In January, I’ll celebrate 10 years as a producer with Ideastream Public Media.
When I first walked through the doors of the Idea Center in Downtown Cleveland, I was much younger and my hair was much less gray. I was also eager to begin the next chapter of a career I’d already grown to love.
The greatest gift this job has given me over the years is getting to know the people and places of Northeast Ohio on a deeper level.
Since joining the arts and culture team in 2022, I’ve explored many of the 22 counties in Ideastream’s coverage area. No matter where I visit or who I talk to, I realize there’s an incredible amount of the region’s history sitting just below the surface. All I have to do is ask the right question to uncover it.
The vast amount of historical knowledge I’ve gained comes in very handy at social gatherings. It also makes me more curious. I can’t go anywhere — a restaurant, a bank, a hotel, a grocery store — without wondering what came before it.
Ideastream Senior Arts Reporter Kabir Bhatia is the same way, and the stories we’ve told together carry a common thread of nostalgia. It only seemed natural to continue to share our love of the past with a new video series.
Or maybe we just needed an excuse to dig through old black and white photos for hours a day and call it “work.”
Ever walk by a building and wonder what it used to be? There’s architecture with a story to tell around every city in Northeast Ohio. Kabir and I are hitting the road to visit as many of these sites as we can for the new series, “What It Was.”
Find the videos on Ideastream’s social media accounts, catch them in our weekly arts and culture show “Applause,” or watch them any time on the PBS app.
For the first episode, we decided to start with a building we know — or thought we knew: the Idea Center at Playhouse Square, home of Ideastream Public Media since 2005.
Our building at 1375 Euclid Ave. has hosted many tenants throughout its lifespan.
Designed by the architectural firm Walker and Weeks (think also of the Public Auditorium, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and Cleveland Public Library), the building opened in 1912 as a home furnishings showroom and warehouse for the Kinney & Levan Company.
A year later, the fifth and sixth floors housed the Public Library of the City School District of the City of Cleveland (later, Cleveland Public Library) until its new main branch on Superior Avenue was completed in 1925.
In the 1930s, the building served as the corporate headquarters for Stouffer’s, including its popular Playhouse Square restaurant. Around 1943, WJW remodeled the second floor of the building for its new radio studio.
In 1950, disc jockey Alan Freed came to WJW from WAKR in Akron. It was in that very radio studio that Freed first uttered the words “rock ‘n’ roll,” thus making Cleveland what many consider to be the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll.
I’m excited to see what other interesting buildings we discover with this series, and we invite you to join us along the way. If there’s a building in your town you’d like to know more about, send a message to arts@ideastream.org.
In the meantime, I’ll be sitting at my desk buried in old photographs for at least another 10 years, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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