As if they owned the here and now. But something was different about this scene. You could tell by how far away they were holding their smartphone cameras, stretching their arms out to capture as much of the background as their faces in the foreground. They wanted to capture this place – because it looked special, different, stunning.The intricate glass and gears; the shiny, hulking steel. The feeling that you're in another time, in a place so elaborate that no one today could afford to build something like this. That's because no one could – because this newfound backdrop of sleek partying is an age-old signifier of power. This bar used to be a bank. The Vault, a just-opened nightclub consisting of a maze of rooms and, yes, vaults, is located in The 9. The much-anticipated project is breathing new life into a longtime dead zone in downtown Cleveland – the old Ameritrust complex on East Ninth Street. For years, the complex sat empty and in danger of a death sentence, courtesy of a wrecking ball.
It was a fine example of American ruin porn – a striking tower designed by modernist master Marcel Breuer rotting away in broad daylight. Next to it, the circa-1908 Cleveland Trust rotunda sat shuttered – a neoclassical temple to Cleveland's once-great financial status and an embarrassing reminder of how far the city had fallen. It is these two extremes – Cleveland's financial heyday and its collapse – that has led to a wave of banks being repurposed as bars and restaurants. "Cleveland is so lucky to have so many of these great old banks and buildings that are finding new life as something else," said Keith Halfmann, chief operating officer of Geis Hospitality Group, which oversees the Vault. "Cleveland was such a large and wealthy city at one point." Like many Midwest cities, Cleveland came of age during the rise of American industry. The city grew an astounding 560 percent from 1880 to 1930, when it reached a population of 900,429. The era also marks the golden age of banking – and the building of countless, elaborate banks – before the Wall Street crash of 1929 that signaled the start of the Great Depression.
That might sound like the opening line of a history lesson that would put many to sleep. But that's not to say the Vault's cocktail list doesn't appropriate the past, offering such drinks as the rum-infused "Carnegie Steel" or the bourbon-powered "Cleveland Trust Co." Whether they were aware of the particulars of history, the selfie set seemed enamored with the residue of that past partying at the Vault. Residue and years of neglect is all Halfmann saw when he first saw the place. He was working in Milwaukee in hospitality management and came in to interview for the job. "We walked around with flashlights, but I was blown away with the vaults, the big doors, the Tiffany in the rotunda, the marble that is 3 inches thick," he says. "If you could just peel away the layers, you could recapture the pride of Cleveland." It's a refrain you hear often when it comes to repurposed banks. Of course, it starts with double-take, as Rockefeller's owner Michael Adams discovered.
"Ninety percent of the people that walk in are like, 'Holy ... what is this place?' " says Adams, pointing to the striking French Norman-style architecture and arches in his Cleveland Heights bar and restaurant. "Then I show them the vault, and it all makes sense to them." These days, you're likely to see the chef in the vault, which leads to the kitchen area. In 1930, you might've seen John D. Rockefeller, who built the joint. It operated as a bank until 1998. "Banks were built with such grandeur back then, and they don't even come close to that today," says Adams. "They're all cookie-cutter and could just as well be a bank or a CVS – everything looks the same, which is why a place like this is priceless when it comes to creating an atmosphere." Like many converted banks, the milieu of the past informs others aspects of the operation, from the classic cocktail list to the menu to the musical backdrop. Rockefeller's rolls out jazz bands like the North Coast Jazz Collective – creating a gentle, soft din that feels like yesteryear hovering over the place.
"You know why it's soft and gentle?" says Adams. "Look at this woodwork, still original. Rockefeller built this place to last a long time." That's how so many of these buildings lived on, even as the city was dying. By the end of the 1970s, a decade in which Cleveland lost a staggering 23.6 percent of its population, many of its old bank buildings avoided the wrecking ball, even if the neighborhood around them struggled. "Banks survive because they're the sturdiest buildings you'll find," says Virginia Barsan, who owns the building that houses Luxe, a former bank that is now a bar-eatery in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood. Barsan runs her longtime family business next door, the Pioneer Savings Bank. The conversion of the building that houses Luxe started in 1992. But the roots of bank conversions started long before that, with her father, Elie Barsan. "Banks were everywhere in Cleveland in 1920s – every nationality had one," says Virginia Barsan, who is Romanian.
"When the Great Depression hit, many of them closed and people like my dad would buy them and convert them into offices or bars." "Just look at a vault," she adds. "The concrete around it is 56 inches thick, and it's cost-prohibitive to bring it down – and it's always the last thing to go, even if you want to tear down the building." Luxe still flaunts its circa-1925 vault. So does Dante, which transformed the vault into a private dining booth. The Tremont eatery sits in the oldLincoln Heights Savings and Loan, which opened in 1924. Hyde Park uses its vault area for an exclusive dining area. The downtown eatery is in the old Midland Bank in the Landmark Office Towers, built between 1928 and 1931 by the famed Van Sweringen Brothers. "Everyone loves vaults," says Robert Ivanov, owner of Touch Supper Club on Lorain Avenue in Ohio City. The bar-eatery-nightclub sits in a circa-1920 bank, and the vault provides the backdrop to the DJ area. "It's one of the first things [people] talk about, and then they'll notice the marble and the woodwork," he adds.
"It sets your place apart." Across the street, it seemed that the old United Bank and Trust Building was just another hunk of junk relegated to the dustbin of history. The Beaux-Arts architectural gem, on the corner of Lorain Avenue and West 25th Street, sat empty for eight years until it reopened as Crop. Built in 1925, the bank perished soon after the crash of '29. It muddled through over the decades, despite the grandiose splendor of the building, which features a striking 12-by-20-foot mural on the wall. "You'll never see anything being built like Crop or the Vault these days," says Halfmann, as he heads through the labyrinth of hallways leading to one of the club's four vaults. "It would cost too much money – this is history coming back to life in a new, modern way." I sipped on a "York Safe & Lock Co.," named after the old area company that made most of the vaults for Cleveland banks in the 1920s. Near me there were three women dressed in 21st-century clubbing attire, talking selfies of one another in front of the glass and gears and steel.