Wade Park and the Layout of University Circle

Glidden House (built 1909). 1901 Ford Drive.

When I look at the buildings that make up the area we now call University Circle, I tend to assume that the area was laid out and built in the 1900s and 1910s. Indeed, save for some buildings on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, there aren't any structures built much before this time.



The houses that haven't been replaced by newer buildings tend toward grand mansions - like the Hay-McKinney House - one of the structures occupied by the Western Reserve Historical Society.



Even the (relatively) smaller houses, like this pair on Magnolia Drive, seem quite suited to the flow of the boulevards.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that a good portion of the roads we use today were laid out a good 30 years before these houses were built.



Details of the 1874 D.J. Lake Atlas of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, used courtesy of Cleveland Public Library.

Jeptha Wade began developing his farm into a park (Wade Park) in the early 1870s. These details show the layout of the roads within the park as they were in 1874. The map is bounded by Euclid Avenue on the south, East 105th Street on the west, East 115th Street on the east, and Ashbury Avenue on the north. Note how similar the layout of these roads remain to the streets present in the University Circle area today. Perhaps they're part of the reason why the area has managed to retain something of a park-like presence.

Where is the University Circle circle?

The neighborhood around Cleveland Museum of Art, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is known as University Circle. For a long time, perhaps longer than I should admit, I thought that the circle the name referred to was the one made by Wade Oval, the road that runs in front of the art and natural history museums, and the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. There was a certain logic to this - after all, it is the only reasonably circular road in the University Circle area.

Alas, this was not true. University Circle, which eventually gave name to the whole neighborhood, was a traffic circle, located at approximately Euclid Avenue and Stearns Road.



This plate, from the 1898 Atlas of the city of Cleveland, Ohio illustrates the University Circle area. The actual circle can be seen just to the right of center.

The circle lasted at least into the 1950s. As roads were realigned, the circle was eliminated.

This map is just one of the many great research sources available online thanks to the Cleveland Public Library maps collection.

East Cleveland Township in 1858

A big part of my historical research involves looking at old maps. They often allow me to verify residences and land ownership as well as helping me to compare the built landscape that I see today with the historic landscape.

One of the most valuable maps in this respect is the 1858 Hopkins map of Cuyahoga County. The city of Cleveland was much smaller than it is today. Outside the city limits, it shows land ownership and the locations of houses.

The landscape has changed so much in the past 150 years that it can be hard to see the relationships between the roads illustrated on Hopkins' map and the roads that exist today. To that end, I've spent some time playing around with Google Maps. This map shows the streets in East Cleveland township in 1858, according to the Hopkins map published that year.


View 1858 East Cleveland Township Roads in a larger map

There are some roads that are popularly known to be older: Euclid; Superior; and St. Claire. There are others that one might suspect, because they are major roads: East 55th and East 105th Streets. The problem with looking for extant historical fabric on these streets is that they have remained major streets. They have fostered commercial growth, and with commercial growth has come the loss of residential structures.

The streets worth really looking at are those that one might not have realized were older streets: Addison; Crawford; Ansel; Lakeview; Eddy; and Coit. I haven't been able to find much along Crawford and Ansel, due primarily to redevelopment, much of it at the turn of the century.



The Banks-Baldwin Law Publishing Co. headquarters was originally located at 757 Ansel Rd, before it was moved.



On and near Addison, just north of Superior, there are two Greek Revival farm houses, one that I've written quite a bit about, and the other, shown here, which hides back a bit from the road and remains a private residence.

These other streets are worth checking out - take a look at these maps, and at the older streets in your neighborhood, and see what you find. There are surely at least a few interesting buildings on Coit, Eddy, and Lakeview, and perhaps on the streets just off them as well. I know that there are more hidden gems out there. Let me know what you find.