page_title: Playhouse Square
section_title: Closing and rebirth
hierarchical_section_title: Playhouse Square / History / Closing and rebirth
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo is DCP_3488 by stu_spivack. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_spivack/18537955/
context_page_description: Playhouse Square is a theater district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is the largest performing arts center in the US outside of New York City. Constructed in a span of 19 months in the early 1920s, the theaters were subsequently closed down, but were revived through a grassroots effort. Their renovation and reopening helped usher in a new era of downtown revitalization in Cleveland, and was called "one of the top ten successes in Cleveland history."
context_section_description: The theaters successfully showed a variety of serious theater, vaudeville shows, and movies for more than forty years. However, during the years following World War II, suburbanization and the rise of television led to the decline of the theaters. Fire broke out in the Ohio in 1964, and the other Playhouse Square theaters were struck by vandalism. Between May 1968 and July 1969, all the theaters closed except the Hanna.
  Plans to reopen and restore the theaters began almost immediately. In 1970, Raymond K. Shepardson, a Cleveland Public Schools employee, formed a non-profit group named the “Playhouse Square Association” with the Junior League of Cleveland, Inc. The cover of the February 27, 1970 issue of Life was a two-page pull-out of James H. Daugherty's The Spirit of Cinema America, a mural in the State Theatre's lobby.
  Plans to raze the Ohio and the State Theatres in 1972 and 1977 caused a public outcry, and in 1973 the newly formed Playhouse Square Foundation obtained long-term leases for the Palace, Ohio and State Theatres, while Cuyahoga County commissioners purchased the Loews Building. Also in 1973, the musical revue Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris opened in the State Theatre lobby. Expected to run two weeks, the show instead played for two and a half years. In 1978, Playhouse Square was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
caption: Part of James Daugherty's The Spirit of Drama – Europe, one of four murals in the lobby of the State Theater.
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