The newly formed Siegel & Shuster Society is taking action on saving the house where the 17 year old Jerry Siegel created Superman. You can find out about their mission from the excerpt from writer Brad Meltzer, as well as the youtube video below.
For the past two years, while researching Jerry Siegel’s life for my new novel, I asked my friend Mike San Giacomo to take me to the actual house in Cleveland where Superman was created. I wanted to see the exact spot where young Jerry Siegel sat in his bed on that rainy summer night…where a seventeen(!) year old kid stared at his bedroom ceiling and gave birth to the idea of Superman.
But the one thing I quickly realized was that this house was in…well…it was in bad shape.
The house where Google was created is saved. The farm where Hewlett Packard was founded is preserved. And Richard Nixon’s house is a museum. But the house where Superman — one of the world’s most recognized heroes — was created? It’s a wreck. It’s actually a great old house — painted bright red and blue (really) — and owned by one of the kindest elderly couples in the world. But as the neighborhood sank, so did the house. When you walk inside, you feel like your foot might go through the floor. The roof is flawed. The paint is a mess. When you look up at the ceiling, you see the exposed rafters overhead. It’s a mess. Worst of all, the city of Cleveland let it happen. As the owner told me, “They won’t even give us a plaque. Not even a plaque to say, ‘This is where Superman was created.’”
