Bookish Trip: Birthplace of Superman

On our recent trip to Cleveland the family indulged me in going to see the houses of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, creators of Superman.

The houses were in a section of Cleveland which tourists rarely visit, and besides a quick stop and a picture, there isn’t much to do there. Both homes are private properties, but the owners decorated their historic locations accordingly. Cleveland even put street signs to mark the creators.

For fans, however, it’s a very cool stop to see where the 20th century most successful literary character was created.

Jerry Siegel:
10622 Kimberly Ave

“This is the house where Superman was born,” reads the sign on the fence. In this house 18 year old Jerry Siegel invented Superman in 1932.

“This is the house where Superman was born.Writer Jerry Siegel (1914-1996) was a teenaged boy who lived here during the Great Depression, one of the toughest economic times for Cleveland and the country.Jerry wasn’t popular.He was a dreamer, and he knew how to dream big.With his best friend, artist Joe Shuster, these two boys created a bright fantasy world of spaceships, strange planets and a city where a young man in red and blue tights could leap over tall buildings in a single bound.They called him Superman.They didn’t just give us the world’s first super hero…They gave us something to believe in.”

Joe Shuster:
Amore Ave.

Right down the street, at the corner of Joe Shuster and Lois Lane, Jerry Siegel’s best friend, and classmate lived. He was an artist named Joe Shuster who put Joe’s ideas into pictures. The house is now a vacant lot, however there fence around it has signs of the cover and first 13 pages of the classic Action Comics #1.