Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Huletts on Public Square

Cleveland's favorite dormant industrial relics ,the Hulett ore loaders (picutred here) are going to be drawn, quartered, and spread around Cleveland. Read the PD article here.

This may be a crazy idea, but why don't we plop one, or at least parts of the rustbelt behemoths down on Public Square? Public Square needs to be re-constituted, as has been discussed in the PD, Blog on the City, and Improvised Schema. Yet the character of this re-constitution is by no means resolved.

A possible solution for Public Square would involve transforming the square into a monumental dumping ground, creating a indexical menagerie of regional history. Imagine Public Square, which already hosts the Soldiers' + Sailors' monument (which thoroughly documents Cuyahoga County's participation in the Civil War), also hosting an immense Hulett, a machine that fueled Cleveland's industrial economy for a healthy part of the 20th century, allowing for cross-era narrative. But also imagine in the future decades other remnants of important artifacts filling the space: pieces of NASA space vehicles that are currently being developed at Glenn Research, a toothbrush light tower from Jacobs Field, prototype wind-turbine technology developed in Cleveland, etc.

Many possibilities exist out there. We just have to be willing to explore them. Creativity can solve several problems with one answer.

3 comments:

Bradley said...

Interesting idea.... maybe instead of the idea of a dumping ground, its more of a monument park of moments in history - to memorialize the Civil War... a commissioned Soldiers and Sailors - for a monument to memorialize the industry that built the city (and the people who contributed to that), a Hulett would be incredibly appropriate - the next monument?? time will tell, but it wouldn't be limited to being a remnant or being a commissioned work, it would be as appropriate as the sculpted S&S was to the Victorian era and a recovered Hulett is to the Industrial Revolution...

Anonymous said...

whatever that thing is in the picture, it is fantastic!

guv said...

a hulett is what - 11 stories high?
keep the height and halve the width and think you've got something workable to counterbalance the height of the S&S monument. the full width would be nice to plop down on that empty (parking) lot that was to house the ameritrust tower. alas, that is wishful thinking.
i think a half (width) hulett wouldn't overwhelm public square and would provide incredible pride in cleveland by recognizing and memorializing our important heritage. i imagine stairs to the second/third level where perhaps a public grafitti park could be placed. could our symphony play from elevated hulett perch? xmas lights would be cool....
possibilities are endless and inspiring.

great idea! i actually thought of the same while listening to the wcpn interview of hauser and councilman zone
http://www.wcpn.org/podcast/audio/2006/06/0622nine.mp3