CLEVELAND — Almost five years after they were renamed the "Cleveland Guardians," siblings Jayne and Ron Chiocchio feel a bit of pride in their baseball team.
"The Guardians being the Guardians bring something special to our heart," Jayne Chiocchio said.
"I’m nostalgic," Ron Chiocchio said.
Their grandfather, Antonio Chiocchio, served as the lead stone carver for a group of Italian immigrants from Oratino, Italy, who built the Guardians of Traffic, which stand just across the street on the Hope Memorial Bridge.
"He still did manual work with the carvings, but he was making sure everybody was doing their part so when they put the pieces together, they matched perfectly," Ron Chiocchio said.
Italian American Museum of Cleveland Director Pamela Dorazio Dean took me to the building that still stands in Little Italy, where those stone carvers worked for two years.
"It’s a massive undertaking; they’re 43 feet tall," Dorazio Dean said. "Little Italy was settled by stone carvers and they left their mark all over the city."
Their popularity has continued to rise, especially recently.
"It’s because of the name change of the team that we’re able to install this historical marker in front of the building in Little Italy where the guardians were carved," Dorazio Dean said.
One side of the historical marker is written in Italian. The other side in English, which reads:
“Guardians of Traffic,” four double-sided figural pylons towering over 40-feet above either end of the Hope Memorial Bridge, have connected Cleveland’s east and west side since 1932. They were designed by architect Frank R. Walker and lead sculptor Henry Hering. More than 20 immigrant stonemasons — many from the Italian village of Oratino — carved the figures at Ohio Cut Stone Company on Random Road from sandstone quarried in nearby Berea. The Italian sculptors lived or worshipped in Cleveland’s Little Italy. Each hand-carved Guardian holds a different vehicle, meant to portray the history of ground transportation. Voted “an outstanding architectural triumph” by the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1936, the bridge with its iconic Guardians were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
For Ron Chiocchio, his home also serves as a museum of sorts.
"I’ve kept them for so many years only because I’m nostalgic and I like history," Chiocchio said.
He still holds onto not only his grandfather's tools, but also some of his work too — his front porch features a sandstone bench built at the same time as the Guardians of Traffic.
A coincidence that Chiocchio admits may hint at the same sandstone being used for both the bench and the Guardians.
"You look at those big blocks, a lot of [leftover] sandstone came off those blocks," Ron Chiocchio said. "To have somebody tied to something that monumental — it’s just a stone structure, but the craftsmanship is really what makes it for me."
CLICK HERE to learn more about the Guardians of Traffic.
