THE SPACE

ThirdSpace Action Lab is located in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood at 1464 East 105th Street. Our building, which residents call the Madison, is tremendously significant to the firm’s mission to create liberated “third places” for people of color, and our commitment to building on legacies of Black excellence. 

In 1960, Robert P. Madison designed the Medical Associates Building for Black doctors whom University Hospitals and Mt. Sinai Medical Center excluded from practicing. These doctors commissioned the building to invest in and care for their community.

Madison was the first licensed Black architect in the state of Ohio, and this project was a critical project upon which he built a successful firm over six decades. His niece, Sandra Madison, operates the firm today.

Today, ThirdSpace Action Lab hosts community lunches, political dialogues, strategy sessions, celebrations, and more in the building’s first-floor storefront space. Imbued with Madison’s legacy, we activate the space to demonstrate the value of radical imagination + investing in place in service of racial equity.