These historic photos might help put things into context. Back in the early 1900s when Cleveland's growth was picking up, the main rail station was on the lakefront, west of where Cleveland Browns Stadium is located. It was considered obsolete and too small to accommodate the growing population.
A plan to construct a new station as part of the 1903 Group Plan was developed. This would have been situated at the northernmost point where Mall C overlooks Lake Erie.
At about the same time, the Van Sweringen brothers (the real estate developers behind much of Shaker Heights) proposed a new station and complex adjacent to Public Square. They bought up a huge amount of local railways and a swath of real estate on the southwest quadrant of Public Square. Here's a 'before' aerial photo looking south - note the Hotel Cleveland (tallest building on the right):
And the 'after' - looking northeast. The earthworks related to all of this was the second largest after the Panama Canal - that's how massive this project was. The lone building on the site is the original Ohio Bell (telephone) building; on the right you can see the new (1927) Ohio Bell tower under construction:
The entire street grid was reworked, with Prospect Avenue and Huron Road being constructed as bridges to accommodate the railways underneath. In the newer photo that Steely Dan posted, the beige building on the left is the original Post Office which had chutes that dropped the mail down to waiting trains.