A History
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The Hangar was built in 1930 as part of the Dudley S. Blossom estate, in what was then Lyndhurst and is now Beachwood, Ohio. Many estates and country houses of that era incorporated private sports facilities, and the Hangar was to be a “gymkana” that would make “vigorous summer sports accessible and practicable year round.” Glass roofs cover both a swimming pool and tennis court (the only indoor har-tru court in the Cleveland area today), allowing for natural light and warmth during the winter.
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Dudley Blossom was a successful Cleveland businessman, but he and his wife Elizabeth Blossom (née Bingham) are more widely known for their philanthropy, in particular their support of the musical arts. For instance, Blossom Music Center, the amphitheater in Cuyahoga Falls that is the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra, was named for them.
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The Blossoms had their longtime friend Abram Garfield (son of President James A. Garfield) design the Hangar. Garfield, who would found the school of architecture that would be folded into Case Western Reserve University, had designed many other homes, including the Mather House at CWRU and the Hay-McKinney Mansion of the Western Reserve Historical Society. He had also designed the Blossoms’ Tudor Revival home in Lyndhurst, which was built about a decade before the Hangar was added.
The Hangar was Garfield’s first and only foray into the design style that had swept the world since the 1925 exhibition in Paris, “arts decoratifs.” That exposition debuted a modern style characterized by a streamlined classicism, and geometric and symmetrical compositions. In Cleveland other great examples of Art Deco can be found at Severance Hall, the pylons of the Hope Memorial bridge, and the “Muse with the Violin” screen at the Cleveland Museum of Art, just to name a few. But the Hangar is a standout of Art Deco splendor.
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“The Hangar shows the fluency that Abram Garfield had,” said Dean Zimmerman, Chief Curator of the Western Reserve Historical Society from 1986-1992. “He’d worked in Colonial Revival, in Beaux-Arts … yet this was cutting-edge.”
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Garfield’s daily diary entries from the summer of 1930 show frequent mentions of the Blossom project, though he referred to it mostly as the Blossom tennis court. “Stopped at the Blossom tennis court, coming along very well,” for example, and “almost completed, and I believe, a meaningful piece of work. Mural work very interesting, and I believe the building is a success.”
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The real magic of the Hangar is in its interior spaces. The mural work that Garfield mentions in his diary is one of the first things that will stand out to visitors. Guests who arrive in the main lounge are immediately surrounded by a vivid, sea-themed wall mural that leads upward to a sapphire-glass tray ceiling, from which hangs a sleek, silvery chandelier. The mural is signed “June Platt, 1930.”
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June Platt and her husband, Joseph, were a pair of powerful tastemakers in the 1930’s, ‘40’s and beyond. Joseph Platt decorated sets for Hollywood films, including “Gone with the Wind’ and Hitchcock’s “Rebecca.” June Platt, daughter of a well-known sculptor named Rudolf Evans, went on to become a nationally famous author of cookbooks and guides to entertaining, as well as a wallpaper designer. The Platts lived mainly in New York and later Paris. The only other known mural attributed to the Platts is at the Country Club of Detroit.
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Another superb interior detail of the Hangar is the sea-themed, decorative railing that surrounds the pool area. The railing was designed by Martin Rose of Rose Iron Works, a nationally renowned firm at the time.
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Since the late 1940’s, the Hangar has been a private club that members use for swimming, tennis, gatherings and parties. The Hangar has hosted large weddings in its decorative interior spaces and on its beautiful tennis court. Today it is owned by Charles Bolton, whose great-aunt was Blossom’s wife, Elizabeth. Bolton and his wife, Julia, oversaw the building’s restoration in the mid-1980’s with Cleveland firm Residence Artists.
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The Hangar is a gem,” said Paul Westlake, Principal Architect at Westlake Reed Leskosky, the firm that evolved out of Abram Garfield’s architecture firm. “It tells a unique story of the sophistication and wealth that Clevelanders had.” For this reason, the Hangar was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, and in 2021, a foundation was formed to ensure that the building survives for another century.