The Union Commerce Building was built by the Union Trust Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and was originally known as the Union Trust Building. The Union Trust Company purchased six land parcels in downtown Cleveland in 1920-1924 and built two office buildings on the site that were connected above a dedicated alley. The main building consisted of twenty-one stories located at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East Ninth Street. It housed the Union Bank of Commerce, retail stores, an Arcade, and offices. The annex building, facing Chester Avenue on East Ninth Street, housed retail stores, offices, and an engine room in four stories. The Union Trust Company failed in 1933, and the banking space remained vacant until the State Banking Department took over the bank and created Union Properties, Inc., to liquidate the assets of Union Trust. The building's name was changed in 1938 to Union Commerce Building. The Union Bank of Commerce acquired the building at public auction in 1949.
The building was designed by the Chicago, Illinois, firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White and was erected at a cost of $17 million. The building remained essentially unchanged until it was purchased by the First Union Real Estate Investments Trust in 1961 and seven stories were added to part of the building that had been topped off at the fourteenth floor. The building included an L-shaped, three-story banking room which was the country's largest when it was built in 1924. This banking room underwent a $6 million renovation in 1973. The building also boasted four large murals by Jules Guerin.
In 1983, the building was sold to a partnership that included Carl D. Glickman. The name of the building was changed to the Huntington Building when Huntington National Bank of Columbus took over the Union Commerce Corporation and engaged the entire building under a master lease from its owner, Chester Union Associates and First Union Realty.
The Union Commerce Building Records, 1948, consist of a building appraisal completed by Ostendorf-Morris Company at the request of the noteholders committee of Union Properties, Inc.
The appraisal includes photographs of the building and surrounding area; identification of the property; maps of the area; descriptions of downtown Cleveland, Ohio; automobile and pedestrian traffic statistics; parking, hotel room, and office space statistics for the area; a history of the building itself; a valuation of the land occupied by the building; a physical description of the interior and exterior of the building; a valuation of the building; an analysis of the rental value of the property; and a report on income and expenses for the building.
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the architecture, buildings, and property values in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 1940s. Those studying the history of the Union Commerce Building (now known as the Huntington Building) will find this collection particularly useful.
The collection has been retained in original order and is maintained in two folders.
Processed by Margaret Burzynski-Bays in 2014.
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 5223 Union Commerce Building Records, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Gift of James O. Roberts, president of Management Planning, Inc., in 1991.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.