If  local eyes are shut to the value of the Breuer,  perhaps this iconic eye of the Building will be recognized  by a sophisticated developer as one reason to remove and reassemble the stone and precast concrete elements hung on the steel core of this 1970 structure.

A few weeks ago I went to the Marcel Breuer Building in Cleveland, Ohio before dawn.  There’s a tight little alley on the south side of the building, with a pedestrian bridge several stories up connecting the Breuer on the north side of the alley with the parking garage on the south side of the alley.  The public sidewalk at the head of the alley was so hot from the steam pipes under it that I couldn’t stand on it with my tripod.  So I went into the alley. 

The sun was about to hit the Breuer, it was 5:30am.  The alley had the usual Cleveland detritus strewn about – a sleeping bag under the gas meters in a dumptster alcove.  Unused loading docks behind vacant ancient buildings with rusty iron fire escapes rising up the brick wall above.

The Breuer, also vacant for years, maintained its reticent nobility.  

You think it’s ugly Mr Hagan?  Mr. Dimora?  Go in the alley at dawn and check it out.  The black polished stone façade – which hasn’t seen a wash for years - still reflects the neighboring buildings as if the stone had just been attached.   And when you look at the shiny black stone surface of the Breuer, and see from the stone the reflection of the neighboring Cleveland  building across East 9th,  the idea (recently expressed by the Plain Dealer, Dimora and Hagan, Cimperman, and many others) that if you don’t like the exterior appearance of a building, then  that is a reason to voice for its removal – will strike you as about as ignorant as racism.  Architectural Racism. 

It is the exterior and interior appearance of the building – the stately Breuer appearance which Cleveland Trust bought when they commissioned Breuer to design the building.   The structural steel core, the single pane glass, the foundations which don’t meet today’s seismic criteria (neither do the foundations of the adjacent parking structure which the Commissioners Hagan and Dimora plan to keep), the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC are all expendable to the Breuer design. 

So if the building must be demolished because our local minds aren’t erudite enough to know it’s value, is there a demolition contractor -  perhaps from Europe or Dubai or China – who will bid to remove all the Breuer features and put the building back up elsewhere?   The reassembled building would have instant flare and fame.  (or a downtown Cleveland landowner directly adjacent to the existing Breuer could install new foundations and the building could be moved laterally – that’s what happened two weeks ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts – Harvard University moved 3 large buildings on their Law school campus. I’ll post photos here soon)

And selling the Breuer for re-use elsewhere would put Hagan and Dimora back on the right side of sustainability - wouldn't it make Cleveland look good!