History
The impetus for Cleveland Stadium came from city manager William R. Hopkins, Cleveland Indians' president Ernest Barnard, real estate magnate and future Indians' president Alva Bradley, and the Van Sweringen brothers, who thought that the attraction of a stadium would benefit area commerce in general and their own commercial interests in downtown Cleveland in particular. However, some have incorrectly stated that it was built in a failed bid to attract the 1932 Summer Olympics, which had been awarded to Los Angeles in 1923, long before ground was broken on the stadium. Another common misconception is that Cleveland Stadium, was a Works Progress Administration project; in fact, the WPA was not created until 1935, four years after the stadium was built.
In November 1928, Cleveland voters passed by 112,448 to 76,975, a 59% passage rate, with 55% needed to pass, "a $2.5 million levy for a fireproof stadium on the Lakefront." Actual construction costs overran that amount by $500,000.
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“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
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