They have stood over the Cuyahoga River since 1932 — eight massive stone figures watching the traffic cross the Hope Memorial Bridge, unmoved by nearly a century of Cleveland weather, industry, and change. Most people who drive between them every day never look up. But once you know the story of the Guardians of Traffic, you never quite see them the same way again.
Here's the history behind Cleveland's most iconic sculptures, why they've come to symbolize the city itself, and how they earned their place on everything from a bridge to a baseball team to the shirt on your back.
The CBY CLE Guardian — the Art Deco figure that watches over the Hope Memorial Bridge, reimagined on a snow-wash oversized tee.
What Are the Guardians of Traffic?
The Guardians of Traffic are eight monumental Art Deco figures carved into four sandstone pylons on the Hope Memorial Bridge — formerly the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge — which stretches nearly a mile across the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland, terminating just short of the ballpark.
Each pylon bears a figure on either side: two sets face east, two face west, standing guard over everyone who crosses between them. They were carved from Berea sandstone — the local stone that built much of the city — and they've overseen east-west traffic since the bridge opened in 1932.
The figures are transitional in style — somewhere between stylized classicism and the sleek, modern Art Deco lines of the late 1920s and 1930s. The angular parallel lines running behind and below each Guardian mark them unmistakably as Art Deco. In fact, they're Cleveland's only large-scale Art Deco monuments.
Who Built the Guardians of Traffic?
The Guardians were designed by architect Frank Walker, of the prominent Cleveland firm Walker and Weeks, and sculpted by Henry Hering of New York. Each figure was carved from a sandstone slab more than 40 feet tall.
But the names on the blueprints don't tell the whole story. Much of the actual stone carving was done by Italian immigrant stonemasons — many of them living in Cleveland's Little Italy neighborhood — who applied their craft to bring the massive figures to life. It's a fitting origin for a Cleveland icon: designed by the city's architects, but built by the immigrant hands that built so much of the city itself.
Among those associated with the bridge's construction was William Henry "Hank" Hope, a Cleveland stonemason — and the father of comedian Bob Hope, who spent part of his childhood in Cleveland. That family connection would later give the bridge its modern name.
The Guardian Heavyweight Tee — the full figure, front and center.
What Do the Guardians Represent?
The bridge's engineer, Wilbur Watson, wrote that the eight figures were meant to "typify the spirit of progress in transportation." Look closely and you'll see it: each Guardian holds a different ground vehicle in its hands, tracing the evolution of transport across time.
The vehicles range from a hay rack, a covered wagon, and a stagecoach to a 1930s-era passenger automobile and four different types of motor trucks. Read in sequence, they tell the story of how people and goods moved — from the horse-drawn past to the industrial present. Because of this, the figures are sometimes called the Guardians of Transportation.
The winged helmets many of them wear suggest their inspiration: Hermes, the Greek messenger god and the god of commerce and land travel. One historian has also compared their wings — which wrap around the pylons — to the guardian statues that flanked the palaces of Assyrian kings, part-man and part-winged-bull figures placed in pairs to protect all who passed between them. It's the same idea, thousands of years apart: figures standing watch, offering safe passage.
From Lorain-Carnegie to Hope Memorial Bridge
For its first five decades, the bridge was known simply as the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, named for the avenues it connects — Lorain on the west side, Carnegie on the east.
In 1980, the bridge was closed for extensive renovations, including the replacement of its concrete roadway deck. When it reopened in 1983, it carried a new name: the Hope Memorial Bridge, honoring the Hope family and their stonemason patriarch, connected to the bridge's construction and to Cleveland's own Bob Hope.
The Guardians Almost Didn't Survive
Here's the part most people don't know: the Guardians of Traffic were nearly torn down.
By the 1970s, decades of pollution had left the statues dark with grime — this was before the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts had begun to reverse the damage to America's industrial cities. The Guardians looked worn and dirty, and some Clevelanders wanted them gone. There were serious calls to demolish them, with critics dismissing the figures as "monstrosities" that should be "torn down and forgotten." One proposal to widen the bridge would have required removing them entirely.
Wiser heads prevailed. In 1976, the bridge and its Guardians were added to the National Register of Historic Places, a designation that helped protect and preserve them. The statues stayed. And in the decades since, they've only grown in stature — literally lit up in 2012 when the city added lighting to the figures as part of a project that also opened a wide multi-use path across the bridge.
How the Guardians Became a Symbol of Cleveland
Somewhere along the way, the Guardians stopped being just sculptures and became shorthand for the city's character. Resilient. Hard-working. Loyal. Standing watch through the lean years and the good ones alike.
That symbolism reached a national stage in 2021, when Cleveland's baseball team adopted the Guardians name — a direct nod to the statues on the bridge just outside the ballpark. The team explained that the name reflected the traits Clevelanders take pride in most: fierce loyalty, unwavering support, and the resolve to stand side by side through thick and thin. Even the team's wordmark borrows from the bridge, its sharp angular letters echoing the trusses underneath.
For a city that's been counted out more than once, the Guardians are the perfect emblem: they got dirty, they got doubted, and they're still standing.
The Guardian Fitted Tee in maroon — the same icon, cut closer.
Wearing the Guardian
At Cranberry's, the Guardian is where our Cleveland line starts — and it's no accident.
Our CBY CLE label is built on the marks that actually mean something to this city: the area code, the steel, and the Guardian standing over the river. When we put the Guardian on a tee and a heavyweight crewneck, we weren't decorating a shirt. We were carrying a piece of the city — the same resilience, the same refusal to be torn down and forgotten, the same quiet watch over the water.
The Guardian has looked out over Cleveland since 1932. Now you can wear the mark that's come to stand for the whole city.
216. Cleveland. Rooted in Brooklyn. Home on the Lakes. Worn everywhere.
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