# @clevelandmagazine on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Crq2iuTt3br
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/6032052-clevelandmagazine-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/60febc5440.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-04-30T18:00:07.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Cleveland Magazine (@clevelandmagazine) — https://gondola.cc/clevelandmagazine

## Caption

Sometime in 1936, Cleveland lost the largest book in the world. 

The Golden Book of Cleveland was the official registration book of the Great Lakes Exposition. It stood inside the main entrance on St. Clair Avenue during the expo’s first season. 📒 

It was 7 feet by 5 feet and 3 feet thick, with 6,000 pages — about the size of a queen-size bed. The shiny, golden cover was a detailed relief of the Terminal Tower, representing 1936, and a Native American gazing on a town, evoking 1836, the year Cleveland became a city. Smaller replica booklets claimed it “the largest in the word.” It weighed 2 1/2 tons. 

Despite its size, the book disappears from the expo’s 1937 program. The Western Reserve Historical Society doesn’t have it. Neither do folks at City Hall. 

“If a 2-ton book was around, somebody would know. It wouldn’t have taken 70 years to find it,” Scott Frantz, a city planning staffer who collects Expo memorabilia, told Cleveland Magazine writer Erick Trickey when he investigated the book’s disappearance in 2006. 

But it’s romantic to believe that the Golden Book still exists, that it’s just hidden and forgotten, like the Ark of the Covenant in the final scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” 🗝️ 

Imagine its golden gleam just before its crate is nailed shut, imagine the silence of the decades settling onto it as it’s wheeled through a never-ending warehouse and stored eternally among a maze of crates. Imagine top men are working on it right now.

👨‍💻To read more about the Golden Book of Cleveland, click on the link in our bio. 

🖊️Erick Trickey 
📸 Courtesy Cleveland Magazine 

#cleveland #clevelandhistory #greatlakesexpo #greatlakesexposition #northeastohiohistory #nationalbookday #largestbookintheworld #clevelandbooks

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## Tags

northeastohiohistory, largestbookintheworld, clevelandhistory, cleveland, nationalbookday, greatlakesexposition, greatlakesexpo, clevelandbooks

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