Virginia Benson, who helped preserve historic buildings in Cleveland and develop its waterfront, dies at 88

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Audience members at the Allen Theatre in Playhouse Square might be taken aback by the beauty and splendor of the space. What they don’t know is that the property might have been a barren parking lot were it not for the work of Virginia Benson.

“She was very involved in saving the Allen Theatre,” said her colleague, Kathleen Crowther. “It was a group effort but she was a key person.”

Benson, a college professor and preservationist, died Jan. 20 at the age of 88. The cause of death was respiratory failure.

Benson was born and raised in Roseau, Minnesota. Her parents were Gretchen (née Buren), a homemaker, and Fred Olson, a dentist. Benson had two younger brothers. Benson was an intelligent child. She competed in the state spelling bee. She came up with an idea for plastic dental braces and submitted it to Reader’s Digest, which awarded her $5 for her concept.

“As a child, she had an interest in other places,” said her daughter, Rebecca Leiter. “She would write to different cities, requesting tourist information.”

After graduating from high school, Benson moved to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota. She worked at the Federal Reserve Bank, which is where she met her husband, Verdayne “Dane” Benson. She married him at the age of 19.

Their growing family lived in Bismarck, North Dakota; Billings, Montana; and Cody, Wyoming, before settling in Hudson, Ohio, in 1962.

Benson continued her college education at Kent State University, and was on campus when the shootings took place on May 4, 1970.

Benson was awarded a doctorate in economic geography from Kent State University in 1981. She immediately accepted a position as an associate professor at the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. At the time, she was one of only a few women on the faculty, and she held the position for the next 30 years.

Courses she taught include Urban Design, Preserving Sacred Landmarks, and Historic Preservation.

As a professor, she co-authored two textbooks: Historic Preservation for Professionals and Introduction to Urban Studies, which is still being used by universities.

Benson loved taking her students on field trips. She took them to Toronto, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, and around Cleveland, to teach them about urban planning.

“She wanted students to get out into the field to see things in action. That’s what distinguished her from other professors,” Crowther said.

“She was very engaging,” Leiter said. “She really loved the topics that she was teaching about.”

Benson co-authored a study commissioned by the George Gund Foundation called Project Preservation Cleveland. It was a roadmap for the development of the Cleveland Restoration Society. Under her leadership, the organization expanded and professionalized. “It has grown from being all volunteers to an organization with 27 staff members, 35 trustees, an operating budget of $3 million, and a number of pieces of real estate under its ownership,” Crowther said.

She co-founded the Cleveland Waterfront Coalition. “She understood that there was economic value in the waterfront, that it could be redeveloped. The mission of the Coalition was to bring that to the attention of the city’s leadership. She was extremely successful. It is evident today: there’s a museum district at the lakefront; there’s recreational boating. It’s remarkable what exists there that did not exist there in the early 1980s.”

Benson was a member of the Sacred Landmarks Research Group, a collection of professors doing research on Cleveland’s historic religious buildings. “Her expertise lay with the role of religious buildings in neighborhoods,” Crowther said.

Benson got her students involved in housing market studies to finance housing construction in downtown Cleveland. “She had her students standing on busiest street corner in Cleveland, clipboards in hand, doing surveys of office workers. Those studies were used by developers to obtain financing for projects in Cleveland.”

“She showed up in Cleveland at the right time. She found other people that were like-minded and banded together with them. She definitely impacted the city,” Leiter said.

In 2015, she was awarded the Robert C. Gaede Lifetime Achievement Award for her preservation work.

Benson was a founding member of Grace Baptist Church in Kent, Ohio. A self-taught piano player, she became the church pianist. “She always had a strong faith. She was a believer in prayer,” Leiter said.

Benson’s life was marked by tragedy when, in 1993, her daughter and granddaughter passed away in an car crash. “She would visit their graves once a week, and put flowers there,” Leiter said.

Benson cherished family above all else. She was proud of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She hosted holiday parties at her home, often inviting students who had nowhere else to go, to join in on the festivities. Every Thanksgiving was celebrated with her famous Swedish meatballs and every Christmas she gathered the family around the piano to sing carols.

“She had a lot of strength and tenacity but she was also very fun-loving and laughed a lot,” Leiter said.

She is survived by her brother, Thomas Olson, her children, David Benson, Tim Benson, and Rebecca Leiter, and eight grandchildren. She is predeceased by her husband, Verdayne, her daughter, Rachel Benson, and her granddaughter, Ingrid Amelia Benson.