Cleveland Arcade

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Some photos of the historic Cleveland Arcade, an 1890 shopping mall said to be modeled on Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Before my whirlwind trip to Cleveland a couple of weeks ago I had no idea this existed. So naturally I had to stop and take a bunch of photos and generally wander around dazzled for a bit.

I should point out that it's a working shopping center and not just an architectural marvel, although it's not that big by modern mall standards, and the upper floors are now a Hyatt Regency hotel. Plus it seems to be set up to cater to downtown office workers, and not a lot was open on the weekend when I dropped by.

If the Arcade existed in a trendier, more tourist-oriented city it would be full of people 24/7, all gawking at the architecture and buying Cleveland Arcade t-shirts and snowglobes and knicknacks and so forth. If this existed in a very trendy city, the Vegas casino based on that city would include a carbon-copy Arcade, but full of slot machines and frozen daiquiri stands. But it's in Cleveland, a city in the un-trendy upper Midwest that's gotten a bad rap in recent decades for reasons I'll never understand. "How did I not know this existed?" was the reaction I kept having while wandering around town. So I'm going to go out on a limb and predict Cleveland will be fashionable someday. I won't go so far as to predict exactly when, but sooner or later the mainstream (i.e bicoastal) media will catch on and freak out like they've just discovered Atlantis or something. By which I mean they'll do the same exact thing they've been doing about Portland in recent years. Mark my words, it's just a matter of time.