AIA Cleveland’s first “Architecture: Early Cleveland to Beaux-Arts” Architecture Tour, of the summer season developed in partnership with Historic Gateway Neighborhood Corp. and the Take a Hike® Walking Tours program, launched with a full and enthusiastic group on a beautiful sunny afternoon in Downtown Cleveland. With a cool breeze moving between the towers from the lake, it was a perfect day to slow down, look up, and rediscover the city through its buildings.

The tour, first initiated last summer and quickly embraced by the public, has become a meaningful way to tell Cleveland’s architecture and planning story. This first of two chapters focuses on Early Cleveland: its beginnings as a New England village, its rise as a powerful industrial city, the emergence of “Main Street,” an American innovation, and the invention and evolution of the commercial high-rise into the modern skyscraper.

Beginning in Public Square in front of the Society for Savings Building, built in 1890 and once Cleveland’s tallest, the route continued west along Superior Avenue past landmarks including the Rockefeller Building, recently acquired by K&D, and the Perry-Payne Building. At the Western Reserve Building, designed by Daniel Burnham, the group turned north along West 9th, passed the historic Crittenden Building, and continued east on St. Clair Avenue to the Standard Building. The tour concluded at The Mall with a discussion of Burnham’s role as mastermind behind Cleveland’s Group Plan of 1903, one of the city’s most important urban planning achievements.

For AIA Cleveland, the tour is also an opportunity for architects and designers to share their love of design, engineering, history, and city-building with the broader public. It invites participants to see Cleveland’s architectural heritage not as a static collection of old buildings, but as a living story shaped by transportation, technology, industry, culture, and civic ambition.

Participants generously donated to the program following the tour. Donations are especially meaningful this year in honor of Tim Donovan, co-founder of Take a Hike® Walking Tours, who passed away this past year. Gifts made by the stated deadline are being matched through the Timothy S. Donovan Legacy Fund, up to $25,000.

The Architecture Tour continues Sundays from 1:00–2:30 p.m., beginning at Rebol in Public Square, with no tours on Father’s Day weekend or Independence Day weekend.

2026 Tour Dates: June 14, June 28, July 12, July 19, July 26, August 2, August 9, August 16, August 23, August 30, September 6, September 13, September 20, and September 27.

Sign up here: https://www.takeahikecle.com/architecture