Bridges in Cleveland

From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland

The link is here

BRIDGES. Cleveland, split firmly though unequally by the CUYAHOGA RIVER, is deeply dependent on bridges. The city’s east and west sides are joined today by both high fixed spans and lower-level opening bridges. Trains cannot climb steep grades, and their frequency of crossing is low enough to permit the use of opening spans of various sorts. Auto and truck traffic, however, is of such high density that delays occasioned by spans opening for river traffic would be intolerable. Autos and trucks are capable of climbing the relatively steep approaches to high-level bridges over the Cuyahoga River, and today the bridges carrying heavy traffic loads (the Innerbelt Bridge, the HOPE MEMORIAL BRIDGE, the VETERANS MEMORIAL BRIDGE, and theMAIN AVE. BRIDGE) are high fixed spans. There are more than 330 bridges in the immediate Cleveland area, including both the Cuyahoga River bridges and those spanning other features of the area’s mixed terrain and industrial complexes.

When Cleveland was first platted, just before 1800, the east and west sides were joined by ferries, which were soon supplanted by the first Center St. Bridge. The Center St. Bridge was based on a system of chained floating logs, a section of which would be pulled aside to permit the passage of vessels. A later version of this bridge was based on pontoon boats, and ultimately on a succession of fixed structures. The first substantial bridge over the Cuyahoga appears to have been the first COLUMBUS STREET BRIDGE, erected ca. 1836, with a draw section permitting vessels to pass. The roofed bridge was 200′ long and 33′ wide, including sidewalks. In 1836, following the incorporation of both Cleveland and OHIO CITY (CITY OF OHIO), Cleveland ordered the destruction of its portion of the Center St. Bridge, which had the effect of directing commerce across the Columbus St. span, thereby bypassing Ohio City. Enraged Ohio City residents damaged the Columbus St. span and hostilities began. West-siders ultimately gained their point, retaining a Center St. bridge along with the Columbus St. span. With Cleveland’s annexation of Ohio City in 1854, traffic increases led to construction of the Main St. Bridge and the Seneca (W. 3rd) St. Bridge, and a rebuilding of the Center St. Bridge. In 1870 the Columbus bridge was replaced by an iron truss structure, which in turn was replaced by a 3rd bridge in 1895. The Seneca span collapsed in 1857 and was replaced first by a timber draw span, and in 1888 by a Scherzer roller-lift bridge–the first of its kind in Cleveland. The Center St. Bridge had a similar history, its wooden structure being replaced several times, finally with the unequal swinging span of iron built in 1900, which remained in service in 1993 as the sole swinging bridge in the city.

By 1993, 4 great vehicular bridges provided high-level spans over the Cuyahoga Valley. They were the Veterans Memorial Bridge (opened in 1918), the Hope Memorial Bridge (1932), the Main Ave. Bridge (1939), and the Innerbelt Bridge (1959). Near the present Veterans Memorial Bridge may be seen the remains of one of Cleveland’s great historical bridge achievements, the SUPERIOR VIADUCT, opened with great fanfare in Dec. 1878. Its great west side stone approaches were joined with a swinging metal span crossing the Cuyahoga toward PUBLIC SQUARE and downtown Cleveland. The viaduct served until Veterans Memorial was opened in 1918, as a result of complaints about delays in vehicular traffic from the frequent openings that river traffic required. Originally known as the Detroit-Superior Bridge, Veterans Memorial was a 2-level structure, with streetcars utilizing the lower deck until their demise in the 1950s. When inaugurated, it was the world’s largest double-deck reinforced-concrete bridge.

Planned as early as 1916 but delayed by World War I, Hope Memorial was opened as the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in 1932. The bridge has a lower deck originally designed for rapid-transit trains and trucks, but never used. Four colossal pylons, with figures symbolizing transportation progress, were preserved as the bridge underwent a thorough renovation in the 1980s, at which time it was renamed the Hope Memorial Bridge to honor the stonemason father of former Cleveland entertainer Bob Hope. Planned as early as 1930 to replace the low-level Main Ave. Bridge, with its attendant traffic delays, the Main Ave. High-Level Bridge was opened in 1939, after a remarkably fast construction largely financed with PWA funds. The bridge is 2,250′ long; with approaches, it is more than a mile in length. Eight truss-cantilever spans of varying lengths constitute the bridge itself, with added bridgework at the eastern end joining the bridge to the lakefront freeway. Having undergone significant emergency repairs in the 1980s, the Main Ave. Bridge was closed from 1990-92 for a major rebuilding and renovation of the deck structure, sidewalks, and railings.

The old CENTRAL VIADUCT, opened in 1888, stood approximately at the location of the Innerbelt Bridge (1959). The entire span consisted of 2 bridges of iron and steel placed on masonry piers. Originally the river was spanned with a swing section, which was replaced with an overhead truss in 1912. Closed in 1941, the Central Viaduct was finally replaced in 1959 by the Innerbelt Bridge, built with substantial funding resulting from the Federal Highway Act of 1956. The bridge is Ohio’s widest, and nearly a mile long, with the central portion consisting of a series of cantilever-deck trusses with a reinforced-concrete deck and asphaltic concrete driving surface. It serves to connect I-71 and I-90 West with the Innerbelt Freeway. Two other bridges built as part of the interstate highway system are the I-490 bridge, which replaced the Clark Ave. Bridge, and the I-480 bridge spanning the Cuyahoga through VALLEY VIEW. A substantial high-level rail bridge, the CLEVELAND UNION TERMINAL Railway Bridge, just south of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, carries 2 rail tracks and 2 tracks used by commuter rapid trains of the GREATER CLEVELAND REGIONAL TRANSIT AUTHORITY.

Nearly a dozen movable bridges remained across the Cuyahoga serving both vehicular traffic and railroads in 1993. Among the vehicular bridges are the old Center St. Swing Bridge, the Willow St. Lift Bridge (over the Old Cuyahoga Channel between the west side and WHISKEY ISLAND), the Columbus St. Lift Bridge, the Carter Rd. Bridge, and the W. 3rd St. Bridge. The remaining lift bridges serve various railroads; some were actively used, such as the ConRail Lift Bridge near the mouth of the Cuyahoga–the first bridge up the Cuyahoga from Cleveland Harbor–but many remained in lifted positions in the 1980s in response to industrial declines in the Cuyahoga Valley and consequent declines in railroad traffic. The rail bridges included Scherzer roller-lift bridges, bascule structures, and jacknife bridges, in addition to lift bridges such as the ConRail structure.

In addition to those spanning the Cuyahoga River, there are other bridges in Cleveland worthy of note. Architect CHAS. F. SCHWEINFURTH†, noted for his design of the downtown TRINITY CATHEDRAL, designed 4 unusually fine bridges that span Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. (formerly Liberty Blvd.) inROCKEFELLER PARK. Structurally interesting in their combining of steel, concrete, and decorative stone, they include 3 vehicle bridges (Wade Park, Superior, and St. Clair avenues) and a railroad bridge (built for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway). Other noteworthy structures include the Forest Hills pedestrian bridge in nearby CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, the concrete-arch Monticello Bridge carrying Monticello Blvd. over Euclid Creek, the 1910 DETROIT-ROCKY RIVER BRIDGE (demolished 1980), the Hilliard Rd. Bridge over the Rocky River (1926), and the steel arched Lorain Rd. Bridge crossing Metropolitan Park near the Rocky River.

Although a large number of engineers, designers, and architects, organizations, and consortia can be identified with recent bridge history in Cleveland, several individuals and organizations stand out. One of these is Chas. Schweinfurth, whose designs were referred to earlier. Another prominent designer and builder associated mainly with midwestern railroad bridges was AMASA STONE†, who, unfortunately, is often remembered for the tragic 1876 collapse of his innovative wrought-iron Howe truss bridge that spanned the Ashtabula River, supporting the tracks of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad, of which he was president. Cleveland firms that have had prominent roles in the history of Cleveland bridges are Wilbur J. Watson & Associates–known for the 1940 Columbus St. Bridge and later for pioneering concrete bridge structures–and Frank Osborn’s OSBORN ENGINEERING CO., which began building local bridges at about the end of the 19th century. Another firm with historical prominence was the KING IRON BRIDGE & MANUFACTURING CO., which had important roles in the building of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, the old Central Viaduct, and the present (1993) Center St. Bridge. In the post-World War II period, the firm of Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff was heavily involved with bridges in Cleveland, as attention shifted away from building new bridges to rebuilding and rehabilitating existing structures.

Willis Sibley


Bluestone, Daniel M., ed. Cleveland: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites (1978).

Bridges of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County (1918).

Watson, Sara Ruth and John R. Wolfs. Bridges of Metropolitan Cleveland (1981).

Aviation in Cleveland

From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The link is here

AVIATION. In the 1920s Cleveland emerged as a center for the early development of commercial mail and passenger flight operations, and since that time has become a focal point for the advancement of modern aviation and aerospace technology.

Cleveland’s initial contact with aviation began during World War I when the federal government provided incentive for its development by introducing the delivery of mail by air. Just as Cleveland benefited from its position on the New York-to-Chicago railroad corridor, its size and strategic location fit ideally into a coast-to-coast route for airmail delivery from New York City to San Francisco. In 1918 federal officials began constructing a transcontinental system of navigational beacons or “guide lights” to initiate coast-to-coast airmail delivery, and Cleveland, aided by enthusiastic support from the Chamber of Commerce and local business groups, was chosen as one of the principal stops. The first regular airmail service as far as Chicago was inaugurated in mid-December of that year when planes piloted by U.S. Army flyers arrived in Cleveland, landing on a grassy strip in Woodland Hills Park near E. 93rd St. and Kinsman Ave. Planes on these runs carried 850 lbs. of mail (letters cost $.06 to send) and the flights experienced few major difficulties. The first truly transcontinental airmail trips in the nation began 8 Sept. 1920, with planes making their Cleveland stop at Martin Field, located behind the aircraft plant (seeGLENN L. MARTIN CO.) on St. Clair Ave. The U.S. government considered these makeshift fields unsatisfactory, and in 1925, CLEVELAND-HOPKINS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT emerged when a team of city officials and Army Air Service personnel selected 1,040 acres at Brookpark and Riverside Dr. as the site for a new municipal airport. The much larger facility reflected good long-term planning, although the administration and passenger buildings did not open until 4 years later.

The timing of this $1.25 million airport expenditure was ideal because in 1925 Congress passed the Kelly Act, under which the federal government turned over operation of its airmail routes to private parties through competitive bidding. Civil aviation was born, and Cleveland benefited from the entrepreneurial spirit of the early airplane owners. Not only did private contract flyers carry mail to various cities, mostly in the Midwest, but these fledgling businesses began to seek passengers as well. Ford Commercial Air lines inaugurated daily trips between Cleveland and Detroit on 1 July 1925, and soon Natl. Air Transport, a future component of United Airlines, launched what would become the first continuous service. Four thousand planes cleared the new field in 1925; in 1926 the total reached 11,000; and a year later, volume had grown to 14,000. Travelers bound for Detroit in 1929 made the 100-minute flight from Cleveland in a Ford tri-motor metal monoplane paying a fare of $18 one way and $35 round-trip. Airline personnel continually reassured wary passengers that air travel was safe, pointing out that planes, pilots, and mechanics were licensed by the Aeronautics Branch of the Dept. of Commerce and a rigid daily inspection of equipment was made. Aircraft landing was indeed made much safer after 1930 when Cleveland’s municipal airport installed the world’s first radio traffic system. General airport upgrading in the mid-1930s also made for better flying, and pilots favored the Cleveland field because of its relatively obstruction-free approaches.

With the introduction of the improved Douglas DC-3 airplane in the late 1930s, the number of trips canceled by adverse conditions lessened significantly, making it possible for an airline to turn a profit on a flight without hauling mail. By World War II, 3 airlines, American, Pennsylvania Central, and United, dominated Cleveland’s commercial traffic. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the greater dependability and faster speeds of the planes, the lower fares, and the decline in intercity railroad passenger service expanded the market for air travel. Both passenger traffic and mail increased, as did the number of flights for airlines such as Eastern, TWA, United, and Trans-Canada, which connected Cleveland travelers to the major cities of the U.S. and Canada and to international flights around the world.

The most notable technological advance during the period was the advent of the jet engine and the rapid disappearance of piston-driven craft. Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 jets began to land at Cleveland Hopkins Intl. Airport, and in the late 1970s, the next generation of wide-bodied Boeing 747s and DC-10s regularly deposited passengers here. Only a few turbo-prop jets reminded passengers of the early jet age, and these craft belonged almost exclusively to small feeder lines such as the locally based WRIGHT AIRLINES, INC.. Massive improvements of Hopkins facilities were begun in 1973 involving a $60 million terminal-expansion plan which included rehabilitation of the west concourse and the longer runways needed to accommodate the jet age and the increase in passengers that it brought.

While physical improvements at Greater Cleveland’s 3 airports were readily apparent, the traveler, after 1978, also recognized that airlines themselves were changing as the revolutionary process of deregulation by the federal government swept the industry in the late 1970s. Competition increased and so did mergers as fares were lowered to attract more passengers. In order to maintain profitability, trunk carriers reduced the number of flights or ended service outright in what was rapidly becoming an intense rivalry. In spite of the volatility, however, a number of new airlines entered the field, and in 1992 Continental and USAir were major carriers operating out of Cleveland’s municipal airport.

Greater Cleveland had satellite airports as well. To relieve congestion, especially traffic generated by private aircraft, Cleveland’s downtown field, BURKE LAKEFRONT AIRPORT, opened in 1947 to provide ready access to the central business for travelers using their own or company planes or the regularly scheduled community flights. The other major landing strip at CUYAHOGA COUNTY AIRPORT on Richmond Rd. also served general aviation. Located in Richmond Hts., this field initially opened in the spring of 1929 when Ohio Air Terminals, Inc. acquired a 272-acre parcel for a flying school and related activities; however, it closed a year later after legal action was taken against the promoters because of airplane noise and danger. A pro-aviation climate after World War II prompted small-plane enthusiasts to win voter approval for the issuance of county general obligation bonds to rehabilitate the field. Although nearby property owners tried to block the plan, the Cuyahoga County Airport opened on 30 May 1950.

Cleveland aviation involved transporting freight as well as mail and people. In Feb. 1936, the Railway Express Agency’s Air Div. started air-rail express service through an interchange agreement with Pan American Airways that linked Cleveland with cities on 20 American airlines and most of Latin America. From the mid-1930s on, the forwarding of express and freight increased steadily. After World War II, air cargo service frequently became part of the individual carrier’s Cleveland operation. American Airlines, for instance, inaugurated such service between Hopkins and 42 other cities on its far-flung system in Sept. 1946. More recently, freight-only air forwarders have served the community, including Federal Express and the Flying Tiger Line.

In addition to the development of commercial aviation, Cleveland played an early role in the research and production of aircraft, beginning in 1918. That year inventor-entrepreneur Glenn L. Martin came to Cleveland and established a factory at 16800 St. Clair Ave. where he and his talented colleagues built the Martin MB bomber–acknowledged by military authorities to be superior in its class. The Martin-designed bomber, scheduled for quantity production when World War I ended, was produced here for the U.S. Army and Navy, for the Post Office, and for commercial use. Although Martin moved his plant to Baltimore in 1929, the GREAT LAKES AIRCRAFT CO. operated a portion of the former Martin facility until that company disbanded in the mid-1930s. Aircraft parts continued to be made here, however, by firms such as Cleveland Pneumatic Aerol Co. and Thompson Products (TRW). Cleveland returned to aircraft production during World War II, when the Cleveland Bomber Plant owned by the Dept. of Defense and operated by General Motors (GM) made the B-29 bomber adjacent to the municipal airport.

Aviation research and development was also furthered by the NATIONAL AIR RACES, which were held here intermittently throughout the 1930s and from 1946-49. In 1929 the quality of Cleveland’s airport and the organizational skills of the Chamber of Commerce, together with support from Glenn Martin and Thompson Products, made possible the first aircraft races and the satellite aeronautical exposition. Although the races popularized aviation and were a source of civic pride, they were also important in advancing aircraft technology. Contests such as the Bendix trophy race from Los Angeles to Cleveland and the Thompson Trophy Race–a 55-mi. closed course marked by pylons–were proving grounds to test the airplanes’ durability and performance under extreme conditions. Cleveland’s stature as a research center was affirmed when the Natl. Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) established an aircraft engine laboratory in 1940. During World War II, its investigations included the problems associated with B-29 engines which were being assembled here by GM. Renamed the Lewis Flight Propulsion Research Laboratory after the war, the NACA facility conducted research to improve jet engine technology. In 1958 the Lewis Research Center became part of the Natl. Air & Space Admin. (NASA) and became actively engaged in the Mercury and Apollo space programs.

Although aircraft production did not remain in Cleveland, the city retained a meaningful presence in the manufacture of airplane parts and the advancement of jet engine and aerospace research and development.

H. Roger Grant

Univ. of Akron


Dawson, Virginia P. Engines and Innovation: Lewis Laboratories and American Propulsion Technologies (1991).

Hull, Robert. September Champions–The Story of America’s Air Racing Pioneers (1979).

Fordon, Leslie N. “On to Cleveland Race–1929,” in American Aviation Historical Journal, Spring (1966).

Wings Over Cleveland (1948).

Giblin, Ann M. “Aviation Enterprise, Technology and Law on Richmond Rd: The Curtiss Wright Hanger and the Cuyahoga County Airport,” in Journal of the Cuyahoga County Archives, (1983).

Morton, Jan. “Cleveland’s Municipal Airport,” in National Municipal Review (1926).

Aviation Library, WRHS.

Information kept by our government should be presumed open to public (by David Marburger 3/10/13)

Article written by David Marburger, a partner at Baker Hostetler’s principal office in Cleveland. Mr. Marburger is co-author of Access with Attitude, a book about Ohio’s sunshine laws.

This op-ed appeared in the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday March 10, 2013 

Information Kept by Our Government Should be Presumed Open to Public

It’s time for the Ohio General Assembly to kill the stealth exemption.

The stealth exemption is a nickname for a series of misguided rulings by the Ohio Supreme Court in interpreting Ohio’s open-records law, our most potent catalyst for accountable government.

The court’s rulings have made Ohio the only state where citizens must prove that information kept by public agencies is supposed to be open. 

In every other state, officials must comply with public requests to see records in their custody unless the officials prove that the information matches an explicit description in a statute that identifies the kinds of information that they can withhold.

Ohio’s top court has moved that key component of open government back to the 17th century, when England ruled America.

In England, the government was the king’s government. An English citizen had to satisfy the king’s ministers that the citizen deserved to see particular records. If Mr. Jones could show that he was about to sell his land, he could see his recorded deed. 

But America emphatically rejects that idea. Officials keep and create records only for our benefit, under our authority, and with our money. Open records is the default.

In limited instances, we’ve decided that society benefits more by closing certain categories of records than by opening them. So we’ve enacted statutes that specifically identify categories of records that officials may withhold from us. How government security systems work is an example. 

But about 10 years ago, Ohio agencies began to say no even when recorded information that we requested didn’t fit any statutory exception. The agencies pounced on the statutory definition of record, which applies to recorded information that documents any activity of government. 

The logic: If official information isn’t a “record,” then it can’t be a “public record.” And if it isn’t a “public record,” the public has no right to see it. 

They insisted on narrow, highly literal interpretations of “record,” and they succeeded in persuading the Ohio Supreme Court to adopt the narrow view. Actual rulings: 

• Citizens’ letters kept by a judge that tried to influence her sentencing in a controversial criminal case — closed because they aren’t “records.”

• Parents’ letters received by a public high-school superintendent describing how the high-school basketball coach was treating the student players could be freely destroyed because they weren’t “records.”

• Responses by prospective jurors in a criminal case to the court’s written questions, and used to select which jurors to keep and exclude from the case — closed because they aren’t “records.”

• Emails among county employees using county computers while on the job that racially harassed another employee — closed because they aren’t “records.” 

• Applications to become public-school superintendent sent to the school district’s post office box at the school district’s instruction were not “records,” and so were closed until the school board disclosed them at the board’s own initiative.

The definition of record has become a stealth exemption from the public’s right to know. It’s a black hole of government-stored information that we can’t see and that no one can categorically identify.

The Ohio Supreme Court has never answered this question: Which law allows our agencies to keep recorded information that isn’t a “record”? Answer: There isn’t one.

Or this question: Which theory of democracy justifies allowing officials to conceal information kept in managing our affairs, collected using our authority, and paid for with our funds — when no law identifies that information? Same answer.

All recorded information kept by our government agencies must be presumptively open to the public unless expressly closed by statute.

If that makes the family photos on the mayor’s secretary’s desk a public record, then pass a law that exempts the personal effects of public employees that are incidental to their employment. But nothing should be exempt from public view unless one of our statutes says it is.

 

Philanthropy in Cleveland from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

Written by David Hammack

The link is here

PHILANTHROPY – The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

PHILANTHROPY. Philanthropy in Cleveland sprang from a strong basis in RELIGION. In the 20th century much (though by no means all) philanthropic activity has been devoted to building great nonprofit institutions run by professionals, not only in MEDICINE and social work but also in education and the fine arts; in keeping with the principle that philanthropy should help people help themselves, these institutions draw most of their income from payments (by individuals and by governments) for the services they offer. But 19th century philanthropy was almost always domestic in scale, and, with its strong emphasis on the views and members of particular religious denominations, was often as inward-looking as the work of a mutual-benefit society. Early Cleveland’s first relief agency, the WESTERN SEAMEN’S FRIEND SOCIETY, was organized in 1830 by BENJAMIN ROUSE, an agent of the American Sunday-School Union. Rouse’s desire to reach all who were in need and to promote moral values as well as to provide emergency food and shelter gave his efforts a broadly philanthropic, and not merely a charitable, purpose. The MARTHA WASHINGTON AND DORCAS SOCIETY (1843) was also organized for the broader purpose of “retarding intemperance” as well as the relief of poverty; its successors, including the Cleveland Women’s Temperance Union (1850) and the Ladies Bethel Aid Society (1867), all offered Protestant forms of “Christian philanthropy.” REBECCA CROMWELL ROUSEand several of the other Protestant churchwomen who led these organizations raised nearly $1 million through the SOLDIERS’ AID SOCIETY OF NORTHERN OHIO (1861-68), not only to meet the medical-care needs of Union soldiers but also to support the strict social and moral discipline advocated by the U.S. Sanitary Commission. The religious basis of philanthropy led to complementary and sometimes competing efforts, both among the Protestant denominations and among CATHOLICS, ROMAN and . To compete with the public schools Bp. LOUIS AMADEUS RAPPE called to Cleveland the URSULINE SISTERS OF CLEVELAND to provide PAROCHIAL EDUCATION (CATHOLIC) in 1850; to complement Protestant poor-relief efforts he called the SISTERS OF CHARITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE, who cared for the poor and the sick in a Catholic spirit, in 1852. As the Jewish population grew, a Hebrew Benevolent Society appeared in 1855. Although the city government provided a larger share of the meager assistance deemed necessary to sustain the very poor after 1855, religious participation in this field continued; as late as 1901, Mayor TOM L. JOHNSON appointed the pastor of the Cedar Ave. Church of Christ,HARRIS R. COOLEY, as the city’s director, of charities.

After the Civil War, private philanthropy emphasized the creation of more specialized institutions. Orphan asylums appeared first. Bp. Rappe established ST. VINCENT’S ORPHAN ASYLUM for boys and ST. MARY’S ORPHAN ASYLUM FOR FEMALES for girls as early as 1851; the Protestants who had created the SOCIETY FOR THE RELIEF OF THE POOR founded the Cleveland Orphan Asylum in 1852. The German Methodist Orphan Asylum and the Jewish Orphan Asylum (later BELLEFAIRE), originally intended in part for the children of soldiers killed in the Civil War, followed in 1864 and 1869. When hospitals and homes for “foundlings” (abandoned infants) appeared in the 1870s and 1880s, they, too, were allied with the major religions. The courts, which were the key government agencies of the period, supported this pattern by assigning foundlings and orphans according to their parents’ known or supposed religious affiliation. After 1876 the state government also empowered the Cleveland Humane Society to remove children from cruel or neglectful parents and to place them in ORPHANAGES or foster homes, but the society’s funds came from private contributions. Like the orphanages, new facilities intended to encourage morality and good health among the young people who flocked to the small but rapidly growing industrial city on the lake were also founded by wealthy merchants who acted through religious associations. Protestants started the YOUNG WOMEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSN. (YWCA) a year later. Benefactors quickly provided dormitory and recreation halls that were unusually large for a city of Cleveland’s size, but not large enough to discourage the WOMAN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION, NON-PARTISAN, OF CLEVELAND from establishing a network of alcohol-free “friendly inns” in the 1870s and a Training Home for Friendless Girls in 1893.

Despite the best efforts of the YMCA and the WCTU, Cleveland had its full share of unwed mothers, prostitutes, alcoholics, and enfeebled old people who were unable to earn a living. Pious and wealthy citizens tried to meet the needs of these people through an ever more diverse array of special institutions. Homes for “unfortunate women” who had fallen into PROSTITUTION or become pregnant outside wedlock included the Catholic House of the Good Shepherd (1869) and the Stillman Witt Home attached to the Protestant Orphan Asylum (1873). The private, general-purpose relief organizations of the antebellum years were reorganized to provide employment advice and (largely religious) family counseling. The Catholic LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR (1870), the Protestant YWCA (1868), and the Jewish Home (1877) all provided OLD AGE/NURSING HOMES. Several Protestants, concerned about the living conditions, the educational opportunities, and the political, views of Cleveland’s rapidly expanding immigrant communities, established HIRAM HOUSE (1896), Goodrich House (1896) (see GOODRICH-GANNETT NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER), ALTA HOUSE (1898), and other SETTLEMENT HOUSES. The Jewish Council Educational Alliance, forerunner of the JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER, offered comparable facilities after 1897. During the 19th century, local governments played a much smaller role in these fields than in general relief. Individual towns did, on occasion, provide tuition and other support to private schools, ranging from the Methodist mission’s Cleveland City Industrial School (seeCLEVELAND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL) to EAST CLEVELAND‘s Presbyterian-sponsored Shaw Academy, but this practice came to an end as public school systems expanded. In a pattern that was to become much more common in the 20th century, kindergartens pioneered in the 1880s by the private Day Nursery & Free Kindergarten Assn. were adopted by public school districts in the 1890s.

Faced with the expanding population of a rapidly growing, polyglot industrial city and with a larger and ever more varied set of benevolent institutions, Cleveland’s philanthropists began to introduce new forms of organization after 1880. They established a CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY to discourage mendicancy and promote efficiency in 1881, just a year after Buffalo adapted the English Charity Organization Society idea to American conditions. Three years later, the Charity Organization Society merged with Cleveland’s leading Protestant counseling group to create the Bethel Associated Charities. But the charity organization movement emphasized efficiency and promoted a comprehensive concern for the region’s entire population, which included growing proportions of Catholics and Jews. For these reasons, it did not mix easily with traditional religious benevolence. “Charity cannot be organized like the Steel Trust, or run by paid clerks,” an evangelical Protestant wrote indignantly at the end of the century. “Charity means love; it is a personal thing. Can you picture Christ organizing love, card-indexing the good and the bad?”

Religious influence was less marked in the field of cultural philanthropy–a field that was little cultivated in 19th-century Cleveland. The private associations that brought the predecessors of CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY–Western Reserve Univ. of Hudson, OH, and the new Case School of Applied Science–to Cleveland at the beginning of the 1880s emphasized secular rather than religious purposes. They also received important support from the city government when they located on the attractive grounds of WADE PARK, created by JEPTHA H. WADE with private funds but developed and maintained by the city. Yet religious influence did, persist in the field of higher education. Case Institute and WRU were amply supplied with chapels, Protestants gave generously to a wide variety of denominational colleges in Ohio and elsewhere, and in Cleveland Catholics started several institutions of higher learning to complement their parochial elementary and diocesan secondary schools.

A more tightly organized, more professional, and in some ways less religious organization of philanthropy dominated Cleveland after 1900. By 1920 Greater Cleveland had taken advantage of the opportunities opened by its rapid growth into a modern metropolis and was earning a national reputation for the innovative and unusually efficient organization of its philanthropy. Early in the 20th century Cleveland’s business leaders created 3 new institutions, the charity federation, the community chest, and the community foundation, that transformed philanthropy not only in Cleveland but also throughout the U.S.

In 1900 a Committee on Benevolent Assns. of the Chamber of Commerce began to look for ways to rationalize the raising and distribution of funds and to evaluate and monitor the work of the many specialized institutions that had been created in the decades after the Civil War. Following the example of the Fed. for Jewish Charities (1903; later the JEWISH COMMUNITY FEDERATION), the suggestions of insurance executive MARTIN MARKS, and the advice of iron ore magnate SAMUEL MATHER, this committee proposed the creation of a Federation for Charity & Philanthropy. In 1913 the federation launched the first sustained campaign in the U.S. designed to raise funds for a large number of separate homes, clinics, and family services, regardless of Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish sponsorship. The campaign was so successful–it increased the number of contributors to these institutions from a few hundred to over 6,000–that it became the model for the Red Cross and Victory Chest drives carried out across the nation to meet the needs created by World War I. Cleveland’s Community Chest (which evolved into the UNITED WAY SERVICES), also the first in the U.S., continued to run unified fundraising campaigns after the war. In 1919 more than 148,000 donors responded to its appeal.

Four factors account for the success of Cleveland’s united fundraising campaigns. From the beginning they represented a truly united effort because the wealthy individuals who had traditionally supported particular institutions were willing to allow them to become part of a communitywide federation, evaluated and funded by a highly professional central agency. Also from the very beginning, the united campaigns were mounted by some of the most highly skilled fundraisers to be found in the U.S. These fundraisers worked in an unusually supportive environment. Cleveland, like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other manufacturing cities that grew rapidly between 1890 and 1930 (and unlike New York, Boston, or, Philadelphia), had a small number of large integrated manufacturing corporations that employed a large portion of its labor force (see ECONOMY); these corporations strongly supported the Community Chest through their rapidly developing personnel departments. Finally, although the new organization of philanthropy reduced the influence of organized religion, religious leaders of all faiths wholeheartedly supported the unified drives.

Within the new philanthropic system, the Fed. for Charity & Philanthropy continued to evaluate individual institutions, study the city’s needs, and distribute the funds raised by the Community Chest. In studying the city’s needs, it was quickly joined by the CLEVELAND FOUNDATION. Organized by FREDERICK GOFF, president of the Cleveland Trust Co. (later AMERITRUST, now part of Society Bank), the Cleveland Foundation was the nation’s first community foundation. Between 1914-24, it made remarkably effective use of the survey idea originated in charity organization societies in England and New York and applied with great fanfare in the Pittsburgh Survey of 1909. The Cleveland Foundation hired prominent experts–Chicago welfare director Sherman C. Kingsley, LEONARD P. AYRES of New York City’s Russell Sage Foundation (which had pioneered the social survey), WRU’s RAYMOND A. MOLEY, Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Univ. Law School–to evaluate Cleveland’s provisions for welfare, education, criminal justice, and recreation. The resulting studies attracted widespread attention, and Cleveland’s community foundation, like its Community Chest, was copied in many other large cities.

The highly professional studies sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation effectively set priorities for the city’s private institutions. They played a role, for example, in WRU’s 1916 decision to raise funds to support a School of Applied Social Sciences to train the professional social workers who were rapidly replacing the pious, temperance-minded ladies who had carried out “friendly visits” to the homes of the Protestant and Jewish poor since the 1840s. They encouraged the creation of the Metropolitan Park System (see CLEVELAND METROPARKS) and, less effectively, called attention to the needs of the city’s rapidly expanding population of blacks (see AFRICAN AMERICANS). The foundation’s reports also influenced public policies in such fields as EDUCATION and criminal justice (see LAW). By increasing the influence of corporate leaders and of the distinguished professionals they admired, Cleveland’s new philanthropic institutions reduced the influence of religious congregations (and perhaps of women) on poor relief, family counseling, and youth-service activities. Protestants and Jews responded by creating new, more, centralized organizations to formulate and express their common views on social questions. Catholics joined Protestants and Jews in creating new centrally managed campaigns to raise funds for specifically religious educational, chaplaincy, and outreach activities.

A preliminary effort to create a Christian Fed. of Cleveland in 1900 had accompanied the decision of the Bethel Associated Charities to lay aside its traditional Protestant identity and change its name to Cleveland Associated Charities. By 1911 Cleveland’s Protestants had worked out a more permanent form of association, the Federated Churches of Cleveland (now known as the INTERCHURCH COUNCIL OF GREATER CLEVELAND). Its purpose was to “improve the social and religious life of the growing city,” in part by promoting “comity in religious work among the foreign populations of the city” and encouraging “united and aggressive action upon religious and social questions.” In the 1920s the Protestants added a concern for Christian education to its agenda, and in 1911 returned to the roots laid down by Benjamin and Rebecca Rouse in the 1830s when the Federated Churches merged with the Cuyahoga County Sunday School Assn. and undertook to train and equip Sunday school teachers in many Protestant churches. The JEWISH COMMUNITY FEDERATION, begun in 1903
and later expanded to accommodate Cleveland’s growing Orthodox community, was still more effective in raising and allocating funds for Jewish educational and cultural institutions, ranging from Hebrew schools to the Jewish Community Ctr., as well as for benevolent institutions that included Mt. Sinai Hospital and JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSN.. In 1919 the CATHOLIC CHARITIES CORP. was organized to carry out a similar unified drive for funds for specifically Catholic agencies and institutions.

After 1920 Cleveland philanthropy also reorganized old charitable institutions to make use of the new expertise. As social workers, psychologists, and other child-development specialists gained prominence, for example, the old orphanages were reorganized to care for handicapped, retarded, and disturbed children. Most Catholic orphanages were consolidated into the expanding facilities of PARMADALE CHILDREN’S VILLAGE OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL after 1925; the Protestant Orphan Asylum (BEECH BROOK, INC.) moved to Orange Twp. in 1926; and the Jewish Orphan Asylum moved into the new buildings of BELLEFAIRE in UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS in 1929. By the 1940s, most of these institutions were distinguished more for the particular character of their professional services, as evaluated by theFEDERATION FOR COMMUNITY PLANNING, than for their religious affiliations, and many of them accepted children regardless of religious background. Funds for CHILD CARE and counseling that had once gone to the (Protestant) Humane Society and the, Bethel Associated Charities, by 1940 went
to “nonsectarian” organizations that styled themselves Youth Services and the Family Service Assn. In this manner, explicitly religious and chaplaincy programs were separated from job training and family and individual counseling.

The Depression and the New Deal reinforced the continuing tendency toward the specialization and professionalization of charitable organizations. When the Depression threw over one-third of Cleveland’s labor force out of work, it was clearly impossible for private charity even to address the need for general relief. Municipal and state institutions had long supplemented the work of private orphanages and institutions for the mentally handicapped; these were considerably expanded after 1900, and again in the 1930s. Even more decisively, the New Deal established the policy of using government agencies, supplied with federal and state funds, to provide direct relief through Social Security, Aid to Dependent Children, and other programs. In 1935 over 1,000 of the social workers employed by the Family Service Society were moved in a body to the Cuyahoga County Welfare Dept., which now became responsible for administering Social Security, ADC, and other federally funded social-welfare programs. Private philanthropy’s long-dominant role in the management of poor relief was sharply curtailed. Many traditional charitable organizations were thus forced to define new, more specialized and professional roles for themselves. And the Fed. for Community Planning found itself working with union and political leaders as well as with major donors and professional social workers to coordinate the work of public as well as private social agencies.

“Since 1900,” one religious leader would observe in 1956, “the specialists have taken over, and the clergyman finds himself unable to communicate with the criminologist who runs the jail, the administrator who manages the hospital, the social worker who counsels. . . .” Cleveland philanthropy, thoroughly persuaded of the value of professional expertise, supported the triumph of the specialists in the professions and the arts as well as in what came to be known as the social services. It provided significant additional facilities and endowments for the private universities, both in Cleveland and elsewhere, whose graduate and professional faculties sought knowledge for the new professions and trained the new specialists. And it created, in UNIVERSITY CIRCLE, an extraordinary set of educational, medical, and cultural institutions that appealed particularly to the city’s managerial and professional workers. Because these institutions were increasingly supported by tuition, hospital charges, and ticket fees paid by their users, and by government funds, they relied increasingly on professional managers.

In Cleveland itself, philanthropy played an important role in the creation of unusually distinguished professional communities in the fields of medicine,, engineering, law, social work, and the fine arts. The VISITING NURSE ASSN. OF CLEVELAND played a pioneering role from its origins in 1901. Following the recommendations of the nationally influential Cleveland Hospital & Health Survey conducted under private auspices by Dr. Haven Emerson in 1920, the city’s major donors moved several private hospitals to Univ. Circle, built up the extraordinary facilities of UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS CASE MEDICAL CENTERMT. SINAI MEDICAL CENTERSAINT LUKE’S MEDICAL CENTER, andSAINT VINCENT CHARITY HOSPITAL AND HEALTH CENTER, and established a large endowment for WRU’s Medical School (begun in 1843; Univ. Circle buildings from 1924) and Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing (1923). These facilities in turn made for the rich medical environment that allowed the private, independent CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION to achieve great success by the 1960s. Private philanthropy also provided the funds needed to create the Case Institute of Technology and WRU’s schools of Law and of Applied Social Sciences, and later CWRU’s Weatherhead School of Management and Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations, created in 1985 to educate managers for nonprofits. Private philanthropy also established FENN COLLEGE, which later became CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY, and helped establish CSU’s Cleveland-Marshall Law School, Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, and other professional schools,
as well as the professional programs of JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITYBALDWIN-WALLACE COLLEGE, and the area’s other colleges. Many Clevelanders also made notable gifts to universities and colleges elsewhere in Ohio, the Midwest, and the Northeast. Philanthropy helped establish traditions of academic rigor and innovation at both WRU and Case Institute of Technology. In the 1980s and 1990s private philanthropy made a concerted effort to provide CWRU (created by merger in 1967) with sufficient endowment to allow it to realize its full potential as a major comprehensive private research university, serving both the metropolitan region and the nation at large.

Between 1880 and the 1960s, private philanthropy also sponsored nearly all HIGHER EDUCATION available in Greater Cleveland. Oberlin College enjoyed support from Congregationalists and others; Methodists maintained BALDWIN-WALLACE COLLEGE in suburbanBEREA, and Catholics supported the educational work that began in ST. JOHN COLLEGE and flowered into John Carroll Univ. andNOTRE DAME COLLEGE OF OHIO and URSULINE COLLEGE colleges. WRU sponsored a downtown branch, Cleveland College, and theYMCA set up Fenn College to provide night-school and business courses. With the transformation of Fenn, College into Cleveland State Univ. in the mid-1960s, and the creation of CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, private philanthropy saw the management of many universities become the responsibility of government. Apart from supporting a nationally distinguished School of Library Science at WRU from 1903 until its closure in 1986, private philanthropy similarly left libraries to public agencies, notably the CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY, whose notable research collections were largely provided by private philanthropy.

In the cultural field, the highly organized character of Cleveland philanthropy is reflected in the extraordinary set of institutions gathered in Univ. Circle and in the successful efforts to develop PLAYHOUSE SQUARE and the North Coast Harbor. Cleveland philanthropy long gave priority to “high” culture, especially in music and art; the result is 2 of the best institutions in the U.S., the CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA and the CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART. The orchestra has been supported by endowments, by SEVERANCE HALL (on land made available by WRU), and by the Blossom Music Ctr. for summer concerts.
Its musicians, together with those of the OHIO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (after 1972) and others who teach and study at the CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC, WRU’s Dept. of Music, Baldwin-Wallace College, Oberlin College, and the CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT, give Cleveland an unusually large and distinguished musical community. Extraordinary gifts have also provided the Cleveland Museum of Art with one of the 3 or 4 most distinguished comprehensive collections of painting and sculpture–and, over the years, with one of the most highly professional curatorial staffs–in the U.S. Univ. Circle houses other cultural institutions, as well as CWRU and the Univ. Hospitals and Cleveland Clinic medical complexes. By the 1970s the CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, the Cleveland Health Education Museum, and the CLEVELAND BOTANICAL GARDEN had established national reputations for excellence in their fields, and the WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY had put together unusually strong collections of books, manuscripts, and automobiles. In 1957 Cleveland philanthropy created still another centrally managed, innovative organization, the Univ. Circle Development Foundation, to provide land acquisition and real estate management. Later, parking and police services to all the private cultural and educational institutions located in the area were established. Supported entirely by private funds, Univ. Circle has carried out urban redevelopment and policing functions ordinarily assigned to public officials. Even more than its counterparts in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area near the Univ. of Chicago and the Morningside Hts., area around Columbia Univ. in New York, UNIVERSITY CIRCLE, INC. (UCI), has served as a model for university and cultural institutions in other cities.

Cleveland philanthropy also helped create notable cultural institutions in other fields. The THEATER, including most notably the GREAT LAKES THEATER FESTIVAL and the Cleveland Public Theater.

When new tax laws encouraged the possessors of large fortunes to make large gifts after 1949, most of them chose to add to the endowment of existing institutions or to create new general-purpose foundations. Cleveland saw the creation of an unusually large number of new foundations, of which the largest was the GEO. GUND FOUNDATION and one of the most adventurous was the WOMEN’S COMMUNITY FOUNDATION, joined with the Cleveland Foundation in a continuing effort to direct philanthropic funds to the areas of greatest current need. By 1995 the combined endowments of these foundations amounted to nearly $2 billion and provided the Cleveland area with one of the largest and most flexible sources of support for philanthropic activities available in any city in the U.S. Cleveland foundations also employed an unusually large community of professional grantmakers who worked together not only through the Cleveland Regional Assn. of Grantmakers but also played leading roles in creating such national networks as that of Women in Philanthropy.

The demand for funds from foundations and annual fund drives alike rose abruptly after the mid-1960s. In 1930 Cuyahoga County’s nonprofits spent, on wages, salaries, rent, utilities and supplies, an amount that equaled about 3% of all wages and salaries paid in the county: this number grew very little before 1960, but then grew rapidly (thanks mostly to federal medicare, medicaid funds) to more than 12% by 1990. The role for philanthropy grew with the growth of the nonprofit
sector. Medical advances created new needs for research and treatment facilities; medicare and medicaid allowed more people to receive treatment, creating a need for new facilities. Federal student aid and research funds allowed private colleges and universities to grow, but also increased their need for new buildings and for excellence. The federal “War on Poverty” actually increased the role of private counselling, family-service, and job-training agencies. In the arts, the desire for first-rate THEATER and dance organizations increased the competition for the funds available for cultural philanthropy. But new problems of the 1960s–overt racial conflict, suburbanization and the decline of the central city’s population, the decline of heavy industry, and economic stagnation in general–presented the most difficult new challenges. The city’s dramatically smaller and less affluent population left the city government incapable of meeting its established responsibilities. PARKS, fell into a sorry state for lack of routine maintenance; schools were disrupted by racial conflict and petty political squabbles; STREETSBRIDGES, and sewers began to disintegrate. The CLEVELAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS lost pupils and found themselves embroiled in continuing conflicts over race and money. The Cleveland Public Library found it increasingly difficult to maintain its great research collections or to support the branch libraries that struggled to meet the needs of increasingly impoverished neighborhoods. Pressure to move these activities into private hands, especially the hands of philanthropic agencies, mounted.

Many Cleveland institutions developed creative responses to these new challenges. The Protestant Fed. of Churches reorganized itself as the Greater Cleveland Interchurch Council and gave increasing emphasis to its efforts to promote interracial cooperation and to feed the hungry. The Fed. for Community Planning sought new ways to bring together the disparate agencies that were dealing with related problems, and to establish a common welfare agenda for the region. At its strong suggestion, several long-established agencies merged into the CENTER FOR FAMILIES AND CHILDREN in 1969. Several individual religious congregations and private social agencies undertook to carry out new programs established and funded by the federal government. The United Way, which had developed a large and highly professional staff of its own, took over many of the allocation and evaluation activities formerly carried out by the Fed. for Community Planning. The Catholic church made extraordinary–and remarkably successful–efforts to find resources for inner-city Catholic schools, even as Catholics moved in large numbers to the suburbs. Several of Cleveland’s major business corporations undertook new philanthropic initiatives in the late 1970s and 1980s, focusing their efforts on the development of Playhouse Square, on sustaining the major arts organizations, on housing (Neighborhood Progress, Inc.) and on an economic development agenda greatly expanded from the older job-training efforts mounted by GOODWILL INDUSTRIES and VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE SERVICES (ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT, INC., , Work in Northeast Ohio Council). Through the GREATER CLEVELAND ROUNDTABLE many of Cleveland’s largest business corporations also sought to bring their philanthropic resources to bear on the reform of Cleveland’s Public Schools; with $28 million in its first 3 rounds, the Cleveland Initiative for Education became one of the largest private efforts in the U.S.

In the 1980s new government policies posed still more urgent questions. Government funds had met more and more of the cost of social services, medical care, and education between 1964-75, freeing private funds for investment in, research, specialized care, higher education, and the arts. Government and private insurance funds came to cover most of the cost of providing medical and nursing home care: institutions in those fields refocused their activities in more entrepreneurial ways to take advantage of new these new funding streams, with the result that they seemed, to donors and regulators alike, less and less like charities. When federal expenditures for domestic social purposes were capped after 1976 and cut after 1980, private philanthropy was pressed to replace them. The private institutional pattern established between 1900-20, like the pattern of government support begun in the 1930s and greatly expanded in the 1960s, met with criticism. Once again philanthropic institutions, in Cleveland as throughout the U.S., were forced to reconsider priorities and their methods of operation.

David C. Hammack

Case Western Reserve Univ.


Kyong Ho Lee, Darry. “From a Puritan City to a Cosmopolitan City: Cleveland Protestants in the Changing Social Order, 1898-1940” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve Univ., 1994).

McTighe, Michael J. A Measure of Success: Protestants and Public Culture in Antebellum Cleveland (1994).

Ross, Brian. “The New Philanthropy: The Reorganization of Charity in Turn of the Century Cleveland” (Ph.D. dissertation, Case Western Reserve Univ., 1989).

Tittle, Diana. Rebuilding Cleveland: The Cleveland Foundation and Its Evolving Urban Strategy (1992).

Van Tassel, David and John Grabowski, eds. Cleveland: A Tradition of Reform (1986).

Waite, Florence T. A Warm Friend for the Spirit: A History of the Family Service Assn. of Cleveland and its Forbears (1960).

Last Modified: 13 May 1998 11:00:48 AM

Cleveland’s Settlement Houses from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

Written by Dr. John J. Grabowski

The link is here

SETTLEMENT HOUSES – The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

SETTLEMENT HOUSES. Cleveland, along with Chicago, Boston, and New York, was one of the centers of the U.S. settlement-house movement. Local settlement work began in the late 1890s, and within a decade a half-dozen settlements operated in Cleveland neighborhoods. Several of the city’s settlement houses achieved national recognition; for example, KARAMU HOUSE, one of the centers of African American theater in the U.S., and the CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT, with its model music training programs. The settlement movement began in England in 1884 when a group of Oxford Univ. students established Toynbee Hall, a residence in a London slum. Sharing knowledge and skills with area residents, they strove to understand and solve urban problems. The urban village concept was foremost, attempting to replicate in city neighborhoods the network of mutual aid common to a small village. New York City’s Neighborhood Guild (1885) and Jane Addams’ Hull House (Chicago, 1888) marked the importation of settlement houses to the U.S.; over 100 existed in America by 1900. The settlement movement grew in response to the overcrowding, impoverishment, corruption, and disease caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization. One of the most enduring reform movements, it uniquely attempted to change problem neighborhoods from within.


Hiram House float in the 1919 Community Fund Parade. WRHS.

Social settlements addressed Progressive Era concerns: education (with adult classes, kindergartens, and vocational training); citizenship; recreation; health (with visiting-nurse networks and health inspections); labor, unions, and working standards; and living conditions (establishing housing codes). Many programs became standard to education and government. Early settlement house support came through an independent board of directors or a particular religious or educational affiliation. While supporters and settlement workers were generally native-born, Protestant and middle- or upper-middle-class, clients in the early years were mostly Catholic or Jewish working-class immigrants. This difference between the settlement worker and neighborhood resident clearly distinguished the American settlement movement.

The first settlement house established in Cleveland was HIRAM HOUSE (1896). By World War I, many other settlements served Cleveland neighborhoods. While Hiram House served JEWS & JUDAISM (later ITALIANS and thenAFRICAN AMERICANS) along lower Woodland Ave., ALTA HOUSE (1900) served the Italians of LITTLE ITALYEAST END NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE (1907) worked with HUNGARIANS and SLOVAKS in the BUCKEYE-WOODLAND-Woodhill district, and Goodrich House (1897, see GOODRICH-GANNETT NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER) served South Slavic groups residing along St. Clair Ave. By the 1920s, other local settlements included the WEST SIDE COMMUNITY HOUSE (1922), MERRICK HOUSE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT(1919), the RAINEY INSTITUTE (1904), UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT (1922), the Playhouse Settlement (1915, later Karamu House), the Council Educational Alliance (1899, forerunner of the JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER), the FRIENDLY INN SOCIAL SETTLEMENT (1897), and the Cleveland Music School Settlement (1912). The 1920s and 1930s saw tremendous nationwide changes in settlement operation, especially the hiring of trained social workers and the emphasis on a more scientific methodology and program. National and local organizations, such as the National Federation of Settlements (est. 1911), the Cleveland Settlement Union, and, later, the GREATER CLEVELAND NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS ASSN., fostered such change.

Following World War I, the increased centralization of urban social work and PHILANTHROPY affected settlement houses. While they had previously enjoyed autonomy in fundraising and allocation, many settlements came to depend on centralized welfare campaigns by 1930. Funding agencies frequently dictated areas in which a settlement could spend monies received from general solicitations, often hampering program development. In Cleveland, the Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, and later the Welfare Federation (predecessors ofUNITED WAY SERVICES), solicited and allocated charitable funds. Despite the loss of autonomy, the curtailment of immigration, and the general decline of urban populations, many settlement houses established during the Progressive Era endured in 1993, such as Alta House, Goodrich-Gannett, Karamu, and the Cleveland Music School Settlement. A new neighborhood emphasis by various city, state, and federal funding programs during the 1970s renewed vitality in some institutions.


John J. Grabowski

Western Reserve Historical Society

Bond, Robert L. Focus on Neighborhoods: A History of Responses by Cleveland’s Settlement Houses and Neighborhood Centers to Changing Human Needs (1990).

See also specific institutions and reformers.

Last Modified: 21 Nov 2009 01:54:41 PM

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