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This south-facing wall between West 25th and West 26th holds several generations of Fries & Schuele advertising in one weathered surface.

The oldest visible layer appears to be a large painted version of the store’s name spread across the upper brickwork. At some point, Fries & Schuele repainted the name in a slightly different position, leaving one set of letters over another. As the later paint faded, both versions began to show through. That overlap is why the wall looks unusually busy and difficult to read today.

The yellow message came later. “PATRONS PARKING” and a yellow arrow were painted across the older store-name lettering, directing customers toward West 26th. Rather than removing the earlier sign, the store simply reused the wall. What remains is a layered record of the building’s commercial life: an early company name, a later repaint, then a parking message added as more customers began arriving by automobile.

Lower on the wall, the smaller boxed ghost sign reads “The Fries & Schuele Company” and “Peerless Blue Stamps.” These stamps were part of the store’s customer savings program, promoted from at least the 1910s into the early 1930s.

Fries & Schuele began in 1868 on Pearl Street, now West 25th, and grew from a dry goods business into a six-floor department store extending through the block to West 26th. It sold clothing, carpets, curtains, furnishings and household goods, serving generations of shoppers in the Market District beside the West Side Market.

The store closed on January 13, 1979, after more than a century in business. The building later found new residential and commercial uses, but these fading signs still preserve its changing identity, from the repeated store name to customer parking and the Blue Stamp program once used to keep shoppers returning.

West Side Market, Cleveland, Ohio- July 31, 2026

These aerials show just how much work is underway across the property.

The North Arcade is heavily under construction as part of the market’s larger transformation. Once complete, it is planned as a prepared-food hall with space for up to 12 locally owned food and beverage businesses, along with indoor and outdoor seating. The area between the arcade and Market Hall is also planned as a public courtyard with covered connections between the buildings.

The KeyBank Produce Arcade remains open and continues serving shoppers during construction.

The large masonry structure rising in the lot north of the arcade is the market’s permanent utility yard. It will house major infrastructure, including a new backup generator. That work is tied to a much broader upgrade of the property’s electrical systems, refrigeration, heating and cooling, and overall power resiliency.

Some of the biggest changes are happening below ground. Crews are rebuilding the century-old basement with improved food storage, vendor prep and cleaning areas, and the market’s first onsite commercial kitchen.

Cleveland, tonight is shaping up to be a great patio night, so we might as well make the most of it. Where are you heading for Friday happy hour?

Here is a full 360-degree look at the West Side Market renovation in Ohio City, with several phases of the project visible at once. Drag through the image to take in the full scene.

The fresh gray roofs wrapping the market mark one of the most visible exterior improvements, with restoration work completed on the historic arcades. The KeyBank Produce Arcade has reopened, while the North Arcade remains part of the next phase. Once finished, the North Arcade is planned to become a prepared-food hall with space for locally owned vendors, adding new food options and giving the market a stronger year-round draw beyond traditional shopping.

You can also see the new structure taking shape in the parking area north of the North Arcade. That is part of the market’s permanent utility yard, which will house a backup generator and other infrastructure needed to support the larger renovation.

A lot of the work happening now is behind the scenes, but it will have a long impact. The project includes a major basement overhaul, improved vendor support areas, upgraded electrical systems, modern refrigeration, a commercial kitchen, and HVAC improvements throughout the Market Hall and arcades. Together, those changes are meant to help preserve one of Cleveland’s most important public spaces while making it more functional for the next generation of vendors and visitors.

The current Market Hall opened in 1912, replacing the earlier Pearl Street Market that served this corner in the 1800s. This view captures another major chapter in that long history, with restoration, infrastructure, and future public spaces all taking shape at once.

A different perspective on Cleveland’s skyline

These views show the now-demolished parking garage behind Cleveland’s Rockefeller Building at West 6th Street and Superior Avenue.

Built in 1925, the five-level garage covered about 43,600 square feet. It had been out of use for years, and a 2021 engineering report concluded that adapting it for modern parking or another use was not financially practical. The Cleveland Landmarks Commission approved its demolition that same year.

The property’s history reaches back much further. The Rockefeller Building was constructed from 1903 to 1905 on the former site of the Weddell House, a well-known Cleveland hotel that opened in 1847. John D. Rockefeller commissioned the office building, which was expanded westward in 1910. For decades, it housed companies tied to Cleveland’s iron, coal and Great Lakes shipping industries.

K&D Group purchased the long-vacant building in April 2026. Its current plan calls for roughly 275 apartments inside the historic tower, along with interior demolition, asbestos abatement and cleanup before the larger renovation can move forward. The developer has said financing and the condition of the building will make the full project a multi-year effort.

Plans for the former garage site include a new parking structure with about 500 spaces, topped by a pool deck and residential amenities. That portion remains a future proposal, so the final design and construction timeline could still change.

For now, the demolished garage is the first major physical change at a downtown property that has been sitting in limbo for years.

This row on West 9th Street is one of the clearest surviving pieces of 19th-century Cleveland.

West 9th was once called Water Street. From the bluff above the Cuyahoga River, it stood close to lake shipping, rail lines and the commercial traffic moving through the Flats. After the Civil War, the area became part of Cleveland’s wholesale district, where merchants handled furniture, dry goods, groceries, hardware and other goods arriving by rail and water. Water Street became West 9th during the city’s street and address reorganization in 1906.

One of the block’s most unusual survivors is the Hart Building. Furniture dealer William Hart constructed a four-story building here in 1853 after an earlier location was destroyed by fire. In 1868, he added a nine-foot-wide section in the narrow space between his building and the newly completed Crittenden Block. Now numbered 1374 West 9th, it is considered the narrowest building in downtown Cleveland.

Its gray facade is easy to identify in these photographs. Arched openings, decorative window hoods and a steep upper gable give the tiny structure a presence far beyond its width. Hart once visually joined the original building and the narrow addition with ornamental metalwork and a mansard roof. Later alterations exposed more of the brick and made the two sections easier to distinguish.

Gray’s Block and the neighboring Crittenden Block also date to 1868. Together, they show how Water Street developed one narrow parcel at a time. Merchants built upward to make the most of limited land near the river, rail lines and lakefront shipping routes.

No two facades along the row are quite alike. Red brick, pale stone trim, tall arched windows, carved window caps and projecting cornices gave each business its own identity. The architecture was practical, but it also advertised the merchant inside.

By the late 20th century, much of the surrounding district had emptied or been demolished. This block remains a compact record of the commercial city that once lined Water Street.

A rarer Cleveland view looking east down St. Clair into the skyline.

This 360-degree panorama looks across one of the largest remaining surface parking lots in downtown Cleveland, a 2.3-acre site at 1365 West 9th Street.

This part of downtown was once known as Water Street. During Cleveland’s earliest decades, it stood near the edge of the original settlement, overlooking the river, lakefront and busy landing places below. Lorenzo Carter, one of the city’s first permanent settlers, built a log tavern nearby in 1803. That tavern later became the meeting place where Trinity Parish was organized in 1816. The site was eventually replaced by the Western Reserve Building, completed in 1892 from designs by the office of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham.

As Cleveland expanded during the 1800s, the neighborhood changed from a residential area into the center of the city’s wholesale trade. Warehouses, offices and commercial blocks clustered above the Cuyahoga River, close to rail lines, docks and shipping routes. By the late 19th century, businesses dealing in groceries, dry goods, hardware, furniture, iron, coal, oil and railroad supplies filled these streets. The Warehouse District preserves buildings dating from roughly 1850 through the early 20th century and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Several important survivors remain along West 9th.

Gray’s Block, now generally included within the Lorenzo Carter Building at 1354 to 1368 West 9th Street, is part of a closely packed row of historic commercial structures on the west side of the street. Nearby are the Hart Block and the older section associated with the Lorenzo Carter Building. Together, these narrow brick buildings preserve the scale of Cleveland’s pre-skyscraper commercial district, when individual merchants built upward on relatively small parcels rather than assembling an entire city block.

Just beyond it, the Crittenden Block dates to 1868. The Hart Building includes an 1868 addition and a later cast-iron-fronted section associated with Cleveland’s furniture trade. Its ornamental metal facade belongs to the same architectural tradition seen in the commercial districts of New York’s SoHo and Tribeca. The building later became part of the Warehouse District’s residential revival, with upper floors converted to condominiums.

The three-story Hilliard Building, erected in 1850, is considered Cleveland’s oldest surviving commercial building. It is an unusually direct connection to the period when West 9th was still Water Street and downtown Cleveland remained concentrated near the river.

Farther along West 9th stands the Western Reserve Building at 1468 West 9th. Built in 1891 and 1892, it reflects the transition between traditional masonry construction and the steel-framed office towers that would reshape American cities. Before it stood there, the property held Carter’s early tavern.

The large Otis Terminal building at West 9th and St. Clair represents the district’s later industrial period. Completed in the early 20th century for the William Edwards Company, it occupies a far larger footprint than the narrow commercial blocks nearby. That difference in scale shows how Cleveland’s wholesale trade grew from small merchant buildings into massive distribution operations.

The parking lot below the panorama is another layer of the neighborhood’s history, although a far less decorative one. It occupies about 2.3 acres at the southeast corner of West 9th Street and St. Clair Avenue and contains roughly 350 parking spaces. The property has been offered for sale more than once since 2019. In June 2026, geotechnical crews were seen taking soil samples, raising hopes that the land might finally return to active urban use.

That possibility makes the panorama especially interesting. A piece of land surrounded by historic buildings, existing apartments, restaurants, offices and transit could accommodate a significant new development. It could also remain much as it appears here, an open field of asphalt separating West 9th from the downtown skyline.

Another major change is already visible nearby. The obsolete parking garage behind the Rockefeller Building at West 6th Street and Superior Avenue was demolished recently. The garage dated to 1925 and had been approved for removal by the Cleveland Landmarks Commission in 2021 after engineers concluded that adapting it for modern use was not practical. Crews preserved the decorative arch from the vehicle entrance for possible incorporation into its replacement.

K&D Group purchased the 17-story Rockefeller Building in April 2026 and has proposed converting it into approximately 275 apartments. Longer-term plans call for a new 500-space garage behind the building, with public parking and a rooftop amenity deck. The project still requires substantial environmental cleanup, interior demolition and financing, so the full redevelopment is expected to take several years.

Move through the panorama and look beyond the empty spaces between the cars. The brick walls, cast-iron details, old loading floors and narrow building fronts are remnants of the district that helped turn Cleveland into a national center of shipping, manufacturing and wholesale commerce. Much of that original city was lost to demolition and surface parking during the 20th century. The buildings that remain along West 9th survived because preservationists and developers began adapting them for housing, offices and retail during the 1980s and 1990s.

The unanswered question is whether this lot will eventually help reconnect those surviving buildings, or whether downtown Cleveland’s largest blank space will continue to be used for storing cars.