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Explore & Learn > Exhibits > Shattered Dreams Revisited
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Now open at the History Center in University Circle
Shattered Dreams Revisited: The Death & Rebirth of the Midwest Industrial City
This new exhibit includes photographs, streamed photo-slide shows and student poetry combined with historic artifacts to tell the story of the Death and Rebirth of the Midwest Industrial City.
Artist's Statement
When I moved to Cleveland in 1950, the city was full of energy and excitement. Unemployment and inflation were low and optimism was high. It was also a time of population shifts as one out of every five American families moved somewhere – from the country to the city to the suburbs and from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West. Twenty years later, when I returned to Cleveland from military service, things were entirely different. They grew progressively worse into the new millennium. Some once-busy factories were being shut down and boarded up, and torn down.
In 2009, I decided to photograph what Cleveland had become, and to use those photographs to tell the story of what Cleveland had once been. I committed to look for the slightest signs of rebirth in the midst of all of the death and decay. At first, it was a fresh coat of paint or a neighborhood garden. Soon it was exciting examples of adaptive reuse.
~ LAUREN PACINI ~
This is a poem featured in the exhibit by Annalena Weissman, Ruffing Montessori School, 7th Grade.
SHATTERED MEMORIES
When I look at what
Was once
An old factory
And a water tower
Actually
Containing water
I see great memories
All around
When I flash back
To the present
I see graffiti
Everywhere
Broken windows
And bricks falling from the building
Now all the great memories are
Gone.
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