Renaissance Cleveland Hotel
| Renaissance Cleveland Hotel | |
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Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, with Terminal Tower in the rear and windowless 1958 wing to the right
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| General information | |
| Location | Cleveland, Ohio |
| Address | 24 Public Square |
| Coordinates | 41°29′55″N 81°41′42″W / 41.49861°N 81.69500°WCoordinates: 41°29′55″N 81°41′42″W / 41.49861°N 81.69500°W |
| Opening | December 16, 1918 |
| Management | Renaissance Hotels |
| Height | 162 ft |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 12 |
| Other information | |
| Number of rooms | 441 |
| Number of suites | 50 |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
The Renaissance Cleveland Hotel is an historic hotel on Public Square in Cleveland, Ohio, opened in 1918 as the Hotel Cleveland. It is today part of the Tower City Center mixed-use complex.
A place of lodging has occupied the site since 1815, when Phinney Mowrey opened Mowrey's Tavern. Donald MacIntosh purchased the tavern in 1820 and operated it as the Cleveland House and later the City Hotel until it was destroyed by fire in 1845. In 1848, it was rebuilt as the Dunham House, which was enlarged in 1852 and renamed the Forest City House. That structure was demolished in 1916 to make way for the current hotel.
The 1000-room Hotel Cleveland was built at a cost of $4.5 million and opened on December 16, 1918.Charles Lindbergh spoke in a ballroom at the hotel in 1927, three months after completing his solo Trans-Atlantic flight. The Van Sweringen brothers purchased the hotel in the 1920s and built the Cleveland Union Terminal complex, completed in 1930, around it.
Eliot Ness and his wife Evaline frequently danced in the hotel's famous Bronze Room during his time in Cleveland. Ness also questioned Francis Sweeney, a suspect in the Torso murders, in one of the hotel's rooms for over a week in 1938. The following year, in 1939, he held a meeting of local factory owners in the hotel's Empire Room, attempting to start a network of informants among their employees, to catch potential saboteurs. The local CIO head feared it was a union-busting ploy and asked J. Edgar Hoover to intervene. Hoover sided with the CIO and remained at odds with Ness through the remainder of his career. President Harry S. Truman and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt were both guests at the hotel in the 1940s.
Sheraton Hotels acquired the Hotel Cleveland in 1958 and rechristened it the Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel. Sheraton spent $5.2 million renovating the hotel and adding an enormous adjacent structure containing a multi-level garage, topped by a modern ballroom. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a series of speeches at the Sheraton on November 4, 1960, before giving a major speech in the adjacent Public Square. In 1961, Sheraton converted the Bronze Room to the Kon Tiki Restaurant. The restaurant has since been closed and the space has been converted to offices. An historic meeting between leaders of Cleveland's white and black communities occurred at the Sheraton on April 19, 1964, following the death of Civil Rights protestor Rev. Bruce W. Klunder twelve days earlier.
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