The college was founded in 1882 as the
Western Reserve School of Design for Women, at first attended by one teacher and one pupil in the sitting room of its founder, Sarah Kimball. The school moved several times, first to the attic of the Old Cleveland City Hall, then to the Old Kelly homestead on Wilson Avenue (now East 55th Street). Having become a
co-educational school, it was renamed the
Cleveland School of Art in 1892. After unsuccessful attempts to merge the school with
Western Reserve University, the school became independent. In the fall of 1905, the first classes were held in a newly constructed building at the corner of Magnolia Drive and Juniper Road in Cleveland's
University Circle. Beginning in 1917, the school offered classes for children and adults on weekends and in the summer. The school participated in the
WPA Federal Art Project during the
Great Depression (1930s).
Medical drawing and
mapmaking were added to the curriculum during
World War II (1939–1945). The college gradually incorporated more academic courses into the curriculum, while retaining its key objective to offer practical training.
Euclid Avenue assembly plant which was built by Ford in 1914-1915 and added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Cleveland Institute of Art named the building the Joseph McCullough Center For Visual Arts following remodeling. In 2015, the college unified its operations at the Euclid Avenue site, where it completed construction of an 80,000-square-foot building adjoined to the McCullough Center on the west, and also named for George Gund II. This new George Gund Building has been designed to look crisp and contemporary without detracting from the historic McCullough building next door. It houses: • the Peter B. Lewis Theater, the new home of CIA's year-round, nationally acclaimed Cinematheque film program • the Reinberger Gallery for public exhibitions; • CIA's programs in Animation, Ceramics, Drawing, Game Design, Glass, Graphic Design, Illustration, Industrial Design, Interior Architecture, Jewelry + Metals, Life Sciences Illustration, Painting, Photography + Video, Printmaking, and Sculpture + Expanded Media • the
American Greetings Welcome Center • the Admissions and Financial Aid offices • administrative operations This campus unification fully connects CIA to the new Uptown development of retail, restaurants, and residential construction anchored by CIA to the east and the new home of the
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland to the west. Uptown Phase II, at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Ford Drive, includes CIA's new freshman residence hall that opened in August 2014. ==Academics==