Neighborhoods in the Flats

WHISKEY ISLAND

Whiskey Island is a 500-foot wide strip of land in the Flats area of Cleveland that extends from the mouth of the Cuyahoga River to West 40th. Original site of Major Lorenzo Carter’s farm, Whiskey Island was not originally an island, but was man-made in the 1820’s, when the people of Cleveland straightened the mouth of the river to aid in shipping of goods and produce.

(View of Whiskey Island and Wendy Park from the East Bank of the Flats)

Heading north, the Cuyahoga River used to flow under the present-day Detroit Superior “Veteran’s Memorial” Bridge and then, just before reaching open water, it turned sharply west, cutting a deep bed parallel to the lakeshore all the way to West 40th Street, where it flowed north again to Lake Erie. This path was the old river bed.

Slow flowing water piled sand around the mouth of the river, causing blockage. In 1825, the leading men of Cleveland convinced the State Legislature to allocate $5,000 to straighten the mouth of the river. They constructed a dam at the angle, and when the rains came, they softened the earth and the river tore through the last few yards to the lake, gouging a channel to open water, thereby creating Whiskey Island. Whiskey Island itself was widened another 500 feet with landfill to create even more land.

Whiskey Island became home to the families who made their living on the Island, such as the men who unloaded the ore from the ships and trains that arrived. There were many saloons on Whiskey Island. One was Fat Jacks, owned by J.C. Dare. Others were Mother Carey’s Place , Sweeney’s, Kilbane’s and Corrigan’s. Johnny Kilbane, who was Featherweight Champion of the World in 1912-13, came from Whiskey Island. Always a poor section of town, during the Great Depression, many homeless people lived on Whiskey Island in home-made shacks built from boards and corrugated iron. This area was Cleveland’s “Hooverville.”

The book, “Irish Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland” tells about what life was like on Whiskey Island: “One must picture that land as it was when the Irish first huddled together on it. When Moses Cleaveland first came upon it, it was a delta and he had some difficulty finding the main channel to the river itself. The fact that he had to come upriver three-quarters of a mile before reaching ground solid enough to stand on gives one a clue as to its composition. One of the men in his company, in writing later about the founding father's trip said, “I could not help but reflect that history was repeating itself," he wrote, "Moses, like his namesake, was caught in the bullrushes." The land around the river's mouth and for a half-mile south of it was pure swamp, with the exception of a ridge that had been formed by the Cuyahoga's current as it curved westward on its way to emptying in Lake Erie at a point just east of present day Edgewater Park. It would not be until 1827 that federal funding and engineering expertise allowed local citizens to dig a channel, creating the river's mouth as we now know it. The Irish, naturally, did the digging. Since that knoll was the only habitable land anywhere about, the Irish took possession of it and began erecting tarpaper shanties on it. Amusingly enough, that stretch of slightly elevated land was once the "farm" of Lorenzo Carter, the city's first resident, who had built a still on its easternmost end. The land the Irish settled on had been called Klhiskey Island for years before they arrived, but if it hadn't been, it would have had to have been renamed. The Irish who squatted there gave a new meaning to the island's name -- they made it a real island of whiskey. In its heyday it boasted of having 13 saloons, a considerable achievement since it was only a mile long and a third of a mile across at its widest point. It was from the first and for many years remained the wildest, bawdiest section of Cleveland.”

William Ellis, in his book called “The Cuyahoga”, states: “Still, that’s not why Whiskey Island got its name. Man named Carter had a store here on the Cuyahoga mor’n a hundred years ago, when the Indians were here. And right across the river, right on the tip of Whiskey Island, was where they had the still. It was there for a helluva long time. That’s why they call it Whiskey Island.”

Still another description of Whiskey Island is found in the book, “Cleveland's Flats On Tour” by Joan Schattinger and Ann Lawrence: “In 1831 some west side investors purchased the 80-acre Carter farm between the river and the old river bed. They laid out lots and streets and offered lots to anyone who could pay 1/4 of the purchase price in cash. A distillery built on a mound in the area gave the name of Whiskey Island to the District. The area was also used by rum runners between the United States and Canada during Prohibition. Legend states that the island once had its own mayor, fire department, and police when 28 of its 29 buildings were saloons or brothels, and the other was a jail. The area was also used by rum runners between the U.S. and Canada during Prohibition. Whiskey Island was also home of the Hewlett Unloaders and Loading Docks. These unloaders looked like giant grasshoppers and were used to extract iron ore and other materials from the bottoms of ships.”

St. Malachi was the church that served the Whiskey Island area. It was built in 1865 at Washington and Pearl Street on a site that overlooked the hillside slope known as the Angle. The population of this area was almost entirely made up of former canal diggers, dock workers, sailors and tugmen.

(St. Malachi Church)

Interesting websites about Whiskey Island:

"Whiskey Island History" by the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History:  https://case.edu/ech/articles/w/whiskey-island#:~:text=LORENZO%20CARTER%20built%20his%20family,settled%2C%20largely%20by%20Irish%20immigrants.

"Whiskey Island" by Cleveland Historical: https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/68

"Whiskey Island Land Uses Resolved After Nine Years" by Ed Houser http://realneo.us/Congratulations-Citizen-Hauser

"Wendy Park" by The Cleveland Metroparks:  https://www.clevelandmetroparks.com/parks/visit/parks/lakefront-reservation/wendy-park

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2021/06/how-a-fathers-grief-led-to-completion-of-the-cleveland-metroparks-wendy-park-bridge-at-whiskey-island.html

“Biography of Johnny Kilbane”:  http://www.johnnykilbane.com/biography.html

SOURCES:

"Irish Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland" by Nelson Callahan & William F. Hickey, with an Introduction by Andrew M. Greeley

“The Cuyahoga”, by William Ellis. 

“Cleveland's Flats On Tour” by Joan Schattinger and Ann Lawrence.

CLEVELAND CENTRE ALSO KNOWN AS GRAVITY POINT

Located on the east side of the river at Oxbow Bend (Columbus Rd. near Leonard). As Cleveland became a major trading port after the opening of the canal, the value of land near the river increased. In 1833, James S. Clark and Edmund Clark began to develop their land on the east side of the river at Oxbow bend. They called this Cleveland Centre and hoped to turn the area into a world trading center. They named the streets after foreign countries – Russia, China, German, French and British. The streets radiated in a fan shape from a central spoke which was called Gravity Place. Columbus Street was the main street and it ran diagonally through the spoke to the river and was connected by a covered bridge to the West Side. It continued through Mr. Clark’s newly built allotment called Willeyville to the Wooster and Medina Turnpike. Few houses were built on the high-priced lots before financial panic struck and the plan was abandoned. However, three major thoroughfares remained: Columbus Street carried the traffic, Merwin served the shipping and warehouse industries until the 1860's, and Commercial Street was preserved in the name given to the Commercial Street Hill. Later, in 1986, a public park was proposed on the site in the master plan for the Flats.

(For more information on Cleveland Centre and Gravity Point, see the Lake Erie & Cuyahoga River page on this site at:  https://sites.google.com/site/clevelandanditsneighborhoods/cleveland-and-its-neighborhoods-home/peripheral-subjects/lake-erie-cuyahoga-river?authuser=0

IRISHTOWN BEND AND THE ANGLE

According to Condon, by the late 1850s, Cleveland was a fast growing industrial city with factories, railroads, immigrants, shanties, blast furnaces and the Rockefeller’s oil refineries, all located in The Flats, around the bend in the river. The people lived up on the bluffs and down the hillsides leading into the flats. Some houses were built right on the steep hills surrounding the flats on the west side of the river. This neighborhood was called The Angle because of the steep angle of the hill and the abrupt turn the hill took as it turned north to parallel the lake shore. Further down the river was an area known as Irishtown bend which stretched south to Columbus Street. Housing here was cheap and flimsy - in fact, some dwellings were called shanties - made of scrap lumber and crowded many on a steep lot. The housing was very cheap because no one wanted to live near the noisy factories. As people prospered, they moved up to the area around Franklin and Detroit.

(Irishtown Bend in 1877)

OUTSKIRTS OF BROOKLYN TOWNSHIP

When the fourth draft of lands by the Connecticut Land Co. was made in 1807, Samuel P. Lord, of East Haddam, CT, and his associates drew practically the entire township No. 7 in Range 13, later called Brooklyn Township and later still Ohio City. The township was surveyed in 1809, but no permanent settler was attracted to the land until James Fish, who had purchased some land from Samuel Lord, came from Groton, CT in 1812. He found only one person in the township, a squatter called Granger who was living in a hut on a hill known as Granger Hill which was near present-day Riverside Cemetery. Granger left before 1815. In 1813 and 1814 a number of other families came, including relatives of James Fish, the Hinckleys, Brainards and Youngs. The owners of most of Brooklyn Township, Samuel Lord and his son Richard, and his brother-in-law, Josiah Barber, arrived in 1818 and settled near the mouth of the river about the time the township was organized

LAKEVIEW TERRACE, RIVERVIEW APARTMENTS AND THE VALLEYVIEW HOUSING PROJECTS

A culmination of work done by Ernest Bohn, these housing projects were a pilot program of slum clearance, urban renewal, and low-rent public housing designed for the elderly. Lakeview Terrace is located on the west side of the Cuyahoga overlooking Whiskey Island. Further down the river overlooking Irishtown Bend are Riverview Apartments, Ernest Bohn’s biggest project. Finally, the Valleyview Estates were located farther south in the Tremont neighborhood, and built on 75 acres on the bluff below Walworth Run. Valleyview Estates were recently demolished.

(Riverview Apartments)

Sources:

“The Cuyahoga” by William Ellis

"Irish Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland" by Nelson Callahan & William F. Hickey, with an Introduction by Andrew M. Greeley

"Cleveland's Flats On Tour” by Joan Schattinger and Ann Lawrence

"West of the Cuyahoga" George Condon, 2006

THE HAYMARKET NEIGHBORHOOD

The Haymarket neighborhood was south of Public Square and just south of the intersection of Ontario and Carnegie. It was bounded on the north by Race Avenue and on the south by Stone's Levee and Harrison Street. The west side of this neighborhood ran along the east bank of the Cuyahoga River and was bordered by Ontario/Broadway on the east. Streets in the area were Hill, Berg, Minkon, Lane, Commercial, Seneca, Scowden and Ohio. The Haymarket District began as a market and later became a residential and commercial area. A wooden building was built in 1839 on a four acre site and was the first municipal marketplace at the corner of Michigan and Ontario. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, farmers brought their goods to the market on wagons and would sell produce and hay - thus the name "Haymarket." By 1856, legislation was passed creating an official city market and a permanent market called the Central Market was built at Broadway and Bolivar Streets.

Central Market in the 1920s

Central Market in 1940 from the Cleveland Press

Sheriff Street Market

1868 Map of the Haymarket area below.

The actual Haymarket neighborhood is included within the black half circle.

Note the other streets that are no longer in existence in the 1906 map below:

Scowden, Toronto, Chicago, Toledo, Oswego, and Walworth.

(Click map to enlarge)

1906 Map of the Haymarket Area

The street names in the map above were changed in 1906 to the following in the map below:

Ohio Street became Carnegie.

Pittsburgh Street became Broadway.

First Street became Hill Street.

There was no Second Street, just a small alley.

Third Street became Berg.

Jerome Alley or Court was between Third Street and Fourth Street.

Fourth Street became Minkon.

Fifth Street became Lane.

Canal Road remained Canal Road.

Seneca/Central Way became West 3rd.

(Click map to enlarge)

The Haymarket area is in red.  Note that the actual

Haymarket is indicated by the word "Haymarket" between

Harrison and Commercial Streets.

(Click to enlarge)

The homes in this area were very cheap and therefore were filled with the transient workers of the docks and to later immigrants who worked in the factories down in the valley. This area was also Cleveland's earliest business section. The right of way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, formerly the Cleveland Terminal and Valley Railroad, formerly was the old canal.  The canal came to the foot of Commercial Street hill. It was for this reason that the dock workers lived in this neighborhood. By 1900, there were 40 different nationalities living in the area. In 1900 the largest population in this neighborhood was Eastern European Jews. By 1914, most of them had abandoned the Haymarket neighborhood and they were replaced by Italians. In order to assist the residents, the YMCA opened the Central Friendly Inn in 1874. In 1878 the Children's Free Medical and Surgical Dispensary opened to provide cold milk for children. The people living in this area were very poor. The deteriorating houses were turned into multi-family tenements. In my own family, I have documented three different families from Prussia, consisting of 17 people, living in one house at 31 1/2 Fourth Street (Minkon today) in 1888. They had just arrived in this country in 1887. One of these families was devastated by Tuberculosis, with six of their seven children dying from that disease. Factories in the area polluted the air and one can imagine that with all those people living on top of each other, it wasn't a very healthy situation. This was not a pleasant place to live. Eventually, this area became the first slum in Cleveland when the oldest housing stock in the city deteriorated.

There were many saloons in this neighborhood, with 30 saloons on Commercial Street alone. It was a common site to see men drinking beer from pails or buckets. A relative of my great-grandfather would send his children to the saloon to get a pail of beer and the child had to run home with it before the foam disappeared. Could you imagine this happening today? Because of this, the Women's Christian Temperance Union became very active in the Haymarket area. The Salvation Army opened a barracks for transient men and poor families. Another important social service agency was the Hiram House. This was opened in 1896 and was first located on the west side of Orange Avenue and later moved to 2713 Orange Avenue. Hiram House had a public shower building as well as a summer camp for children in Moreland Hills. Hiram House closed in the 1940s due to the area being demolished for freeway construction.

Crime was a big problem in the Haymarket neighborhood. Police were known to patrol in twos and threes. A call box system was installed to allow them to call for help. Patrol wagons were at the Central Station to help with hauling away disorderly and drunken people. The Haymarket District was known as the roughest area in Cleveland for quite a while. The Haymarket District's most famous residents were Blinkey Morgan and Johnny Coghlin. These two men were the heads of gangs that terrorized downtown Cleveland. Another famous person from this area was Charles McGill, one of Haymarket's murderers, and the last man to be hanged in the old county jail.  Other murderers of the time were Stephen Hood, who in 1873 killed his six-year old stepson by beating him to death with a club.  One Andrew Doig murdered Molly Knapp after arguing about money.

Not all was bad in the Haymarket District. They would have "concerts on the hill", and in an article by E. Arthur Roberts, he said, "Some of the biggest hearts this city has ever known were to be found in the Haymarket stores and lodging houses." Some of the business establishments in this area were: Samuel Nash's grocery at the foot of Commercial Hill, the White Elephant Theater at Bolivar and E. 4th, and the London House at the foot of Ontario Street. There was also "Gypsy George's", a saloon at the corner of Commercial Road and Berg Avenue. There were seven entrances to his establishment and several underground passages.

The Haymarket District was torn down in the 1920's to accomodate the Cleveland Union Terminal (Terminal Tower Complex). Part of this area also became the Gateway complex, home of Gund Arena (now Quicken Loans Arena), and Jacob's Field.

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

Article by E. Arthur Roberts entitled "Tough, Yes, But Good Men Lived in Haymarket"

In order to get goods from the river and canal up the Eagle Avenue hill to the market, Smead's Rolling Road was built.  There is a great history of Smead's Rolling Road here:  https://urbanohio.com/topic/12673-cleveland-colonel-smeads-rolling-road-eagle-avenue/#comment-554745

Smead's Rolling Road

The Central Viaduct was built from 1887-1888.  This connected Central Avenue (Carnegie today) to West 14th in Tremont.  On November 16, 1895, a disaster occurred on the Central Viaduct when a streetcar plunged off of it into the Cuyahoga River.

Central Viaduct

VIDEO FROM THE LATE 1950s SHOWING THE BUILDING OF THE INNERBELT BRIDGE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_jxLMY4HHg&feature=c4-overview&list=UUfs4Y-HU3bvMOYPVNu9rvAw

Sanborn Map of the area.  Note Cleveland Provision Pork House in lower right-hand corner.  (Click on map to enlarge)

Sanborn Map of the area.  Note Strong Cobb & Co. above Harrison Street.

(Click map to enlarge)

In this picture we see Strong Cobb (upper left) and Cleveland Provision (2527 Canal Road) lower right.  The two houses to the right of the smokestack in the center of the picture are on Fourth Street aka Minkon.  This photo was taken from the Central Viaduct looking Northeast.  (Photo from Cleveland State University, Michael Schwartz Library Special Collections)

This picture was taken from Cleveland Provision on Canal Road.  You see the train tracks butting up against Minkon shown in the Sanborn Map above, as well as houses on Minkon and the other streets heading up the hill.  (Photo from Cleveland State University, Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland Memory Project.)

December 4, 1892 picture at 35 Fourth Street (later Minkon)

The wedding of Wilhelmina Flaum and Otto Hallig (lower left).  Rev. Carl Zorn of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church is in the front row, third from left.  Photo courtesy of Steve Flaum.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ABOUT THE HAYMARKET NEIGHBORHOOD

January 24, 1895 – Plain Dealer

PITIFUL – Homes of Poverty and Haunts of Vice in Our Own City

A Vivid and Suggestive Story

How Law is Defied, Morality and Decency Are Ignored, Childhood is Contaminated and Youth Destroyed – What is the Remedy?  A Study for All Who Love Their Kind.

The elegant mansions on our broad avenue, the many equally beautiful and even luxurious residences on less pretentious streets and the thousands of humble but comfortable homes all over our city are just cause for civic pride.  But a sight of some of the places where little children live and learn and become like those around them, where mothers toil in hopeless penury, where vice flaunts itself in horrid guise, would cause anyone who cares for the fair fame, for the best interests of our city, to blush for shame, if not to tremble with fear for its future.

Recent visits in the Haymarket region brought to our knowledge such conditions as we could not have believed to exist had not our own eyes borne testimony to the facts.  The following sketches are not exaggerations; the lines are too lightly rather than too heavily drawn.  Neither do they represent extreme and very rare cases; they may be matched in scores – we may safely say in hundreds of instances.  Will the reader look at some of these just after the late storm, which had covered with the mantle of snow some of the repulsiveness we could easily imagine. 

A long narrow passageway between two old houses that appear to be but a series of rooms, added one after another to the original poor little building, as successive tenants could be persuaded to pretend to make a home in one or two, as the case might be, of the low, dark rooms.  So all through the passage every few feet doors opened each into a different home, but in all the same dreadful sights.  Puny infants, bloated, blear eyed men and women; pretty faced little children, but squalor and filth everywhere.  At the end of the passage a flight of narrow, rickety stairs led to the upper tenements.  In one of these we found a man who had much to say of his efforts to get work, but who, as we were told, had been raving drunk all night on the dollar he had earned the day before.  Think of trying to sleep in such a neighborhood as that!

A side entrance from another narrow passageway, two steps down from the street, brought us into a room, dark indeed, but with light enough to reveal such an accumulation of diet as would prove that not scrubbing, nor even sweeping, was part of the household employments.  As we entered the mother was laboring to raise from the floor an overturned chair, into which was tied a half grown boy, who was twisting and writhing in contortions that were most distressing to witness.  When the boy was placed again upon the chair the uncontrollable swaying of arms and legs and rolling of the head continued while we talked with the mother.  “The sick boy was her oldest child; there were eight others; he was a good boy; he’d been so always’ they said he was incurable, but he knew as much as any of the children.  Her husband worked when he could get anything to do; he was good to his children, sent them to school and did the best he could.  Sometimes he couldn’t earn even 50 cents a day, and then the children cried for bread and she would not have even 5 cents to buy a loaf.”  And here the mother’s eyes overflowed – and wisely or unwisely several small coins came forth just then from the pockets of the visitors and were laid in the hand of the poor boy, who clutched them nervously and with half articulated words expressed his joy.  This woman seemed discouraged and incapable rather than vicious or lazy.

Through alleys and rear alleys crowded thick with houses little more than huts, our guide led us to a low doorway, which he opened, and then stepped back for us to enter, as only one at a time could find standing room within.  There were two rooms, each six feet by eight, and but a single window.  A stove on which, as appeared, some cornmeal mush was cooking, a dirty lounge and a small table filled all the space, except that occupied by the woman – a good looking Bohemian – who held a baby in her arms, while three other bright little ones with bare feet and scant clothing huddled about her.  Her husband was killed not long ago.  She had five children to feed.  Two of them could go to school if they had shoes.  A big, brawny man sat on the lounge, seemingly more interested in the contents of the supper kettle than anything else.  What was his relation to the family we did not learn.  He was evidently one more to eat, whether adding anything to the resources or not.

In one place visited there were signs of neatness and even an attempt at decoration.  It was one of those same wretched huts in the backyard off a back alley, but the little living room had a coat of pale blue whitewash on its walls.  There were two or three little pictures with kindergarten chains of pink and blue paper hung gracefully between them.  The man, who had an honest and somewhat intelligent face, was at work on a work bench, and showed a pastry board he had tried all the day before to sell.  The woman was pale and sick.  No wonder, as we thought, when we saw her bare feet on the cold floor.  The boy, who went to school, had to wear her shoes.  There were six children here.  One little fellow, imitating his father, was bravely pounding his tiny fingers in the effort to drive a nail with the stove lifter.  Here were only two small rooms in which this family of eight, who evidently wanted to be decent, must eat and sleep and work.  Without any qualms of conscience in this case lest we should be doing harm rather than good, we brightened for a little the sick woman’s face and had a sweet “thank you” lisped from the pretty baby boy.  “What a place for such a father and mother to rear these bright, beautiful children!” we exclaimed, as we turned away from the miserable, but, we believed, honest and decent home.

It was a dark rainy night, when to walk upon the slippery streets was at peril of life and limb.  Into a small, dirty, hot place, very near to one of the city’s thoroughfares, four Christian women went.  The bar and the rows of bottles told what is the business carried on and the appearance of the big, coarse, bestial man in charge indicated plainly enough that he was one of his own best customers.  Opposite the bar two women sat; the one, a gross, brazen faced mulatto, perhaps thirty years old; the other a German, younger in years, as well as in sin, was evidently touched in her better nature by the kind, earnest words spoken to her.  Instead of the bold, defiant air of the older woman, she seemed ashamed, and said she wanted to leave her present life.  A young boy, seeing that he was not to be called upon to serve the visitors in the usual way, busied himself in a back room, until the dear old hymn, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” was begun, when, coming where the group of singers stood, he joined with full, sweet voice in the words he had learned in some gospel meeting “before I went into this business.”

A similar room in the same locality; four men around a table playing cards, while the bartender is just bringing in from an adjoining room empty bottles and glasses.  The half-open door discloses a small hallway, from which a staircase ascends and into which a half dozen girls soon gather, curious to see who is making such unaccustomed visit.  There is no cessation of the card playing, while a sweet gospel visitation is sung, and a few words of prayer spoken.  No response is made to the earnest pleading to turn away from sinful ways, but after repeating that blessed truth, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish but have everlasting life,” the party of Christian women went out into the storm, with the prayer in their hearts that some word spoken or sung might touch the conscience and be used by the Holy Spirit in regenerating power.

The sound of music comes out upon the night air from across the street.  Cautiously making our way along we enter the front door and pass behind the screen meant to protect the inmates from the view of passersby.  Beyond the rows of bottles whose contents are surely known by the odors that fill the place, past the burly bartender and two or three customers, we go on into a room in which is an attempt at fine furniture and hangings.  A piano and violin are being played to some rollicking air and on the sofas are seated two young girls of not more than sixteen years and boys of eighteen or possibly twenty.  The dress, the attitudes, the air, told all too plainly whose house we were in.  While one of the visitors prayed, the girls left the room.

A young man of perhaps twenty-five years had come in from the saloon, drawn perhaps by the singing or praying.  He was fine looking, well dressed, and evidently touched by the sight of women out on such an errand, on such a night.  To one who said to him, “Are you always going on in this kind of life?” he replied, “No, I don’t intend to.”  “When is the best time to stop?”  After a moment’s hesitation, “Now, I suppose.”  “Will you stop now?”  The fine brown eyes filled with tears and an inward struggle going on was evident.  “Perhaps your mother was a Christian!”  “She is one.”  “She may be praying for you now!”

“Very likely she is.”  “Will you go right away from this place now?”  The strong frame trembled, the eyes overflowed, and turning quickly away he left the room.

This time it was a woman of perhaps forty years who faced us as we passed behind the curtains that separated the saloon from the other place.  She was probably handsome when young, but her face was cold, hard, defiant.  She wore a white dress with yellow ribbons; in her ears and at her throat brilliant diamonds gleamed.  Younger women were in the room and several men, while in the bar room was a woman gorgeously arrayed and bedizened with all the falseness which seeks by the semblance of beauty to cover the hideousness of vice.  Four young men were listening to her blandishments, while they drank the liquor that would take away their sense of shame, their power to resist the evil to which the false temptress was enticing them.

Another scene:  A low, dirty room about twenty feet square, situated on a side hill.  Boisterous shouts mingled with ribald jests and horrid oaths.  The place is crowded in suffocation, black and white, old and young, men and women indiscriminately mingled, dancing to the music of a squeaky violin, while others stand about the bar drinking.  A little girl, not more than six years old, bare footed, ragged, dirty, was just leaving with a pitcher of beer, sold to her, without doubt, in direct violation of law; while amidst the crowd of bloated, drunken sots was a small boy with a face as sweet and beautiful as could anywhere be found.  The child looked as much out of place here as would an angel from heaven in the heart of hell.  Drawing him away from the horrid sounds we asked:  “Why are you here in this dreadful place, dear child?”  “Oh, I like to hear the music,” was his innocent reply.

In another and larger saloon, not less than fifteen boys, all evidently under eighteen years of age, were playing cards and drinking.  The law makes it an offense punishable with heavy fine or imprisonment to sell liquor to minors, or even to allow them to come into saloons unless upon lawful business.  Surely no lawful business brought those fifteen boys into that saloon that night all at once.  If proof were wanting that the saloon is an open door leading to gambling, licentiousness and other crimes, it were easily obtained by anyone who would visit the saloons of this city.  He would find that in many if not in most cases a side staircase or a back passage leads to gambling rooms, wine parlors, and places of illicit resort.  In the nature of things, indulgence in the vice of intemperance leads to the breaking down of character, of the power to resist temptation to other vices.

In the problem that awaits a solution from Cleveland’s strongest brains and purest hearts, one very difficult and complicated equation is found in the condition of the very poor, and certainly another in that of the vicious classes.  Can either of these equations be eliminated?  Tenement houses with some adequate provision for cleanliness for good air, and against such herding together of all ages and both sexes, as is now found, might help to answer that question.  Compulsory education, not alone in books but in industries and moralities, will go far toward answering it as regards the children in these homes.  Will not a faithful enforcement of the laws which deal with the vices that fester and breed in our city render it easier to control and keep in check the vicious and criminal element in our body politic, if not entirely to eliminate it?  May the future speedily bring an affirmative answer!  Mary E. Ingersoll

October 27, 1895 – Plain Dealer

About the Haymarket

An electric light, the central viaduct, with its attendant increase of street traffic and the combined influence of religious services and institutions has metamorphosed the old haymarket region from a cesspool of crime, immorality and degradation into a district which now has a fair share of mercantile life and business activity.

Twenty, even fifteen, years ago the haymarket region enjoyed the unenviable reputation of being one of the toughest and hardest regions between New York and Chicago.  Although continually watched by the police, crime was committed in every conceivable manner – from the brutal holdup and murder to the greater and more repulsive perpetrations.  Commercial Hill, Cleveland’s toughest locality at the present time, has improved wonderfully within the last fifteen years, while Berg Street Hill, which extends at right angles from Commercial Street, has somewhat deteriorated.  But neither of these streets can compare with the old haymarket in its palmy days, before street car or traffic had penetrated its gloominess.  At that time the haymarket was located between Hill, Addison, Ontario Streets, and Central Avenue.  The central viaduct had not been built, the Broadway Mills were not located at the end of Viaduct Street, and the street cars didn’t round the corner at Ontario Street and Centralway.

There was no particular necessity for an electric light; no one went into the district after dark for any good purpose.  The long lines of red glassed windows, the squeaking harsh sound of a dozen old fiddles, the tin pan clang of a dozen antiquated pianos, the ribald joke, the harsh laugh and screeching voices of dissolate women, attested the character of the neighborhood.  The “Black Stag,” “Jack Joshua’s Place,” “Pony Smart’s Joint,” and the houses kept by Bob Lee and Bill Anderson, all of them the roughest of rough dives, were well known by the police and carefully watched.  Patrolmen did not saunter through the dark alleys, the innumerable byways and paths of the district alone; they invariably went in couples and often in squads.  These were the days before the innovation of the patrol wagon and the police exchange system.  When an arrest was made the prisoner had to be dragged through the streets to the central station, and often a woman, crazed with drink, would be dragged into the turnkey’s room by four or five stalwart officers, well-nigh divested of her only garment, a slouchy, dirty wrapper, it having been torn off in the fight.

But then came the Salvation Army and the Central Friendly Inn.  Mayor McKisson followed and with the religious services and demonstrations a slight improvement was noticed, but it was not encouraging.  The red lights still burned, crime was still perpetrated, lewd women were still in evidence.  During the day, the district would be comparatively quiet.  Aside from scores of hay-laden wagons and a congregation of farmers, the conspicuous number of saloons, nothing particular could be noticed, except a small army of dirty children, who played around the wagons, wallowed in the mud, cursed and swore lustily and enjoyed all the opportunities of the environment to have a jolly good time.

When the project of building the Central viaduct was agitated and work finally commenced, the change became perceptible and when traffic was opened, the aspect was encouraging.  Traffic over the new bridge was heavy.  The haymarket was in plain view of one of the city’s most important thoroughfares.  The street cars came next and then the electric light.  The last improvement proved a death blow to the more vicious element in the neighborhood.  Gradually the red lights disappeared, gradually the saloon was supplanted by a little grocery or notion store and more frequently by second-hand shops.

Of the many dens which encircled the haymarket, but six or seven remain, and the general appearance of the locality impresses one with the existence of poverty rather than crime.  A cluster of shanties between the Central Viaduct and the end of Central Avenue is conspicuous by reason of their tumble down appearance.  The lack of uniformity, the fact that the front doors of several of them face each other, conveys the idea that they have been dropped there by chance and that chance is responsible for their occupancy.  An appearance of utter neglect, the absence of any indication of paint, the loose shingles, the bits of cloth and board nailed over the kinks and crevices attests the indifference of the people.  On the south side of the market are a number of saloons, relics of the past.  Broken steps, worm eaten doors and an occasional sign advertising the superior merits of some particular brand of whisky, and the permeating odor of stale beer and bad cheese is in substance their description.  The bars are old, dirty, and sticky, decorated here and there by cheap glass decanters and dirty glasses.  Her and there a cracked mirror shows a past extravagance.

Near the Central Viaduct, between Viaduct and Harrison streets, is a peculiarly shaped three-story block.  In the corner room is a barber shop and a flaming red sign proclaims that a man can be shaved for a nickel and have his hair shorn for an additional 5 cents.  The rest of the block is occupied by saloons.  On Hill Street there are several more small grog shops, but the few disreputable houses are fast disappearing.

The police have succeeded in gaining perfect control over the district and the trips of the patrol wagon to box No. 36 are not at all frequent.

November 22, 1896 – Plain Dealer

A Thanksgiving Story

"Speaking of Thanksgiving," said a police officer in the first precinct who has been connected with the department for many years, "I can tell you of a little experience I had a year ago that I will remember as long as I live.  "It was while doing patrol duty in the Haymarket district that I became acquainted with a family by the name of Garland, and around this family center the incidents of the little story which I am about to relate.  The Garland family consisted of the old mother who was blind, her little girl about nine years old, and last, a son named Jakey, who was twelve years old and upon whom the welfare of the family depended.  It goes without saying that the family was very poor and that the existence of its three members was one of continual hardship.  Two small rooms on the first floor of a rickety tenement house located on a street near the Haymarket composed the home of the unfortunate family, and in these rooms the old blind woman and her two children while away their evening hours.  I say hours, for they spent very little time at home during the day. 

"Jakey, who, to my mind, was the most interesting member of the family, sold papers and blacked boots on the streets all day, while his blind mother sat on the Public Square on such days as the weather would permit and ground doleful music out of a small hand organ.  The little girl was too young to work and attended school most of the time.  Jakey's highest ambition was to furnish means for his sister to obtain an education, and the boy would sacrifice mot anything in order that his sister might be warmly clad in cold weather.

"It happened that I used to se Jakey and his mother nearly every day when they were going to and from their work.  I took quite an interest in them and became well acquainted with Jakey.  Whenever I would meet him on the street and he was alone he would stop and talk, telling me about his family and how he worked to support his mother and sister.  He was like the average boy that makes a living by selling papers on the streets in a good many respects, that is, he was full of slang expressions and ready to fight any of his competitors in business. 

About a week before Thanksgiving Day last year I met Jakey on the street and he said "Gee, but I wish I could get a turnkey for next Thursday and surprise de folks.  I've been saving up all de stuff I could and think maybe I'll have enough to buy one somehow."  I told the boy I hoped he would be successful and thought no more about the matter until two days before Thanksgiving when I noticed him coming up Ontario Street with something swung over his shoulder.  I asked what he had and he said, "Oh, I got a turk as I was telling you about."  I asked him where he got it and he said, "Oh, de man over there in that store on de corner give it to me."  How did he give it to you I asked.  "Well, it was like this.  I goes into de store and tells him I want to buy a turkey.  He laughed at me first and asked me how much stuff I had to blow in.  I told him I had been saving and was going to surprise de folks wid it, and what does he do but go and pick out this here one and tells me to take it along.  He wouldn't take a red for it either.

I congratulated him upon his good luck and he went whistling away.  That night when I went to the station the lieutenant informed me that the proprietor of a meat market had complained to him that several turkeys had been stolen from his market late that afternoon.  Of course, my thoughts at once turned to Jakey Garland.  I couldn't believe it possible that Jakey had stolen the turkey.  It was my duty, however, to tell the lieutenant that I had seen a boy on Ontario Street with a turkey.  He ordered me to place him under arrest until the proprietor of the market could be notified and asked as to the truth of Jakey's story.  I never hated to do anything so in my life as I did to arrest that boy because I was sure in my own mind that he was not guilty. 

When I informed Jakey of my unpleasant mission after arriving at his home, there was a scene such as words cannot describe.  Jakey protested his innocence while his mother and sister wept pitifully.  "I finally succeeded in persuading Jakey to accompany me to the station where he was compelled to remain overnight.  The next morning the proprietor called and when he saw Jakey he remembered him as the boy to whom he had presented the turkey.  Jakey was then the happiest boy in Cleveland.  I told him that it came out just as I thought it would and then nothing would do but that I must come and eat dinner with him and his family.  A few days later I met Jakey on the street and he told me what a good time he and his mother and sister had on Thanksgiving Day and that he intended that they should celebration like that every year.    Charles Strong.

July 24, 1895 – Plain Dealer

The Disreputable Residents Must Leave or Go to the Workhouse and They Prefer to do the Former

The inhabitants of the portion of the condemned tenderloin district which lies along Lake and Wood streets, are unhappy mortals.  Many of the disorderly houses which have flourished in times past, when the strings of police court pulled less taut, are now forced to close and quit their infamous business, or else find territory untramped by the blue coated representatives of peace and order.  Many houses have been ordered suppressed and have been given a time limit to pack up and get out.  A few months ago the disreputable portion of Seneca street hill was purified by suppression, and now it is quiet at night and free from revelry and disorder.  The scarlet houses in the Haymarket district, on Canal Street and those in other parts of the city have thus far been allowed to continue in peace, except for an occasional raid by the police.  It is probably that this order of things will continue until the resorts are complained of by residents of the neighborhood. 

February 22, 1896 – Plain Dealer

Suffering - Tenement District Residents Cannot Keep Warm and Need Clothing Badly.

Central Friendly Inn ladies offer to distribute garments.  Some of the scenes witnessed in the Rickety Houses.  The biting cold is not a pleasure to those who are scantily clothed.  With the intense cold of this week great suffering has been felt, the tenement district, near the Haymarket, suffering.  Mrs. W.J. Sheppard and Mrs. E.C. Worthington of the Central Friendly Inn have been making visits to the district and reliving the suffering by furnishing what clothing they have received, but the demand is far in excess of the supply.  It would be hard to enumerate the poverty, filth and suffering of this neighborhood.  Those places, which, by a very great diversion could be classed as tenements, should be improved by the owners who rent them, and others should be demolished, and proper, decent places for a human being to live in be provided.  We believe this district should be cleaned, that is, the alleys and yards and the work given to men who now live in them and can work and who say they will if they can. We found a mother and five children, one in arms, and she was the only provider.  There is nothing that the family does not need.  There is another family, the father of which is a consumptive.  The mother can do washing and scrubbing, but this, she says, she cannot always get.   In one place a family with six children was found huddling around a miserable stove in a miserable room.  Four of the children were without shoes and stockings and huddled together in an effort to withstand the cold winds which found an entrance through the cracks in the building. 

July 24, 1905 – Plain Dealer

ELIMINATE THE WHOLE SECTION – Only Solution Judge Sees for the Congestion of Cross Alley Region – Would Tear Down Hovels and Use Land for Park and Playgrounds.

A half hundred naked children were playing in Cross Alley yesterday.  Rolling in the dust and dirt of the unpaved passageway, tossing handfuls of the dirt in each other’s hair and faces, they fought and laughed, cried bitterly and screamed for joy while their parents looked on and applauded, little realizing that in each handful of dust lingered germs that might any day carry off their offspring in death.

Cross Alley is one of the worst of the streets and alleyways in the “Haymarket” district.  Others are bad, and a fine eye is needed to assign the superlative to any particular street in the district.  The “homes” that front on the alley were practically all at one time the wood and coal sheds of the houses that face on Hill and Minkon Streets.

Little effort has been made by the owners of the property to improve the condition of their old fuel houses for the benefit of the residents of the alley.  Here, halfway down the alley, is a lean-to with no floor but the clay soil.  There is an entrance from the dusty and dirty alley through a plank door hanging by one rusty hinge.

The home is but one room.  A woman was sitting before the door when her visitors arrived.  With an incoherent mumble she stood aside and looked askance at them as they entered.  A half dozen scantily clad little children ranging in age from a year to eight years came scurrying to their mother from all directions.

In one corner of the room was a broken camp cot with a torn portion of camp mattress covering it.  An undersized cook stove, held up from the ground by bricks, had its outlet for smoke through a rift in the ceiling that a tall man would brush with his head.  There were no tables, one chair and a bundle of rags and straw in another corner, where the children crawled for their sleep.

The “home” is but typical of scores more on Hill Street, and Minkon and the alleys between the two and Broadway.  No yards, no grass, no playground but the cobblestone streets for the children.  There is little attempt at sanitation.  Ashes, refuse and garbage of weeks’ accumulation is thrown indiscriminately on the small stretches of ground that separate the shacks from each other.  Under the windows are piles of garbage.  In through the rear doors come odors that suffocate the chance visitor.

The social settlement workers, the charity workers, the juvenile court and the philanthropic bodies of the city are hunting some solution for the problem.

“I can see no escape from the problem, but condemnation of the district,” says Judge T.H. Bushnell of the juvenile court.  “Let the city erect a park on the site of the worst section of the district.  The cost would be small compared to the lives of children that would be saved, and two objects would be accomplished.  The worst slum section of the city would be eradicated and a playground and breathing place would be provided for the children of the other districts surrounding it.

“Two or three acres between Hill and Minkon Streets or between Hill Street and Broadway would make an excellent breathing spot for these children and their parents.”

The only public playground for this entire general district, with a population of more than 30,000 people, lies along Broadway above the Nickel Plate passenger station.  It is little but a strip on the top of the bluff and has no shade or bit of green.  A few swings and “teeters” are placed about the grounds, but owing to the intense heat of the place in summer, it is only available in the evening.

July 28, 1905 – Plain Dealer

Children Learn Crimes in Slums - Haymarket District Serious Problem for Social Settlement Workers.

The slums furnish many of those children who are called to the bar of the juvenile court. This record of crime seems to be growing rather than diminishing, despite the growth of the work of the social settlements, the juvenile court and the police. With their playground on the streets, not the sight of a blade of grass from one week's end to another's, the children who have played in the dirt, slept in dirt, lived in dirt from their earliest days, seem to turn to wrongdoing and with blunted conscience and absence of moral training persist in evil until taken for the preservation of society, and possible saving of their bodies and souls, they are brought into court. The statistics of the Hill street district, the worst slum district in the city, are appalling with their figures of youthful offenders. Bounded by Hill and Minkon and Cross and Commercial streets, the district is composed of six city squares. Within its borders exist an army of thousands of people. Tier upon tier of houses rise from the bluffs one above the other. Mere shacks, with cracks through which the snow or the rain may go, dozens of humans are crowded into three and four rooms. Sanitation there is none. Refuse is thrown from the rear doors and against the doors of the lean-to adjoining. There is city water on each lot, but this comes from a pipe through the ground and the earth for several feet about is tramped into a mire by countless feet. The streets are dirty, and down Cross Street from Broadway runs an open wooden sewer. No covering, no guard about it, a stench arises from it that permeates all the surrounding tenements. The alleys, freighted heavier with children than even the streets, are inches deep in dust, and with each tramping of the children in play, clouds of the suffocating dirt grinds its way into and settles on the scant furniture of the she homes that open from the passageway.

It is in these surroundings that the juvenile court and police find the preponderance of their youthful offenders. Hill Street, with its 3 squares, had 22 children in the court for the six months ended June 30. Cross Street, with its single square, had six; Berg Street, slightly shorter than Hill, had ten, and Minkon, lying down by the canal, and with houses only on one side of the street, had five. During the portion of July that has passed this proportion of arrests has been maintained. While there are other districts in the city where children are bad, the number does not compare to that of the "Haymarket". West River and Mulberry streets furnish numbers; Orange and Irving streets, in the same general district as Hill and Berg street, have their quota in the state institutions for youth, but in no section of the city is social settlement work as difficult, missionary work so unfruitful and police authority so ridiculed as in the six little squares comprising the "Haymarket district." The district remains squalid, dirty, unsanitary, immoral, contented in itself and seemingly not alarmed by the conditions that take its children through death by the score.

May 20, 1912 – Plain Dealer

Twenty-three years ago Sanford Alden formed his first boy's club in an East End Church. After a few years he decided that he was needed own in the Haymarket District where the streets are full of neglected boys, and ten years ago he rented a little upstairs room on the crest of Vinegar Hill and hung out the sign "Boy's Club". In the early days of the Vinegar Hill club the average attendance was forty boys, some of whom were homeless and some with homes that were worse than none. Most of them were boys who were learning the lore of the streets. Down along the river in the Haymarket district, in the very hotbeds of vice, these were the haunts of many of those whom Mr. Alden called his boys. Older boys and men were training these boys to steal and worse, and Mr. Alden and his kind were not wanted. Twice was Mr. Alden shot at in the midnight hours, and once he was beaten so badly that he was confined to his bed for several days, blind and bruised. Mr. Alden went into this work that he has loved with an enthusiasm that has never waned. At last his boys' club is on its feet, the rooms are comfortable, he has nine volunteer helpers, classes in carpentry, mechanical drawing and gymnastics are conducted, and Mr. Alden's modest dream is realized after 23 years of patient struggle with an unsympathetic world which has refused to understand. One of the boys, for example, Mike Monor, drifted into the club 16 years ago with a group of newsboys, and for 16 years he has been Mr. Alden's right-hand man. 

December 22, 1918 – Plain Dealer

NEXT FIVE YEARS WILL SEE MANY CHANGES ON SQUARE

Union Passenger Depot to Match Hotel Cleveland in Architecture; Will Restore Many Abandoned Streets to City

The picture on this page shows the southwest corner of the Public Square, as it may be expected to appear within five years.  At the right may be seen the new Hotel Cleveland, in the angel and stretching along the south side of the southwest section of the square, the building which the Cleveland Union Terminals Co., wishes to erect as a union passenger station for Cleveland.

The building of the new union passenger station, and particularly the freight relief program which is bound up with the depot project, will result in the literal making over of a section of which Cleveland is none too proud.  It will require, before the combined developments are finished, a great area long Ontario Street, and it will put this land to work to make the city go.

Much of the district affected lies in what has long been known as the Haymarket section, oftener known in the records of the police and fire departments than any other districts within the city.  This land is to be used in the creation of high level freight facilities, and here it is that the bulk of the proposed street vacations will be made.

The street which must be vacated if the big improvement is to go forward hand, for the most part, precariously to the side of the hill which drops into the valley south and east of Central Viaduct.  Parts of many of these streets, indeed, do not hang at all.  They drop.

Harrison Street, Hill Avenue, Commercial Road, Berg Street, and Minkon Street are affected most.  They are streets whose very names are unfamiliar to most Clevelanders.  You can see them from Central Viaduct as you pass above the flats.  You are not likely to visit them.

Mostly, though, you look from the old viaduct across the tops of a few old buildings and the roofs of many old, old shacks which were once, perhaps, attractive residences in the days when Broadway was the main business thoroughfare of Cleveland and the Ohio canal did a flourishing passenger business.  And most of these houses, social workers complain, shelter all too many families.

Streets scheduled for vacation, and for a renewed era of true usefulness, include:  Harrison Street from Central Avenue to Canal Road; Andes Court, from Central Avenue to E. 9th Street (this is an alley back of Broadway); Hill Avenue, from Broadway to E. 9th Street; Commercial Road, from Hill Avenue to Canal Road; Berg Street, from Commercial Road to E. 9th Street and beyond to Canal Road; Minken Street, from Commercial Road to E. 9th Street; Lane Street, from Commercial Road to Canal Road; E. 9th Street, from Broadway to Canal Road.

This last is the fag end of a street which cannot be recognized as a usable thoroughfare.  It is, really, a precipitous cut-bank.  Canal Road, sections of which are to be vacated, is to be replaced by a more modern and convenient street, built by the Terminals company and dedicated to the city, as a permanent improvement which shall provide more easy access and egress to and from the flats.

Canal Road, for years, has been almost overwhelmed by dirt and debris from the hillside above.  Engineers have rebuilt it into a first-class thoroughfare, which is to mount the hill by easy grades to Ontario Street.  Along Ontario, at the base of the steep hill, it has been divided into two roads, one serving property along the river, and the other reaching the high level at Central Avenue.  Beyond Central, it descends gradually again, to rejoin the parent road beyond Central Viaduct.

This improvement is designed to lessen haulage difficulties in the flats which might result from the closing of W. 3rd Street and Eagle Avenue.  On the last named street a big and complicated rolling roadway stands unused, a monument to a futile effort to get business down into the flats and out again.  Vacation of Eagle Avenue, and a few fag ends and courts which come down from Ontario Street into the flats by means of rickety stairways of Prospect Avenue from Ontario Street to Canal Road; and of Champlain Avenue and West 3rd Street from Superior Avenue to Canal Road, are parts of the union passenger station improvement itself.

Long Avenue is to be retained as part of a new thoroughfare, but it will be a step below Prospect Avenue, which is to be carried northwestward as far as Columbus Road, at the east end of the high level bridge.  Traffic to and from the flats that now uses the steep W. 3rd Street hill will use Canal Road, and the new street, which will reach Superior by a new thorough fare to be cut through and dedicated to the city midway between W. 3rd and W. 6th Streets.  The hill ends of Huron Road, Race Street, Eagle Avenue and How Avenue will be cleaned out incidental to the construction for the station proper.

On the west side of the Cuyahoga River, and as part of bringing the roads down Walworth Run to the new station, Walworth Avenue will be moved a few feet south, and will become a real street instead of a pretense as today.  Walworth Avenue can be traced only by the sewer manholes.

A fragment of W. 30th Street is to be vacated at this point, where it leads to a dump in a gulley.  Moore Avenue and Hunt Avenue, streets which cling to the top of the river embankment, will be affected for a few yards.  West 22nd street is to be moved in order to furnish an outlet on Lorain Avenue just south of the present junction.

In order to make possible proper support for the new bridge which is to be flung across the river, a section of old Winter Street is to be vacated.  This section, in the flats, was long since swallowed up in railroad tracks.

In the Kingsbury Run section extensions of Canal Road, Hill Avenue and Stanley Road will be eliminated at the point where the passenger station link of railroad connects with the lines coming in from the south and east.

No date – Plain Dealer

Rents are raised, many must move - Families in Haymarket District in Struggle - Hundreds being forced out to make room for rapid transit railway

The congested territory between Central Ave. and Broadway, from the Haymarket to E. 40th St. is rapidly becoming more overcrowded, rents there are being raised from 10% to 15%, and many families are losing out in their struggle to live under decent conditions.  . . . Hundreds of families are being forced to move from homes torn down to make room for the rapid transit railway that is being constructed between Orange Ave. and Broadway.  Many more are moving from tenements and homes condemned by the city.  Nearness to the market districts, where food and clothing may be bought cheaply, convenience of day nurseries for hundreds of families in which the mother must work part of the time, desire to live among others of the same nationality, and lastly, because in this district is about the only one in which two or three-room apartments may be had for $6, $7 and $8 a month are reasons for families remaining in that neighborhood.  

May 13, 1928 – Plain Dealer

The Good Old Days in the Haymarket District - Union Station wipes out one of Cleveland's most Colorful Spots

by J.H. Webb

Building the great terminal railway station that fronts upon the Public Square has swept from Cleveland's "Haymarket" everything but its name. The name alone is enough to keep alive memories of the district to which farmers once hauled their fragrant crops, grown on the sites of what are now suburban cities, and of the picturesque deeds of criminals who came to infest the place.

Many of the doings of the gangsters who made the old "hill" section of the city their hangout were recorded by the late Alfred Henry Lewis in his "Field Notes of a Reformer." for which he gathered material when he was police prosecutor. Not only are the gangsters gone, the aging buildings in which they lived and played and plotted and hid have been razed by the wreckers who march ahead of the batteries of steam shovels.

Founders of the city's industry and commerce and political bosses, as well as gangsters thrived in the hill district 40 or 50 years ago. The old livery stables which once stood along the alleys of Race Avenue and the "dead end" of Central Avenue were used for their original purpose long after the hillsite lost its first character, while lodging houses which rendered service for half a century were the abodes of men who toiled in the valley until the building wreckers stormed the hill.

The "Haymarket" was the home of gangsters like "Blinky Morgan, the rendezvous of "Johnny" Coughlan’s followers, who ruled along what is now the white way of E. 9th Street. These types of men terrorized the whole downtown section in the good old days, when almost every second house on the "hill" was a saloon or a bawdy house, when two quarts of beer cost a jitney and the residents of the region sat on curbstones and rank from pails. It was in those days, too, that "Paddy the Tough" otherwise Patrick McKernan, strode up and down the "hill" dragging his coat behind him, daring anyone to tread on the garment.

Mrs. Wren presided over the Wren House and swayed gangsters and politicians, while "Gypsy" George flourished in a regular western type of saloon and dance hall, sometimes referred to as Cleveland's first cabaret.

Tom Oakes, an Englishman with a big thick bushy beard, kept the London House at the foot of Ontario Street curing the days when the "dead end" of Central Avenue was known as Ohio Street. Tom squandered what he earned in a legitimate business by betting on a sorrel trotter which was just fast enough to lose.

"Bonesy" Morris was another of the hillside characters; he once pawned an overcoat off his back to buy a revolved with which he killed "Jim" Handy, a Factory Street saloon keeper.

While these toughs fought and killed and other denizens of the district quarreled and drank, William F. Newcomb, builder of the Newcomb Building at Ontario Street and Eagle Avenue, was pioneering his foundry business and often had no more than two bits left after his workers were paid their weekly wages. Closeby, where Newcomb accumulated half a million dollars, were the "Horseshoe" the "Sailor Boy" and the "Three Stars," among the best known of the drink shops on the hill.

Amid this squalor, crime and industry, the Friendly Inn stood as a beacon light for the "Haymarket's" frequenters. No other section of Cleveland offered a more unhappy environment for a nursery for future citizens than the old Haymarket district, yet in this circumscribed area were born a greater number of children than in any other equal territory in the city.

The refuse of the dirty markets polluted the air and clouds of smoke rolled from puffing freight and passenger locomotives in the flats below. Neither breathing nor bathing space was considered by the motley denizens of the district overlooking the crooked Cuyahoga River. Here was the superlative of every known menace to public safety, morality and health; here were the highest death rate, the largest percentage of tuberculosis, and the most truancy - often arising from necessity which forced children into factories and sweat shops; here was the breeding place for every contagion - and the zone of the city's highest birthrate; here were gathered 35 nationalities - aliens.

And amid this hellish scum the Friendly Inn thrived because the keynote of its work was economic reliance. Thoroughfares like Champlaign, Superior, Seneca, Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, Factory, Commercial and others, were familiar to those who read of the city, which became "Smoketown" in the tales written by Lewis. Persons with whom he was once associated and about whom he wrote were thinly disguised in print. "Judge Bung," for instance, was easily recognized as Judge Peter Young, who presided over the police court in which Lewis was prosecutor. Old timers also recognized "The Reverend Mr. Sounding Board," as Alexander Lawlor, keeper of the White House saloon. Others of Lewis' characters in print included "Patriarch Cram," "Madam Gray" and "Madam Hamilton."

Captain Hoehn, mentioned by name, was the police officer knocked senseless when Blinky Morgan killed Detective William Hulligan with a coupling pin at Ravenna, Ohio in 1887. Later, Capt. Hoehn was made superintendent of police of Cleveland.

The crimes committed in the Haymarket would fill a volume, while another book might be written around the pioneers of industry and commerce who lived and thrived in the district, or had commercial interests in the valley below.

Many strong policemen paced beats in the Haymarket district when its dwellers terrorized the community, but only one of them was a match for all comers among the gangsters. He was Henry Brunner, a friend of the ragged kids and tradespeople and never afraid to go alone where two or three fellow officers hesitated to venture. When Brunner wanted his man he went single handed and got him. When Brunner sought an offender the "hill gang" knew Brunner meant what he said and resistance was not offered.

The Haymarket and its environs teem with pioneer history. Here was Cleveland's earliest business center. The right of way of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, formerly the Cleveland Terminal & Valley Railroad, was once an old canal bed. Canal boats in early days came to the foot of what was known as "Commercial Hill," where the "callers," as boatmen were then known, and the lake seamen had their lodgings.

An English sociologist, in looking over the Haymarket district several years before its decline, said he had always believed the worst slums of the world were in London, but a glimpse of the Cleveland type convinced him he was wrong.

The Armour Co.'s packing plant, a white tiled structure on the site of the old Wren House, noted as a stopping place for soldiers during the Civil War, when Mrs. Wren ran the place, is to be razed to make way for the terminal station. Mrs. Wren was one of the leaders of an English colony that squatted on the hill. Others included the Nashes and Tom Oakes and his brood, which consisted of a large family of three generations.

Ed J. Hanratty, present Sheriff of Cuyahoga County and formerly councilman from the Haymarket ward estimates that Mrs. Wren had due her $200,000 in unpaid lodging and board bills by valley workers she tided over in periods of unemployment.

The Kavanaughs, Martin and Stephen, William and Joseph Newby, and other residents of prominence among the influential families were permanent fixtures. Martin Kavanaugh became a paving contractor and Steve joined the city fire department.

Farmers who brought jags of hay to town parked their nags and wagons along lower Central Avenue, or Ohio Street, at the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway tracks. Until a few years ago a stable in which farmers swapped horses and traded hay remained intact.

"Big Mike" Lukascho, father-8in-law of the Ninth Ward's present councilman, Jimmy McGinty was well named, for he stood six feet four and weighed 300 pounds. He was a local leader among representative of many of the Slavic people who were among the first central Europeans to settle in Cleveland in any great numbers. "Big Mike's Place," his saloon at Commercial Road and Minkon Street, was their headquarters, their club house and their post office. And to the proprietor they looked for advice and guidance in this strange new country

"Gypsy" George, who owned a favorite haunt, played the violin and with a pianist furnished music for dancers in his saloon, which had 17 entrances and several underground passages. In one of these gruesome passages one of the most horrible murders in the history of the hill district was committed, the victim a man suspected of being a stool pigeon.

Charley McGill, the last man to be hanged in the old county jail in the Public Square, was one of the notorious toughs of the hill district. MGill shot and killed Mary Kelley in a house on Cross Street.

Frank, alias "Bonesy" Morris, killed James Handy, a saloon keeper, and got a life sentence in the Ohio State prison, but was later paroled. The murdered man's widow opposed the parole, which was not granted until after her death. Another notable murder was that committed by Stephen Hood, July 1, 1873, when he took his six year old stepson, regarded by Hood as an encumbrance to the woods and beat the boy to death with a club. Andy Doig murdered "Mollie" Knapp in her room at 39 Central Avenue, November 20, 1900. He died in the penitentiary.

May 3, 1959 – Plain Dealer

Haymarket, in Freeway Path, Gone Forever

Last traces of Cleveland's once notorious Haymarket District are being wiped away by the steel and concrete sinews of the 35 million dollar a mile Inner Belt Freeway.  As a city measures time, they Haymarket still lived not so long ago.  Forgotten by most Clevelanders, it has faded prematurely in the pages of local history.  What was the Haymarket?

In the beginning, about 1839, it was a Haymarket, and so it remained until the early 1900s when horse liniment began giving way to metal polish for horseless carriages.

Around the Haymarket there grew up a business, commercial and residential district which thrived in the decades when Cleveland turbulently evolved from a Midwest frontier town to a surging metropolis.  At the heart of the Haymarket District was Cleveland's first municipal market house, built 120 years ago this year.  The market place was at Ontario Street and Michigan Street.  The latter (opposite Prospect Ave. S.E.) was one of those which vanished in the birth of the Union Terminal group in the 1920s, even as the Inner Belt is devouring other streets today.

Ironically, on the very spot where farmers used to park their hay wagons there is now a modern "pigeon hole" garage for parking automobiles. 

In the early years there were many fine homes in the Haymarket District.  The Rev. Amadeus Rappe, first Catholic bishop of Cleveland, lived in a rented house near the Haymarket when he came here in 1847 to serve a Catholic population of about 10,000.

The tides of immigration flooding in from Europe after the Civil War fashioned an explosive change in the district.  Penniless, or nearly so, most of the immigrants poured into the Haymarket, which became the caldron where generations of newcomers were to toil and sweat for a niche in the new world.  This done, they moved out and made room in the Haymarket for teeming thousands who followed.

Soon overcrowded, the district became the city's first slum.  An English sociologist, in looking over the Haymarket District several years before its demise, said that he had always believed the worst slums of the world were in London, but that a glimpse of the Cleveland type convinced him he was wrong.

Of the district it was written some years past:

"The refuse of the dirty markets polluted the air and clouds of smoke rolled from puffing freight and passenger locomotives in the Flats below.  Neither breathing nor bathing space was considered by the motley denizens of the district overlooking the crooked Cuyahoga River.

"Here was the superlative of every known menace to public safety, morality, and health; here were the highest death rate, the largest percentage of tuberculosis and the most truancy - often arising from the necessity which forced children into factories and sweat shops; here was the breeding place for every contagion and the zone of the city's highest birth rate; here were gathered 35 nationalities - aliens."

The Haymarket, as one well might expect, became a lawless district.  Crimes committed there would fill a volume.  The Haymarket was the casbah for gangsters like Blinky Morgan, the rendezvous of Johnny Coughlan's followers, who ruled along what is now E. 9th Street and terrorized the whole downtown section in the "good old days."

Almost every other house on the "hill" beneath Ontario Street was a saloon or bawdy house.  Two quarts of beer cost a nickel, and residents of the Haymarket sat on curbstones and drank it from pails.

There was a famed thug, "Paddy the Tough", otherwise known as Patrick McKernan, who strode up and down the streets dragging his coat behind him, daring anyone to treat on the garment.  Frank (Bonesy) Morris was another Haymarket character.  He once pawned an overcoat off his back to buy a revolver with which he killed Jim Handy a saloonkeeper.

Charley McGill, the last man ever hanged in the old county jail on Public Square, was a Haymarket thug who shot and killed Mary Kelley in a house on Cross Street.  Stephen Hood was an infamous Haymarketer who regarded his 6 year old stepson as an encumbrance.  In 1873 he took the boy out into the woods and beat him to death with a club.

Brawny Cleveland policemen did not patrol the district in pairs.  When they invaded the Haymarket they went in threes for their own protection.  There was one notable exception among the bluecoats.  He was Henry Brunner a friend of ragged kids and tradespeople, who was never afraid to go in alone where fellow officers hesitated to venture even in teams.  Brunner would go in single-handed and get his man.  When Brunner moved in, the Haymarket mobsters knew he meant business and no resistance was offered. 

In those days the police emergency wagon was a wheelbarrow in which obstreperous prisoners and drunks often were wheeled to the police station.  At Ontario and Eagle Avenue stood the Wren House, a stopping place for Union officers in Civil War days.  Mrs. Wren, the proprietor, was a member of the Haymarket's English colony.  Many years later the Wren House was taken over by Edward J. Hanratty, who renamed it Newburg House.

Hanratty, in later years to become Cuyahoga County sheriff, was for nearly 30 years undisputed political boss of the Haymarket "hill".  What helped him to that post and helped him stay was a "straight left" that was feared and respected throughout the district.

Of Mrs. Wren, Hanratty once said she had owing to her more than $200,000 in unpaid lodging and board bills of valley factory workers she tided over in periods of unemployment.  "Some of the biggest hearts this city ever has known were to be found in the Haymarket stores and lodging houses," Hanratty once said.

Another celebrity of the district was Councilman James McGinty, known by his constituents as the mayor of Haymarket.  McGinty was the son-in-law of Big Mike Lukascho, whose six feet four and 300 pounds helped make him the local leader of the Slavic settlers in the Haymarket.  His saloon, Big Mike's Place, was at Commercial Road and Minkon Street.  It was the headquarters, clubhouse and post office for the Slavic immigrants, and it was to Big Mike they looked for advice and guidance in the strange new country.

Another popular Haymarket bistro was Gypsy George's place at Commercial Road and Berg Avenue.  There were seven entrances to Gypsy George's and a number of underground passages, all of which could not have made a policeman's life any easier. 

One of the Haymarket's many gruesome murders was committed in one of the underground passages at Gypsy George's, the victim's offense being that he was suspected as a stool pigeon. 

Amid the commerce and industry, the squalor and crime, the Friendly Inn stood as a beacon light for many who were cruelly buffeted in the hurly-burly of Haymarket living.  In the temperance crusade of 1874 fearless women of the Women's Christian Association opened the Friendly Inn in a small rented store on Central Place in the district.  Here was provided a reading room and safe meeting place for idle men and boys.  Later came a restaurant and then a kindergarten, playground and library for children.  In 1888 a new building was erected at Broadway and Central with inexpensive lodgings for derelicts. 

With its constant influx and outflow of immigrant families, the Haymarket was a crucible which did much to mold the burgeoning metropolis.  For all of this, the district has been slighted by historians.  The Haymarket still lives mostly in a few ancient newspaper clippings, and to be sure, in the memory of older Cleveland residents.

The Haymarket was dealt a mortal blow when the Van Sweringen brothers forged ahead with the Union Terminal development.  Building wreckers in the early 1920s cleared out hundreds of houses and other aged structures in which the people of the Haymarket lived and played and plotted.  Vestiges of the district which survived another 30 years are now being blotted out with more finality.

The End of the Haymarket Neighborhood

As we can see, it was a rough and tumble history for the Haymarket neighborhood.  This area was doomed to failure from the very beginning it seems.  Its downfall began with pieces of it demolished for the construction of the Central Viaduct in 1887-1888.  Then along came the Union Terminal (Terminal Tower) project in 1926-1927 which took more of the Haymarket.  All was stable for a while when in 1959 more of the neighborhood was destroyed for the Innerbelt Bridge project.  The last bit of this neighborhood was taken in 2013 when the Innerbelt Bridge was replaced.  All that remains is a small building at 2515 Canal Road, the Wheeling Freight Depot between Harrison and Commercial Streets, a few train trestles, and remnants of the old Central Viaduct that the powers that be saw fit to leave for history!  

1959 Pictures of the last remnants of the Haymarket District.  These houses were torn down for the Innerbelt Bridge.  (Click to enlarge)

2005 Picture of Minkon Street.  It is gone now - taken by the new 2013 Innerbelt Bridge.  (Click to enlarge)

2013 photo of one of the pillars from the Central Viaduct, resting below the new Innerbelt Bridge.  (Click to enlarge)

2013 photo of the end of the old Central Viaduct underneath the new Innerbelt Bridge (click to enlarge)

Links:

History of the Central Viaduct  http://realneo.us/history-of-the-central-viaduct

Eagle Avenue Bridge  http://cyclotram.blogspot.com/2013/06/eagle-avenue-bridge.html

Strong Cobb Building and old Central Viaduct Bridge Abutment  http://realneo.us/blog/jeff-buster/bridge-abutment-feng-shui

Strong Cobb Building (aka Broadway Mills) (Torn down 2012)  http://realneo.us/blog/martha-eakin/save-the-broadway-mills-buiding-from-odot

Strong Cobb Building Demolition  http://www.flickr.com/photos/theclevelandkid24/sets/72157626312089660/#

Strong Cobb was a pharmaceutical company - look at what they produced!  http://antiquecannabisbook.com/Add-13a/StrongCobb.htm

Strong Cobb pictures  http://realneo.us/forum/strong-cobb

Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad Warehouse - 2769 Commercial Road  http://www.west2k.com/ohpix/clevelandwandlefreight.jpg

Cleveland Provision Company history   http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=CPC4

THE TREMONT NEIGHBORHOOD

Current-day Tremont is bounded on the north and east by the Cuyahoga River, on the west by the Jennings Freeway and on the south by Harvard/Denison. There are three basic levels to the Tremont neighborhood: West 14th to West 10th; West 7th to West 5th; and the lowest level was West 3rd. Henry Hadlow's farm was located down in the valley. Back in 1818, the area now known as Tremont was a wooded plateau atop the Cuyahoga Valley. The early settlers were farmers from New England who wished to build their homes outside of Cleveland. Scenic views of the river attracted these prosperous residents to Tremont in the 1800's. These early New England settlers were responsible for the founding of the first church which is known today as Pilgrim Congregational Church. Because of the beautiful homes on Jennings Avenue (currently W. 14th Street), this Avenue was called the Gold Coast of Cleveland.

Tremont was originally part of Old Brooklyn and the area was a section of Ohio City from 1836-1854. In the early days, the Tremont neighborhood was known as University Heights, named as such because of Cleveland University which was located there. The name was later changed to Lincoln Heights because it was the site of two Union Army Camps during the Civil War. Tremont is a modern name. Numerous businesses and factories in the valley provided work for immigrants. Tremont was home to Irish, Germans, Poles, Syrians, Rusyns and Ukrainians among others. A total of 30 nationalities had lived in or were living in Tremont as of 1994. Many of these various ethnic groups organized churches in Tremont, and for that reason, there are many, many churches in this small neighborhood. The many nationalities each had their own buildings for social gatherings. Some of these were The Heights Mannerchor Hall, Koreny's Hall (aka Lemko Hall), The Ukrainian National Home, The Polish National Home, Holy Ghost Hall, the Ukrainian Labor Temple, St. Augustine Hall, and St. John Cantius Hall. Tremont was also home to Lincoln Park, Merrick House, the Lincoln Park Baths building (now condominiums), and the Union Gospel Press building which was the printing house for a magazine shipped to all parts of the Christian world by subscription. The Valley View Projects were located at the end of W. 7th Street and were constructed in the 1930's. They overlooked what used to be Henry Hadlow's farm and were recently demolished and rebuilt.

By the 1980s, sixty eight percent of Tremont's housing was built before 1900. It was an isolated neighborhood because of the closing of the Clark Avenue Bridge, as well as the construction of the highways I-71 and I-490. In recent years, it has experienced a period of revitalizaton. By the early 1990s, Tremont became known for its restaurants, shops, and art galleries. We will cover this neighborhood in more detail in its own "Tremont Neighborhood Section."

OTHER INTERESTING SITES IN THE FLATS

SOURCES:

Most of the information in this section came from:

"Cleveland's Flats - The Incredible City Under the Hill" by Ann T. Lawrence and Joan M. Schattinger, 1979.

"Cleveland's Flats on Tour - A Self Guide to the Riverfront" by Ann Lawrence and Joan Schattinger, 1980's.

1. “Ron Dewey Foundry”, 1001 Old River Road, corner of Old River Rd. and Front Street. This was the site of a pot and kettle works. The foundry area was used to accommodate tinning furnaces.

(Present-day photo of 1001 Old River Road)

2. The Old Custom House – 1089 Old River Road, next to the Cleveland Flux Co. Site. This is where the customs agent collected duties on imported goods.

3. The Cleveland Flux Co. Site – Old River Rd. and Main Avenue, under the Main Avenue Bridge.

4. Iron Curtain Bridge (Conrail Bridge) – Crossing the river near Front Street and Old River Road. At the mouth of the river, 98 feet above river level with a span of 265 feet, is the Iron Curtain Bridge, known in the 1980’s as Conrail Bridge (No. 1) because its double tracks carried Conrail passenger and freight traffic on the main line between New York and Chicago. This bridge is nicknamed The Iron Curtain because it must be raised to allow ships to enter or leave the river.

(Iron Curtain Bridge taken from Whiskey Island)

5. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Bridge #464 and the Willow Street Bridge in the background, taken from Old River Road. The Willow Street Bridge is northeast of Elm Street at the river. It is one of the newest drawbridges in the Flats, this bridge was built in 1964 as the only vehicular connection to Whiskey Island.

6. Samsel Supply – 1235 Old River Road - 1285 Old River Road

(Samsel Supply)

7. Hausheer & Sons Marine Supply Co. – 1220 – 1250 Old River Road.  A sign on the building says Beacon Hausheer Marine Co. EST. 1854.  Proprietor:  Louis Hausheer (1831-1906).  Sons were Louis Henry Hausheer Jr. (1860-1919), August Hausheer (1861-1891), George W. Hausheer (1869-1949), and daughter, Charlotte Hausheer (1873-1934).  This building has iron columns and a metal cornice fashioned to resemble carved wood. According to legend, runaway slaves hid in the basement of this building until they could board sailing vessels to take them to Canada. Later a thriving ship-supply and provision company operated here around the clock for many years.

(Hausheer & Sons Marine Supply Company)

8. Upson-Walton Building – 1310 Old River Road – In 2007 this was the Arhaus Furniture Co. Constructed in 1868, this building was the first brick building in the downtown area mandated by ordinance to be of fireproof construction. J.E. Upson and J.W. Walton purchased the building in 1871 for their ships’ chandlery. The third floor was a sail loft. In 1964 Frank Samsel acquired the marine division which he operated on this site until moving to the large, renovated building across the street.

(Upson Walton Building)

9. Bethel Mission – 1316 Old River Road – In 2007 this was Rhona Allen Hair. The first Bethel Church of Cleveland was located here. A missionary chapel for seamen, it offered services conducted by the Rev. Taylor. Incoming seamen entered from the dock through the basement and climbed up through a trap door to the chapel. Next door (through the south wall) they could get food and lodging.

(Present-day location of the old Bethel Mission)

10. Frank Morrison Building (Central Exchange) – 1330 Old River Road – In the mid nineteenth century a dock ran along the river parallel to River Road, and buildings on the river had both a street address and a dock address. This building, constructed in 1850, is a rare example of the first commercial architecture in Cleveland. The shop windows have stone posts and lintels. The Chamber of Commerce once had an office in the balcony upstairs. The building is named for Frank Morrison who sold navigational equipment here for many years.

(Frank Morrison Building)

11. Looking up St. Clair Avenue from Old River Road. This intersection was the site of the original Tax Collection site. In 1803, when Ohio achieved statehood, it had to start collecting duties on goods imported from Canada. John Walworth became the first Collector of the Port of the Erie Collection District. This intersection, down on the river was also the landing site of Moses Cleveland and also the Lorenzo Carter cabin site. Moses Cleveland arrived here on July 22, 1796. Although the exact spot is impossible to determine, historians agree that it is within 500 feet of this site. From here, explorers followed the Indian trail up St. Clair, where they laid out the Public Square. Lorenzo Carter arrived in Cleveland in May of 1897 and built a cabin with a garret on the river bank. It was the site of a store, the city’s first wedding, the first “grand ball”, and a school. He also built and operated a ferry at the foot of Superior Street to trade with the Native American Indians who lived on the high cliffs west of the river. Also up this hill was the Pease Hotel. When Moses Cleveland arrived, his party constructed a small cabin to store supplies and a larger one to live. The larger one was called Pease’s Hotel in honor of Seth Pease, one of the group. The street on the right, angling up, was Union Lane (Now W. 10th Street) and was the favored street from the river to Public Square. The slope was gentle enough for horse drawn loads which could not climb the St. Clair incline.

(St. Clair Avenue from Old River Road)

12. Settlers Landing – Located at this site are tablets on the ground commemorating the Burning River, the Bicentennial of Cleveland, Moses Cleaveland, and Entertainment in Cleveland in the 1970’s

(Tablet at Settlers Landing about the History of Cleveland)

13. Torn down buildings on east bank of river.

At this spot was the J.J. Shepard’s Dock (Immigrants Landing) at 1078 Old River Road.

According to legend, this building is the oldest on the river, dating to 1840. Immigrants waited here for their trips by canal boat to Akron. Passenger boats for Cedar Point landed here. Rud Machine later occupied the building

Also located here was the Great Lakes Towing Company at 1200 Old River Road. This was the former home of the Cleveland tugboat crews, and this building was once the site of the Cleveland and Buffalo Terminal for steamships. When new docks were built at E. 9th Street, these docks became obsolete.

14. Heritage Park I - Carter Cabin – 1570 Merwin Ave. A one-acre parcel of land on the river, the park is located near the site where Moses Cleveland landed. A project of the Women’s City Club, the log cabin was dedicated in 1976 as part of Cleveland’s celebration of the nation’s bicentennial. The cabin is a close replica of one in which early settlers lived and is furnished with authentic utensils and furnishings.

(Commemorative Tablet at the site of Carter's Cabin)

15. Power House – Woodland and West Side Railroad Power House – on the river in the Nautica Project. Built in 1892 by Mark Hanna to provide electric power to his streetcar line, the structure generated power for the Woodland and West Side Street Railway, later part of the Cleveland Electric Railway Co. After being abandoned in 1920, the building was acquired by the Steel Barrel Co. which used it for storage. It became part of Nautica in the mid 1980’s.

(The Powerhouse)

16. Underside of the New Detroit Superior Bridge where the street cars used to travel underneath. The steel center span of this 3,112-foot bridge is constructed of nickel steel to rise 98 feet above the water. It was the first non-movable bridge to be built over the river. The 12 concrete arches support 2 levels, one of 6 lanes of traffic and one of 2 sets of streetcar tracks. The Cuyahoga County Engineer’s office conducts tours of this bridge every year.

(Trolley Deck under the Detroit Superior Bridge)

17. Baltimore & Ohio Depot at the corner of Columbus and Center (formerly Canal Rd.) This building was once the terminal of the B & O Railroad lines that traversed the city. In the 1980’s it was purchased by Sherwin-Williams. In the first decade of 2000, there was talk of turning it into an Immigrant Museum, but these plans fell through.

(Baltimore & Ohio Train Depot)

18. West end of what remains of the OLD Detroit Superior Bridge. Picture taken from Heritage Park, the site of the Lorenzo Carter Cabin. The Old Detroit Superior Bridge was the first high-level bridge in Cleveland. It was built between 1875 and 1878. A pivoting center section enabled large vessels to pass through. City-owned sidewalks and streetcar lines crossed the bridge. Only seven sandstone arches and the fine wrought-iron railing of the original viaduct remain. The building on the left in this picture is 1283 Riverbed Street. It was the home to the Cleveland Fire Department Training Station and was built in 1921. Inside the tower is a rack where firemen hung their hoses to dry. Later the building was used as a police training academy and home of the International Longshoremen’s Assn. Local 1317. The building now houses the Flats Oxbow Association and River’s Bend Parks Corporation. The Flats Oxbow Association was established as a non-profit organization of Flats businesses and others interested in the development of the riverfront. The River’s Bend Parks Corp. was started in 1981 by the Women’s City Club. Its purpose is to operate and promote the use of Heritage Parks 1 and 2 and the Carter log cabin and to acquaint people with the Flats and with the history of the area. Not shown in this picture, but just to the right is Heritage Park 2 which holds a gazebo and boardwalk from which to view the Center Street Swing Bridge, river traffic, and the skyline of the city. The brick building on the right is 1250 Riverbed Road and is known as “The Left Bank”. This building is typical of the older buildings along the river which opened at one level on one side of the building and at another on the other side. This structure exits both on the Old Superior Viaduct above and at river level below. The building once was the home of river industry. More recently it is a center for artists and sculptors.

(Remains of the Old Detroit Superior Bridge - West End)

19. Center Street Swing Bridge, picture taken from Heritage Park. Built by the King Bridge Co. in 1901, the present Center Street Bridge is the only remaining swing bridge on the river.

(Center Street Swing Bridge)

20. Alex de Tocqueville Tablet in Heritage Park

21. Erie Canal Terminus Tablet at Heritage Park. 1520 Merwin Ave. This area is the site of the boat basin where boats tied up and unloaded at the north end of the Ohio Canal. In 1825 construction was begun to connect Ohio with the eastern markets. Prominent lawyer and state legislator, Alfred Kelley, succeeded in having Cleveland named the northern terminus of the canal and gave land for the terminus to the Canal Commission. The canal was completed to Akron in 1827 and to Portsmouth on the Ohio River in 1832. The opening of the canal meant the end of the pioneer era in Cleveland.  For more information on Alfred Kelley's life and how the Ohio & Erie Canal caused Cleveland to grow exponentially and prosper, see this link:  https://sites.google.com/site/clevelandanditsneighborhoods/cleveland-and-its-neighborhoods-home/peripheral-subjects/lake-erie-cuyahoga-river?authuser=0

(Erie Canal Terminus Plaque)

22. Flat Iron Café at Merwin and Center Streets. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, crews who docked across the street could get lodging and breakfast in this century-old building shaped like an iron.

(Flat Iron Cafe)

23. Flour Mill – 1635 Merwin Avenue – A flour mill has always operated on this site to produce this important Cleveland export. The brick mill was added to the wooden structure in 1900, but the 100-year old burr mill stone is no longer operable. In 2007 this building was labeled “Cereal Food Products”.

(Old Flour Mill at 1635 Merwin Avenue)

24. Charles Stearns Stone Yard, est. 1857 – 1681 Merwin – This is a very interesting, old building. In 1900, Charles Stearns was living on East Madison Avenue in Cleveland. He was born in 1840 in Ohio and was the manager of the stone yard. He died at the Masonic Home in Springfield on May 18, 1917. This funeral was conducted at Wright’s Chapel, 2601 Prospect Avenue.

(Charles Stearns Stone Yard)

25. Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad Bridge #4 – crossing the river between Center Street and the Columbus Road Bridge, or in the olden days, at the corner of Columbus and Girard. This single-track railroad bridge with a span of 260 feet was built in 1953 to replace the Scherzer bridge that once was at the site. Just about at this location were the “Cleveland Centre” and “Gravity Place” as well as St. Mary’s on the Falls Church, the first Catholic Church built in Cleveland. As Cleveland became a major trading port after the opening of the canal, the value of land near the river increased. This encouraged James and Edmund Clark to begin to develop their land on the east side of the river at Oxbow Bend. Hoping to turn the area into a world trading center, they devised an elaborate plan of streets in a project they called Cleveland Centre. They later abandoned this venture and the area turned commercial. Gravity Place was the center hub of these streets. In 1986, a public park was proposed on this site in the Master Plan for the Flats. This park was to commemorate the ill-fated Cleveland Centre real estate venture.

(Bridge at Columbus and Girard)

26. Plidco Pipeline Museum – 1831 Columbus Road.

(Plidco Pipeline Museum)

27. Columbus Road Bridge. Built in 1940 as part of the Public Works Administration river-widening project, this lift bridge has a span of 220 feet. The deck is sloped at each end to accommodate the street elevations. Earlier bridges at this site included the only covered bridge in Cleveland history (the object of the Bridge War), a county bridge built in 1870, and the first double swing bridge ever built. In 1836, to funnel traffic to their new real estate venture and market east of the river, some east side developers built the first stationary bridge in the city at this site. It was a covered structure which connected the Wooster turnpike with Columbus Street Hill and bypassed the West Side Market. Ohio City residents were so furious at losing business that they vowed to boycott the new bridge and use only the old floating bridge at Main Street. The east siders retaliated by making the Main Street Bridge inoperable. Then, Ohio City struck back. On October 27, 1837, they marched on the bridge, intent on destroying it. Clevelanders countered the attack with their old Fourth of July Cannon, and the fray was on. By the time it was broken up, the bridge was badly damaged and remained closed for over ten years. Back in the day, Columbus Road contained restaurants, hotels, and small businesses spawned by increasing canal and railroad traffic.

(Columbus Road Bridge)

(Columbus Street Bridge in 1837)

28. Riverview Apartments – old Irishtown Bend – the Riverbank overlooking the Columbus Road area. In 1825, Irish immigrants who came to dig the Ohio Canal settled here along the west riverbank in an area known as Irishtown Bend. They labored from sunrise to sundown for 30 cents a day plus a jigger of whiskey every 5 hours to ward off malaria and cholera. Back in the day, this steep embankment was covered with shanties and houses.

29. Poet monument at the north end of the Columbus Road Bridge

30. View of downtown from intersection of Columbus and Merwin. Merwin Street was named for Noble H. Merwin who built his first log cabin home at the corner of Superior and Merwin in 1815. He gained fame as a shipbuilder, building and launching a 44-ton schooner in 1822.

(View of Downtown from Columbus Rd. and Merwin)

31. Fire Department located at Scranton and Carter Roads. The dock here housed river fireboats for many years, and the building and staff have served nearby neighborhoods.

(Fire Station at Scranton and Carter Roads)

32. Eagle Street Bridge – crossing the river between Ontario and the Carter/Scranton intersection. This 2,000 foot structure was built in 1931 and is the oldest lift bridge in Cleveland. It spans 225 feet and includes a roadway and one sidewalk. The first lift bridge in Cleveland, it was one of the earliest to be built in the country.

(Eagle Street Bridge)

33. Spectacular views of the Flats from Sokolowski’s Restaurant on University.

34. Train Avenue – this was a major thoroughfare for people wanting a short-cut into downtown Cleveland. In earlier years there were a lot of industrial businesses located here, but today, there is very little left.

(View of Train Avenue from Scranton Road, looking West)

35. View of Flats from Franklin Avenue (also the view that residents of Irishtown Bend would have had)

36. A good view of the old Riverbed can be had from Salt Drive. Notice also, the Indian Mounds on Whiskey Island.

(The Old Riverbed)

(View of Whiskey Island from Salt Drive)

37. Wendy Park on Whiskey Island – from here you get a wonderful view of the River, the Iron Curtain Bridge, the lighthouse and the Old Coast Guard Station. Constructed in 1940, this station housed a boathouse, garage and lighthouse.

(Wendy Park on Whiskey Island)

38. Paint Plant - 601 Canal Road – First Mixed Paint Plant in America – In 1870 Henry Sherwin and E.P. Williams purchased a small shop from John D. Rockefeller and began to mix paint here. They also manufactured tin cans to hold the product. The Sherwin Williams Co. dedicated its newly renovated 95,000 square foot research and development building here in 1986.

39. Eagle Street Rolling Road – In the early days loaded wagons were too heavy to be pulled up the hill by horse. Workers constructed a “rolling road” which worked like an escalator.

(The Rolling Road on Eagle Street)

40. Intersection of Old River Road and Front Street - This entire area was originally marsh. The old river channel across the river once led to one of the river entrances which was located west of the city. The present river mouth was dug between 1835 and 1840 to provide straight and easy access to and from Lake Erie.

41. Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Co. - Detroit near the west end of the high level bridge. Incorporated by Josiah Barber, Charles Hoyt, and Richard Lord in 1834, this was the first furnace to use steam rather than horse power.

42. Scranton Peninsula - the area west of the river between the Columbus Road Bridge and the Hope Memorial Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. This area, which extends to Abbey Road and lies directly across the river from Tower City, is owned by a small number of investors for mixed-use development. The name Scranton comes from Joel Scranton, who used the fortune he made in leather to purchase "Scranton Flats" west of the river.

43. Grove Court Condominiums - 1900 Grove Court - along Riverbed Road between Center and Columbus. Angled in all directions with sensational view of the river, Grove Court is a 1980's addition to modern condo living. In 1984 Westbank Dev. released its plans for public parks, bicycle and foot paths, and private housing and retailing along the west riverbank. Grove Court Condominiums was the first project completed.

Sources:

"Cleveland's Flats - The Incredible City Under the Hill" by Ann T. Lawrence and Joan M. Schattinger, 1979

"Cleveland's Flats on Tour - A Self Guide to the Riverfront" by Ann Lawrence and Joan Schattinger, 1980's

"A Photo Album of Ohio's Canal Era, 1825-1913" by Jack Gieck

"Cleveland - Prodigy of the Western Reserve" by George Condon

"Cleveland: The Best Kept Secret" by George Condon, 1967

"Cleveland the Making of A City" by William Ganson Rose, 1950

"Early Settlers of Cleveland" by William Donohue Ellis, 1976

"The Cuyahoga" by William Donohue Ellis, 1966

"The Cuyahoga: The Crooker River That Made a City Great" by Charles Post, 1941

"West of the Cuyahoga" by George Condon, 2006

"Irish Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland" by Nelson Callahan & William F. Hickey, with an Introduction by Andrew M. Greeley http://web.ulib.csuohio.edu/irish/

“Cleveland's Golden Story” by James Wallen, 1920

About Joel Scranton:

“Pioneer Families of Cleveland 1796-1840”, Gertrude van Renssaelaer Wickham, 1896

“History of the City of Cleveland: Its Settlement, Rise and Progress”, W. Scott Robison, 1887