Abstract

The Nottingham-Spirk Design Associates (N-S) purchased the First Church of Christian Scientist at 2200 Overlook Road to relocate their business. The original building was restored with few modifications in order to house the operation of the design/innovation business. The first part of the interview is about when the church was built and the negotiation with John Severance.This was the first of the Christ Scientist churches in Cleveland and with a significant design. In the next part of the interview discussion is centered on purchasing the church by Nottingham-Spirk Design Associates, architectural details and renovations to the building. The conclusion of the interview talk is about the firm and involvement within the community.

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Interviewee

Spirk, John (interviewee); Spirk, Evan (interviewee); Novak, Vickie (interviewee); First Church of Christian Scientist (interview)

Interviewer

Valore, Kenneth (interviewer); Lanese, James (interviewer)

Project

Sacred Landmarks

Date

2-6-2010

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

28 minutes

Transcript

Ken Valore [00:00:11] My name is Ken Valore. I’m doing an interview for the Cleveland History and Digital Humanities project Sacred Landmarks with my colleague Jim Lanese, and we are interviewing people from Nottingham Spirk, located at 2200 Overlook Road. And could each of you who are here just introduce yourselves?

John Spirk [00:00:38] Sure. My name is John Spirk. I’m Co-President, Nottingham Spirk.

Vickie Novak [00:00:44] Vickie Novak, Strategic Program Director.

Evan Spirk [00:00:46] Evan Spirk, Product Design Manager.

Ken Valore [00:00:49] Okay, well, first, can you give me just a short history of the building as you know it?

John Spirk [00:00:59] Sure. The building was built in the late ’20s as obviously a Christian Scientist Church. There’s just an interesting backstory. The church originally was planned for the site where Severance Hall is right now. And John Severance was looking for a home for the orchestra, saw the piece of property, and unfortunately, the church had owned it and was planning this church to be built there. So he contacted the church. They came to an agreement of which the church was paid $600,000 for that piece of property. John Severance took it over, and while he was in discussion with the church, looked at the plans that they had for the building, loved the idea and the design that was being planned, retained Walker and Weeks, who were the architects of record, who also did Federal Reserve Bank and many significant buildings in Cleveland. He retained Walker and Weeks to design Severance Hall. In the meantime, the church had their building designed. They moved to this site on Overlook and started construction with the help of John Severance’s money. So it’s interesting, the people come through this building and say, this. This looks like Severance Hall. And interesting enough is Severance hall looks like this building because it was designed first.

Ken Valore [00:02:33] Right.

John Spirk [00:02:33] So we thought it was interesting.

Ken Valore [00:02:35] Right? Yeah. Is the design of this similar to the one over in Cleveland over on 117? It looks slightly similar.

John Spirk [00:02:48] Each of the churches has a distinctive design. There were, to my knowledge, eight Christian Scientist churches in the city of Cleveland, and they numbered each one. This was the First Church of Christ Scientist. There’s a Second, Third, Fourth, give you an example in Chicago, there’s about 30, and each one’s numbered and so- And they all vary in design and architecture. And architecture. This is probably one of the most significant from a design standpoint. But they were all beautiful buildings. This is really the only one remaining in its unique or its completeness. The rest have either been torn down or have fallen into disrepair. And so it’s significant from that standpoint.

Ken Valore [00:03:33] Right now, you know, this one is different than that one because of the tower. That is kind of unique too. It looks like they Have a big. There’s a big carol on there. I noticed all the bells.

Evan Spirk [00:03:51] Well, the tower, when they first created the building, they heated it with coal, right? So they needed a way to get rid of the coal in a clean way. So there’s actually a huge coal stack inside the tower, and the bells at the top are all fake. So just purely visual.

John Spirk [00:04:18] The smoke would go out where the bells are. There’s urban legend in Little Italy, which is down below us, that when they would see the smoke coming out of the top of the tower, they would say, another Christian Scientist is being cremated. And when we purchased the building in the early 2000s and would go to some of the restaurants down here that we’ve been going to for years, they would call the chef over and say, these are the guys that bought the crematorium. And we’re saying, no, there’s no crematorium. It’s a church. Trust us, we’ve been through it. So it’s just. But it’s been certainly in the area for many years. The tower now serves a very unique purpose, and that is, we work with Case. They’ve mounted their Wi-Fi antennas on the top, so they broadcast the cloud to Case Western and the surrounding area from the top of the tower. It’s one of the highest points around. If they didn’t have that, they would have to construct this probably ugly steel tower. So it really serves a great purpose today, far more than it did the last 50 years, because it served no purpose when the coal stopped being burned.

Ken Valore [00:05:33] I thought you were going to say, when they saw the smoke, they thought the coal was being burned.

John Spirk [00:05:39] That’s always part of.

Ken Valore [00:05:42] So how did you come to acquire the building?

John Spirk [00:05:49] We had two offices in the two locations in Case Western Reserve area, the campus, and had for many years, we had outgrown both buildings and were looking to stay in the area because we really love this area. And we had asked around, talked to many of the people. Case, uh, Cleveland Clinic. Were there any interesting, interesting buildings? I mean, we didn’t want just a warehouse. And we always. There was always. The answer was always no. There’s nothing available. Nothing for sale, nothing. And so we almost gave up because we kept looking further and further away from University Circle. And one of the people that we had talked to remembered us and called us one time one day and said, are you still looking for space? And we said, yeah. They said, well, there’s church on top of the hill. Okay, church. Your immediate reaction is, you know, statues, stained glass, second level underneath for bingo. You know, it’s like we weren’t quite sure if it would work, but we said we’d look. So we drove up Overlook. And, I mean, we were just amazed because it looked like Severance hall. And we couldn’t imagine why Severance hall would be for sale. But the members had. Membership had decreased so much that this was far too big of a building for them. And so they actually were looking to merge with the Christian Scientist Church in Cleveland Heights. And that’s actually where they are today, which is a much stronger, more robust church now. But so we walked through, and the moment we walked through from top to bottom, we thought this was absolutely a perfect facility for us and what we do here. So we sat with the members of the church, worked out, you know, a way to make it happen, and we did. Actually, we were the only ones that were interested in the building that didn’t want to tear it down. There were lots of developers who looked, this is a beautiful site on top of the hill overlooking the campus. They wanted to put townhouses and condos along the ridge. And the church was really against that, obviously, but didn’t really have any way to stop it because, as the church would tell us, people would walk through, look around, and the first question they would say is, can you tear it down? The answer is yes. It wasn’t listed on any national registry. It is now. But the church members said they would literally move into one room of this church if it meant not having the building torn down. And we really appreciated and respected that. And there were no stipulations or restrictions when we acquired the building. But I think they understood that we really had great visions and plans for the building, and so they embraced the whole idea, was taking it well.

Ken Valore [00:09:10] That’s great. I mean, you know, I’m glad you did it enough. Historic buildings get torn down or, you know, unique buildings get torn down. So what did you have to do to make it functional? I mean, you know, when we came in, obviously there’s a reception area and there’s some doors. Is that like the main sanctuary, what I would call sanctuary? I don’t know how these churches are.

John Spirk [00:09:46] What we. The main entrance, where you see the big doors, there’s glass panels in those doors. They were not glass when we first moved in. Without those glass panels, that area would be very dark, which it always was. So we put glass panels in there and opened up some areas to see into the main room. Christian Scientists were a very different religion than maybe what you would think of as a religion. There’s no statues in this building, there’s no altar per se. It’s more of a stage, more of like an auditorium, which really makes it much easier to repurpose for our. For almost anything, but for us in particular. And so it really, it really worked out well. What we did was remove the pews and donated those to two different churches. But other than that, other, you know, everything else pretty much remained as. As it was. Other than, you know, there were numerous. There were no Internet connections obviously through the building. We had to do all that. There was no air conditioning in the building. We had to do that, which was an immense project. The roof needed to be replaced. Just basic asbestos had to be all removed. Those kind of things were very time consuming. Time consuming and added cost.

Evan Spirk [00:11:25] Well, part of what we do is as a design firm is a business innovation firm. Part of the process is painting products and creating prototypes. So we had to create an addition to the building to kind of isolate the messy part of what we do. We also- And that became the addition to the building. We also have a elevator so we can bring in massive products we work on and ship out. And we also have in a garage.

John Spirk [00:12:02] Parking garage, shipping machine. Shipping garage.

Ken Valore [00:12:08] So now that main area is that kind of the work area for the designers?

Vickie Novak [00:12:17] Yes, the whole building was made for our entire process. So what John and John like so much when they saw the building is they could see where everything could be. So the building, there were two buildings prior to moving in here. One building was the dirty part, which was making it like building it. The other part of the business is understanding the business problem, designing a solution, much cleaner process. So the bottom of the building is the prototyping area, a huge shop. It’s the biggest part of the building. Most square footage of the building, Correct state of the art equipment. Every prototype technician has their own cubicle. A level up from that is the engineers. So we have about 10 degreed engineers that sit just above that, very close in proximity to the machinery. And then the level up from there is the level we’re on right now, which is the center is the designers and on the perimeter are offices and our focus group room. And then the level above that is our graphics and research. So we call it vertical integration because the entire process is here in the building and it’s structured perfectly.

Ken Valore [00:13:37] Now, when you moved in though, were there those three levels?

John Spirk [00:13:42] Yeah, we didn’t change any of the levels in the building. There’s actually five levels to this building. And then below the prototype level that Vicki mentioned is it was an apartment Suite for the building manager. They lived here and took care of the church at the time. So it worked out really well for us because we converted it into a daycare for staff members. So any given day, you get on, you’ll see two or three little ones. And so we actually. We’ve used those little ones for research.

Evan Spirk [00:14:25] We recently developed a baby bottle that’s on the market. So we had, you know, children or babies in the nursery during the development phase, and we actually could have them try it out in house and get feedback on the spot. So came in very handy.

Ken Valore [00:14:46] Great. So, you know, what other. I mean, were there unexpected problems? I mean, you mentioned asbestos. I mean, that seems to be common thing for buildings.

John Spirk [00:15:02] Yeah, you have to really be prepared to do a renovation of this magnitude, because we would. Every week we would get a call from the developer saying, you got to get up here and look at this. Those were always bad calls.

Evan Spirk [00:15:20] That’s great.

John Spirk [00:15:21] We would get our- You got to get up here and look at this. And they would come up, because we’re only five minutes away. And we would drive up, they’d walk through. We’d follow them through the building and then go, you know, the asbestos we talked about, well, we found more over here, and it’s gonna- And, you know, the electrical we talked about, well, we can’t get through this. We have to go around it. And, you know, you have to be prepared for those discussions. So it was, you know, we thought the roof, maybe we could get by with, you know, repair and-

Ken Valore [00:16:00] Is it domed?

John Spirk [00:16:01] Well, it’s a peak. There’s a dome inside that has the oculus, the sky, but it really is shaped like that. My thumbs are the oculus, and it’s just pointed probably another 20 feet between here. So you just have to kind of be prepared for all those things.

Ken Valore [00:16:20] How long did it take to convert it to your use?

John Spirk [00:16:26] Yeah, it took about a year of planning in about a year and maybe a year and a half of construction. So it took about two plus years to go from the beginning until we were able to move in.

Ken Valore [00:16:40] How did you find the people to do it? I mean, this seems to be kind of unusual.

John Spirk [00:16:47] Yeah, it is. Well, there’s kind of an area of architecture. There are architect firms that specialize in this historic renovation. And one in town that we worked with that was very good, very good reputation was Paul Volpe, Volpe and Associates. And Paul walked through pieces and parts of everything and helped us kind of find the right tradespeople that understood the process as well.

Ken Valore [00:17:19] So To a certain extent you kept, I mean, the bulk of the building you kept intact?

John Spirk [00:17:27] Absolutely. Very little was changed.

Ken Valore [00:17:30] I mean, anybody looking from the outside wouldn’t know what’s going on here.

John Spirk [00:17:35] No, very simple. We obviously worked with the state, the city and the state relative to historic issues and listing on the national registry, things like that. And they have very strict guidelines. For example, you can’t see it obviously, but this room we’re sitting in, it had a flat ceiling and we wanted to add some height to it because it’s a conference room. And so we had to do a drawing of this and submit it to the historic commission in Columbus. And they had to approve us changing that. And the way they work is you can change it within reason, as you know, they’ll agree to that as long as you can bring it back to the original. And obviously you can make this roof or the ceiling flat again. But those are the level of details you have to consider which adds, you know, again, time and interest to the process of historic buildings.

Jim Lanese [00:18:40] Aside from interacting with the history commissions and so forth. When you purchased the building, were there any provisions with the church or the congregation themselves that they wanted preserved or attended to?

John Spirk [00:18:59] They were, they could not be nicer. And you know, we deal in business related things and any business person knows you have interesting people on the other side of the table. It was almost, I couldn’t believe how wonderful these people were. I mean, just as accommodating as they could be, just wanting to make this thing happen because they knew we were serious about keeping the building and renovating it. And so there were no, you know, there were no constraints on what we were going to do, certainly from the church, other than kind of a handshake, understanding that we were going to preserve it. And as a matter of fact, about a few months after we moved in, we had the members come back and basically toured the building again. And they were just, literally some tears were shed as they walked around because it was. While the building itself was being used, it wasn’t abandoned for years, things like that. It was used the day we moved in, they moved out. But you know, the details, the paint, the wall covering, the finishing, all the wood in this room had been, all the wood had been refinished, it was all here. But I mean, it was like a brand new church again. I mean, it’s just from that standpoint and there’s an interesting history to this, not to digress, but right across the street, in fact, the house, I believe still exists. Philip Johnson, famous architect his family belonged to this church were members of the church. And if you look at this building, the roof is a silver color. Today, it’s stainless steel. But when the church was built, what we had to replace it was aluminum. And it seemed to be a strange. Why would you use aluminum on the roof? It was very expensive in 1930, but then we found Philip Johnson’s father was one of the original investors in ALCOA. And so that probably helped get the aluminum for the roof at a much better price.

Ken Valore [00:21:26] A new use for aluminum.

John Spirk [00:21:28] Exactly. Which was another. Again, this. You know, we wanted to maintain the color because it was always a silver roof. And over the years, it had been patched, and what they were doing is painting it silver because that’s what they had to do to patch. So the roof now is this standing seam silver roof as it was intended.

Ken Valore [00:21:56] One of the other history professors mentioned, and I’m not sure whether it’s true or not, he saw you or your associates maybe were students of Schreckengost,

John Spirk [00:22:06] Victor Schreckengost. Both. Yeah, that’s tougher to spell. Both. My partner and I were both students of Victor. And the year Victor retired is the year we started business. So it is kind of an interesting timing there, but no, we learned a lot of things from Victor.

Ken Valore [00:22:42] Basically, you’re an industrial design company. Did you say, is there a specialty or.

Vickie Novak [00:22:52] Specialty in the company? Yeah, absolutely. There’s truly no company like us. Many people and our roots are grounded in industrial design, for sure. But even the very first project that John and John found was not just purely about design aesthetics, it was about solving a business problem. And that has continued up until today. And I think that’s why the company’s been so successful solving a business problem and getting something to market. So many design firms create beautiful things, but don’t serve the consumer and don’t last decades. So it’s a very different kind of company. So we’ve transitioned from calling ourselves a design association, Design Associates, to a business innovation firm, because we really feel that’s what we do.

Ken Valore [00:23:41] Sure. What was your specialty? My son, he said painting.

Vickie Novak [00:23:48] Painting.

John Spirk [00:23:50] As a company, it’s really creating product. Many of it is in the consumer marketplace and more recently in the medical device area.

Ken Valore [00:24:05] Jim, do you have any more questions? I think this has been extremely interesting. I guess the medical product capacity might do well with our upcoming Medical Mart.

John Spirk [00:24:24] We are looking very anxiously at the time when that will be completed. As you can see, literally from this room, University Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, medical will become more and more important to the Cleveland in the northeast Ohio region, for sure. And that’s why we feel it’s important to stay very close to both of those institutions and medical centers for what we do, which is in this case, the medical device area, to improve the quality of lots of various surgical tools, things like that.

Ken Valore [00:25:09] Were you guys involved at all? Remember when they were talking about a year or two years ago about having that kind of design.

John Spirk [00:25:18] The District of Design?

Ken Valore [00:25:20] Yeah.

John Spirk [00:25:22] Now, we have not been involved in it. We’re really not sure what the. I mean, we understand the spirit of it. It’s just the financial model was a little difficult to understand. You know, showrooms for maybe manufacturing companies, things like that. It just. It really didn’t seem to. We weren’t sure how the financial model was going to work. [00:25:56] And it’s still in discussion. I know. And hopefully they’ll find a path to what they were looking for.

Jim Lanese [00:26:05] I believe I read in the description of the facility here that the original pipe organ is still in place, intact and functional. Are there any other alternate organization uses to the building? Do you invite people in to play or listen or any. Any of those kinds of activities?

John Spirk [00:26:30] Do you invite people?

Vickie Novak [00:26:33] It’s so hard. I mean, we would love to. You can see there’s a lot of passion around the building and a lot of care given to it. Unfortunately, we are a consulting service, so we’re all billable people. And so one day we hope to come up with a way to make the building more accessible. But as it stands right now, it’s just financially not possible. But, you know, John and John do hold business meetings here, and people get to see the building that way.

Ken Valore [00:27:10] Well, yeah. Jim was here for seven consumer or some kind of paper. [00:27:15] I was here for a focus group discussion.

John Spirk [00:27:19] Oh, one point.

Vickie Novak [00:27:20] There you go.

John Spirk [00:27:21] Do you remember the product you were reviewing at the time?

Ken Valore [00:27:25] I was telling Ken, I don’t recall that a product was discussed at all, but it had to do with water quality, so I assume it was related to a potential filtering type device.

John Spirk [00:27:38] Were working on. Yeah, that’s interesting.

Vickie Novak [00:27:41] You know, we love. We love. We’re in a very great location to. We’re in middle of America, so the focus group room is perfect. Many retailers that we work with really leverage that room a lot. So thank you.

Ken Valore [00:27:57] All right, well, there’s nothing else. If you don’t have any other questions, we thank you very much, much for your time. And if you could just-

John Spirk [00:28:06] Oh, sure.

Ken Valore [00:28:07] Sign those things, we would appreciate it.

Vickie Novak [00:28:11] I do. Thank you.

Ken Valore [00:28:13] You’re welcome.

James Lanese [00:28:14] Thank you.

John Spirk [00:28:15] You’re welcome.

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