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Cleveland, Ohio is the second largest city in Ohio and seat of Cuyahoga County, located where the Cuyahoga River enters Lake Erie. A major manufacturing and commercial center, it ranks as one of the chief ports on the Great Lakes, and the city has long functioned as a collecting point for highway and railroad traffic from the Midwest. In the 1990s Cleveland developed new cultural, sports, and entertainment attractions in the downtown area and increased its vitality.

The eastern part of the Cleveland metropolitan area lies on the Appalachian Plateau at an elevation of about 1,100 feet, while the western part sits upon the Lake Plain and associated terraces at about 600 feet. The eastern area’s higher elevation results in significantly greater snowfalls in winter. Annual precipitation, measured at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport in the west, is about 37 inches and falls evenly throughout the year. Temperatures in the city are moderated by its location on Lake Erie. The average high in January is 32° and the average low is 18°; average high in July is 82° and the average low is 61°.

Cleveland is named for Moses Cleaveland, who laid out the city as part of a survey in 1796. The spelling of the name was later shortened; one story holds that it was done by a newspaper editor in order to fit the name in the newspaper’s masthead.

Most of the northern and downtown sections of Cleveland lie on terraces between 60 and 80 feet above Lake Erie. These terraces are divided by the valley of the Cuyahoga River, which flows northward through Cleveland. The valley, called the Flats, was once the city’s main industrial section but has since been converted into an entertainment district, with numerous restaurants and nightclubs in renovated warehouses on both banks of the river. High bridges across the Flats link the commercial and residential areas to its east and west.

The heart of the central business district is Public Square, on a lake terrace east of the Flats. The square contains a large monument to participants in the American Civil War (1861-1865) and statues of city founder Moses Cleaveland and of one of America’s greatest reform mayors, Tom L. Johnson, who served from 1901 to 1909. Public Square is the focal point of several main thoroughfares and is dominated by the 52-story Terminal Tower (1929), which for several decades was the tallest building in the United States west of New York. Terminal Tower’s lower concourse, originally the station for the New York Central Railroad, was renovated in 1990 into an open three-level development of retail stores and restaurants known as Tower City. Other important retail complexes in the downtown are The Galleria, a collection of stores in a mall-like, ultra-modern building; and the Arcade, a magnificently restored late 19th century three-story shopping and office arcade listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Euclid Avenue, which runs eastward from Public Square, formerly was the main retail concentration, but its shopping influence is today greatly reduced. Eastward along Euclid Avenue is the University Circle area, a neighborhood of educational, medical, and cultural facilities.

In 1895 the Cleveland Architectural Club challenged its members to produce a "grouping of Cleveland’s Public Buildings." Out of this idea emerged the Group Plan, patterned on the "city beautiful" concept expressed in the redevelopment of the Chicago waterfront for the Chicago World’s Fair. Both Daniel H. Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted, architects of the Chicago plan, played key roles in developing a mall in downtown Cleveland where an impressive concentration of public buildings was erected in the first third of the 20th century. Structures include the Federal Building, the County Court House, the Cleveland Public Library, City Hall, the Cleveland Board of Education Building, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and Public Hall (a combination auditorium, convention center, and exposition hall).

The land area of the city of Cleveland is 77 square miles. But this represents only a small fraction of the city’s metropolitan region, which spreads over Cuyahoga, Lorain, Lake, Medina, Ashtabula, and Geauga counties, with a land area of 2,707.5 square miles. The Cleveland metropolitan area includes the communities of Parma, Lorain, Lakewood, Elyria, Euclid, Cleveland Heights, Mentor, East Cleveland, Strongsville, Garfield Heights, Shaker Heights, and many smaller communities.