The eighth annual Cleveland History Days are now underway, and that once again includes a rare opportunity to tour the former streetcar level of the Veterans Memorial Bridge.
Also known as the Detroit-Superior Bridge, it's a familiar fixture in Downtown Cleveland's skyline, with 12 distinct concrete arches and a center steel span stretching 3,000 feet over the Cuyahoga River. Upon its completion in 1917, it was the first fixed high-level bridge in the city and one of the most impressive structures in the nation.
"It was an engineering marvel, given its size and the scale and the construction techniques used at that time, and it has continued to serve a really important role, a crucial role in our transportation system," said Annie Pease, Cuyahoga County's senior advisor for transportation.
Designed as a double-decker bridge, it carried automobiles and pedestrians on the upper level and streetcars on the lower level across four sets of tracks, shuttling passengers between Detroit Avenue on the West Side and Superior Avenue Downtown.
"It operated in that multimodal fashion from 1917 until 1954," Pease said. "After 1954, the streetcars left the region and this space sat vacated largely through today."
In recent years, the county has made repairs and upgrades to the bridge and has opened the lower level to the public for art installations and historical tours. During a public tour in 2017, thousands of visitors walked the nearly mile-long tunnel where steel tracks once were, passing rows of concrete arches while taking in majestic views of the city skyline and river below.
In 2023, the county launched its Rediscover Veterans Memorial Bridge initiative, seeking input from the community on how the dormant lower level could once again be utilized as a public space and as a connector between the Near West Side and Downtown.
"There were some kinds of grassroots community efforts in the early 2000s as the residential population was growing on the Near West Side of the Cuyahoga River and as people were using the bridge to get to opportunities and recreation in Downtown Cleveland," Pease said. "The idea of how this bridge is used primarily entered the fore and there was a big push to have special events on the lower level of the bridge."
Those efforts, she said, resulted in a federally-funded study in 2013 that explored opportunities for how the space might be used, including recommendations for walking and bike paths, as well as scenic overlooks.
In March 2024, the county announced in a press release that it received $7 million in federal funding to support redevelopment plans for the vacant lower level.
"We're taking this idea of the space being a transportation corridor as well as a destination and looking at, what does it take for this to be open longer term, not just for special events," Pease said.
Explore the historic streetcar level of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, part of Cleveland History Days, on Saturday from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., and on Fridays through September as part of the Take a Hike Summer Series, a program of the Historic Gateway Neighborhood Corporation.
