Brad Ricca was one of many Cleveland residents told as a child that the Ohio Bell (now AT&T) building downtown was the inspiration for the art deco tower housing the Daily Planet, the major metropolitan newspaper that employed Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent.
But Ricca, a lecturer at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned that wasn’t the case while researching Super Boys, a book about Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. But the truth is far more interesting.
Shuster denied the connection to the Ohio Bell building, according to a 2013 Smithsonian.com story, and suggested it was based on the Daily Star in his birthplace of Toronto (in early issues of the comic book, Clark Kent works for the Daily Star). But that building wasn’t finished until 1929, by which time Shuster’s family had departed Canada for Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood.
Ricca also points out that the first appearance of the Daily Planet skyscraper with a planet at its top wasn’t in the comic books, but in the 1940s cartoons made by Max Fleischer and distributed by Paramount (it’s also worth noting that the building bears more than a passing resemblance to the Paramount Building at 1501 Broadway in New York City).
One thing that is for sure is that one Cleveland building did inspire Siegel and Shuster.
“We looked up at Cleveland’s Terminal Tower and visualized a costumed figure (who had not yet seen print) whizzing through the sky around it and then alighting atop it,” the duo wrote to then-mayor George Voinovich on the occasion of Superman’s 50th anniversary in 1988.
Status: Busted
Read more about Superman's Cleveland roots here.
Read More: Click here to read the full list of 30 Myths That Define Cleveland
CLE Myths: Ohio Bell Building Inspired Superman
Was the building (now the AT&T building) the inspiration for Superman's Daily Planet?
