The Fine Arts Building opened in 1921 to great fanfare. Located on Euclid Avenue between East 30th and East 36th Streets in the historical stretch of Millionaires’ Row, the Fine Arts Building was built in an era of great change in Cleveland. By the 1920s, Millionaires’ Row was starting to lose the eponymous millionaires who developed the area, as Euclid Avenue became more focused on commerce.
The Fine Arts Building started as the mansion of John Henry Devereux. Originally built in 1873 for Devereux, a U.S. Army general in the Civil War, the mansion remained home to the Devereux family until his widow Antoinette passed away in 1915. As the city changed and Euclid Avenue lost its luster in the eyes of local elites, its old mansions were usually torn down, but the Devereux mansion did not meet that same fate. Instead, six years after Antoinette Devereux's death, it was repurposed as a self-contained arts colony.
The Fine Arts Building was the brainchild of two Cleveland brothers, A. A. and Max Kalish. A. A. Kalish was a real estate dealer and his brother Max was a renowned artist. The Kalish brothers were born in Minsk in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) into an Orthodox Jewish family. Their father immigrated to the U.S. in 1894, and the rest of the family followed four years later. Max, having shown artistic talent early on, later won a scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art. After a stint in the Army in World War I, he split his time between Europe and the U.S. until World War II, when he had to return to the U.S. permanently.
The melding of the business and art worlds had its roots in New York City, and the Cleveland Fine Arts Building reflected this. The primary models for the Cleveland Fine Arts Building were the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York City and Chicago’s Fine Arts Building. Both places, as would happen in Cleveland, combined the creation of art and use of a building to showcase and sell the art produced there.
The concept of fine arts buildings began in the mid-19th century in New York City. In the 1850s a building was constructed on 10th Street that ended up housing a wide range of artists, such as Winslow Homer and Frederic Church. It was the first such building in the world. It was from this building that Greenwich Village gained its reputation as a center for artistic and bohemian lifestyles. As in Cleveland 60 years later, the Tenth Street Studio Building was developed by two brothers, in this case, businessman Richard Morris Hunt and artist William Morris Hunt.
The reason that places such as the Fine Arts Building were built was to bring together the world of art and commerce. They provided artists space to work, as well as a place to sell their works. This was especially important in the era before a lot of artists had agents to sell their work for them.
The Cleveland Fine Arts Building lasted for less than fifteen years as an artists' building. After the mid 1930s, it continued as an apartment building. The front of the building hosted various businesses over the years, as well. In the late 1950s there was a family-owned deli, and various other businesses occupied its street-level spaces into the 21st century.
The Fine Arts Building was Cleveland's answer to similar artist-oriented developments in New York and Chicago. Reflecting the vision of two brothers who emigrated from the Russian Empire, this Millionaires' Row mansion–turned–miniature artists' colony mimicked the bohemian spirit of New York's Greenwich Village.
","website":null,"related_resources":["Apmann, Sarah Bean. \"How One Building Turned Greenwich Village Into an Artists’ Mecca.\" Off the Grid Village Preservation Blog. August 6, 2019.","Blaugrand, Annette. The Tenth Street Building: Artist-Entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists. Southampton, NY: Parrish Art Museum, 1997.
","Devereux, Antoinette C. 1910 United States Census. Ohio, Cuyahoga County, Cleveland City, Ward 12, ED 198.
","\"Fine Arts Building.\" Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.","Gregg, Albert Sydney. \"Why Max Kalish Likes Paris.\" Cleveland Plain Dealer. August 23, 1929.","Kalish, Max. 1920 United States Census. Ohio, Cuyahoga County, Cleveland City, Ward 18, ED 366.","\"Max Kalish, American, 1891–1945.\" Wolfs Gallery.","Robertson, William. \"Block on Euclid To Be Remodeled Fine Arts Building at No. 3226 Eucild Planned by Max and A.A. Kalish.\" Cleveland Plain Dealer. July 6, 1921."],"factoids":["Cleveland’s Fine Arts Building was modeled on the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York and the similarly named Fine Arts Building in Chicago. Los Angeles also opened a similar building in the 1920s.
","After its time as an artists' showplace, the building’s storefront was a deli and in 1958 was the scene of a murder, when the store's owner was killed in a robbery.
","The Fine Arts Building is one of a few buildings that incorporates the remnants of an intact Millionaires' Row house.
"],"files":{"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/fullsize/b329f71271c960e9825209c2ba3dfd00.jpg":{"id":12852,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"The Fine Arts Building in 1940","description":"The Fine Arts Building was, an example of the Italian Renaissance Revival style with its tile roof, arched windows framed by Ionic pilasters, balconettes, and decorative lion sculptures and medallions. It was designed by architects Herbert Briggs and Harry S. Nelson. | Cleveland Public Library, Photograph Collection | 1940","thumbnail":"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/square_thumbnails/b329f71271c960e9825209c2ba3dfd00.jpg"},"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/fullsize/c92a3700e5155bd60936c7dc031e0db6.jpg":{"id":12902,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Portrait of Artist Max Kalish","description":"Max Kalish was a noted Cleveland sculptor who was born in Minsk in what is now Belarus. He and his brother A. A. Kalish expanded the old Devereux mansion into the Fine Arts Building in 1921. | Cleveland Public Library, Photograph Collection | 1931 | Ethel C. Standiford","thumbnail":"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/square_thumbnails/c92a3700e5155bd60936c7dc031e0db6.jpg"},"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/fullsize/18ab8e5d3c8d7336708f04f011ca1428.jpg":{"id":12853,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Fine Arts Building Ad","description":"An advertisement for the Fine Arts Building at the beginning of its time as The Fine Arts Building in 1921. The text by A. A. Kalish gives an update and enthuses about the Building's purpose and excitement for its future. Businesses that were involved in the building's construction appear in the small ads around the edges. | Cleveland Plain Dealer | October 9, 1921","thumbnail":"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/square_thumbnails/18ab8e5d3c8d7336708f04f011ca1428.jpg"},"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/fullsize/44ab6750c9ccace14b935a322ccf79e6.jpg":{"id":12854,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Deli Fine Arts Building","description":"The storefront of the Fine Arts Building in 1958, in a Plain Dealer story about a murder that occurred in the deli. | Cleveland Plain Dealer | December 9, 1958","thumbnail":"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/square_thumbnails/44ab6750c9ccace14b935a322ccf79e6.jpg"},"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/fullsize/b0ee1647adae3badf684e7d892d994a3.jpg":{"id":12896,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Aerial View","description":"Recent aerial photo of the front of the Fine Arts Building | 2024 | Dorjan Scott","thumbnail":"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/square_thumbnails/b0ee1647adae3badf684e7d892d994a3.jpg"},"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/fullsize/5fbbd9640879bc1630282b5bcbeac1fb.jpg":{"id":12897,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Side View of Fine Arts Building","description":"Side view of the Fine Arts Building, showing the old Devereux Mansion in the middle of the building. This view faces west. | 2024 | Dorjan Scott","thumbnail":"https://www.clevelandhistorical.org/files/square_thumbnails/5fbbd9640879bc1630282b5bcbeac1fb.jpg"}}}