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Greetings from Cleveland:
Postcards from the Ingalls Library Collection
February 2010 |
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Postcard: Public Square, Cleveland, O.
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| Between 1900 and the mid 1950s, Cleveland laid claim to being one of the largest cities in America, ranked between 5th and 7th place for five decades.1 Its population grew in pace with its industrial complex, and its downtown skyline took shape while landscapers and naturalists readied its unprecedented network of public parks.
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"They call her the Sixth City, but that is only in a comparative sense, and exclusively in regard to her statistical position in the population ranks of the large cities of our land. For no real citizen of Cleveland will ever admit that his community is less than first, in all of the things that make for the advance of a strong and healthy American town. His might better be called 'the City of Boundless Enthusiasm.' Your Cleveland man, however, is content to know it as the Sixth City."
"And Cleveland having thus baptized herself, as it were, proceeded to spread her new name to the world. 'Cleveland — Sixth City' appeared on the stationery of her business houses; her tailors stitched it in upon the labels of the ready-made suits they sent to all corners of the land; her bakers stamped it on the products of their ovens; big shippers stenciled it over packing-cases; manufacturers even placed it upon the brass-plates of the lathes and other complicated machines they sent forth from their shops. Today when you say 'Sixth City' to an American he replies, 'Cleveland,' which is precisely what Cleveland intended he should reply."2
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