It's been 25 years since Cleveland's Greyhound bus station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Yet, it’s only been about eight months since the nonprofit Playhouse Square Foundation took ownership of the Streamline Moderne facility.
“We didn't buy it because we were desperate to buy a bus station,” said Playhouse Square CEO Craig Hassall. “We bought it because it was available for sale, to be honest, and it was right on our doorstep. It's a beautiful building and it could become a great performance space.”
For the next several months, Greyhound will continue to use the building on Chester Avenue. At the same time, Playhouse Square has commissioned a study by New York-based Streetsense on how to utilize the space. Hassall said he doesn’t want big box retail or something like a casino. He’d rather see the 76-year-old structure used as a kind of supper club.
“Not for Broadway shows, but you could have it as a cabaret space, burlesque or magic shows, or one-nighters,” he said.
He’s also in discussions with affiliate company Karamu House about programming for the station.
Hassall’s development plans also extend down the street to the former Cleveland Institute of Electronics building, which closed in 2022 and is now owned by Playhouse Square. Hassall said it could be used for rehearsal space as well as arts-based programming for people living with conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or dementia.
“It could be drumming or music or dance,” he said. “The idea is it would mitigate or reduce your symptoms over the period of your class. The building's in great shape. It was renovated just recently by a fellow who was using it as an office.”
Cuyahoga County records show combined sales prices of nearly $5 million for the station and electronics school. Hassall said he’d be “surprised” if the cost of repurposing both buildings exceeded $20 million.
The Greyhound station opened in 1948 and was built in the midst of the Great Migration, serving as a gateway for travelers seeking work in Northeast Ohio’s bustling economy. Hassall said that history will be honored thanks to Robert Louis Brandon Edwards, a Ph.D. student in historic preservation at Columbia University. He contacted the city, imploring them not to demolish the station. After working out arrangements with Playhouse Square, he’s moved to Cleveland and is working to create an installation, centered around and1947 Greyhound bus.
“In preservation, we tend to focus on the built environment: Buildings and places and landscapes,” he said. “We never really talk about the moments in between those buildings and sites. And a lot of the Black experience in America has taken place in between these sites. So, I thought, ‘How cool would it be if I could tell that story through a car, a truck, a bus?’ And then it reminded me of my childhood and listening to stories from my grandmother who migrated from Virginia to New York.”
Edwards considers the project both personal and academic, reflecting on what he has heard about travel in the Jim Crow era: Cars and air travel were expensive, and train depots weren’t as accessible as rural country roads.
“I took an inventory of different museums that interpret the Black experience in the bus and those sites only talk about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott or the Freedom Rides in 1961,” he said. “We don't talk about the everyday traveler.”
Hassall said he wants that to be an integral part of the redevelopment project.
“I'd be uncomfortable about taking over the bus station and just erasing the whole history of that building and making it just a sort of functional space,” Hassall said. “I really want to celebrate the history of the building as well.”
