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Home / Newsroom / The History of the Pacelli Lion
Pacelli Lion

Painting the Pacelli Lion is a widely known JCU campus tradition, yet the origin of this massive sandstone monument is much less familiar. 

 

The history of the statue goes the way back to the late 1800s and includes beer, two notable immigrant families, and a lot of spray paint. There are also a few theories on how John Carroll’s campus became the statue’s current home. After one alumnus investigated these theories, we can finally fill in the gaps and understand the whole story. 

 

The Lion’s First Home

Cleveland’s booming beer business in the late 1800s laid the foundation for the Lion. The Leisy Brewing Company was Cleveland’s largest independent brewery when it was built on the city’s near west side in 1873. Issac Liesy and his two brothers, originally from Bavaria, Germany, left their small brewery in rural Iowa and came to Cleveland after visiting the city for a brewer’s convention. 

 

The Leisy Brewing Company expanded and remained independent despite fierce competition from nearly 20 other local Cleveland breweries. The company continued to thrive until prohibition in 1920. It closed in 1923 after an unsuccessful attempt to make non-alcoholic drinks. However, the facility would reopen after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. 

 

Liesy Brewery

Artist Rendering of The Liesy Brewing Company, ca. 1890

The Leisy Family amassed a large fortune from the brewery and built a massive estate in 1905 on what is now Martin Luther King Dr. on the city's East Side. The property was known as "Hochwald," or high forest in German. Known for its lavish parties, the thirty-six-room mansion featured five massive sandstone lion carvings used as fountains to fill water features on the property. One of those lions now resides at the end of Pacelli Hall, but it took some time getting here. 

 

One long-running theory claims a JCU fraternity stole the lion from a Case Western Reserve University Greek house as a prank. But as Laurene DiCillo '87 discovered during her research, the sandstone monuments weigh over four tons. The statute's sheer weight is enough to disprove the fraternity prank theory. 

 

lion statue

The Lion Appears on Campus

The Leisy Family home was eventually sold and demolished in the early 1970s. An Irish maser stone cutter, Eamon D'arcy, sought to rescue some stonework from the property. D'arcy ran a local business, D&W stone, and created the Irish Famine Memorial in Cleveland's Heritage Park in the Flats.   

 

D'arcy did not want to see the stonework of the Liesy home razed, so he had one of his crews extract one of the lion sculptures from home. While the reason is unknown, DiCillo says the crew dropped the stone off on John Carroll's campus in 1973. As far as we know, the 8-thousand pound block just sat there for a few years; students didn't engage with the lion until years later.  

 

Pacelli Lion 1976

The first painting of the Pacelli Lion, 1976

Red, White, and Blue

The lion's painting tradition began as the United States celebrated its bicentennial anniversary. In the summer of 1976, JCU's campus and the rest of the country were celebrating America's 200th birthday. John Carroll students painted the lion red, white, and blue in honor of the July 4th holiday. Since then, the lion has endured many paint jobs, primarily associated with Fraternity and Sorority life on campus.

 

Thousands of students walk past the Pacelli Lion every day, yet few know the monument's rich history. While the lion now marks fraternity and sorority pride, its legacy is rooted in the success of Cleveland's past generations.