The CLEVELAND THEATER was known as the city's melodrama hall. Built by Charles H. Bulkley on the northeast corner of St. Clair Ave. and East 2nd streets (the latter known as Middle St. until 1905), it served up a steady diet of dramatized blood, gore, massacre, and mayhem. It opened as a stock (resident company) theater under the management of Frank M. Drew on 19 Oct. 1885. The debut performance was Michael Strogoff, a Russian drama replete with duplicity, torture, and suicide. Its last show, in 1910, was The Chinatown Trunk Mystery, a whodunit steeped in murder, miscegenation and other dangerous encounters. In between, The Cleveland featured a variety of salacious productions interspersed with vaudeville shows, comic opera, and occasional moving pictures.
Like its entertainment fare, administrative shifts were frequent. Frank Drew quit at the close of the first season. In Sept. 1886, H. R. Jacobs purchased the theater, changed the name to H. R. Jacobs Theater, and opened with The Lights o' London, a popular play filled with duplicity and romantic misbehavior. On 7 Dec. 1891, the interior of the theater was damaged by fire. Jacobs reopened it on 21 Mar. 1892 with the Miller Opera Co. performing Ship Ahoy. Jacobs gave up the theater in the mid 1890s and the Brady & Stair syndicate subsequently secured possession and restored the original name. The new Cleveland Theater featured melodrama and variety shows, interspersed periodically with cinema. A few years later it returned to low-grade stock productions. After closing in 1910, the building was put to commercial uses. It burned to the ground on 11 Mar. 1912. The Union Paper & Twine Co. was its final occupant.
Updated by Christopher Roy 9 September 2024