Moving Places Screens at Cuyahoga 50 Celebration

June 22nd, 2019 marked a milestone for Cleveland. Fifty years prior to this date, the Cuyahoga River burned for the last time. Although a fairly minor fire by comparison to conflagrations that engulfed the river in years past, it nonetheless galvanized the burgeoning environmental movement in America. The Cuyahoga 50 event celebrated how far Cleveland has come since that time. Transformed from a river choked with flammable solvents, trash, and scum, the Cuyahoga today has become a sought out site for recreation while fish populations have returned to levels not seen for decades.

One of the highlights for the events around Cuyahoga 50 was the opening of the streetcar bridge that straddles the underside of the Detroit-Superior Bridge. About 14,000 visitors took this opportunity to explore this unique space. The bridge was a marvel in engineering when it was completed in 1918, separating streetcars and automobiles on separate levels and easing transit across the Cuyahoga River. As automobiles rose in dominance in the city, they increasingly competed with streetcars for dwindling space on increasingly busy and dangerous streets.

While the streetcars long disappeared, the corridor that they once used offers a unique urban space affording scenic views of downtown and the Cuyahoga River Valley while presenting a quiet space for reaching downtown from the west-side.

I was honored to curate a one hour film collage featuring vignettes that provided a deeper history of Cleveland’s streetcars, including rare footage of streetcars using the bridge in the 1940’s. The film also featured shorter segments exploring the rise of the automobile and a more recent movement to make city streets more accommodating to bicycles. The film played on a continuous loop for the 13 hours of the event, taking place in a make-shift pop-up cinema right off of the entrance to the bridge.

The photos below provide some glimpses of the events that took place on the bridge that day, including some light and music installations that animated the history of the river from a place that burned to a monument celebrating the possibility of a human presence that regenerates instead of depletes the natural world. After the photos below, check out my explorations of the broader city on this day.

While my film played on endless repeat, I hopped on my bike to take in the full majesty of the Cuyahoga River, marveling at how a densely populated city that once stood at the epicenter of American industrial prowess could return to a balance between people and the larger natural world that sustains all life. The turn-around of the Cuyahoga River presents important lessons as we grapple with the larger challenges of today- from species extinction to climate change.