You’ve probably heard that Superman of Metropolis is originally from the planet Krypton by way of Smallville. But in point of fact, the Man of Steel—like Drew Carey, the gas mask, and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony—comes from Cleveland.
Writer Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster met as teenagers at Glenville High School on the Ohio city’s East Side, began developing their muscle-bound vigilante in self-published projects starting in 1933, and, 5 years later, landed Superman a starring role in comic books published by what would become DC Comics.
Having since gone on to appear in movies, cartoons, TV shows, and a pile of merch so high even you-know-who couldn’t leap it in a single bound, Superman is returning to his roots in his latest film outing.
Scheduled for release on July 11, the new Superman movie, written and directed by James Gunn and starring David Corenswet as the title character and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, used Cleveland as a stand-in for Metropolis for a 6-week on-location shoot during the summer of 2024.
We’ll get to some of the key locations you’ll see onscreen, but first here are some other super sites in Cleveland where fans can pay homage to Siegel, Shuster, and their work.
Superman Sites in Cleveland
For anybody entering the city via Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, a Superman display in the baggage claim area welcomes visitors, supplies info on the character’s origins, and gives you an opportunity to nudge your traveling companions and say, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s our bags! And also Superman!”
Traveling northeast from the airport, you’ll pass through Downtown (to which we’ll return) and come to the East Side neighborhood of Glenville, where Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster grew up, back when most of the area’s residents were Jewish immigrants like Siegel’s and Shuster’s parents.
Siegel’s childhood home stands at 10622 Kimberly Ave. The place is still privately owned, so you have to stay on the sidewalk. But there’s a big red S affixed to the fence out front as well as a sign commemorating the house’s historical significance.
A roughly 10-minute walk south along Parkwood Drive will bring you to the site of Shuster’s childhood home, located on a corner lot at Parkwood and Amor Ave. The apartment house where the Shusters lived is gone now, but the fence surrounding the property is decorated with metal panels reproducing the first Superman story, published in 1938.
After sampling some of Glenville’s green spaces and cultural landmarks, you can resume your Superman-centric tour Downtown.
A must-see is the memorabilia exhibit at the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library (325 Superior Ave.). A huge collection of comics, toys, photos, costumes, movie props, and many other artifacts conveys the staggering pop-cultural impact of the character, with different items regularly swapped in to reward repeat visitors.
From the library, you’re well-positioned to explore the part of the city that was temporarily transformed into Metropolis for the 2025 Superman movie (a sign that went up during filming appears at the top of this page).
Superman Filming Locations in Cleveland
Located across the street from the library, the Leader Building (526 Superior Ave.) plays the onscreen headquarters of the Daily Planet, the newspaper that employs Clark Kent and Lois Lane. During the making of the film in 2024, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporters spotted Corenswet in his Superman suit on the street in front of the building. Brosnahan as Lane, Wendell Pierce as Daily Planet editor Perry White, and Nicholas Hoult, who plays villain Lex Luthor, were all seen in the vicinity as well.
Incidentally, the Plain Dealer repeats the legend that Siegel and Shuster came up with the name of their fictional newspaper, the Daily Planet, by rearranging the letters in “Plain Dealer” and replacing the R with a Y.
Go west down Superior Ave. and you’ll soon arrive at Public Square, the city’s wide-open central plaza. The 52-story skyscraper on the southwest corner is Terminal Tower, which makes an appearance in the Superman trailer and reportedly helped inspire Siegel and Shuster to dream of defying gravity. The building’s observation deck charges just $5 to take in its lofty view.
Other filming locations nearby include the neoclassical Cleveland City Hall (601 Lakeside Ave.), used as the neoclassical Metropolis City Hall, and The Arcade (401 Euclid Ave.), a historic retail complex where Superman and Lois can be seen in the trailer sharing a midair kiss under the structure’s 300-foot-long glass skylight (pictured below).
The city’s Major League Baseball stadium, Progressive Field, reportedly serves as the setting for a battle scene in front of signage that, for the film, declares the Cleveland Guardians’ ballpark the home of the Metropolis Meteors instead.
More mayhem ensues west of Downtown on the arched Detroit-Superior Bridge spanning the Cuyahoga River, where a “mass evacuation scene” was shot.
Beyond Ohio, production on Superman took place in studios in Atlanta and on the icy wastes of Svalbard, Norway, for the obligatory Fortress of Solitude scenes.
As for Siegel and Shuster, they died in 1996 and 1992, respectively. Early on, they gave away the copyright to their most lucrative creation, so the royalties and revenue for all that merch went to DC Comics.
In their hometown, a public monument to Siegel and Shuster is at last in the works. Planned for a “Tribute Plaza” near the entrance to the Huntington Convention Center, the city-approved work will feature statues by local artist David Deming depicting Superman, Siegel, Shuster, and Joanne Siegel, who served as Shuster’s model for Lois Lane before she married Siegel. The monument will also include a representation of an oversize glass-and-steel phone booth.
The Siegel & Shuster Society is currently accepting donations to finish the project. Here’s hoping there’s a little something left over to sculpt a tribute to Beppo the Super-Monkey.