For years, the manually operated traffic tower glowered over hordes of drivers at East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue. But the intersection wasn’t always the site of vehicular mayhem. Plain Dealer reporter S.J. Kelly, writing in 1938, conjured a time 70 years earlier when a vacant lot, a brick church, an apartment building, a doctor’s office and a pasture occupied the corner.
But the Cleveland of the 1920s and 1930s, when the tower was probably constructed, was more inclined toward the vroom vrooming of combustion engines than the clopping of a horse and buggy. Traffic signals imposed some order. Many were outfitted with the creation of African-American inventor Garrett Morgan, who thought up a signal with an intermediate yellow light and sold his invention to General Electric in 1923.
By 1939, the ornately styled traffic tower had come to an undignified retirement. George Spaller, who may have once operated it, stood inside the toppled giant, a symbol of a changing age.
A. T. Burch, the editor of The Cleveland Press, was asked about the tower during a trivia contest. “It was taken down because it was a nuisance. It’s harder to explain why it was put up,” Burch joked, according to The Plain Dealer. “It was sold to Cleveland, Alabama, and until somebody proves me wrong, I’ll say it was melted up to make bullets for use in the Chinese-Japanese war.”
1939: East 9th-Euclid Avenue Traffic Tower Retires
George Spaller, who may have once operated it, stands in the toppled giant.
