Heinen’s murals in downtown Cleveland rotunda pained by artist who went down with Titanic

The Cleveland Trust Company building at the corner of East 9th Street and Euclid Avenue holds a piece of history that remains even as Heinen’s closes its downtown location. High above the grocery aisles, thirteen murals depict the growth of civilization in the Midwest. These works of art come from the hands of Francis Davis Millet, a man whose life matched the scale of his professional output.

Millet served as a drummer boy and surgical assistant during the Civil War before reporting as a journalist in the Russian-Turkish War. He eventually gained recognition as a muralist with works displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His time in Cleveland during the early 1900s resulted in the rotunda murals that define the space of the former bank building.

His final journey occurred in 1912 when he booked a first-class ticket on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. The collision with an iceberg on April 14 ended his life at age 65. His body was later recovered and buried in Massachusetts.

For years, shoppers walked through the rotunda without knowing the identity of the artist above them. While the store at this location may be shuttered, the thirteen murals remain as a permanent record of an artist who perished in one of history’s most famous maritime disasters.