The Mechanics Block

Print by Thomas Whelpley, 1834. Used courtesy of Cleveland Public Library.

Think about the Cleveland landscape in 1833. It still resembled a New England town. Cows grazed at East 9th Street. It was becoming prosperous, thanks to the Ohio and Erie Canal.

This landscape seems so far removed from what we know today that it's hard to comprehend this being the same city. Yet, at about this time (some sources say 1832, more say 1838), a building was constructed that stuck around and remained part of downtown life until 1971.


Photo by Mentor Sig

The Mechanics Block was built at the southeast corner of Prospect Avenue and Ontario Street. At the time of its construction, it must have surely been a grand structure, if we are to compare the buildings of a few years prior. To the right, we can see the Stanley Block, which has been condemned and will likely be demolished in the near future.


From an ad published in the Plain Dealer, April 5, 1914, page 6.

The Mechanics Block housed several schools and other organizations until 1903, when it became home to the Richman Brothers department store. Richman Brothers eventually expanded to fill part of the neighboring Stanley Block. It was not demolished due to structural issues, but rather because the owner no longer wanted it.

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Photo by Mentor Sig

The demolition of the Mechanics Block did cause some public outcry. It led to the founding of what would become the Cleveland Restoration Society. More action is still needed to keep similiarly significant properties from being demolished.

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A big part of the problem is building code enforcement. While not the case for the Mechanics Block, it is the situation with the Stanley Block. Violations are not issued for building code problems until they have become such that owners can, conveniently at times, say that the cost of repairs is greater than the value of the building.

The purpose of building codes is not just to protect the residents of a given structure, but the neighbors who choose to live, work, or own property nearby. They make decisions based upon the neighborhood as it is, with the expectation that the basic laws of the municipality will be enforced.

While I agree that many of the houses that have been condemned recently are in significantly decayed condition, and perhaps even worthy of demolition, I must wonder why something wasn't done sooner, to arrest their decline. Why did we have to wait until they had to be demolished before citing the owners for the code violations? Further, why doesn't the Department of Building and Housing have some tool other than just condemnation?

The historical buildings here make up the fabric of what makes the city interesting. In a residential neighborhood, we wouldn't allow the house next door to be demolished to make space for a ten story glass and steel office building - it's not in the best interests of anyone living there. Likewise, in the few remaining historic areas in our city, we shouldn't discard these important structures just because it's what one individual or group desires.

It's about the interests of the population as a whole. This is why we have building and zoning codes, and why they need to be enforced. If this means we need stronger laws, so be it.

Cleveland in 1833, as seen by Thomas Whelpley

In 1834, Thomas Whelpley, a Cleveland artist, published a set of four prints illustrating the city. (The drawings used to make them were made in 1833.) These form the first visual record that we have of the Cleveland landscape as a whole - prior to this point, we have only maps and illustrations of individual structures. I've wanted to do a story using Whelpley's images for a while, but have had trouble locating quality reproductions to work from.

The images used here are from originals in the collections of the Cleveland Public Library. They escaped my notice because they are in the art collection - be sure to check it out for plenty of other interesting material. The prints were hand-colored, with watercolor paints, probably at the time of publication or soon after. I have taken the liberty of removing the rather large margins and adjusting the exposure, in the interest of clarity.

The population of Cleveland, as of the 1830 US Census, was 1075. Cuyahoga County as a whole was just above 10,000. The Ohio and Erie Canal had just been completed, drastically reducing the cost of shipping goods. It would bring down the cost of goods dramatically. Cleveland was on the verge of major change when Mr. Whelpley made these images - that there was demand for such a portfolio may be seen as one indicator of that.



In this view of Cleveland, From Brooklyn Hill Looking East, we see a small town with a prospering waterfront. Many ships are docked along or transiting the Cuyahoga River. While this is clearly an area of some commercial significance, it is still rural enough that cows and sheep are grazing in the foreground.


In From the corner of Bank and St. Clair Streets looking east we see some of the most notable buildings of the city at that time. Bank Street is now West 6th. About a third of the way from the left, the building with the tower is the Academy, the only school in Cleveland, built 1821-1822. It replaced a small log structure built a few years earlier. To the right, we see two churches. To the left is Trinity Church, built 1828-1829. To the right, the Presbyterian Church. At the far right, in the distance, is the second Court House, built 1828.

The various buildings are also tagged directly on the image in Flickr, if you have difficulty locating them.



The Court House was located in the southeast quadrant of Public Square. In From the Court House looking west, we can see Superior Avenue, the main business route at the time. Even so, it still has many residential structures, most of which were built of wood. Some show Greek Revival elements, while some, presumably older, bear Federal traits.

In the distance, to the right, we can see Trinity Church. Past that, Lake Erie is visible.



From the Buffalo Road, East of the Court House shows a point on what has become Euclid Avenue, looking west from about East 9th Street. Euclid Avenue runs from the left corner toward the center of the image and the Second Court House, built in 1828. The court house was not just a legal center, but also served as a gathering place.

A third of the way from the right, in the distance, we can see the two churches noted previously. In the foreground, there is a large pasture, with cows grazing.

For more information, see Cleveland: Village to Metropolis by Edmund H. Chapman and Cleveland: the Making of a City by William Ganson Rose.

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These images show a city that still bears much of the form of a New England village. Animals still grazed near the center of the city, and the economy was still largely agricultural.

Every building shown here is gone. Even so, it's worth looking at the city as it was, 177 years ago. Up to the point of the building of the interstate highways, the city retained much of the same basic layout that was used here. These images, I hope, can show a bit of the intention behind the roads that make up our downtown. Please be sure to click through to the high resolution versions to examine them in detail.

Why a Historical Marker Isn't Enough;

Or, Why We Need to Retain Historic Houses as Part of Our Communities

In the past few months, I've raised a louder voice for preservation of buildings relating to historic individuals and events. As a result, I've seen many different suggestions as to things that we should be doing instead of preserving these buildings.

Some have suggested that photographic documentation is enough. Others have have suggested that a given building isn't worth saving because it wasn't where the individual created their most important works. Still others have suggested that the individual's achievements would be better commemorated by a statue. One even suggested, in a letter to the editor of the Plain Dealer, on Wednesday, that we should deconstruct the Langston Hughes house and re-use the lumber to build a community center.

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I'm a youth services librarian in the inner city. In my experience, when you talk about overarching historical themes, you get a lot of blank looks. But when you can talk about important individuals who lived in their neighborhoods, who walked the same streets as they walk every day, it's possible to make a real connection.

It's not enough to just show photographs of a house that once existed. There's an importance that actual artifacts have that simply isn't conveyed in photographic reproductions. We aren't content with a museum exhibit of photographs of Satchel Paige's baseball uniform or Langston Hughes' manuscript poetry - we demand the real thing.

Many important individuals have come out of Cleveland - individuals that the children I serve can look up to. We tell them that these historic figures are worthy of respect and admiration, that they are people the children can look up to, but then we demolish what little remains of these great people's physical connection to the city. What message does this send?

As I've said before, I don't believe that these houses should be made into museums. I just think that they should be preserved as part of the community. There are plenty of historic houses that remain private residences - take the John Heisman birthplace or the Jeremiah Gates residence, the oldest house in Cleveland.

It's our collective fault that some of these houses have been allowed to decay to this point. We failed to bring them to the public attention when they needed less work. There are plenty of homes throughout the area that individuals and companies are in the process of rehabilitating, either as their own residences, or with the intent of resale. It costs a lot of money to demolish a house - $10,000 plus - wouldn't a more appropriate expenditure of the public money be to put that expense into the rehabilitation of the structures? $10,000 would often be enough to make the difference between a house that can be rehabbed in a cost effective manner and one that cannot.

Why should the public pay for any part of the rehabbing of a private residence? Because, while not open to the public, these houses are part of our history. The cost of fixing up any one of them to museum standards, with proper accessiblity, mechanical, and fire suppression systems would likely cost a half million dollars. This hypothetical sum might instead be divided over 25 houses, to the tune of $20,000 each. It would stabilize 25 sites important to the history of our community, and would provide the public a greater value than one small museum.

It's not about public vs. private funds, however. It's about a respect for the history of our city. It's about showing our children that we care about their past. It's about showing that the figures we claim matter actually matter to us.

Mystery Photo for September 2, 2010

Do you know what this building is or where it is located? An initial hint: it is still standing.

Update: We have a winner in the first commenter!

Here's what the building looks like today:



Be the first to identify it in the comments here and win your choice of the following books:

• Covering History: Revisiting Federal Art in Cleveland, 1933-43, a beautiful, 72 page joint publication of the Cleveland Artists Foundation and the Cleveland Public Library. It picks up where Karal Ann Marling's work (Federal Art in Cleveland) left off, and is highly recommended.
  
• Any of the other publications of the Cleveland Artists Foundation that are still in print. The CAF is the organization publishing works on the history of art in greater Cleveland.
  
• Shaker Heights Fences by Patricia J. Forgac (1984, 16 pages)
  
• Shaker Heights: the Van Sweringen Influence by Claudia R. Boatwright (1983, 56 pages)

All guesses must be made as comments on this post. If the answer has not been correctly guessed by 2pm, the post will be edited to include a clue. If it has still not been guessed by 8pm, it will be edited again to include another clue.

If you publish books or other products relating to Cleveland history and would like to offer them as prizes, please email clevelandareahistory@gmail.com

Book review: The Severances

Diana Tittle's latest book, The Severances: An American Odyssey, from Puritan Massachusetts to Ohio's Western Reserve, and Beyond covers four hundred years of the history family that is integral to the cultural landscape of northeast Ohio.

The text, which is meant for a general audience, is introduced by a small segment in 1864, as Louis H. Severance packs to leave Cleveland to fight in the Civil War. From there, the work begins with the first members of the family and the conditions that caused them to move from England to Massachusetts in 1634 or 1635. The journey continues through New York and in Ohio in the early 19th century. We visit the oil fields of Pennsylvania, deal with some of the less gruesome parts of the Civil War, see California in the 1870s, and cruise around the Mediterranean with Samuel Clemens. Julia Severance's education at Wells College in the 1880s leads into her part in the story of Frances Folsom's marriage to president Grover Cleveland.

Employment with Standard Oil lead to wealth, and eventually, philanthropy. This included the endowment of the College of Wooster, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance Hall, and St. Luke's Hospital.

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Ms. Tittle has given us, in this volume, a commendable piece of research. I was at first concerned by the relative lack of footnotes - I kept asking how she knew this or that fact - until I stumbled upon the source notes, which consume 40 pages, in a font rather smaller than the rest of the text. For a work of original research such as this, such extensive documentation should be expected.

I believe that this book could be made better through the use of more images. While there are a few sections of photographs, they are on the same stock as the rest of the book, so they don't stand out, and there isn't any key between the corresponding pages and the images. Further, Ms. Tittle does such a good job of illustrating certain subjects that I'm sure she's seen them, yet the reader is left without any visual confirmation. She describes a chest that likely belonged to Mary Severance, circa 1700, in Deerfield, Massachusetts that recently sold at auction, or, in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, "the large, Federal-style home [that Martin Severance II built] for his family in 1784 that still stands near Bridge Street between Severance and Maple." I want to see these things. A piece of furniture, at at time when there was so little, that retained a family connection is rare, and makes for a stronger story. Likewise with the house, hewn by Martin Severance II's own hands. Alas, it is also currently omitted by Google Streetview. There are many similar examples - if it means making the book a bit longer, so be it - it's the cost of a stronger, more useful title.

There are a few smaller issues I feel the need to raise. The first is the occasional use of what can be best described as anachronistic language. Ms. Tittle's intent is clear, however - to convey a certain place and time. There are also times where I feel the desire for a greater idea as to the exact location. One example of this would be the Severance's home, Longwood - is described as being on Kinsman Road, near Woodland Cemetery. Noting a contemporary cross street would help illuminate the location. Another is the house that Joseph Severance built on lot 36, in Deerfield, Massachusetts and which the author believes is still standing, as part of Deerfield Village. Unfortunately, Deerfield Village (and the other obvious sources) refer to the houses by the names of their builders or select historic occupants, so there is no easy way for the casual reader to determine which of the houses pictured on the Deerfield Village website was built by Severance. Finally, Ms. Tittle relies heavily on the privately held Severance Family Records. I always feel a slight unease as any work that relies so heavily on a source that the random reader can't go check if she or he chooses, but at the same time, there's no way the book could have been done without that collection.

The Severances absolutely excels in painting a picture of middle to upper middle class life in Cleveland in the 19th century and the causes that might have brought them here. In this particular respect, it exceeds every other title I can think of. For that reason, it will be a strong addition my personal research collection - shelved with other aspects of 19th century Cleveland life, rather than with organizational and family histories.

The Severances: An American Odyssey, from Puritan Massachusetts to Ohio's Western Reserve, and Beyond is published by the Western Reserve Historical Society. 400 pages. Sewn hardcover. $37.50. ISBN: 978-0-911704-61-7. It may be ordered from TheSeverances.com, which also has information about upcoming lectures associated with the release of the book.