When Darl Schaaff, a former Alaskan turned Clevelander, asked himself, “If you wanted to display what your life collected, what would it look like?,” his answer was the Darl Center for the Arts.
Over the past few years, Schaaff has rebuilt the former Broadway branch of Cleveland Public Library at 5437 Broadway Ave. to house his personal collection of about 400 pieces of art and artifacts and to display them to the public. Ultimately, he hopes the library building, an imposing brick and stone building that is one of several libraries in Cleveland built with money donated by Andrew Carnegie a century ago, will become a draw for Slavic Village.
“I want people to stop thinking nothing is happening in this area and the way for people to get over that is to come here,” said Schaaff, who first visited Cleveland in 2009 while scouting locations for the 2014 Gay Games and later decided to move here.
Before he became a Clevelander, Schaaff spent several decades working in performing arts and managing his former event planning business, which he said catered to large corporations. Along the way, he accumulated a large collection of paintings, prints, sculptures, antiques, and curios that are now on display at the center.
The collection spent most of its time in storage in Anchorage until Schaaff completed his move to Cleveland. After three years of searching for a location, it was love at first sight when Schaaff saw the 119-year-old building. In October 2022, he purchased the decagonal-shaped building, which was the first library Carnegie donated to Cleveland, for $237,000. It had apparently been vacant for some time, after the Cleveland Public Library sold it to Broadway Community Development Corporation in the late ‘80s. It has transferred to new hands several times since then, according to property records, and was last owned by the enigmatic “4 Ever Social Club.”
Schaaff has spent the past year rehabilitating the 20,000-square-foot building, which had fallen into a severe state of disrepair after being abandoned by the previous owner. “Every surface you see in here had to be redone, there was extensive water damage and the roof was gone, it was just insane,” he said of the currently self-financed rehab, which he estimated may cost him around $1 million when it’s all said and done. Schaaff said contractors removed 120 cubic yards of trash and scrap from the building. Despite the neglect, he is grateful for the building’s structural integrity, which he said is owed to the craftsmanship of the original builders.
The building and its collection
Upon entering the building, visitors are immediately met by the unique architecture. A grand staircase takes you up the collection’s center room beneath a large glass rotunda that has been lovingly restored. Dividing the collection are large white pillars and wooden framed glass walls that separate the main floor into individual galleries.
Under the rotunda, a sculpture of a large metallic tree is on display, while international and domestic works are spread throughout the galleries. While touring the international gallery, Schaaff listed out works from countries in Africa, Oceania, and Asia. For example, the gallery presents ceremonial wares from China and Tibet displayed across the room from African tools from various tribes and time periods.
In an adjacent gallery, Schaaff displays pieces he’s either used in events or theatrical roles or built for himself. “I’ve never bought a piece of art because I thought it would be valuable one day — all of these artists, I either knew some of them, met them, knew their manager or something, there is some connection here to all of these people,” he said.
One such piece is a Warhol print that he got after spending time with the artist at a benefit he helped organize in Washington, D.C. Nearby is a costume he wore in a performance of a short story he wrote. There’s also a section of a gallery dedicated to Alaska where visitors can see an indigenous parka made of spotted seal, whale bone carvings, and props from an Iditarod-themed party.
Below, is the center’s basement area, which was filled with junk and nearly inaccessible when he purchased it. Since work began, Schaaff and his crew have converted the central area of the basement into a theater that is now equipped to handle a live production and a sizable audience.
Activating the center for the community
In addition to displaying art and hosting productions, Schaaff is hoping to activate the center as a neighborhood space. “From the moment the building became usable I started hosting neighborhood meetings here, meetings with community organizations and businesses because it is the right thing to do,” he said.
To date, Schaaff’s center has hosted about a dozen meetings for neighborhood groups including University Settlement, who recently hosted an over 50-person community meeting here, and Slavic Village Development, who used it as part of their Rooms to Let art event.
Schaaff also said that he is committed to hiring local businesses. For the center’s recent opening, he hired a local caterer to provision the party and the local circus troupe Crooked River Circus performed in the theater.
Earl Pike, executive director of University Settlement, said the Darl Center is a long awaited “new breath of fresh air” that has potential to help the community. “I knew immediately that this was going to be the kind of thing we needed,” Pike said of Schaaff’s project. “It’s not uncommon for poor communities like this to experience initial development in undesirable forms — dollar stores, liquor stores, bail bonds, we don’t need any more of those. What he is doing builds a sense of community, it’s not just transactional economics. And what he’s doing is unusual, it stresses the arts and culture in an area that is historically not seen as an arts community.”
Pike said that he can foresee the Darl Center being an important part of the community because the owner is responsive to local needs and interests. According to Pike, the recently acquired collection of African pieces are of interest to community members and would be an opportunity for the center to engage residents and neighborhood groups on their cultural value.
Schaaff’s arrival in the neighborhood also plants a flag for the queer community, Pike said. “He brings a queer sensibility,” he said of Schaaff’s idea to begin and host the inaugural Slavic Village Pride celebration in 2023.
This event not only connects and celebrates queer and allied communities, but it also helps rally support for those communities in the area, Pike stressed. “We know from practical experiences and through evidence that the more queer-supportive a community is, the easier it is to support people with HIV and to do prevention work,” said Pike, who intensified his own organization’s HIV outreach and prevention after learning that HIV transmission rates in Slavic Village were among the highest in Cuyahoga County.
Coincidentally, this cause has been important to Schaaff for the past two decades as he lost his partner of 30 years to AIDS in the ‘90s. Since then, he has dedicated philanthropic efforts towards HIV/AIDs-related causes. Schaaff said his partner had been one of the key figures in his life who inspired his past and continues to inspire his future at the Darl Center where a segment of the collection is dedicated to him.
What’s next for the Darl Center
Schaaff is now focused on the final stages of renovating the building, which he thinks will be completed by next summer.
The library’s basement back rooms still need work and Schaaff’s contracting crew is working to convert the library’s mezzanine into a living space for guests. They’re also looking at making the building more accessible to people with disabilities.
In the meantime, Schaaff hopes to work with community leaders such as Pike to determine how the center can best fit into Slavic Village’s future. For now, Schaaff says, “Truth is, I do not have any specific plan for the place, I believe that the future will reveal itself and it will be glorious.”