The five-story skylight Arcade, one of the…
May 1890 CE
Built in 1890 by Detroit Bridge Co., run by Stephen V. Harkness until his death in 1888, at at a cost of $867,000 ($24,700,000 in 2019 dollars), designed by John Eisenmann and George H. Smith, the Arcade is today one of the few remaining arcades of its kind in the United States.
Modeled after the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II located in Milan, the Arcade is a cross between a lighted court and a commercial shopping street.
The building is a complex of three structures: two nine-story office buildings facing out to Euclid and Superior Avenues, connected via the five-story iron-and-glass-enclosed arcade.
The Arcade's skylight, one hundred feet (thirty meters) high, is made of eighteen hundred panes of glass spanning over three hundred feet (ninety-one meters).
The construction is financed by John D. Rockefeller, Mark Hanna, Charles F. Brush and several other wealthy Clevelanders of the day.