As Heinen’s closes its doors at the historic Cleveland Trust Company building this July, a significant piece of history remains inside the rotunda. For years, shoppers walked through the grocery store unaware that thirteen murals circling the dome above were the work of Francis Davis Millet, a renowned artist whose life ended in the North Atlantic.
Built in 1907, the architecture at the corner of East 9th Street and Euclid Avenue houses these depictions of Midwest civilization. Millet, who served as a drummer boy in the Civil War and worked as a journalist, spent a year in Cleveland alongside two assistants to complete these works. While the original small-scale renditions of these murals sat boxed and forgotten for over a century, the large-scale versions remain prominently displayed.
Millet held an impressive career that included his art hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His final commission, however, led him to board the RMS Titanic in 1912. He was among the passengers who perished when the ship collided with an iceberg. Although the grocery store vacated the space, the artistic legacy of a man lost to history on that voyage continues to watch over the downtown intersection.
Observers of local history now look toward the future of the vacant building. While the grocery store operations have ended, the murals represent a tangible link to a global tragedy and the artistic spirit of the early twentieth century. These paintings serve as a permanent fixture of Cleveland’s architectural identity.