Hidden Cleveland: Three Ruins

Warner & Swasey Observatory

The 1919- and 1941-built domes of the observatory peak above the treetops as you cross into East Cleveland on Taylor Road. The former Case Western Reserve University School of Applied Science was abandoned in 1980 after light pollution diminished the usefulness of its two since-moved telescopes. Its domes pocked with missing panels and red brick facade overgrown with ivy make it look like a forgotten temple to science. Hanover Road near Taylor Road, East Cleveland 

Aviation High School

Planes still fly overhead, but the school bells are silent near Burke Lakefront Airport. Once a path for Cleveland Metropolitan School District high schoolers into Ohio’s aerospace industry, the hangar-shaped building with classrooms and a practice control tower has a grisly history — then school superintendent Frederick Holliday shot himself in a stairwell in 1985. The school was abandoned 10 years later because of a lack of funding. North Marginal Road, Cleveland 

Kinsman Sidaway Bridge

From near Kinsman Road, the 675-foot-long skeleton of a bridge in Cleveland’s Garden Valley neighborhood is hardly visible through overgrown brush and trees. But its thick metal beams and long suspension cables feel foreboding, especially looking into the
Kingsbury Run ravine below, where one of the Torso Murders victims was found in 1942. During the unrest of the 1966 Hough Riots, the bridge was stripped of its wood and set on fire. Near Kinsman Road and Sidaway Avenue, Cleveland