The Rock Hall Fight: Why Cleveland Won
Near Cleveland, Ohio
Six cities wanted the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Memphis had Sun Studio and Stax Records. Detroit had Motown. Cincinnati had King Records. Philadelphia had American Bandstand. New York had almost everything. Cleveland had Alan Freed.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was created in nineteen eighty-three, and it spent three years searching for a permanent home. On May fifth, nineteen eighty-six, it announced that the museum would be built in Cleveland. The case the city made rested on two arguments: that a WJW disc jockey named Alan Freed had coined the phrase "rock and roll" on Cleveland radio beginning in nineteen fifty-one, and that the Moondog Coronation Ball of March nineteen fifty-two was the first major rock and roll concert. Cleveland was, the argument went, where it had started.
The city also pledged sixty-five million dollars in public money toward construction. That was not a small consideration.
Architect I.M. Pei designed the building: a glass pyramid and geometric forms on the lakefront, deliberately monumental, the kind of structure that says the argument has been settled. It opened on September first, nineteen ninety-five, with an induction ceremony that lasted seven hours.
The other cities have never entirely accepted the outcome. Memphis maintains its claim through Graceland and Beale Street. Detroit maintains its claim through Motown. The Hall of Fame maintains its claim by being in Cleveland, which in the end is the strongest argument of all.
