Abstract
This interview with William Becker of Cleveland State University archives focuses on the history of CSU, as well as its precursor Fenn College. See also William Becker Interview, 2005 (400006) and William Becker Interview, 15 October 2014 (500047). Very poor sound quality.
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Interviewee
Becker, William (interviewee)
Interviewer
Strugar, Milan (interviewer)
Project
History 304
Date
2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
61 minutes
Recommended Citation
"William Becker interview, 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 304038.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/825
Transcript
Milan Strugar [00:00:06] Okay. Hi, my name is Milan Struga. What is your name?
William Becker [00:00:10] My name is William Becker.
Milan Strugar [00:00:11] And where do you live?
William Becker [00:00:12] I presently live in Lakewood, Ohio.
Milan Strugar [00:00:17] Did you always live here?
William Becker [00:00:19] I’m a native Clevelander.
Milan Strugar [00:00:22] Now, we’ll just go to the particular questions concerning Fenn Tower.
William Becker [00:00:27] Okay.
Milan Strugar [00:00:29] And the first question is, have you ever been inside of Fenn Tower while it was working as a real college?
William Becker [00:00:36] Oh, yes, many times. Many times, yes.
Milan Strugar [00:00:39] All right. See, in the past week or so, I did a project on Fenn Tower where I described some of the interior and exterior parts of it. Okay, so what do you know about the interior design of Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:00:53] Well, going back, looking at it, and I’m familiar with the original design of the building, what it was designed for. It was designed as a country club, which was a franchise organization. People were to buy memberships there. Unfortunately, at the time, they started building it in 1929. And then the crash came with the stock market, and the whole organization, National Town and Country Club, which was nationwide, went bankrupt. [00:01:23] And as I’ve been an archivist here at Cleveland State for 30 years, over that time, I’ve had an opportunity to look at what has happened over Fenn Tower. Originally, it was designed to function, as I mentioned, an athletic club. It had different floors, had different features, including the upper floors, which were for rooms, guest rooms, residential rooms. [00:01:52] One of the amazing things about the inside of Fenn Tower was the fact that they had a swimming pool on the fifth floor. That’s the things people. That’s the unique feature of that building that most people remember. The idea of having a functional swimming pool up so high in a building was strange. [00:02:10] Other things that I knew was that the upper floor, there was a radio room up there. I didn’t know that at first because I happened to be wandering around up there one day looking for closets, material that belonged to the old Fenn College or the university that somebody had stuck away in closets. [00:02:31] I wandered up to the 19th floor and took a small stairway up and I found the radio room, which I thought was pretty cool. So remind me that was there. And then there was the feature, the world’s longest pendulum. When it was constructed, that one was fun to find. That went all the way from the top of the building down to the basement. [00:02:53] So it had some unique features to it. And the stairways. The stairway was always strange to me in that building because you could walk up the main stairway up to about the seventh floor. And then after that, it just seemed this main stairway just disappeared. And you just had this regular stairway that you’d find in most buildings nowadays between floors. [00:03:17] So it had some interesting features.
Milan Strugar [00:03:22] I think, at least as I did my project, since the first eight floors of Fenn Tower were made up for ballrooms and billiard rooms and recreation facilities and the pool like said. Do you know any significant events that happened at Fenn Tower in the past 40 or 50 years in those recreational facilities?
William Becker [00:03:42] That building was the prime building of Fenn College since 1937, up to the time it became CSU in 1965. Many things happened in that building. You have to imagine the layout of the school at the time. You had Fenn Tower at the northeast corner of 24th and Euclid. And across the street from it on the east side or the west side, Excuse me, of 24th Street was the Stilwell Hall. [00:04:19] And to the east of Fenn Tower on Euclid Avenue was Foster Hall. That basically made up the campus of the school. Fen Tower contained most of the administration offices, some classrooms and all the social areas. As you mentioned, the primary social area was like the third floor. There was a cafeteria, snack bar there and also what was called Panel Hall. [00:04:45] That’s where all the social events were held in the school. And they’d have concerts for the choral groups, the music groups on campus. The president’s reception for the graduation was held there. It really was a beautiful place. It’s now you can’t go up there. Even when it closed it, they had it locked off. [00:05:08] But that was probably the most opulent place on Fenn Tower was the third floor what they called Panel Hall.
Milan Strugar [00:05:15] Were there any contests held at the pool? Because I read in some of the.
William Becker [00:05:19] Of course they had the varsity swim meets there as well as the phys ed classes and the recreational times for the students. So it was dedicated. It was called the Elwood H. Fisher. And Elwood H. Fisher was one of the Fisher brothers. Fisher Foods, which later became part of Stop and Shop and through mergers, is now part of Giant Eagle. [00:05:46] But he and his brother had a grocery store business in Cleveland in the beginning of the 20th century. And he was the board of trustees chairman. And right after they purchased Fenn Tower, they named the swimming pool after Elwood H. Fisher.
Milan Strugar [00:06:07] Next question is. I don’t know if I’m going to stick to this. Do you know if the guest rooms in the upper floors of the building, were they actually used as guest rooms during the Fenn College era?
William Becker [00:06:21] No, not as guest rooms. They were the dorms for the school. It was until the 70s it was male only. Female students. There was at one time a dorm which is not material to Fenn. But there was a home on Euclid Avenue they had for a couple years. And also at the YWCA. [00:06:41] But the Fenn dorms were always strictly male.
Milan Strugar [00:06:46] I read that. I think the first or the second floor, I cannot be very sure. But one was designed just for men and the other one was designed just for women. Because in one of those. I’m blabbing a little bit on tape, but one of the folders you gave me in one of the booklets, it says that, like, the National Town and Country Club designed one of the floors to be just for women.
William Becker [00:07:12] Yeah. On the second floor, there was, like, only the women’s restroom there. You want to take that as a sign? [00:07:17] Yeah. And the men’s restroom’s down on the first floor. The National Town and Country Club never did anything in the building. That may have been its original design. But because of the bankruptcy, it sat vacant for many years. And ended up with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. And ended up with Fenn College buying it just for the back taxes. [00:07:46] When Fenn took over, it really remodeled the building for its own purposes. One of the things you’ll see at that is the early pictures. There are storefront windows on the Euclid Avenue side in the front. Those are taken out and replaced and made into office areas. There’s also one of the other things in that corner. [00:08:06] The front corner of the building used to be the bookstore for the college. So they had to do some remodeling.
Milan Strugar [00:08:15] There was a mention in the booklet that there was a Turkish bath designed by. Did you ever see that Turkish bath?
William Becker [00:08:21] It was never used. Never used.
Milan Strugar [00:08:23] Does it exist in Fenn Tower? In Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:08:26] It probably was taken out early. I never heard of anybody using it again. That was an amenity that they would use for the country club. But I think the country club only had one event total before it dissolved into bankruptcy.
Milan Strugar [00:08:44] You already answered this question, but I was going to ask it. The windows on the Euclid Avenue said there are stores. Right.
William Becker [00:08:53] It was designed for that.
Milan Strugar [00:08:56] Was it used ever?
William Becker [00:08:57] No, never. The only store that was ever in Fenn Tower was a college bookstore.
Milan Strugar [00:09:07] How has Fenn College. How was Fenn College involved in the Cleveland community?
William Becker [00:09:13] Fenn was one of a number of private colleges. And the whole thing. Fenn started out as a YMCA school. And its whole purpose was it was designed or organized to really focus on students who normally would not be able to go to college on their own. Fenn was the second school in Ohio to adopt the co-op program. [00:09:41] And the idea for the day students was they got them enrolled for the school. They went what we would call the non traditional students now. And they would get the kids into school, came to their first year, and then the day students were expected to go into cooperative education. And that was the program where they would alternate classes, school classes, work. [00:10:05] I mean, classes and work alternated for a period of three years. Then they’d come back for their senior year in order. And the idea was you took an extra year, but that period of co-op paid your bills for the next quarter. And the kids could get through school. The students could get through school plus, although it took them an extra year, when they graduated, they had a year’s experience in their chosen major. [00:10:32] And oftentimes they had contacts within their profession. They knew people in the idea, hoping it would be easier for them to find jobs.
Milan Strugar [00:10:40] Was Fenn College ever involved in charitable work with the Cleveland community, like raising charities or some funds or events?
William Becker [00:10:49] Fenn College is a private institution. Fenn College was always raising money for Fenn College. It had to. Private colleges are always doing that. Those sort of things are always going to the community, trying to keep their operating budget up.
Milan Strugar [00:11:05] But any specific events that you know of or not for raising money for Fenn College?
William Becker [00:11:11] Every year, the whole thing. They had to fend what they call the Fenn Corporation. And these were group businessmen who were involved with the college. And there’s a number of tapes we have in the archives of the corporation dinner. And they come from the end of the time of Fenn College. [00:11:37] But Brooks Earnest, the president, would get up and lay out, talk about the budget and how bad it was and how tight it was. And then through scraping and cutting costs and being careful with this and that, they were able to end the year with a surplus of a couple hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, $1,100 or something, you know, and everybody would applaud the effort in probably the biggest fundraiser that they had outside of raising the money for, was raising the money to buy Fenn Tower. [00:12:10] And that was one time they really went out into the community and got funds to purchase it. But that was back in the mid-30s. But basically they were going more towards businesses and industries, those people who were their co-op students, hiring the co-op students for that school.
Milan Strugar [00:12:36] Did Fenn Tower ever have a garden or some type of open field where its occupants could be relaxed like CSU has?
William Becker [00:12:48] No, no, Fenn College did have, did make use of some vacant fields over at 30th and Chester. But the school, their campus was small. It was almost a postage stamp campus. You know, to cut the grass there you didn’t need a power mower, you could have used a hand mower. The big thing, the big open space was. [00:13:16] What’s the big open space in Cleveland? In Cleveland State, what do you use the main thing for Cleveland State it’s no different. Parking, parking, parking, parking. That hasn’t changed.
Milan Strugar [00:13:30] What type of people worked in Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:13:34] Well, there were the business offices, meaning the bursar’s office, the cashier’s office, the registrars, the admissions and records and the co-op, the finance office, the financial aid office, the all those, the dean’s offices for engineering. The whole school was. It’s best described as. When they were promoting Fenn in the early days, they promoted it as the campus in the clouds. [00:14:07] One of the things I found out about it was the third, only the third school in the United States to have on its campus a skyscraper. So anything was really sort of pushed into that. The other buildings they were using out there for classes were over in Prospect, over by the YMCA, but you mean our building offices were over in Fenn. [00:14:30] Even the president’s office was over in Fenn. Athletics was over in Fenn.
Milan Strugar [00:14:36] What kind of people lived around Fenn Tower over the years? Mostly rich, middle.
William Becker [00:14:42] During Fenn? They were bye bye. The rich people? The halcyon days of Euclid Avenue, they were gone. There was one mansion still left right next door to Fenn. And you had the Mather Mansion which we use now for the college. But they were not used as mansions anymore. The rich folks had up and moved out east.
Milan Strugar [00:15:11] So was it left mostly vacant or middle class moved in?
William Becker [00:15:16] It became, well, like the mansion that was to the east of Mather Mansion, which would sit right where the I-90 is now, the Inner-belt, that was used as the Natural History Museum. Fen Tower became the AAA building. Mather Mansion became the Triple A building. They were used for other purposes, business purposes or organizational purposes. [00:15:45] There was nobody living there.
Milan Strugar [00:15:49] This is now a very strange question, but what nationality or cultural background, what cultural background were the people that worked at Fenn Tower? Was it diverse? Different, like nationalities, cultures, races, religions?
William Becker [00:16:07] You had some mix. I think Fenn probably represented a good deal of what was Cleveland at the time. They probably didn’t have – they had some blacks living there working at Fenn. Actually you could tell better by the student body. There were some blacks there, the whole idea was: who could afford to go to school? [00:16:36] One of the things that led to Fenn’s decline was the whole idea. There were no public universities in Cleveland. The private schools – Case Western Reserve, John Carroll Baldwin Wallace – were effective in keeping a public college out of Cuyahoga County. [the whole idea] was competition. So you were dealing with people, different type of people who would be able to go to a public school.
Milan Strugar [00:17:09] Was the National Town and Country Club ever involved in the Cleveland community before?
William Becker [00:17:16] No, this was an idea that started up and suffered from bad timing. The economic Depression came in ’29 and it was one of the victims.
Milan Strugar [00:17:31] Was there any significant connection between millionaires role in like Mather Mansion and Fenn College?
William Becker [00:17:37] No, no. Fenn, you remember what starts over on Prospect Avenue? It’s a YMCA school so everything is happening right around the Y at 22nd in prospect. Fenn doesn’t come into the picture until the enrollment is bulging at Fenn and they’re looking for room to move. And there’s this vacant tower over sitting a block and a half to the east. [00:18:05] They start eyeballing it. It’s owned by the government at this time, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. And Fenn starts pulling some, getting some people to talk to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation on their behalf, urging them that then have it for the back taxes. It’s better if you have a college using this building and it’s sitting there just gathering dust.
Milan Strugar [00:18:34] The rich people when they lived in Cleveland, were they anyway involved in the creation of the Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:18:40] No, this was national organization, the National Town and Country Club. They might have benefited if they had better timing, who knows. There were a number of people, the wealthy who had memberships in the country club. I know the mayor of Cleveland, the man who became mayor of Cleveland, Harold Burton, he had a membership in the club. [00:19:07] But the National Highland Country Club did not exist long enough to have any kind of significant impact on Cleveland. Its impact was building this building on the corner of 24th in Euclid.
Milan Strugar [00:19:24] Do you agree with the improvements being made to Fenn Tower today?
William Becker [00:19:28] I haven’t really seen what they’ve done. Fenn needed the renovation though. I’m hoping they do a good job. It would be good for the campus.
Milan Strugar [00:19:42] But would you if for example they took out everything in the pool, the recreational facilities, the historical things, would you agree with such idea if they were doing it?
William Becker [00:19:51] Well, there are other people on campus besides myself who know about these things and they’ve been, they’ve urged the developers like to leave the pendulum alone. And you’re not going to take out that pool. That would be, you know, that’s just cost ineffective. It’s going to cost a lot of money to take that pool out. [00:20:13] And you got a gym there. And why take it out? I mean, you can use it. That’s an amenity for the people in the dorms.
Milan Strugar [00:20:24] There is my question that I wanted to ask. Do you think those facilities should be used today by students?
William Becker [00:20:36] Why not? I mean, if you have them. Although the gym is nothing to really brag about. It’s really a band box because I had classes there as a student and it’s really small. It’s not even. The basketball court is not regulation size. It’s just a little bit bigger than half court.
Milan Strugar [00:20:59] And last question. Why did Fenn College become part of CSU? Why did they agree to become public or become part of CSU?
William Becker [00:21:13] You’re asking why did they let CSU take over?
Milan Strugar [00:21:18] Yes.
William Becker [00:21:18] Okay. As I mentioned, there was the effort by the [private] colleges to keep out a public institution. Why? Competition. And the first crack in the wall comes with the levy issue. I think it’s in ’62 that creates Cuyahoga Community College. And as I’ve been told by former Fennies – people who work there – and I’ve heard the story from different people independently, but the schools’ public stance was, oh, this is a fine thing. [00:22:03] Now they had what they called the Greater Cleveland Commission On Higher Education, which was the five schools meeting together and they supported this, but in the background was always, yeah, it’s a fine thing, but don’t put it near us. It passed. Obviously there’s Tri-C today. But the one that really hurt the most was Fenn because it was going to compete for students. [audio pauses] Sorry about the interruption, but when they passed, the Cuyahoga county voters passed the levy for Tri-C. Tri-C would be really focusing on those students who would be the type of students that Fenn College also was focusing on those who would economically have a harder time of going to college than somebody who could afford a Case Western Reserve or a Baldwin Wallace, one of the other private schools in the area. [00:23:07] Another factor that entered into this was the election in ’62 of Governor James Rhodes. The building where Rhodes Tower is named after. One of Rhodes’ ideas was to have a college within a 30 mile radius of everybody in the state. And so this was the largest area without a university. And the story goes that the director of development for the state of Ohio, a man named Warren Chase one afternoon, one morning called Brooks Earnest, the president of [Fenn College]. [00:23:45] [Fenn College] had seen the handwriting on the wall. It was getting tough for them to meet their budget. And they had made overtures about the state taking over the school. And it was a confidential conversation between the two men which somehow ended up on the front page of the Cleveland Press that evening. And what that did was that basically dried up the monies for […] Fenn College. [00:24:15] And it sort of wrote the death warrant in some sense for the school. People were thinking, oh, the state’s going to take it over. They looked at it as almost something that was inevitable now. And the money’s dried up for the contributions, donations to the school. So we ended up with Fenn. Really the budget was starting to hurt and that helped lead the idea of moving the school towards going towards becoming state supported.
Milan Strugar [00:24:57] What do you remember about growing up in Cleveland?
William Becker [00:25:00] Well, actually I grew up in Parma, but that was back in the 50s. And one thing I remember about Cleveland was coming downtown. Downtown was still a shopping area. The malls hadn’t been started. Parma Town when I was a little boy hadn’t been built yet. That would have been a big mall in the southwest suburbs. [00:25:24] And we go down, we’d come downtown maybe a couple times a year. My mom would take my brother and I down on the bus, big old what was called Cleveland Transit buses back then. And usually we always sat in the back of the bus and get bounced around in the back. We went over the Lorain Carnegie Bridge. [00:25:42] But you go downtown. And I remember coming into downtown Cleveland down Ontario street, heading north on Ontario street because my mother always did a shopping at Richmond Brothers and May Company and they were close together off Ontario. And then the big treat for us was for lunchtime she’d take us to the Mill Restaurant. [00:26:02] Which was a cafeteria style place on Euclid Avenue. You know, you got to go through the line with the trays and the dishes and that and you got to pick what you wanted and they served you in the plates. But that was our big thrill. Usually went down in the springtime. We got the new suit for Easter, new clothes. [00:26:21] And then down around Christmas time, we’d be taken downtown. Usually you get. Another thing coming downtown was. My grandfather lived in Baltimore and he would come to visit, but he didn’t fly back then, he took the train. And so my dad would huddle us in the car and we’d all ride down to Terminal Tower, park and go in there and we’d be in the big concourse and you’d have people moving around and that. [00:26:49] And train never [inaudible]. It took forever for when they were a little kid waiting for the train. I always felt frustrated because I could never go downstairs down to the platform to see the trains come in. But you know, eventually my grandfather would appear from up the stairs and we’d go home. [00:27:06] But basically, you know, the other big thing was downtown was going down to Halle Brothers. That was down the street. You took the bus down there down to 12th Street. But generally, basically in downtown it was mostly shopping.
Milan Strugar [00:27:21] But when you went with your family downtown, did you ever pass by Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:27:26] No, that was too far. That was too far north, that was too far out east because my dad vacated some came down shopping with it. That was something we did during the day on the bus.
Milan Strugar [00:27:37] Do you have any memories of Euclid Avenue?
William Becker [00:27:41] Euclid Avenue, basically from 12th Street to the square as growing up, that was my memories of Euclid Avenue. It seems to be a lot more restaurants downtown back then. The stores nowadays, it’s dead now compared to back then. But it was mostly just shopping. Coming down a couple times a year. [00:28:01] The other times would be if my mother would bring us down to the Indians games. My dad wasn’t a baseball fan, my mother was. And we’d get on the bus and take it down and then walk down from the square down to the Municipal Stadium and see the baseball game. And then at the end of the game we’d walk back to pick up the bus and go home.
Milan Strugar [00:28:20] How did you become involved in the history of Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:28:25] Actually, I started as a student here in 1969. Got my undergraduate degree here in ’73 in the history department. Went on to Case Western Reserve University through the Fenn Fellowship. I had a Fenn Educational Foundation fellowship to go out to Case and it was in the History and Archives program. They had an Archives program out there at the time when I spent my year there. [00:28:53] And then what do you do when you graduate with a master’s degree? You try to find a job. And back then it was right, Vietnam, wartime. I always heard these terrible stories about the PhDs in history. They ended up driving a cab or somewhere too many. Everybody wanted to go into teaching and avoid having to go into the army. [00:29:15] Well, I got lucky. I ended up with a part time job here at CSU. I worked for a former Fenn professor who is now archivist. He was like 80 some years old. His name was Millard Jordan. You would have loved talking to this guy. This Guy was a 19th century gentleman who was the type of person who never said anything bad about anybody. [00:29:37] I mean, he’d find something good to say about you even if you just made a good cup of coffee. He was very polite in that [way]. He spent 50 years here. So he was here for quite a long time. And he came at the age of 35. That was the amazing thing. He was here until he was about 86 years old. [00:29:57] But he had a secretary who wanted to go from full time to part time. I got the other half of her job and then she retired. I got the assistant to the archivist position. When she retired, Millard retired and the job sort of devolved on me. Okay, because if you’re around Ohio education long enough, you know, we go through these periods of every so often where they cut the budget, cut the budget, and that usually means they’re going to cut a position. [00:30:31] Well, Professor Jordan’s retirement came at one of those times, so the library had to give up a position so they gave up his. So I just ended up with the position. And finally I said, you know, I’ve been here for umpteen years, can I have the job? And they said, yeah. So I sort of got the job through the back door.
Milan Strugar [00:30:50] Have you written any articles or books on Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:30:54] Actually I’ve done one book on the history of Fenn College itself. It just came out in March of this year and it’s a picture history book. There is a narrative history of Fenn written by its last president, Dr. George Brooks Ernest. Dr. Ernest was an engineer. And the book is very factual, but everybody says it’s dry. [00:31:23] I did one through Arcadia, which was a picture history of the college from 1923–65, the period when it was offering college level courses. And this one was sort of to give you the feeling of what it was like to be at Fenn College, to be a student there or a faculty member. [00:31:42] That was the intent of that book. It’s a picture history. But yeah, there’s a lot of pictures of Fenn Tower in it because it’s a major part of the school.
Milan Strugar [00:31:53] I noticed that you have some pictures over here, so if you would be so kind to explain what they are.
William Becker [00:31:59] Okay. There are three aerial views of the college campus. One of them is of CSU. They’re taken from different angles so you can take a look and see what the campus looked like and also what Euclid Avenue and the area around the campus look like. The oldest one comes from about 1949. And it’s a view looking from the northeast to the southwest. [00:32:25] And you see the area of Payne-Bolton, which is the area we’re sitting in now. Rhodes Tower, the plaza, Main Classroom, and University Center. And at the time, the Bolton estate was used as a municipal parking lot and a turnaround for loop buses. Then you see the campus. You see the campus for Fenn College. [00:32:50] And you’ll notice that actually right there that time, the campus is just basically Fenn Tower over this part of town. Over on Euclid Avenue, Stilwell Hall is still the Ohio Motors building. Yet you can tell that because the back driveway up the building itself is still on there. But Arthur G. McKee – the Chester Building is in. [00:33:15] And the interesting thing about this photograph I get to see is the fact that there’s no freeway. Okay, that’s an interesting part of this. Some of these buildings are going to get knocked down on Chester Avenue when they widened Chester and they take the freeway, the Innerbelt, through here. But you still can see Mather. [00:33:37] You can see Mather. You see the Deveroux house next there to the residence of it right there. But you also see where the Natural History Museum was. But this is anything right here between 30th and Mather Mansion are going to be just dug out, wiped out. You also see the flop houses. They’re probably not that bad right now, but they’re a series of transient hotels over on 20th Street, the right side here, this is 21st Street, the West part of the municipal parking lot. [00:34:15] But over on 20th Street and 19th Street, you see the hotels. There are a bunch of them. You also have commercial buildings along the south side of north side of Chester. And eventually that’s where a soccer field is now. So you get that image. You can see that there’s still a lot of commercial area. [00:34:42] There’s, like I said, some of these are going to be knocked down, especially over in the area to about 24th Street where they’re going to put in the inner belt in a couple years.
Milan Strugar [00:34:53] I’m sorry for interrupting. Do you know if the church and okay, this was already there. Was the church built during that time?
William Becker [00:35:05] No, the church is a lot older. The church dates way back. But the interesting thing here is you get to see the New Amsterdam. It’s a hotel right there. But that is going to be where Viking Hall is. That’s torn down by the time I get here as a student. That’s not there, but that was a hotel that was there. [00:35:25] And that’s later torn down and Viking is later put there. And also in the middle of the Bolton, the parking lot, is the estate house. By the time I’m here, that’s torn down. In fact, this whole area from basically from 24th Street to 21st Street is nothing but a wall, a white wall of construction fence with, you know, the sidewalk supervisor spaces where you can sit there and watch the building going up.
Milan Strugar [00:35:58] Was there a bookstore across from Fenn Tower?
William Becker [00:36:01] No, that’s a car dealership. Yeah, that would become a car dealership. It’s used for commercially for different things over the years. And in the book, you can see it’s B and H Motors. It’s sports cars, used sports cars. They’re still selling cars on Euclid Avenue by that time. You can’t see it really. [00:36:25] But right about right across from where you can see the back end of Foster. And one reason they helped document if Foster opened in ’49. And the area north of it in Fenn Tower is used as a major parking lot for the Fenn College. But you can see it’s not improved. They haven’t quite finished construction of the parking lot there. [00:36:51] But across the street is an old diner, just directly north on 24th Street of Fenn Tower, the two buildings. This is the White Apartments building on Chester. That’s one of the buildings that gets ripped down for the freeway. And next to that is a little bar and grill I mentioned. The bar and grill was owned by a family named Saad. [00:37:13] And that and the Bean Diner was significant for the Fenn students because that’s where many of them ate on Sunday nights. Under the dorm plan, they didn’t have Sunday dinner.
Milan Strugar [00:37:25] Do you know when the Woodling Gym was started to be constructed?
William Becker [00:37:29] You mean the Fairfield Building?
Milan Strugar [00:37:31] Yeah.
William Becker [00:37:32] Yeah, it started construction right after I left in ’73. The dome was up. The geodesic dome that was torn down, that was up the Intramural Center. Yeah. In fact, the geodesic dome has two shells on it. If you ever had looked at it, it had the dirt on it. It was doubled because when they were building it, we had a heavy snowstorm and it collapsed. [00:38:05] And another interesting thing, since we’re talking about Fenn Tower. Fenn Tower is the only building on campus that has been named twice with the same name. [00:38:15] I don’t know why the Board of Trustees of CSU decided they had to name Fenn Tower over again, but they had a resolution naming Fenn Tower Fenn Tower, even though Fenn College named it Fenn Tower when they dedicated it. So it’s the only building on campus. Every building’s been named twice, but it’s the only one with the same name [twice].
Milan Strugar [00:38:38] Also one more thing. Do you know when East 24th was closed because it’s a longer street.
William Becker [00:38:45] East 24th has an interesting history. East 24th closed when they reopened 22nd Street. Now that needs a little bit of explanation. When CSU was built, Fenn became part of CSU. One of the ideas is urban renewal. Okay, the idea is that CSU is going to provide economic development in the area. And like I said, there was all the construction. [00:39:19] You see our Main Classroom building, Basic Science building. Science and Research wasn’t up at that time. But the first building up is Basic Science. And then Main Classroom and Rhodes Tower – University Tower originally – are being constructed. And you have this whole area taken up now between 18th Street and 30th Street. There is no southbound road between Chester and Euclid Avenue. [00:39:49] And so when CSU is opened, they couldn’t have 24th Street open. [recording paused] When CSU opens and they start the construction, they close 22nd Street, 21st Street. And they didn’t have any street between 30th and 18th Street. There was no southbound road to Euclid Avenue from Chester. So during the day they. Sorry for the interruption. [00:40:32] So what they did during the day was they had gates and they closed 24th Street off. And then at 5 o’clock rush hour they opened up the street and you know, you had to start dodging traffic again. And when they opened up Rhodes Tower and Main Classroom building, then they had 22nd Street open and then that’s when they started closed off. [00:40:55] They just kept 24th Street open, closed. But what you see now on 21st Street, that construction, that’s almost like a traffic barrier, rather it’s a nice looking traffic barrier. But they had people going straight through. There are a number of accidents, people coming down 21st Street and just rolling into the campus and damaging things. [00:41:21] So 21st Street is completely closed off at Chester Avenue. Now these other photos, this is about ’72, this shot. The reason why I’m saying ’72 is the parking lot. You don’t have a plaza yet right here. The plaza isn’t put in between University Center and Main Classroom. You’ve got the deck on there. [00:41:54] And. [00:41:55] Then underneath you got parking. You got parking here and you see UC going up. So probably closer to ’73. I graduated in ’73, maybe ’74. Yeah, I’ll revise that to ’74, because this was all parking. Used to park here with student parking. The extension is going up Rhodes Tower. In fact, Rhodes Tower would end just about down there in this room. [00:42:28] Do you know where reference is on first floor? Or the men’s room is on first floor. You go here, you see the strip on the floor, a metal strip that is the original part of the building. And they built this separately. But at the same time they were building University Center. And then I can remember being here on the old part. [00:42:47] It was gated. They had a fence across it. And you could look out to the west towards downtown. But you can see these houses, the transient hotels on 21st Street. You could look in the back, you see the guys hanging out their wash on the back. There are a number of them there. [00:43:09] When you’re going to school, we used to joke one of our goals in life is to be able to buy the Roswell or the Parmelee Hotel on 21st Street. You know, smart aleck college kids, you know, coming to school down there. [00:43:23] But an interesting thing you get here is when the university buys this, a lot of times you go back and read about it, there is some controversy about what are going to happen to the people who live in the area. There are people expressing concern that we just can’t buy the houses, the hotels and kick these people out and they have nowhere to go. [00:43:52] The university was obligated to try to help these people, relocate these people to other homes. But basically it shows what it’s like. Actually, there’s also some gas stations. You don’t see them over on Chester Avenue. That you don’t see anymore.
Milan Strugar [00:44:08] I have one more question. The art building that is on Chester Avenue now, was that a new building?
William Becker [00:44:14] No, that was. I think it was called Wilding or the Cleveland Cotton Products Building. That was when they bought a lot of the buildings around there. Even our physical plant building was Sterling Linder – which was a department store – that was the warehouse for the department store. The buildings you see in this picture are the first ones they built for the college. Again, you can see Main Classroom. You see the top of Basic Science. And you see the construction of University Center and the extension to Rhodes Tower.
Milan Strugar [00:44:46] And Foster Hall, does it still exist at this time?
William Becker [00:44:49] Oh, Foster was ripped down. Yeah, Foster was torn down. And they had the science, physical therapy, the health and science building, whatever they call it. But the one that’s underground. Partially underground, yeah, but that’s where Foster stood. It was strictly in engineering, mostly mechanical. Claude Foster was a Cleveland industrialist who instead of waiting to die to give his money away, had a big dinner one night. [00:45:20] Yeah, you know, great. You know. And he just handed out checks to all kinds of institutions. He was famous for development of the Gabriel shock absorber. And he also had the Gabriel horn. This was back in the early days of the automotive industry. And the Gabriel horn connected to the exhaust and it played melodies. [00:45:47] And it was said there was a rumor. I never been able to track it down. But there was one of those apocryphal stories that he only sold one in Germany – that was to the Kaiser. The Kaiser wouldn’t let anybody else have one. But I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s one of the legends of the Gabriel horn. [00:46:08] But you know, it was a very popular horn, you know, you hit the button and the exhaust played your melody.
Milan Strugar [00:46:19] Like the gym that is being. That is built later.
William Becker [00:46:22] Yeah, the phys ed building. The phys ed building, yes.
Milan Strugar [00:46:25] Because some students call it the Woodling Gym. Who was Woodling?
William Becker [00:46:31] Okay, now there’s the phys ed building. And the gym itself is named for Homer Woodling. Homer Woodling was forever the athletic director of Fenn College. There are a number of people who came and stayed, made careers, long term careers of it. Homer was one of them. And later on his successor was CSU’s first – actually Fenn College’s first – All-American, Robert Busby. [00:47:01] They named the gym after Homer.
Milan Strugar [00:47:03] Were any other people honored by some building being named after them besides Rhodes Tower?
William Becker [00:47:09] Well, Rhodes is named for the governor. Yeah, Rhodes Tower. There’s a number of buildings on campus now. The Wolstein is the most prominent. [00:47:18] There isn’t anything more. [00:47:21] The buildings that have names now all come from people put up the money for it. The Woodling is unusual in that it was named for a CSU faculty member. But he ran the athletic department for many, many years.
Milan Strugar [00:47:40] This picture here, that shows a bunch of parking lots.
William Becker [00:47:43] This one?
Milan Strugar [00:47:44] Yes.
William Becker [00:47:45] Yeah, you can see. This is Fenn looking the other way. We’re looking northeast. You know, at the top of the picture you see the port and you can see the stadium.
Milan Strugar [00:47:55] And the highways.
William Becker [00:47:56] And this is Fenn. There’s Foster on Euclid Avenue. And in fact there’s to be the old Streetcar Diner. And also you had right in here, right next to the Streetcar Diner. CSU had a number of nightclub places nearby that was called the Down Under and My Bedroom there were two places. The Down Under, you could, it was more like for the college students a little bit older. College students went to My Bedroom, you know, it was supposed to be more sophisticated. And they also had the Music Grotto which was a record store. It was a great record store. They were more modern. But there was a number of stores in the area right across from campus that catered to the interests of the college students.
Milan Strugar [00:48:50] And I noticed a lot of parking lots.
William Becker [00:48:53] Again, you know the big one, this is the AAA building one now that becomes ours when we buy Mather Mansion. We get that about 1970. This is the Fenn parking lot I was talking about when we were looking at. I said that Foster was being built because the parking lot wasn’t finished. [00:49:17] Well, you can see that of course now you can still see Saad’s in the corner of the parking lot but you don’t see the White Apartment building that’s torn down. That’s the McKee building. And that became. That was used for student activity centers for a couple years. Then they tore that down. That had an interesting history because tearing it down took a lot longer than they thought. [00:49:40] You know they’re going to come in and knock this thing down and then that’s where Science and Research is. They fooled them. That building took so long to come down because it was so well made. They put that thing together and it took them about a couple weeks longer to tear it down. [00:49:57] And if you also, if you take a look here, you look at what we call the Chester Building where the first college was. But you notice the front on the Chester Building, what we called the Chester Building, which was actually part of Arthur G. McKee. That’s where the Arthur G. McKee building is going to go. But that was torn off. They had to take off the front of the Chester Building and put a new front on the building when [inaudible] put in the freeway.
Milan Strugar [00:50:36] That’s why the Chesters are wide. And this building that I think even today exists right next to this parking lot.
William Becker [00:50:46] Well, the Vixseboxse. Oh, the Vixseboxse building. For many years it was used as a. We call it the Vixseboxse building. And they had the art gallery. The university purchased it and everything. Vixseboxse moved up to Cleveland Heights on Cedar or something. It’s an art gallery. And the story behind that one is it was supposed to become a faculty club and it was named for Joseph E. Cole who gave a lot of money for it. But it fell through for reasons I’m not aware of. But it never became. And instead they took the Joseph E. Cole name and put it under Continuing Education Center and now I think the university wants to renovate it. That may be the administration building. [00:51:33] They want to renovate it. It’s one of the ancient homes. It actually is called the Howe Mansion. And the Howe family is related to the sewing machine Howe. Elias Howe. But they’re part of that family. Not that they were directly involved in making sewing machines, but they were related to Elias. That’s one of the old mansions on Euclid Avenue.
Mark Souther [00:51:54] Could you spell Vixseboxse and Howell?
William Becker [00:51:57] V I X S E B O X S E. Yeah, Vixseboxse. Do I win the spelling bee? I get to go to Washington. Oh.
Milan Strugar [00:52:12] Anything else memorable about the area around Fenn Tower? From the different pictures, different times. I guess we covered almost.
William Becker [00:52:25] Yeah. You get the area. Oh, there’s a Corlett Building. But the more interesting things are the bars that were around. Yeah, there were a number of bars between East 18th Street and 20th Street. There are a number of bars there. Actually, by the time I got here, the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church was down there and was torn down already. [00:52:50] That has been long gone. But they had Luby Chevrolet. The old showroom was there. There used to be another of these streetcar like diners that was on the corner of East 18th Street and Euclid. Where the law college is. It was called Tasty Burger. Ugly green sign, white sign with green and I think yellow on it or something. I used to laugh at it. Called Tasty Booger. Bunch of kids going to college. What do you want? That guy’s only 20. Okay. When the university mentioned the College Inn restaurant that was in the Corlett Building, we bought that one. [00:53:47] And it was a restaurant. It wasn’t a bad restaurant. I ate there a lot of times because the food was decent, it was cheap. It was on the main floor of the Corlett Building. The other buildings all around Corlett were torn down. And a lot of these things went down for the parking structure. [00:54:11] One thing you find in a commuter college that I think. One of the things I’ve realized early that a college president here could do everything wrong but if you provided enough parking lots for everybody, everything would be forgiven. That’s one of the things that you read the Cauldron, you read the Vindicator, what do students complain about? Parking. Not today. They complain about parking. What did they complain about back in the 60s? Parking. You could turn downtown into a big parking lot, we’d complain there’s not enough parking.
Milan Strugar [00:54:56] Also, since we have covered a lot. If you could mention if you know a specific time when these buildings were being torn down as CSU was growing. Not specifically date, but year, at least about the time. Yeah.
William Becker [00:55:14] Okay, you start with Fenn Tower behind Fenn Tower they construct all these little Modulux buildings. These are temporary classrooms. They called them Modulux, where they were modular buildings. You know, they came and plopped them down. There was like seven of them and they were directly behind Fenn Tower. And it would be right behind right where the main phys ed building is basically. [00:55:41] Excuse me. I remember those because of May 4th. You know, May 9th now, but we just went through May 4th, but I was in the auditorium. Classroom was the 700 building. And I had two classes there, my freshman quarter fall freshmen. And we were in that classroom in the spring quarter and somebody threw a firebomb in there. So, you know, we spent the last four or five weeks in that classroom with the smell of burnt wood, you know, like, yuck. [00:56:15] A lot of the faculty were there, history, the social sciences faculty had their offices in these Modulux buildings. And then when they opened up main Rhodes Tower, they moved up into the tower. And in ’72 I was taking a course in the summer and I’d come down on the bus in the morning and one morning I’m going across the Lorain Carnegie Bridge, sitting in the back of the bus and I look up and there’s this big flatbed truck going and it’s carrying one of the Modulux buildings away. [00:56:50] That was my classroom. It was kind of funny to see, but they took those out. That’s when that was about in ’73, ’72, ’73. They took those out. They were one of the first buildings in because they needed the classroom space. Basic Science opened at the end of my freshman quarter here. It opened January of 1970 because I had a geology course, got to use the lab and what kind of rock is this? Hard. [00:57:25] So that opened in ’70. ’72 you had the opening of a Main Classroom in Rhodes Tower. And now the next thing, University Center was also being built at the same time. That started later, but it was just one. Seems like one Building of the year contest was where can we put up this year? Then you had the geodesic dome came about the same time as the opening. I think a little bit later then the opening of the Main Classroom and Rhodes Tower and then University Center. Then about ’74, that was the year I was gone because when I came back University Center was open. I was gone for a year from ’73 to ’74 when I was at Case. And then you had the opening of the phys ed building. The mansion, Mather Mansion, that we got in ’70. And at the time because we started using that downstairs as the reserve area for the library and they had a tough time getting AAA out of here. [00:58:51] The university was trying to push them out [and] AAA saying no, our new building at 55th Street isn’t open yet, it’s not ready, we can’t go, we need it, we need it. No, they can’t go. And then the funny thing is they used to have two libraries. The one I remember first is the one in Stilwell Hall on the third floor. [00:59:17] And originally Fenn Tower had a library on the third floor. I forgot to mention, I should mention that. They had in Panel Hall, the other side which was the cafeteria, was the library. And when they opened up Stilwell Hall in 59 they moved the library. But what was really cool about that is that they didn’t take the books off the shelves and take them down the elevator and go rumbling across 24th Street and then up the elevator in Stilwell Hall. They built scaffolding across. [00:59:50] They got 24th Street closed. They built scaffolding all the way across and they had a catwalk and they had to load up the books and the carts and they ran them across the street. It saved a lot of time, you know, as far as having to take the books out and didn’t have to use the elevators but it was pretty cool. [01:00:08] You got pictures of those. So that’s how they moved that. And then when they opened up Rhodes Tower they had a big. That they couldn’t help but they had to move everything into Fenn Tower from Stilwell into Rhodes Tower. That was different but you know, I thought it was kind of cool the way they did that. [01:00:26] What do we want from the school of engineers.
Milan Strugar [01:00:29] That is interesting. Nothing else Unless you have something to add.
William Becker [01:00:38] No, I’m fine.
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