Happy birthday Cleveland! A historic photo tour in honor of Founders' Day

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Happy birthday Cleveland! Turning 222 is a pretty big deal.

You've been through a lot in the last 200-plus years. Ups and down and highs and lows and more highs, from your founding on the river to your downtown rebirth in the 2000s.

Story by Plain Dealer Reporter Laura DeMarco

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

Moses Cleaveland

The city was founded on July 22, 1796, when General Moses Cleaveland of the Connecticut Land Company arrived at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River and decided the area would be the new "capital city" of the Connecticut Western Reserve

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Library of Congress

Public Square

Cleaveland didn't stay in his namesake long, leaving after a few months never to return - but not before laying out Public Square in the New England style of his home (pictured c 1910). Since then, the area he founded has grown into a major American city- not as big as it was at its peak, but a city on its rise again.

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Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer

Public Square today

In 2016, Public Square was returned to much the way Cleaveland, who still oversees it in statue form, envisioned.

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Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer

Founders' Day party

In honor of the city's founding, University Circle is throwing an early Founders' Day party, from noon to 2 p.m. Friday at Wade Oval.

There will be free birthday cake and ice cream, bounce houses, face painting, free rides on the beloved Euclid Beach Rocket Car, bubblepalooza with Dr. UR Awesome, Games on the Green and the highlight of the day: Solar Car Racing (courtesy of Motorcars in Cleveland Heights). Using a kit, kids can construct and decorate "cars" made out of aluminum cans. They will then race the cars on a special ramp on Wade Oval for the opportunity to win prizes. Solar car kits may be picked up in advance at the University Circle Inc. office (10831 Magnolia Drive).

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Public Square, 1910s

In honor of the anniversary, here’s a trip back in time to some of Cleveland’s most memorable moments and places of the 222 years.

In the 1910s, Public Square was filled with streetcars, very different from today. But some of the same buildings we see in 2018 were there, including the Federal Building and US Courthouse, center, the first building on Cleveland's Mall Plan, completed in 1910.

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National Archives

Settler's Landing

Today, the spot where Moses founded Cleveland, pictured in the 1970s, is a lovely park in the Flats.

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Sun News

Lorenzo Carter's cabin

Cleveland's first permanent settler, Lorenzo Carter, built a cabin on the east bank of the Cuyahoga River. A replica was built in 1976 for the American bicentennial.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

Dunham Tavern

Early settlers Rufus and Jane Pratt Dunham landed at 6709 Euclid Avenue from Massachusetts in 1819. The first building on the site was a log cabin, which served as the Dunhams’ home until they began their permanent house in 1824. It also served as a tavern on the Buffalo Stage Road. Today, the former house-tavern is a museum.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

Millionaire's Row

From the 1870s to 1930s, the stretch of Euclid Avenue east of Ninth Street was known as Millionaire's Row. It was home to the creme de la creme of Cleveland society. By the '30s, Cleveland's wealthy began to move to the East Side and the mansions were largely abandoned, then demolished.

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Library of Congress

Doan's Corners

Cleveland's second downtown, at Euclid Avenue and East 105th to 107th, began in the stage coach-era when Nathaniel Doan settled it in 1799. The opening of the Alhambra in 1911 began its heyday as a vibrant residential and entertainment district. By the 1980s, most of the area had been demolished.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockfeller, pictured in New York in 1910, built Cleveland - literally and figuratively. His founding of Standard Oil in the Flats in 1870 spurred the rise of industry in Cleveland, helping make it one of the wealthiest cities in the world. His philanthropy led to many of the museum, parks and schools still in existence today.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

1920s, Jazz Age

By the 1920s, Cleveland was the fifth largest city in America, and one of the wealthiest. Many Clevelanders lived in luxurious downtown residential hotels, like the Winton on East 12th and Prospect Avenue.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

1930s, Great Lakes Expo

The 1930s was a dramatic time in Cleveland, with the Torso Murderer, 1936 Republican National Convention and Great Lakes Expo of 1936-37 attracting national attention. Located on 135 acres on the lakefront, the Expo was demolished in 1937.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

1940s, homefront

Clevelanders threw themselves into the war effort in the 1940s, on the front and at home. The land that is now Tri-C Western Campus served as Crile Military Hospital during the war, serving wounded soldiers and even holding injured POWs.

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Cleveland Memory Project

1950s, thriving city

Cleveland was a thriving city in the post-War era, with a population that approached a million people in the '50s. Progress and population were driven by Eastern European immigrants fleeing communism and African-Americans migrating from the South in search of good jobs in Cleveland's bustling factories.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

1960s, time of turmoil

The 1960s were a time of turmoil, job loss, race riots and suburban flight in Cleveland. The 1966 Hough Riots, pictured, shone a spotlight on the poverty and overcrowding that affected many of Cleveland's African-American neighborhoods. White flight to the suburbs and the loss of factory jobs led the city's population to begin to decline.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

Carl Stokes

The meteoric rise of Carl Burton Stokes from a high school drop-out who grew up in Cleveland's Outhwaite Homes to becoming the first black mayor of a major American city in 1967 is well known. Less well known, but significant in Cleveland history, is Stokes role as an environmentalist. Following the historic burning river of 1969, Stokes turned his focus to cleaning up Cleveland's beach and riverfronts, making him one of the first in America to do so.

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National Archives

1970s, a gritty city

Cleveland lost 23.6 percent of its population in the 1970s, as the loss of manufacturing jobs and suburban flight took a huge toll. And that was just the beginning ... Cleveland also became the first major American city since the Great Depression to default on its loans. Downtown became a ghost town, with Playhouse Square headed for demolition. Violent mob wars and rampant pollution also made national headlines.

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Plain Dealer Historica Photograph Collectoin

1980s and '90s, rock bottom

The 1980s and '90s were dark decades for Cleveland, as downtown was left for dead and population continued to decline. Many historic buildings were demolished in the decade. Perhaps no loss was more tragic than that of the Cuyahoga and Williamson Buildings, two of Cleveland's earliest skyscrapers, at Public Square.

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2000s, rebirth

The renaissance of downtown, and Cleveland, in the 2000s has its roots in the decision to save Playhouse Square in the 1970s. Not only has Playhouse Square been spectacularly reborn. Public Square was restored to Moses Cleaveland's original vision in 2016. Downtown residential rates are the highest in decades, and numerous other buildings, including the historic Cleveland Trust Rotunda and Tower at East Ninth have been restored and reborn for new generations of Clevelanders.