The Euclid Beach Park Arch has been struck by too many Flying Turns.
The arch once welcomed visitors to the driveway of a beloved lakefront amusement park. Now it straddles narrow East 159th Street near a confusing intersection with Lakeshore Boulevard. Vehicles keep playing Dodgem with the arch, and both sides keep losing.
So Cleveland contractors have excavated the arch’s original location a stone’s throw west and poured new foundations for the 104-year-old structure. They’ll move it there and restore it as the centerpiece of a new Euclid Beach Arch Park.
The 1.55-acre site will be a modest complement to many recreational expansions and improvements underway or envisioned in northeast Cleveland.
Long-time Councilman Michael Polensek of Ward 8 says of the arch’s rescue, “This is very personal to me.” He grew up near Euclid Beach Park. His grandfather would save up nickels for Nickel Day, when each ride cost just that. The grandson loved to ride Dodgem cars and ply Lake Erie for yellow perch.
But he doesn’t love East 159th, which arose later and became the arch’s home. He says the street violated codes and was never dedicated. It ends at Lakeshore in a rare Y intersection with one-way diagonals. Drivers from the west have to turn some 120 degrees to enter East 159th.
Polensek says of the arch, “It’s a tribute to how well it was built that it’s been hit so many times and it still stands.” But it bears several gashes and stands a couple inches off its base. “If it’s not moved, it’s going to be laying in the roadway.”
90 acres of amusements
Euclid Beach Park was opened in 1895 and sold in 1900 to the namesakes of its Humphrey Popcorn stand. The Humphreys made admission free and banned the park’s previous liquor, gambling and risque sideshows. For decades, crowds, sometimes exceeding 85,000 people, swam, danced, dined, braved the Flying Turns roller coaster, bobbed on the Grand Carousel, screamed in the Crystal Maze, gawked at mighty Laughing Sal, and enjoyed other attractions on the park’s 90 acres.
The 1921 arch replaced a smaller one. Its H shape honors the Humphreys. The interior has ladders to the crosspiece. About 1942, the wooden exterior was covered with Perma-Stone, a popular imitation stone from Columbus.
In mid-century, the park started falling out of favor, with locals abandoning the city, security guards violently evicting Blacks from some attractions and protests resulting, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. The park closed in 1969.
In 1973, Cleveland City Council declared the arch a landmark. It’s the only park structure still there. The carousel now whirls at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Humphrey Popcorn is sold at local stores and online.
Some of the park’s old grounds are now the Cleveland Metroparks’ Euclid Beach Park. A new pier there has grillwork depicting old attractions.
Other parts of the amusement park now hold apartment buildings. Still others became Euclid Beach Mobile Home Park, razed recently and slated for takeover soon by the Metroparks.
Uprooting the arch
In 2007, an SUV heavily damaged and dislodged the arch. The structure was repaired, rededicated and damaged many more times, despite bollards.
Cleveland officials offered the arch to the Metroparks. But Sean McDermott, the parks’ chief planner and designer, says they couldn’t take it. They’ll need to develop a master plan for the mobile home grounds before putting anything there.
So the city is moving the arch to a vacant 1.55 acres near the intersection’s northwest corner. A McDonald’s used to stand there, and the chain gave the site to Cleveland.
At last report, officials were planning to strip the Perma-Stone before the move, restore the exterior woodwork afterwards, and plant spotlights for the arch. The work is budgeted for $800,000, to be paid from a $54 million bond issue for capital costs at parks, recreation centers, other facilities and streets.
Next month, officials will start seeking public input for the new Euclid Beach Arch Park’s design, which is expected to include paths, interpretative features and a flagpole, with the arch as a centerpiece. They hope to build the park next year at a cost to be determined.
They also plan to rebuild East 159th over several months, starting in July. The work is budgeted for $1.1 million and should be covered partly by assessments of surrounding property owners. They’ll replace the Y intersection with a T.
Jim Seman, a former park employee and a member of Euclid Beach Park Now aficionados, says he’s glad that the arch will be restored.
In a press release, James DeRosa, who runs the Mayor’s Office of Capital Projects, says that the arch project “respects the past while planning for the future.”
Area resident Joe Johnson welcomes the arch’s move. “My friend’s niece ran into the bollards.”
Resident Tony Adams welcomes the new park. “That would make a nice little area to hang out.”
Other projects underway or sought near Cleveland’s eastern shore include the Cleveland Lakefront Bikeway, Parker Sailing Center, Barge 225 at Wildwood Park, Euclid Creek Greenway, the big Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Strategy (CHEERS) project, and improvements at Humphrey, Veterans and Gordon Parks.
Polensek says, “People want to be near water.”
The Metroparks’ McDermott says, “We are a lakefront city, and we need to provide amenities for the public and showcase our lake.”
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