Credit: Light Our Guardians FB
There are few more iconic visuals in Cleveland, save for the Terminal Tower, than the Guardians of Traffic on the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. They’ve long been visual shorthand for Cleveland, gracing t-shirts, professional marketing photographs, a million Instagram shots and TV commercials, and while we may feel they belong to Us, a question we’ve never thought to ask is who they actually belong to.

That question arose recently thanks to Cleveland businessman Dave LaSalvia who, after noticing that six of the eight guardians’ lights were out, started asking around about who was responsible for fixing them. The answer, from the city of Cleveland, ODOT, Cuyahoga County and Cleveland Public Power: Uh, not us. The Light Our Guardians Facebook page has documented some of his travails in his pursuit of the answer, and this week News Channel 5’s Joe Pagonakis took up the case, getting the same run-around.

“We’ve been communicating with five or six agencies,” Cleveland city Councilman Kerry McCormack told Pago. “Figuring out who is responsible for the lighting should be simpler than this, there’s no doubt about it. We want them lit. I jokingly said I’d go up there and do it myself.”

Pago asked City Hall, which said it was the county’s problem. He then asked the County, which said not only is it the city’s responsibility, but it’s the third time in a year that City Hall has tried to slough off the work on the County.

“There must be some way that we can get them all lit and let them all shine,” LaSalvia told Channel 5, “which is exactly what I think most people in Cleveland want.”

This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2017.

Vince Grzegorek has been with Scene since 2007 and editor-in-chief since 2012. He previously worked at Discount Drug Mart and Texas Roadhouse.

4 replies on “No One Seems to Know Who’s Responsible for Fixing the Lights on the Guardians of Traffic Statues”

  1. With Joe Pagonakis on the case, there WILL be light!

    Hope he continues to follow up. Those statues are too unique and cool to be blacked out. Not too many other places have such cool icons.

    When there were a ton of complaints about the dark underpasses on MLK and I-90, the local TV news outlets made noise until they were fixed. Not sure if that was Joe’s doing, though. Might have been either Ch. 3 or Ch. 8…

    Chuckles the Clown

  2. My great grandfather helped quarry those stones from Berea Quarry. I’m so very proud of them.

  3. While they’re re-lighting the Guardians, can we PLEASE get the rest of the bridges re-lit like they were in 1996?!? The bridges were so cool until about 10 years ago when they really started going completely out. I really don’t understand why the coolest simplest things in this town aren’t seen as a point of pride, but just a line item in a budget. This should have been done last year for RNC!

  4. When I was a kid those things scared me to death. I’d get on the floor of the car to hide from them when we crossed the bridge – possible because there were no seat belts then. Now I think they’re really cool.

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