Playhouse Square

Lawrence Blazey (American, born 1902) Playhouse Square, Cleveland, 1935 Transparent watercolor, opaque watercolor and graphite with collage The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph M. Erdelac 1992.191

Like Bourke-Whites photograph of Public Square seen from the Williamson Building, this colored drawing of Playhouse Square documents modern urban life from a dramatically high vantage point. Cars, buses, and pedestrians dash in various directions through the intersection of Euclid Avenue, Huron Road, and E. 14th Street. Distant and removed from the activity below, Blazey interpreted the city abstractly as an impersonal, dynamic hub of activity. The red and green traffic lights (invented in Cleveland in 1914) are made of cut-and-glued collage elements.