Hope Memorial Bridge: The Guardians of Traffic

At each end of the Hope Memorial Bridge stand eight stone giants, more than forty feet tall, each cradling a different vehicle in his arms, a stagecoach, a covered wagon, a hay rack, a nineteen-thirties automobile, four types of trucks. Together they are called the Guardians of Traffic, and they are among the most extraordinary pieces of public art in Ohio.

The bridge itself was built to carry Lorain Avenue over the Cuyahoga River, replacing an earlier span that could not handle the weight of modern traffic. The bridge opened in nineteen thirty-two, in the depths of the Depression. The Art Deco design, by architect Frank Walker, combined sweeping geometric forms with the monumental sculptor Henry Hering's guardian figures, which were modeled loosely on Hermes, the Greek god of roads and travelers.

Each guardian holds a different mode of ground transport, arranged roughly in chronological order, as if the bridge itself is narrating the history of getting from one place to another. The figures were carved from Berea sandstone by local stonecutters.

For decades the bridge was known as the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. Then it was renamed in honor of William Henry Hope, a stonemason who had settled in Cleveland from England, and whose son became one of the most famous entertainers in American history. Bob Hope was born in Eltham, England in nineteen oh-three and grew up in Cleveland, making his way through vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood. The city honored his father, a craftsman who had worked Cleveland stone, by putting his name on the bridge the craftsmen built.

In twenty twenty-one the Cleveland Guardians baseball team took their new name from these very statues. The Guardians of Traffic had stood over the Cuyahoga for nearly ninety years before anyone thought to name a baseball team after them.