got word along the way that there was some thought about expanding work in industrial arts at Kent State University into the possibility of a program in architecture. Well, that hit me, at which point I was about, let me see, I was about twenty-one or -two years of age. That hit me with such excitement that I am I can hardly resist driving down to Kent right away, and which is just about what I did, and let them know of myself and of my interest. All of that occurred, and they decided that I was not a bad risk at all. Maybe I might even be useful. So there was one other person there ahead of me, Joe Morabito. Joe was teaching drafting in those days. And... But the architectural program didn't really have any dimension. It had no profound program with assurance to the students that this was part of an enduring process. And so there were at that time, twenty-two students who had taken the prospect of a future in architecture at Kent State seriously enough to sign in. That's how we started in the fall of '47, I think it was, with a group of twenty-two young men. In those days, it was always men, you know. And we built upon that, and I gave that every bit of energy I had, and I had a lot of energy on those days. Before you know it, I was... Besides the classroom I was active in the city of Kent planning and architectural issues, writing things for the news, touring the Western Reserve and its... And in those days, and it's relatively un, not uncluttered but it was not, it wasn't exhaustively over elaborately developed, you know. The towns were still towns. Rural crossings were still rural crossings. And thanks to the government's wonderful mapping programs of the early 20th century, I was able to study the maps of the whole of the Reserve, and I could... And on those maps the scale was such that actual small, extremely tiny little black squares filled in represented buildings. And you could see at a town just where all the buildings were and whether the town had any sense at all of a of a city plan, town plan if you please. Well, that fascinated me in those days so much that I think I must have traveled to every one of them in my trusty little old black Plymouth coupe. [laughs] And in any case, oh, I recorded a lot of information thereby and came up with some notions on town planning in the Western Reserve, which I should have already written into a book but haven't ever found the time to do so. But in any case I have the raw material. Otherwise, maybe somebody will, if they haven't done it already, may beat me to it because it's an interesting story. Why did those towns with just the raw material of the fields, not even cornfields yet of the Western Reserve to house them, develop into the shapes and forms that they did?

Nina Gibans [00:15:40] Right. Name just a few of those towns that you're talking about.

Emma Yanoshik-Wing [00:15:44] Can I interrupt for two seconds? The microphone is very sensitive and I'm getting a lot of the paper rumbling, so...

Robert Gaede [00:15:51] Oh. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I would never have known. Okay. Name some of the towns. Well, lacking the map in front of me, I would...

Nina Gibans [00:16:04] Just a few.

Robert Gaede [00:16:05] Only say that virtually every inhabited place in the Western Reserve today began as an inspiration on the map, in the minds of somebody who settled there, and whether it was a place which was given the special advantage of being designated the county seat like Chardon, or a place which ended up with one of the grandest of civic places in it like Mesopotamia but it remained a small town from thence to now. I think that is on... Is that on 322 East or is that on 87 East? But it's out there in Geauga County—and to my knowledge that's the county it's in—would be two sides on the east side, and of course this same configuration extended all the way over to the end of the Western Reserve, which it houses Norwalk and Huron County. And so there are towns [such] as Medina and smaller places west of there like the delightful little town of Wellington which began life with a concept, Well, shall we have a public square or not? And because sometimes never got one, but when they got one they got it by design, not by circumstance. Someone had to decide at this crossing that we should have a green. Now, not all the greens are rectangular, you know. There were two or three or four that were round. What is that town out in I think it's Trumbull County called Mecca, which I think is one of those. There were towns where the green was trapezoidal, and a number of which were triangular like in Chagrin Falls. And so it turns out that there was this fascinating addiction either to prescribed abstract squares and rectangles or split rectangles or quadruple quartered rectangles, which is like our Public Square. Of course, that was not so designed to begin with; that developed that way when they allowed the two main streets to punch through.

Nina Gibans [00:18:54] Talk about that a little bit... [He laughs] Because that's a kernal of Euclid Avenue there.

Robert Gaede [00:18:58] Yes, sure.

Nina Gibans [00:19:01] Talk about the relationship, perhaps. Is there a relationship and when was that happening? Of course it was happening way before the, what you're talking about, right?

Robert Gaede [00:19:13] Okay, the relationship of...

Nina Gibans [00:19:15] Of Public Square.

Robert Gaede [00:19:16] Well, my knowledge of Public Square, which I'm sure is incomplete... But when Moses Cleaveland and his party, P-A-R-T-Y, meaning his group, laid out the essence of Cleveland as a small community on the east bank of the Cuyahoga River, never imagining ever, that it would grow to the dramatic size that it did, it was enough for them to copy the traditional sense of town center which came from New England along with them, and that was a green, which could be any one of numerous shapes, even as those in Ohio were. But in the Cleveland instance, the shape was essentially a square and was largely just developed and populated up to from the West Side towards developing it all towards the east, but was not really in the heart of the town at the outset at all. It was at the edge of the town. And then some of those survivors of that surveying party probably came back to see how it developed over time and were astonished to see that Cleveland was taking root as a town of commerce with the prospects that looked pretty good. So ultimately, maybe this Public Square might end up really being at the heart. Indeed it was. But it was really something in the way of a kind of a meadow at the outset with no indication that it would house public buildings. But we know it did for a time. The second courthouse, I believe it was, possibly even the first one, which was hardly more than a log building, but the second courthouse, which was a nicely furnished wood frame building, was right on the Square and remained there for quite some time. That was in the southwest quadrant of today's Square and it was in the styling would have been, I would suppose, a somewhat modified Georgian on this slim side of heavy detail. I don't think that the community could afford anything more elaborate at that time.

Nina Gibans [00:22:00] I think it's in the the William Summer painting in the Cleveland Public Library. I think that building is in that painting.

Robert Gaede [00:22:08] I think you're right. Yes. And then, of course, when that building soon was found to be insufficient for public purposes, the courthouse was built, I hope I'm correct in this respect, as an early Victorian period building on the northwest side of the Square, but not in the Square. And that building lasted for quite some time. That building was right next door to what today is old Illuminating Building is or right on the side of today's new Illuminating Building. And it was a rather powerful piece of Victoriana in masonry.

Nina Gibans [00:22:49] Talking about Public Square and maybe moving a little bit forward in time, let's go to your career in architecture, your personal career in architecture. How did you come from Kent and your wanderings around the Western Reserve and obviously your love of history following you...

Robert Gaede [00:23:12] Yes.

Nina Gibans [00:23:13] Where were you?

Robert Gaede [00:23:15] Well, I... I did graduate and I did return to Cleveland. As I say, I was hired by the the Garfield office. And at that time they were out... They were ensconced in an office in the building which stands today at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East Sixth Street. In fact, I think it has been called the Euclid Avenue–East Sixth Street Building for some time, a component in, over time, as part of the NCB group.

Nina Gibans [00:23:49] The National City Bank building?

Robert Gaede [00:23:50] Yes.

Nina Gibans [00:23:51] Is this what you're saying?

Robert Gaede [00:23:52] Yes. And... But in those days that was not its name. Not long after that, the office picked up its effects and moved down to what was called the Newman Stern Building on East 12th, if I am correct, I believe, over between Superior on the north and what would that be on the south as a diagonal of that? I don't think it was Vincent, but it was, in any case, it was in that neighborhood, and that building has long since passed away. But that's where I began to learn how to really draw and draft and be... Live the life of an architect, so to speak. And so it was there, then, let's see, how did this intermix with my teaching at Kent? Because I was gone from 1948 to 1952 at Kent State, and part of that time I also spent at City Hall as like two jobs instead of one only and in the world of Jim Lister, if you remember Jim Lister, as an upstart persona interested in city planning as well as in architecture. And so I finally completed work in those several directions around the mid '50s, at which point I said, well, I think I'm—probably prematurely, I shouldn't have said it so quickly—that I'm ready to open my own place and hang up my old shingle, which I did, actually, in July of 1956, which means this, just past July, would be my 50th anniversary. The only thing is I didn't have any work. [laughs] And so not to be surprised, the firm of Garfield, etc., was nice enough to keep me housed and keep me fed, so to speak, the rest of the year while I tried to find some. And I did try to find some and I did find some. And so I didn't really leave them fully until year's end. But officially I hung up my shingle 50 years ago July. But in that ensuing several months, I also found myself a partner. I surveyed myself at the time and decided that I was, well, I was good in certain areas, I was weak in others such as a promotion and the more material and hard-boiled side of architecture. So there was a Herk Visnapuu waiting to be summoned. [laughs] So Herk and I got together late in that year and formed a very loose association, which at times we called Visnapuu and Gaede. Sometimes we called it Gaede and Visnapuu. Defended who got the job first. [laughs] But we worked together, and out of that in time that the earlier title Visnapuu and Gaede took precedence, and we worked with that title from, it was about, say, fifty... Well, '56, if you please, until '74. It was late, very late in '74 that we split up and we went our separate ways. But that's almost eighteen years, and that was pretty good, you know? So that was my first formal architectural partnership, and that was so vital a one that we did well. We, well, first of all, the competition was just a small fraction of what it is nowadays. And so doing well wasn't so hard to do in those days. But we got work. Cleveland was on the bounce after the debacle of the Depression and the hardships of World War Two. Cleveland was recovering itself and finding increased amounts of opportunities and work. And so we shared in that. And not only did that, but we were both so interested in city planning that we opened our own planning service within our firm, which at one time grew to be sixteen people, and we had twenty-four in architecture so that made forty, doesn't it? That was our peak size. It's been all, well, less than that ever since. In any case, so... But that meant that we were working in multiple towns and cities doing various and sundry city planning assignments as well as designing buildings. And, you know, in 1959 when we were only three years or so in practice, we had an opportunity to do a little church project for Pilgrim Church on the Near West Side. Pilgrim Congregational. Still there today and still one of the citadels of Cleveland's ecclesiastical buildings.

Nina Gibans [00:29:31] It's one of the most interesting designs.

Robert Gaede [00:29:32] Yes. So over time, we did... We remodeled the kitchen, something as basic as all that. And from that began artwork in churches, which just spun off like it was meant to be. And over the next 50 years or so, well, 47 years from that point forward until today and still today, we have built up a list of approximately 100 church clients, and some of them invited us back four or five or six or seven times to do new work on this or that or the next thing, either remodeling or a brand-new building or whatever. So we had probably about 120 assignments from the hundred or so clients, and we have a lot of a log of that which I'm trying to refine right now. And one of my projects of retirement, which I'm very interested in and enthused about, is what I call the Early Church Work Reconnect, or ECWR. And what this is, is to look at the log and try to correct all of its shortcomings because it wasn't perfectly correct in all cases. But to go back and see if the church that was claimed by us to be either remodeled or done from scratch is still there. What is its condition? Is it surviving? Does it look well? Am I proud of it yet or not? Has someone else came along and altered my work altogether already.? [laughs] And so I'm into that right now as we speak. That's one of my projects to keep my mind active in retirement.

Nina Gibans [00:31:26] So you've named, obviously, one of your specialties, but you really are the start of a lot of our restoration.

Robert Gaede [00:31:41] Well, I think that is correct because when I was became clear-headed about it pretty much, the year was about 1950. That's when I got my license. I was... I passed the state board first time in 1950, and that accounts for my relatively low number of 1777. And the at that time, historic preservation was so new to the field of architecture that most architects couldn't spell it. And so... And of course, we found also that most architecture, architects couldn't be interested. So that gave me full opportunity to the playing field. I could kick field goals all day if I wanted to. And, and I tried to and I did. And the competition then was so slight that I had more opportunities in that growing and burgeoning field than I ever expected to. And I loved it, and I still do. But today every other, every architect virtually claims the same thing. And so I find that being a historic preservationist today is no longer so remarkable and so unique. It's all just part of the baggage of what it's supposed to have. And of course, saying that is evidence of the success of the movement. And what I was interested in then immensely was that the movement movement to succeed and not die. And it didn't die. It just... It just expanded and gained strength ever since to now and will continue to do so.

Nina Gibans [00:33:38] One of the aspects of Euclid Avenue is the preservation aspect and the future aspect and what should always remain and which has been revived very nicely, and those things that perhaps are missing because we didn't preserve them. So let's talk a little bit about Euclid Avenue in that respect.

Robert Gaede [00:34:07] Well, let me start that conversation with the remembrance and the recognition that back in the few years right after World War Two, being kind of cognizant of and conscious of cities and city development in itself was a new area of activity. We were not really, as a nation, certainly that particularly interested in shapes and forms of cities. Townscape was an unknown word to us. If anything, I think the English developed that way, that phrase, and we began to stand back and perhaps take cognizance of what were the elements that made our city, our city, and made it a place. And Main Street so comes to mind as the chief of these perhaps. In some cases, perhaps it was Courthouse Square or some other cases, it might be some particularly notable structure at the waterfront or elsewhere. But in Cleveland's case, Euclid Avenue was synonymous in the minds, I think, of most Clevelanders with downtown. It was like no use mentioning any other street. It was Euclid Avenue. And Superior, as we know has its good share of splendid buildings and passes right through the center of our Square, as does Ontario. But it never was the commercial dash retail and or even the office heart of the city. It began to gain in those respects for a time, to be sure, but Euclid Avenue held forth as being the embodiment of a vigorous and an enduring city. And the fact that Euclid Avenue stretched way out of sight somewhere to the east, first of all, passing through a semi-industrial zone which minimized Euclid Avenue's right to claim architectural uniqueness or a special aspect. But it built that up again once it reached University Circle, where the cluster of cultural institutions was already either in place or being built year by year as it still is being, so Euclid Avenue did disconnect—and does connect—the city's two nodes of greatest consequence, downtown and University Circle. There's nothing quite equal to that on the West or South Side. And then from of course University Circle, Euclid Avenue continued all the way to Buffalo, New York, as the main connector. That reminds us of the fact that why is Cleveland what it is and where it is, is substantially because of its wonderful location on the south shore of Lake Erie that picks up the main thrust of East-West traffic, be it rail, bus, or automotive. And it also, thanks to the lake itself, it becomes part of the international realm of shipping. And so it's no wonder Cleveland gained rapidly in population, particularly also when just south of Cleveland, it turns out that we had a combination of the natural resources, the product of the earth itself, the iron... The iron was not here so much. It was at the other end of the lake. But the lake connected us to the iron in Minnesota and Wisconsin and up in that area. But we had also the coke opportunities to create that and the waterpower, and we had some towns of the nature of Youngstown, and of course, the center of all this was Pittsburgh, although Cleveland must have been equally considered with them. But so I'm saying that—and a long ways around, and I'm given to longwindednes, Emma, so forgive me—the importance of Euclid Avenue was not superficial. It wasn't designated. It was a natural happening. And so when the surveyors allowed this diagonal roadway at to Buffalo to enter the Public Square from the corner, which might have looked as by some to have been kind of an aberration, it wasn't anything of the kind. It was a perfect connection. And so I, as a child, grew to know downtown as largely... And I'm gonna interrupt to say that the Terminal Tower was built over a long period of time, as you know. It was concluded in 1930. And I was... At that point I was nine or ten years old, but I was aware of this happening and of the activity that surrounded it because the towers stimulated a whole lot of subsidiary buildings, like those big buildings behind it and the department stores and whatever. So when my mother took me to the shop that's Higbee's or preferably at Halle's—that was her favorite [laughs]—I became very mindful of the fact that Euclid Avenue connected these essential places of desired goods and purchases. And so as a kid, I got used to walking the avenue. And then when the entertainment industry moved into the scene and developed the theaters of Cleveland, and what a job they did there that we had not only the Playhouse Square confluence of five, I think it is, substantial theaters, some of them very substantial, all of them, although with the exception of some later movie houses only, existing today as part of Playhouse Square Inc. or whatever they call it, but also the biggest of them all, we all remember, it was the Hippodrome, which is [on] Euclid Avenue, just short of Ninnth Street. Now, I must admit that as a kid, my parents never took me much to the Hippodrome, for whatever the reason, I don't know. But we also went to Euclid Avenue theaters at University Circle. The Keith's 105th Street Theater, which was a giant theater of the grand 1928 style period, was one of the places that we rather frequented. But that whole district out there had, and all of them around Euclid Avenue. The Park, for instance, comes to mind. And the Alhambra is another one. The only one of those, ones of those, if any, existing today, I can't even recite what's still, of all the University Circle theaters, of which there must have been six, exist today, and I don't immediately know that any of them do. But be that as it may, the point is that they were on Euclid Avenue. They weren't on Broadway, they weren't on Detroit Avenue, they weren't on Kinsman Road, although there were theaters on all of those. I might tell you that the Facade, the publication of the Restoration Society, back in the '80s, I think, did a series of the history of Cleveland theaters. Largely, it was the work of Ben Kotowski, who was enthralled by this subject, and probably still is, but then with some input from me, did in sequentially like a wait till the next session, we'll talk about this group of theaters, we covered perhaps 75, maybe, of the theaters of Cleveland that were extant at one time or another, and all but maybe six or eight of them had already been lost. But the fact is and those accounts of Facade from sometime around, let's say about 1980 or '83 or -4, are a fascinating story about the theater life of Cleveland, especially when it turned from motion pictures... I guess they were without sound at first, weren't they? They had... They had labels that ran through the bottom.

Nina Gibans [00:44:13] The ones that went back that far.

Robert Gaede [00:44:16] Yes. And they had a piano up front that gave you the proper sense of excitement. And anyway, so there's an interesting story to be seen there if you want to read from those pages. So where are we now? We're on Euclid Avenue. All this while, it was the street that captured not only the the life and excitement of Cleveland, but also much of its architecture as well. Not all. We have to concede that Superior sort of did well in that regard, too, and to a lesser degree Saint Clair and Ontario. But certainly Euclid Avenue was prominent. Even East Ninth Street, which figures in all of this, it was not until the new-style skyscrapers of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, East Ninth Street didn't count as much, but then it got a good dose of those, as you know, and is today one of the handsomer streets fo

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