A memorial should always primarily be a vehicle for memory; an icon to an important event or person that bears a strong historical significance to the place which accommodates it. All too often however, does a memorial stand as nothing more than a nostalgic monument to a history now forgotten. A memorial should stimulate intrigue, narrating itself as a story to be experienced by the surrounding community it engages. It will ask questions, provoke thought and suggest answers. It shall stand everlasting, eternal and irreplaceable. The Underground Railroad was a significant component to the abolition of American slavery. Thousands of slaves risked their lives, and in many cases left loved ones, to embark on the grueling pursuit of freedom along the Underground Railroad. There were many routes leading from southern states up north to the free-states and Canada. Cleveland, Ohio is only a checkpoint on one particular route, however it symbolized the final point before true freedom –all that remained for the enduring slaves was the trip across Lake Erie into a new life in the freedom of Canada. Situated at Edgewater Park, Cleveland, Ohio, the Underground Railroad memorial symbolically merges the Trade Triangle (key to the beginning of American slavery) with the Underground Railroad (key to the abolishment of slavery). The Trade Triangle component seeks to express the entrapment and cyclical process that engulfed African-American slaves –without an intervening component there was no reason for the Trade Triangle to ever break. Its solid process allowed little freedom for those trapped within it. The experience of the Trade Triangle within the memorial is therefore an uncomfortable, dark, confined experience. The long, narrow, unfinished-concrete walkways entrap the visitor heightening their sense of discomfort and confinement. Small openings allow daylight to flood in, suggesting a ray of hope or escape from the Trade Triangle; however each opening offers nothing more than a view to the outside world –no escape. The Underground Railroad begins as a small dark passage underground, tunneling under the Trade Triangle which counter-levers above. Daylight disappears shrouding the visitors view of the path ahead –symbolic of the insecurity and unknowing that the beginning of the Underground Railroad trail would have exposed. It is still dominated by the effects of the Trade Triangle above which continues its unforgiving, continuous cycle. As the visitor progresses along the Underground Railroad they begin to rise up from underground. The solid concrete mass of the walls, floor and ceiling begin to break apart as light pours in to the growing space that is now opening itself up to the outside world –a symbolic notion of the growing experience and emotion of the journey to freedom. The Underground Railroad progresses, still rising and opening, it crashes through the Trade Triangle which it now dominates –physically preventing visitors below from continuing along the Trade Triangle route, thus symbolically breaking the cycle of entrapment. Now floating over the freedom of the sea, the Underground Railroad has journeyed past the Trade Triangle, focusing northward towards free Canada. It is the final point of the journey. Now the Underground Railroad is open, exposing itself to the free air of the North, absorbing daylight from each plane and offering views out in all directions –there are no limitations or restrictions anymore –freedom. The Underground Railroad: Memorial to American Slavery, Edgewater Park, Cleveland, Ohio, can only stand as a memorial to Cleveland. It cannot represent a symbol of remembrance to speak for all of America, nor for all of American slavery. It can however link itself to the past and where it has journeyed from (entrapment and hostility) and it can direct itself towards a future where it is still travelling (further freedom and liberation, equality and expression). The memorial will ask questions, provoke thought and suggest answers.