CLEVELAND (Jun 16, 2020) – Bill Barrow, Head of Special Collections at Cleveland State University’s Michael Schwartz Library, has played a key role in the publishing of a work on the history and impact of Cleveland’s University Circle that was thirty years in the making. Written by Dr. Darwin Stapleton, the former Executive Director of the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York, The History of University Circle in Cleveland: Community, Philanthropy, and Planning details the 200-year history of Cleveland’s hub of medicine, education and culture.

In the early 1990’s, Barrow attended the Western Reserve Study Symposium when Dr. Stapleton was giving a seminar. In it, Dr. Stapleton mentioned an unpublished manuscript he had written on the history of University Circle. Years later, Barrow remembered that an unpublished manuscript on University Circle was out there and contacted Stapleton, asking if he would be willing to revise and publish the work, to which Stapleton graciously agreed.

“There just aren’t enough good books on University Circle in the world,” Barrow says. “If we hadn’t found Dr. Stapleton’s work, who knows if it would have seen the light of day.”

Detailing the district’s bicentennial history, Stapleton’s book charts University Circle’s role in the establishment of Cleveland, its status as Cleveland’s center of philanthropy and its storied planning process. From its start as a small but diverse suburb of Cleveland to the bustling, charismatic uptown community that it has become, the book encompasses the many changes that a neighborhood as old as this one has undergone.

Published in 2020, The History of University Circle in Cleveland: Community, Philanthropy, and Planning is available to the public as an e-book on the Cleveland State University Michael Schwartz Library’s Pressbooks website: pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu, under Barbara Loomis. This book is also part of the Cleveland Memory Project, an online database of historical texts and images regarding the Greater Cleveland area.

About Cleveland State University

Founded in 1964, Cleveland State University is a public research institution that provides a dynamic setting for Engaged Learning. With 17,000-plus students, ten colleges and schools and more than 175 academic programs, CSU was again chosen for 2019 as one of America’s best universities by U.S. News & World Report. Find more information at www.csuohio.edu.

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