Website devoted to the life and career of Charles W. Chestnutt. “Charles W. Chesnutt was the most widely-read and critically-respected African American fiction writer of his era, a pioneering realist whose treatment of racial issues was far in advance of his time.”
Charles W. Chestnutt from Wikipedia
Charles Waddell Chesnutt (June 20, 1858 – November 15, 1932) was an author, essayist and political activist, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity.
The Struggle for Fair Housing in Cleveland Heights: The St. Ann Audit
Article about the battle for fair housing in Cleveland Heights. From the Cleveland Heights Historical Society
The Clark, Lee and Heights Freeways
The story of the public rejection of a highway that was planned to go through the Shaker Lakes as well as other residential areas in Cleveland Heights. Article written by Marion Morton for the Cleveland Heights Historical Society.
The Great Divide – from Cleveland Magazine
George Voinovich may be retiring at the end of the year (2010), but his time as mayor will live on as the defining moment of our political landscape. From the December, 2010 issue of Cleveland Magazine
Philanthropy in NE Ohio Time Line
Philanthropy grows over the decades in Cleveland: a timeline. From the Plain Dealer
Items in boldface indicate a national trend that began in Cleveland.
| 1830: | Cleveland, a fledgling port city, gets its first relief agency — the Western Seamen’s Friend Society, founded to provide food, shelter and moral values to sailors. |  |
| 1851: |
Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine arrive in Cleveland to care for the poor and sick. |
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| 1853: | B’nai B’rith is established; it later becomes nation’s first regional Jewish charitable institution. Opens orphanage in 1868 that evolves into Bellefaire/Jewish Children’s Bureau. | |
| John D. Rockefeller moves to Cleveland area with his family, attends Central High School. | ||
| 1861: | Soldiers’ Aid Society raises nearly $1 million to meet medical, other needs of Union soldiers. | |
| 1866: | Lakeside Hospital opens to provide medical care to Civil War refugees — an effort to care for the needy that evolved into University Hospitals. | |
| 1880: | Regarding his wealth as a trust to be used for good, Leonard Case Jr. bequeathes part of his $15 million inheritance to found the Case School of Applied Science. |  Leonard Case Jr. |
| 1881: |
Cleveland contractor and railroad tycoon Amasa Stone donates $500,000 to move Western Reserve College from Hudson to University Circle. Contributors raised $100,000 to purchase 43 acres for both it and the Case school, so they could be located adjacent to each other. |
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| 1882: | Cleveland Metroparks Zoo established with land and a herd of deer donated by Jeptha Wade. | |
| 1887: | Oil baron John D. Rockefeller donates $250,000 to local charities — a foretaste of the more than $3 million he would later give away here, including acres of land for use as parks. Forest Hill Park, in Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland, is built on his former estate. |  John D. Rockefeller in 1932 |
| 1895: |
Rockefeller gives funds to create Alta House, a support association for Italian immigrants that is named for his daughter. During his lifetime, he donated $308,429 to Alta House. |
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| 1903: | Federation of Jewish Charities, now the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, is created to raise and distribute funds to Jewish agencies. | |
| 1904: | A.M. McGregor Home for senior citizens opens, one of several enduring Cleveland institutions funded by families of Standard Oil executives who were influenced by Rockefeller’s strong interest in philanthropy. | |
| 1904: | Rainey Institute opens, one of numerous settlement houses springing up to address increasing urbanization and poverty in Cleveland’s neighborhoods. It was funded by philanthropist Eleanor Rainey. | |
| 1911: | Protestant leaders merge their wide-ranging philanthropic efforts, creating Federated Churches of Greater Cleveland, which later became the Interchurch Council. |  Jane Edna Hunter |
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Newly arrived from the South, Jane Edna Hunter raises $1,500 to open a Cleveland boarding house for black women after the YWCA refused to lodge her. Philanthropist Henry Sherwin, of Sherwin-Williams paint company, later donated funds to build Hunter’s dream, the nine-story Phillis Wheatley Association. |
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| 1912: | A meeting at home of Mrs. Amasa Stone Mather leads to the creation of Cleveland’s Junior League, to promote volunteerism, develop women’s potential and improve communities. | |
| 1913: | Federation of Charity and Philanthropy, created by Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, holds “Good Will Week,” the city’s first coordinated fund drive. It would give rise to what is now the United Way. | |
| 1914: | One of Rockefeller’s lawyers, Frederick Goff, establishes the Cleveland Foundation, the nation’s first community foundation. The news is heralded in the New York Times; Boston and Chicago quickly follow Cleveland’s lead. |  Cleveland Foundation 2001 logo |
| 1915: |
Cleveland Play House, the nation’s first permanently established professional theater company, is funded with gifts from philanthropists including industrialist Francis Drury. |
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| 1918: | A “War Chest Campaign” raises nearly $12 million for the WWI effort and the needs of the Welfare Federation of Cleveland. | |
| 1919: | Cleveland Community Chest, which evolved into United Way of Greater Cleveland, is created to raise funds for multiple charities. It is considered one of the first two modern-day United Ways nationally. | |
| 1919: | Catholic Charities Corp. of Cleveland established to centralize fundraising for local Catholic community efforts. | |
| 1921: | Cleveland Clinic Foundation created as a nonprofit entity. Founders said their aim was “better care of the sick; investigation of their problems; and more teaching of those who serve.” | |
| 1930: | Industrialist John L. Severance donates $2.5 million to build a concert hall for the Cleveland Orchestra. Also a liberal benefactor of the Cleveland Museum of Art, he bequeathed it an art collection worth more than $3 million when he died in 1936. |  John L. Severance breaks ground for Severance Hall in 1929. |
| 1952: | Local business executive George Gund, a member of Harvard Business School’s first graduating class, starts a private foundation — now the region’s biggest. Other wealthy residents followed in the 1950s, establishing foundations that live on today, including the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. | |
| 1966: | 13 fundraisers meet at the Cleveland Health Museum and create a local chapter — the nation’s fifth — of the National Society of Fundraising Executives. It’s now called the Association of Fundraising Professionals. | |
| 1973: | Saint Ann Foundation is established by the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine through the sale of Saint Ann Hospital to Kaiser Permanente, becomes nation’s first health care “conversion foundation.” Mt. Sinai and St. Luke’s hospitals later follow suit. | |
| Three Clevelanders — Richard Baker, Morton Mandel and E. Mandell de Windt — create the Ten Plus club for United Way donors of $10,000 or more. The idea spread nationally and is known today as the Alexis de Tocqueville Society. | ||
| 1977: | Cleveland is one of five cities to land a Foundation Center, an office that tracks giving trends, confirming Cleveland’s reputation as a philanthropic hub. | |
| 1987: | Neighborhood Progress Inc. debuts, a ground-breaking, foundation-led effort to unify and support the work of community development corporations. |
Sources: The Plain Dealer, Western Reserve Historical Society, Foundation Center-Cleveland, Ohio Grantmakers Forum, Association of Fundraising Professionals, Case Western Reserve University History Professor David C. Hammack; “The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History” (Indiana University; 1987)
• Northeast Ohio philanthropists’ gifts have helped
region weather economic storms
• Series index
Depression Derailed Van Sweringen Express
Plain Dealer article published on June 2, 1996
DEPRESSION DERAILED VAN SWERINGEN EXPRESS
Those two masters of the game of real estate, the Van Sweringen brothers of Cleveland, had just made their greatest coup, winning a referendum in 1919 that gave them development rights for their Union Terminal complex on the southwest corner of Public Square.
Against all odds and seeming common sense, they had first overpaid for the old Shaker North Union Colony acreage; then, in order to make the area accessible to future home buyers, acquired the Nickle Plate Railroad, 539 miles long, to get a vital two miles for their own transit line over its right-of-way from their Shaker Village development to downtown Cleveland. Now, the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle was in place, and the work started, work that would take 11 years and $200 million.
By 1920, 35 acres of historic old Cleveland were being cleared west from Public Square down the hill to the river. Something was gained and something was lost. Squalid, disease-ridden hovels fell to the wrecker’s ball; so did some landmark old inns and restaurants. Fifteen thousand people were displaced from their homes – as rundown and riddled with crime as the area was, it was home to them.
The crowning jewel of the complex was the 52-story Terminal Tower; next to it was Higbee’s Department Store; behind it was a brand-new street with two more high-rise office buildings. But underneath the tower was what it was all about, because here all the major railroads, except the Pennsylvania converged. This was a time when railroads seemed all-powerful, the industry that legendary robber barons like Jay Gould, Commodore Vanderbilt, and Leland Stanford had made part of the American industrial fabric. Nobody could have foreseen the end of their dominance of passenger travel within a relatively few years.
As for Shaker Village, that exclusive community had succeeded beyond even the Van Sweringen brothers’ wildest dreams! They had added an average of 300 new, expensive homes each year from 1919 to 1929, and the population had gone from 1,700 to 15,500 in the same time. In 1931, it became a city and changed its name to Shaker Heights.
And those 1,366 acres of Shaker land that the Van Sweringens had bought from a Buffalo syndicate for $1 million was now valued at $80 million.
Shaker Village seems to have been among the first planned suburban communities in the country. And its very restrictions were what made it so attractive to so many affluent buyers. In the ’20s and ’30s, you weren’t permitted to buy or resell a house until you got permission from all the neighbors, plus that of the Van Sweringen Co. The latter had to approve the architect, the paint colors, even the realtors!
There were 99-year deed restrictions that effectively kept out Jews, Catholics and blacks until after World War II. The Van Sweringens persuaded Cleveland’s University School to relocate in Shaker, and they were soon followed by Hathaway Brown and Laurel School. It was typical of Oris O. and Mantis J. Van Sweringen that after acquiring the whole Nickle Plate Railroad, almost as an afterthought, they set about buying 24 more railroads to the tune of 27,000 miles of trackage, and that led to being involved with more than 200 other companies including real estate, traction and coal interests that may have had some $4 billion dollars of assets, according to historian George Condon .
Had success gone to the heads of the two shy, reclusive bachelors?
Hardly! On June 28, 1930, Terminal Tower and the Union Terminal were to be dedicated with an immense party of prominent Clevelanders and guests from all over the country. After all, it was the greatest city center complex that had ever been built up to that point. (Rockefeller Center was several years away.) But O.P. and M.J. Van Sweringen weren’t there – they stayed home and listened to the celebration on the radio.
But not even the Van Sweringens could have foreseen the disaster that the Great Depression would create. Railroad revenues plunged, Shaker real estate was going for a song – if it went at all. And the Van Sweringens were into two local banks for a lot of loans, loans that were called and the collateral lost. Even a huge loan from the J.P. Morgan bank wasn’t enough to bail them out, and at the end of September 1935, at an auction of their assets, several entrepreneurs picked up some $3 billion of assets for a little over $3 million.
The two local banks who had loaned the Van Sweringens all that money never re-opened their doors, and there are Clevelanders to this day who feel that their collapse, caused by the Van Sweringens’ defaulted loans, was such a devastating financial and psychological blow to this area that only now it has really begun to recover.
From the Roaring ’20s to the Great Depression, the Van Sweringens led the rise and fall of a great city.
The Best Barber in America: George A. Myers
From the Ohio Historical Society Blog
The Best Barber in America: George A. Myers
by David Simmons, TIMELINE editor
Even after his death in 1865, Abraham Lincoln cast a long shadow over the Republican Party. The “party of Lincoln” held the near-universal allegiance of African Americans as the nineteenth century drew to a close and a new century dawned. George A. Myers was a black barber from Cleveland during this era whose counsel was sought by both state and national party leaders. Cleveland scholar John Vacha told his story with “The Best Barber in America” article that appeared in the January 2000 issue of TIMELINE.
Near the end of his life, George Myers drafted a set of recommendations for the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce on improving black conditions in the city. High on his list were issues related to equal pay and segregation as well as giving the race proper recognition “in all public affairs.”
Myers was a native of Baltimore, where his father worked as a shipyard caulker and became the president of the black wing of a national labor union. After finishing high school, Myers was denied entrance into the city college because of his race, and he was forced to learn the barber trade. He moved to Cleveland in 1879 and was soon the foreman of the barbershop in the Weddell House, one of the city’s most prominent hotels. Here he first became acquainted with many of the Forest City’s leading white businessmen. Impressed with his tonsorial skills, a group of these men fronted Myers the money to establish his own shop at the Hollenden Hotel when it opened on Public Square in 1885.
Decorations on the storefront of George A. Myers’s barbershop in the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland made clear his unwavering support of the Republican Party during the 1896 presidential campaign. Myers (second from right) proudly joined his staff on the sidewalk.
The Hollenden was celebrated for its modern and lavish appointments, including electric lights, and it
quickly became a meeting place for the city’s elite. Myer’s barbershop was in an ideal location, and no fewer than eight presidents and luminaries such as Mark Twin took turns in his chair. It became a “mark of distinction” to have a personal shaving mug on Myers’s own rack. Perhaps most important among those who did was Mark Alonzo Hanna, the shipping and street railway magnate who managed the gubernatorial and presidential campaigns of William McKinley Jr. Myers affectionately dubbed him “Uncle Mark.”
Myers was soon involved in Republican politics, or “the game” as he referred to it. Named a delegate to the 1891 state Republican convention, he helped nominate McKinley to the governor’s office and later worked on his presidential bids in 1892 (failed) and 1896 and 1900 (successful). The barber’s organization of black delegates for McKinley was not limited to Ohio, and he performed similar services in Louisiana and Mississippi. Hanna installed Myers on the state executive committee for the party, where the barber worked to integrate African Americans into the Hanna political machine. In that role, he became the Ohio’s leading politician of his race and a force to be reckoned with in Ohio GOP politics.
With McKinley’s death in 1901 and then Hanna’s in 1904, Myers’s interest in politics waned, and he devoted his attention to improving his barber business. Among the innovations he instituted was telephone service at each of his chairs.
While his influence had diminished, he continued to work behind the scenes as an advocate for equality in wages for African Americans and by denouncing all forms of segregation. He strove to prevent the establishment of a separate city hospital in the 1920s and fought to get equal access for blacks to the city’s hospital facilities and equal employment opportunities for black interns and nurses. City council finally opened the hospital to both in 1930.
When he learned that the Hollenden owner planned to replace his all-black staff with white barbers upon his retirement, Myers remained as the head of his shop even after developing serious health problems. When, on January 17, 1930, he could no longer avoid the inevitable, he worked in the morning and told his staff that he had some important things to discuss with them after lunch. While out, as he purchased a ticket for a southern rest-cure trip, he collapsed and died of heart failure. The strain of finally having to lay his staff off had been too much. George A. Myers was 70 years old.