Article written by Frederic Howe in 1916 about Newton D. Baker for The Independent Magazine
John D. Rockefeller Short Documentary
From History.com
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Theater in Cleveland (through the 1980s)
From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
THEATER. In a frontier situation, where the settlers must be self-sufficient, entertainment is usually a home-grown product. So it was in the village of Cleveland early in the 19th century, when amateur theater manifested itself. Playreadings and amateur performances, mostly in the schools, appear in the record with sufficient frequency to suggest that considerably more of the activity went unrecorded. Such activity eventually led to the forming of the first recorded community drama group. They called themselves the Theatre Royal Society, performed in a hall called the Shakespeare Gallery in the early spring of 1819, gave the proceeds to the village, and vanished from the record. The first known visit of a professional acting company to Cleveland was in 1820, when Wm. B. Blanchard and his troupe performed in the dining room of Mowrey’s Tavern, under conditions little more adequate than the elemental prescription for theater, “a passion and a plank.”
It wasn’t until 5 years later that a second dramatic company visited Cleveland. That year, 1825, also saw the beginning of work on the OHIO AND ERIE CANAL, which upon its completion in 1832 sparked an explosion of growth in Cleveland, the canal’s northern terminus. Since the lake and the canal were the principal avenues of travel to and from the outside world, it followed that the theater season would be a summer one, coinciding with open season of transportation on those freshwater routes. Seeing this opportunity, 2 enterprising actor-managers, Edwin Dean and David McKinney, put together a company of players in 1834 to perform on a lake circuit formed by the triangle of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit, with intermittent extension south on the canal to Columbus. In Cleveland, ITALIAN HALL served as the showplace for their productions for 4 seasons from 1834-37. With local backers, they were planning a fine new theater building for the city when the financial Panic of 1837 intervened. Another venue for performances appeared in 1810 when J. W. Watson built a small theater on the 2nd floor of a building on the north side of Superior Ave., between Bank (W. 6th) and Seneca (W. 3rd) streets. After 6 different names and ownership changes, as the GLOBE THEATER it was razed in 1880.
The coming of the RAILROADS to Cleveland in the early 1850s precipitated another period of rapid growth. Joseph C. Foster continued the struggle to establish a permanent stock company in Cleveland. His effort found its focus at the Cleveland Theater on Center (Frankfort) St. By 1853 he had been successful enough to set about building a new, more satisfactory theater in the vicinity. In 1859, after a quick succession of names, the new theater became the ACADEMY OF MUSIC, and under that name it began its nearly 24-year tenure as Cleveland’s premiere legitimate theater. The man responsible for the name and for the ascendancy of the “Old Drury,” as it came to be known, was JOHN A. ELLSLER†, who with his wife and daughter solidly established the stability and reputation of the stock company as one of the finest in the country. As Cleveland entered the 1870s, a consensus gradually developed that the academy was becoming inadequate for the changing times. Ellsler took the lead, and the result in 1875 was a new first-rate theater for the city, the luxurious EUCLID AVE. OPERA HOUSE. Better times in the 1880s led to more theater-building as the city continued to grow. In 1883 the Park Theater opened on the northwest quadrant of PUBLIC SQUARE, and in 1889 it became the LYCEUM THEATER. It was first managed by AUGUSTUS F. HARTZ†. The CLEVELAND THEATER, another playhouse named for the city, opened in 1885. A tent theater, the Cleveland Pavilion Theatre, flourished that summer in the city. HALTNORTH’S GARDENS had popular alfresco entertainment also. The Columbia Theater opened in 1887, presenting vaudeville, melodrama, and eventually burlesque. In the 1890s theater became more flamboyant and sensational, striving for a surface kind of realism. In 1896, as the 10th-largest city in the nation, Cleveland celebrated its centennial. There were parades, pageants, and various amateur entertainments. An original opera, From Moses to McKisson by W. R. Rose, was presented at the Euclid Ave. Opera House.
In the 19th century, the plays and the stagecraft, in terms of originality and innovation, were pretty much imported products, created and often packaged in New York. The reversal of this order was “Uncle John Ellsler’s School” at the Academy of Music, which contributed such performers as Clara Morris andEFFIE E. ELLSLER† to the national acting scene and Abe Erlanger to management. Up to mid-century, the repertoire offered was typical enough; melodrama and spectacles, tragedies and comedies were all popular. Particularly popular on Cleveland stages also, and probably connected to the New England heritage in the Western Reserve, was the stage Yankee, that Down-Easter character, rustic, shrewd, and comic, and descended in numerous plays from Royall Tyler’s Jonathan in The Contrast (1787). The effect of New England Puritanism on theater in Cleveland is more difficult to assess. John Ellsler, writing in his memoirs and reflecting on a lifetime of theater activity in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and a fortune lost in Cleveland theaters, ruefully concluded that Pittsburgh was the better theater town, a conclusion that, if true at the time, would certainly be reversed in the next century. After mid-century, strong abolitionist sentiment gave stage adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin a unique popularity beyond their artistic merit. The existence of this fervent abolitionism alongside Jim Crow seating in some Cleveland theaters was an ironic fact of the times.
More new theaters came in with the century. The Empire Theater opened in 1900 on Huron Rd. with more vaudeville, as did the COLONIAL THEATERin 1903. Then in 1908 came the mighty HIPPODROME THEATER. This immense playhouse was awe-inspiring and in many ways typified the ebullient spirit of the times. It was built to accommodate the realistic action-spectacles that the movies would soon be doing massively and more successfully. These national trends toward the colossal and superficial in entertainment were soon to be challenged by a counterforce: the Little Theater movement that began in Europe in the 1880s and spread to America in the new century. It was a movement that would soon profoundly and permanently affect the course of theater in Greater Cleveland. The year 1915 has to be noted as special in the annals of Cleveland theater history, for that is when 2 great and enduring theater organizations had their tentative beginnings: the CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE and KARAMU HOUSE. Both grew in different ways from the ideals and ferment of the Little Theater movement. While formal dramatic activity at Karamu did not begin until a few years later, 1915 was the year that ROWENA† and RUSSELL JELLIFFE† came to Cleveland with their galvanizing beliefs that the cultural arts could make a significant contribution to race relations in an urban setting. The first full-fledged City Club ANVIL REVUE, which had evolved from its earlier stunt nights, was held in 1917. The 1920s witnessed the rapid rise of local theater organizations as the important tastemakers and educators of audiences. In addition to the Cleveland Play House and Karamu, another important force for the “new theater” was gradually coming into being at Western Reserve Univ. BARCLAY LEATHEM†, working to overcome faculty prejudice against academic credit for theater studies, formed the Dept. of Speech there in 1927. By 1931 it had become the Dept. of Drama & Theater and was offering graduate study in the field. It was part of Leathem’s vision to promote a working relationship between his department, the Play House, and Karamu, in which his students would gain practical experience working with seasoned actors and technicians in professional-level productions. On campus, his department’s own pioneering productions helped to introduce students and local audiences to such important playwrights as O’Neill, Strindberg, Brecht, and Sartre.
The “wonderful year” for theater openings in Cleveland had to be 1921, when HANNA THEATER opened as legitimate houses. Under the management of Cleveland playwright Robert McLaughlin, the Ohio hosted New York road shows and a summer stock company in the 1920s, until its eventual conversion to motion pictures. The Hanna remained as Cleveland’s primary outlet for Broadway shows well into the 1970s. Elsewhere in the city, at E. 6th and Lakeside, PUBLIC AUDITORIUM was dedicated on 15 Apr. 1922, with its huge stage and impressive architectural style. The Public Music Hall and the Little Theater were added in 1929 to complete the complex.
The fall of 1929 brought the stock market crash, which became at once a jolting epilogue to the 1920s and a sobering prologue to the 1930s. The talkies andRADIO came into their own as inexpensive entertainment. One amazing local phenomenon in radio was GENE CARROLL† and Glenn Rowell doing their show, “Gene & Glenn with Jake & Lena,” heard on radio station WTAM. It attracted national attention. The Theater of Nations, beginning in 1930, boosted ethnic pride as a 3-year series of plays, presented in the Little Theater of Public Hall by nationality groups from around the city. Karamu’s entry in the first series, Roseanne, brought the group additional citywide attention when it was subsequently booked for a special week’s engagement at the Ohio Theater. Indeed, the 1930s continued to bring them ever-widening recognition. Later in the decade, one of their own, LANGSTON HUGHES†, turned to them as the group best suited to produce his plays. The collaboration that followed remains a rare local example of what a playwright and a producing organization working together, over a period of time, can accomplish. The effort saw 6 plays by Hughes presented at Karamu in 4 years, 5 of them world premieres, and the 1930s are remembered with pride in Karamu lore as the “Hughes Decade.”
As the Little Theater movement of the 2 previous decades began to fade into the less avant-garde community-theater trend of the next 2 decades, a group inLAKEWOOD espousing Little Theater ideals was organized and presented its first play in 1931 as the Guild of the Masques. It soon became theLAKEWOOD LITTLE THEATRE/BECK CENTER, which remains one of Cleveland’s distinguished theater organizations. The GREAT LAKES EXPOSITION helped bolster the depressed spirits of the area in the summers of 1936-37. Of theatrical interest were abbreviated productions of some of Shakespeare’s plays, presented in a reproduction of the Globe Playhouse, and in the second summer Billy Rose’s lavish swim spectacle, Aquacade. InCLEVELAND HEIGHTS on 10 Aug. 1938, CAIN PARK THEATER, an open-air, community theater, was dedicated, having evolved from modest beginnings 4 years earlier. Under the direction of DINA REES EVANS†, it made a unique and lasting contribution to theater here for both adults and children. Two local ventures particularly characteristic of the Depression decade were the Cleveland unit of the Federal Theater Project (1935-39) and the Peoples Theater, an attempt by Cleveland native HOWARD DASILVA† to found a workers’ theater here in 1935-36.
The 1940s and the total war effort pushed many peacetime activities aside; but youngsters were not neglected, with children’s theater programs not only at Cain Park but also at the Cleveland Play House and, in the late 1940s, at the Lakewood Little Theater’s School and the Children’s Theater-on-the-Heights. At the college and university level, there were growing theater traditions at BALDWIN-WALLACE COLLEGE and JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITYThe Korean War and McCarthyism set the anxious tone of the early 1950s, and the growth of TELEVISION accelerated the vogue for “home entertainment.” But the appetite for live theater survived, as witnessed in 1954 by the establishment of , one of the first tent theaters in the U.S. In 1960 the Dobama Players put on their first play (see DOBAMA THEATER). Under the vigorous and imaginative leadership of Don Bianchi, they have carved a special niche for themselves in the area. Also in 1960, the drama group of the JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER moved into their model new home, the Blanche R. Halle Theater, to continue a tradition of excellence in production that began in the latter 1940s. In an exciting example of community effort on many levels, the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, later the GREAT LAKES THEATER FESTIVAL, was established in 1962 in LAKEWOOD. On the other hand, the situation in Playhouse Square was far from inspiring. By the end of the 1960s, all the theaters in the area were closed except the Hanna, and the fine though battered old buildings were facing demolition. But in the early 1970s, the Playhouse Square Assn., led by Ray Shepardson, began its battle to save the theaters and the area. Joined by business, other community allies, and the vigorously creative theater department at CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY, it achieved a renaissance, and the future of the theaters has been assured.
In HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, the FRONT ROW THEATER, a large arena-style theater, opened in 1974, staging performances by national as well as local celebrities. In the early 1980s, significant developments in Cleveland theater included the revival of the 3 downtown theaters under the PLAYHOUSE SQUARE, and the moving of the Great Lakes Theater Festival and the Front Row series to Playhouse Square. Another important development was the founding of the Cleveland Public Theater in 1984. A nonprofit corporation, it offered much-needed development opportunities to local playwrights, actors, and directors, and new and relevant ways to present the theatrical experience. Other new groups which have emerged over the past decade include the Ensemble Theater, Bratenahl Playhouse, Working Theater, and CLEVELAND THEATER CO. Many of them are drawing on the city’s pool of nearly 200 Equity actors as well as dedicated amateurs. As roadshows continue to dwindle, the future of theater in Cleveland is more than ever in local hands.
Herbert Mansfield
Healthcare/Medicine History in Cleveland
From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland
MEDICINE. The development of medical care, science, and education in the Cleveland area, as a frontier community evolved into a major industrial center, is a microcosm of national developments in the U.S. The growth of the population and the financial resources available were determining factors. Although the CONNECTICUT LAND CO. commenced to sell its WESTERN RESERVE lands in 1796, it was not until 1800 that a young Connecticut physician, Moses Thompson (1776-1858), went west, cleared his land, and took up residence in what is today Hudson, OH. For 10 years he was the only physician in the Western Reserve west of Warren, OH. In 1810 DAVID LONG†, from Massachusetts, arrived in Cleveland, 25 miles north of Hudson on Lake Erie, a village of 57 inhabitants. A recent medical graduate, Long came because of the personal solicitation of a local resident who suggested that his income could be supplemented at first by teaching school and selling merchandise, a pattern common to undeveloped areas. Like PETER ALLEN† from Connecticut, who settled in Kinsman, OH, in 1808, Long and Thompson provided civic and cultural leadership in addition to medical care.
The completion of the OHIO AND ERIE CANAL in 1832 made the area more accessible, and by 1837 Cleveland had over 5,000 inhabitants, including 27 medical practitioners. By 1848 the population had doubled to more than 10,000, which quadrupled by 1860, with GERMANS and IRISH immigrants. The medical practitioners reflected the varieties of U.S. medical practice then available: regular physicians (allopaths), homeopaths (see HOMEOPATHY), botanics or Thompsonians, practitioners of electromagnetic medicine and mesmerism, and surgeon dentists (see DENTISTRY). They treated the wide spectrum of human ailments that prevailed in a prescientific medical world, in which the nature of disease was still poorly understood, and in which smallpox was the sole disease for which a preventive procedure, vaccination, was available. As emergencies arose, temporary hospitals (see HOSPITALS & HEALTH PLANNING) were set up, such as the army hospital created in 1813 at FORT HUNTINGTON in Cleveland to care for wounded soldiers of the War of 1812, and the hospital on WHISKEY ISLAND set up for the CHOLERA EPIDEMIC OF 1832. For most mild illness, people treated themselves with home remedies, often obtaining their information from popular medical books. Patent medicines, often very profitable, were widely advertised. Patients went to the doctor’s “shop” only for minor surgery, tooth extraction, and medicines compounded by the practitioner from drugs purchased in Pittsburgh or other larger cities to the east. House calls occupied much of the physician’s day, and often night, until well into the 20th century. Home delivery of infants was nearly universal until the 1920s.
In 1811, to regulate medical and surgical practice in Ohio, the state legislature set up medical districts for the purpose of creating local societies to certify and oversee practitioners. In 1824 the 19TH MEDICAL DISTRICT OF OHIO, comprising Cuyahoga and Medina counties, was designated; David Long was elected the first president. After a succession of name changes, in 1902 the present ACADEMY OF MEDICINE OF CLEVELAND of Cleveland emerged. Late in the 19th century, the state became the licensing agency for Ohio practitioners. The earliest permanent hospitals in the area were created as charitable institutions to care solely for the poor and the homeless. In 1836, when Cleveland, with a population of 4,800, incorporated as a city, the CLEVELAND BOARD OF HEALTH (est. 1832) erected a city infirmary, called City Hospital, the ancestor of Cleveland’s MetroHealth Medical Center.
Medical education quickly followed the population growth. In the early 19th century, most physicians were still educated as house students of practicing physicians; Moses Thompson in Hudson having been such a preceptor. But gradually medical colleges, chiefly proprietary institutions organized locally by enterprising physicians, spread throughout the country. The first in northeast Ohio was established at Willoughby, 15 miles from Cleveland, by a group of physicians who had migrated westward from New York State. Founded in 1834 as the Medical Department of Willoughby Univ. of Lake Erie, the school at first attracted outstanding teachers such as JOHN DELAMATER† (1787-1867) and JARED P. KIRTLAND† (1793-1877), but internal dissension led shortly to their resignation. They created a new school in Cleveland named the Cleveland Medical College. Originally chartered in 1843 as a department of the Western Reserve College of Hudson, this school existed in 1994 as the School of Medicine of CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
Cleveland also became an educational center for homeopathic physicians, who began to settle in Ohio in the 1830s. In 1846 a homeopathic society was founded and a homeopathic pharmacy opened on PUBLIC SQUARE, and 4 years later the second school of homeopathy in the U.S., the Western College of Homeopathic Medicine, opened. The Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College, as it was later called, remained in existence from 1850 to 1914, when it became a division of Ohio State Univ. in Columbus. Since homeopathy attempted to reform the excesses of “regular” medical practices, opposing massive dosages and polypharmacy and advocating more conservative methods, regular physicians viewed it as heretical. The Cleveland homeopathic community in 1856 opened the first permanent hospital apart from the infirmary in the city. Named the CLEVELAND HOMEOPATHIC HOSPITAL, it treated mainly employees of RAILROADS who were sick or injured away from home. By 1879, since most other area hospitals would not admit homeopathic physicians or surgeons, a large new hospital, the antecedent of HURON RD. HOSPITAL in EAST CLEVELAND (which established the first NURSING training school west of the Alleghenies) was built on Huron Rd. Highly respected by the nonmedical community, a number of homeopathic physicians became community leaders, and at the turn of the 20th century, leading Cleveland citizens such as MARCUS A. HANNA†, MYRON T. HERRICK†, and JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER† supported their institutions.
In the 19th century, modern theories and practices of medicine began to emerge in Western Europe. The microscope revealed microorganisms that Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and others demonstrated to be disease-causing agents. It also revealed that the minute structure of the human body is composed of cells. In addition to the 2 new sciences of bacteriology (now microbiology) and cellular pathology, an innovation called anesthesia had been developed by American surgeons, and the English surgeon, Joseph Lister, had developed antiseptic surgical procedures. At the same time, a multitude of new chemical remedies appeared, produced by the new science of organic chemistry. All this new information was rapidly transmitted by European emigres, by an increasing number of medical and surgical periodicals, and by Americans studying abroad.
Because of its strategic location, Cleveland gradually became a rich and growing center of intellectual and cultural resources and attracted talent from both home and abroad. By 1890, with a population of more than 250,000, it had 4 medical schools, 3 medical societies, and 335 physicians, 25% of them homeopaths. The medical community was quick to assimilate new medical knowledge and techniques, and to modify its institutions accordingly. Among the influential figures in Cleveland medical education during this period was GUSTAV C. E. WEBER† (1828-1912), a German-born surgeon who came to Cleveland in 1856, having done postgraduate studies in Vienna, Amsterdam, and Paris. In 1864 he was one of the founders of St. Vincent de Paul Hospital (see SAINT VINCENT CHARITY HOSPITAL AND HEALTH CENTER), where he created a new medical school patterned after Bellevue Medical College in New York City, with student access to clinical as well as didactic teaching. Nearly 20 years later, from 1883-93, after the consolidation of several medical schools, Weber served as dean of the Medical Department of Western Reserve Univ., as the former Cleveland Medical College had been renamed. His successor, Isaac N. Himes (1834-95), who had also studied abroad and who later became Cleveland’s first hospital staff pathologist, raised the Medical Department’s faculty and curriculum to the most advanced standards. A number of its faculty members, such as WILLIAM THOMAS CORLETT†, a dermatologist, John P. Sawyer (d. 1945), a physiologist, and Christian Sihler (1848-1919), a histologist, as well as surgeons FRANK E. BUNTS† (1861-1928) and DUDLEY P. ALLEN† (1852-1915) had also studied abroad. The model for the medical department was the new Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine (est. 1893) in Baltimore, MD. Cleveland search committees turned to Hopkins for new faculty members, such as the pathologist William Travis Howard, Jr. (1867-1953), and the gynecologist HUNTER ROBB†. In 1909, after Abraham Flexner completed his famous survey of American medical schools, he wrote to the president of WRU: “The Medical Department of Western Reserve Univ. is next to Johns Hopkins Univ. . . . the best in the country.”
No advances could have occurred if Cleveland hospitals had not become available for teaching and research. After the Civil War, every decade saw new hospitals established by private charitable corporations (see PHILANTHROPY) or churches (see RELIGION). Some were the progenitors of present-day institutions: the Cleveland City Hospital Assn., organized in 1866, gradually evolved into Lakeside Hospital, modeled on the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1889), and ultimately became a part of UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS CASE MEDICAL CENTER of Cleveland (1931); St. Vincent de Paul Hospital opened in 1865 and continued on its present site; the city infirmary evolved into the Cleveland City Hospital in 1891, which in 1956 became the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, now called MetroHealth Medical Center (see CUYAHOGA COUNTY HOSPITAL SYSTEM (CCHS)). These 3 hospitals and the Huron Rd. Homeopathic Hospital were the first major teaching hospitals in the area. Medical care shifted from the home to the hospital, following the introduction of new diagnostic procedures such as x-ray, bacteriological and chemical laboratories, and aseptic surgical techniques. From the 1880s onward, more hospitals were founded to satisfy various needs, such as maternity, baby, and child care, and for specific populations, such as certain racial groups, women physicians (see WOMAN’S GENERAL HOSPITAL), and residents of SUBURBS. By 1943 there were around 30 hospitals in Cleveland with more than 8,000 beds, not including neighboring communities. The patients were no longer the poor and homeless, but people of every financial status. Physicians made fewer and fewer house calls.
As the causes of epidemic diseases became known, appropriate preventions or treatments were applied. A persistent problem had been typhoid fever–3,460 cases in Cleveland between 1912-26. When William Travis Howard, Jr., brought new pathological and bacteriological methods to Cleveland, he also became the city bacteriologist, a position created especially for him. Both he and his successor, ROGER G. PERKINS† (1912), suspected that the source of the typhoid bacilli was Lake Erie, from which the Cleveland water supply had been pumped since 1856 (see WATER SYSTEM, SANITATION). After extensive research, the problem was finally corrected by Oct. 1925, with complete filtration and chlorination of the lake water. Infant mortality had also been very high, with deaths caused by diarrhea, dehydration, and malnutrition, especially among the offspring of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (see IMMIGRATION AND MIGRATION). The Milk Fund Assn., founded in 1899 as a private charitable organization, and the Babies’ Dispensary & Hospital, incorporated in 1904 under the aegis of Edward Fitch Cushing (1862-1911) and HENRY JOHN GERSTENBERGER†, provided care for poor children and freed them from milkborne pathogens. In 1912 the city Health Department established a Bureau of Child Hygiene, which set up 12 dispensaries throughout the city and oversaw the milk production and distribution from its own dairy farm, aided by volunteers. Also, the VISITING NURSE ASSN. OF CLEVELAND brought medical supervision and care into the homes of the poor (see PUBLIC HEALTH). Pediatrics began to develop as a strong medical specialty. Gerstenberger, with postgraduate training in Berlin and Vienna, was appointed professor of pediatrics at the WRU School of Medicine in 1913, when the first separate department was established. He collaborated with a research chemist in developing SMA, a best-selling synthetic milk for infants, the income from which helped to create what became Rainbow Babies & Childrens Hospital (opened in 1925) of Univ. Hospitals. Cleveland became a major center for the training of pediatricians.
During World War I, GEORGE W. CRILE† organized a group of Lakeside Hospital physicians, surgeons, nurses, and enlisted men to serve in France (seeLAKESIDE UNIT, WORLD WAR I). (After WORLD WAR II broke out, on Christmas Eve 1941, the U.S. surgeon general invited the unit to be first again. A month later, the Clevelanders organized as the FOURTH GENERAL HOSPITAL.) While working together in France, surgeons Crile, his cousinWILLIAM E. LOWER†, and Frank E. Bunts recognized the advantages of group clinical practice; after returning, they invited internist JOHN PHILLIPS† to join them and established the CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION (1921). Crile had already distinguished himself nationally, by performing the first successful human blood transfusion in 1906, by his research on shock, and by his reputation for thyroid surgery. The Cleveland Clinic rapidly acquired a national and international reputation for specialization and quality care. Gases produced in a fire in 1929 (see CLEVELAND CLINIC DISASTER) caused many deaths, including that of founder John Phillips. The fire ultimately saved other lives worldwide, however, since it led to the development and use of nontoxic x-ray film.
After World War I, an affluent and growing Cleveland arranged to have a survey made of its hospitals to improve the quality of health care. The 1,082-page Cleveland Hospital & Health Survey (1920), one of the first in an American city, was carried out by an outside expert, Haven Emerson. Cleveland has pioneered in many other forms of cooperation and teamwork, such as the CLEVELAND HOSPITAL SERVICE ASSN. (est. 1934, later renamed BLUE CROSS OF NORTHEAST OHIO) and the Community Health Foundation (est. 1964), the first health-maintenance organization in the Middle West, nowKAISER PERMANENTE MEDICAL CARE PROGRAM. In addition, the Cleveland Health Education Museum (later the HEALTH MUSEUM), the first in the U.S., opened in 1940.
In the 1930s, innovators such as JOSEPH T. WEARN† at the WRU School of Medicine and Russell L. Haden at the Cleveland Clinic brought laboratory-oriented medical science to the forefront. Obstetricians from Cleveland hospitals, led by A. J. SKEEL† of SAINT LUKE’S MEDICAL CENTER, in 1932 formed the Cleveland Hospital Obstetric Society, which for 10 years collected data and analyzed the causes of maternal mortality, stimulating similar activity in other cities and influencing standards of the American College of Surgeons. Many cooperative medical events have occurred, such as the 1962 polio immunization campaign sponsored by the Cleveland Academy of Medicine and the Cuyahoga County Medical Foundation. On Sabin Oral Sundays, 2,400 physicians and other volunteers distributed sugar cubes containing polio vaccine and immunized more than 84% of the Cuyahoga County residents, the best record in the U.S. This success was facilitated by voluntary action, advertising, and public-relations expertise from the nonmedical community (seePHILANTHROPY). Earlier, in 1949, Cleveland radiologists had cooperated with the Academy of Medicine, the Antituberculosis Society, and the Greater Cleveland Hospital Assn. in a successful mass survey to detect tuberculosis among Greater Cleveland citizens.
One may finally ask, what are some of the unique contributions of Cleveland medicine? What, if any, major medical discoveries have been made? Medical “firsts” include Noah Worcester’s first American treatise on dermatology, A Synopsis of the Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment of the More Common and Important Diseases of the Skin (Philadelphia, 1845); Abraham Metz’s first textbook on ophthalmology, The Anatomy and Histology of the Human Eye(Philadelphia, 1869); and Samuel W. Kelley’s first book on pediatric surgery, The Surgical Diseases of Children: A Modern Treatise on Pediatric Surgery(New York, 1909). On 8 Feb. 1896, 3 months to the day after Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen in Germany announced the discovery of x-rays, DAYTON C. MILLER†, a professor at Cleveland’s Case School of Applied Science, made the first x-rays in the U.S. He lectured 2 months later to the CLEVELAND MEDICAL SOCIETY. There were outstanding teachers, such as William Thomas Corlett, appointed in 1901 as one of the few American physicians to test the new syphilis remedy, Salvarsan, at Lakeside Hospital, CARL J. WIGGERS† (called the father of hemodynamics in the U.S.), the first editor ofCirculation Research, and TORALD H. SOLLMANN†, who in 1901 published the leading American textbook on pharmacology, which has gone through at least 8 editions. Endemic goiter has disappeared because of the research between 1915-20 of DAVID MARINE† and CARL H. LENHART† that showed that it was caused by iodine deficiency in the diet.
Since 1940 Cleveland’s major medical contributions have been in cardiovascular diseases and their treatment: the studies of angina pectoris carried out by Harold Feil and Mortimer Siegel at MT. SINAI MEDICAL CENTER and their pioneering work in electrocardiography; the experiments of HARRY GOLDBLATT† in hypertension; and the development of open-heart surgery by CLAUDE S. BECK† (who also gave the first course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, later called CPR, 1950), and Jay Ankeney at Univ. Hospitals. In 1956 St. Vincent Charity Hospital opened the world’s first intensive-care unit devoted exclusively to heart surgery. Willem Kolff developed kidney dialysis techniques at the Cleveland Clinic, where he also started to develop the artificial heart, aided by research engineers at the NASA JOHN H. GLENN RESEARCH CENTER AT LEWIS FIELD. Cleveland Clinic became a “revascularization center” for coronary artery disease by means of bypass surgery, based on a technique developed by Ten Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the CWRU medical school, including Frederick C. Robbins, honored for his work with the polio virus. Other Cleveland contributions to medicine included pioneering work in gerontology, the activities of the CLEVELAND MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSN. (est. 1894), and the first and longest-running medical feature on a television news show, Dr. Theodore Castele’s segment of “Live on 5” (WEWS (Channel 5)), which began in 1975. In 1990 national attention focused on Univ. Hospitals researchers, headed by Dr. Roland W. Moskowitz, who traced osteoarthritis to a specific genetic defect; in 1993 Dr. Eric Topol concluded a 2-year study, the largest of its type, on the effects of the drug t-PA on heart attack patients. One can characterize medicine in Cleveland as equal and in many cases superior to that of other urban centers. In the 20th century, it has been especially distinguished by extensive institutional cooperation and outstanding private and community support.
Genevieve Miller
Case Western Reserve Univ. (emeritus)
Brown, Kent L., ed. Medicine in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County: 1810-1976 (1977).
Dittrick, Howard, comp. Pioneer Medicine in the Western Reserve (1932).
Waite, Frederick Clayton. Western Reserve University, Centennial History of the School of Medicine (1946).
Immigration and Migration in Cleveland from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Written by Dr. John J. Grabowski
IMMIGRATION AND MIGRATION. The growth of major industrial centers such as Cleveland was made possible in large part by the migration of peoples of a variety of origins to provide the labor or entrepreneurial skills demanded by the changing economy. The nature of this migration (that is, what groups arrived during particular time periods) was determined not only by the opportunities available in the city but also by national and international factors permitting, necessitating, or expediting the migration of various national groups. The nature of migration to Cleveland is like that of similar midwestern industrial centers, especially Chicago (although Chicago’s scale of immigration was much greater that Cleveland’s) and, to a degree, Detroit. Cleveland’s situation, however, was quite different from that of major ports such as New York, which gathered larger and more diverse populations.
During this area’s formative period, 1796-1830, the lack of large-scale economic opportunity provided little attraction for migration to the region. Those who did come were largely Americans of English or BRITISH IMMIGRATION ancestry who had previously resided in New England or New York, although some came directly from England or Scotland. A substantial Manx migration to the NEWBURGH area was unique in these early years. Toward the end of the period, some IRISH, utilized in part to construct the OHIO AND ERIE CANAL, and a few GERMANS, usually farmers with a previous American residence, came to the region. Following completion of the canal in 1832, and of a rail network in the 1850s, the area’s economic potential grew, particularly in mercantile endeavors, and it became more attractive to migrating groups. Most immigrants from 1830-70 came from the German states, Great Britain, and, particularly, Ireland, with the city attracting substantial representation from each of these groups. In doing so, it reflected national trends that saw the German and Irish populations of many major cities grow. It did, however, lag behind certain cities, such as Cincinnati, where earlier and more rapid economic development resulted in an earlier and more substantial growth of these ethnic groups.
The most substantial and diverse migration to Cleveland occurred from 1870-1914, the period of the “new immigration,” in which many Southern and Eastern Europeans came to the U.S. This large exodus was fostered by shortages of land in the home countries, more liberal emigration policies, increased military conscription, and, particularly for the Jews (see JEWS & JUDAISM), persecutions. Pogroms against Jews living in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire occasioned an emigration that vastly increased the Jewish settlements of cities such as Cleveland after the 1880s. The entire process was facilitated by the development of relatively cheap, regular ocean transport. As this coincided with the tremendous post-Civil War expansion of Cleveland’s industrial base, the city received large numbers of ITALIANS, Austro-Hungarians, and RUSSIANS. The influx was so great that by 1874, the city stationed members of the police force, designated as emigrant officers, at its various railroad stations to count and assist new arrivals in the city. However, while these groups represented a new source of population, immigration from the older sources, as detailed on the accompanying chart, continued unabated. Indeed, until 1893 more Germans arrived annually in Cleveland than did any other national group. By 1900 the city’s German population of 40,648 was larger than that of any other foreign-born community. Because Cleveland’s industries expanded at a slightly later date than those in Chicago or Detroit, it received its infusion of “new immigrants” somewhat later than those cities. For instance, the Polish communities in those two cities had already established basic institutions such as churches and benefit organizations in the 1870s, while Cleveland’s Polish community (see POLES) was still in a nascent state. While the city’s representation of immigrants from these new sources parallels that in other cities, several groups did come to Cleveland in extraordinarily large concentrations, most prominently the SLOVENES and SLOVAKS.
World War I effectively ended large-scale European immigration, as the conflict involved many potential immigrants and strangled the sea lanes. Restrictive legislation, such as the Literacy Act of 1917 and Natl. Origins Act of 1921 (formalized in 1924), prohibited large-scale immigration after the conflict and provided quotas that discriminated against Southern and Eastern Europeans. Given the chaos in Europe following the war, it is justifiable to assume that the “new immigration” would have continued unabated had not restrictions been put in place. Despite problems in Europe, and particularly persecution in the Nazi German state, relatively little migration to the U.S. and Cleveland took place from 1914-45. However, the city’s need for people continued during much of this time, particularly during the war and before the Depression. New sources of migrants met this need, the most prominent of which was the American South, where thousands of blacks (see AFRICAN AMERICANS) came north to work in wartime industries. Cleveland, which had a black presence from its earliest history, had a relatively small black population of approx. 10,000 immediately before the war. By 1920 the figure had grown to 34,451, and 20 years later stood at over 85,000. Other new sources of migrants opened during this period; it was, for instance, in the 1920s that Cleveland received its first cohesive group of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico. Although the Natl. Origins Act remained in effect after World War II, special acts permitting the immigration of displaced persons from Europe helped to partially replenish some of the older European immigrant populations of the city. Again, Cleveland was typical of other industrial cities in receiving large numbers of displaced persons during the late 1940s and early 1950s. However, its share was somewhat smaller than that received by Chicago, New York, and other large cities. During this period Cleveland’s UKRAINIANS population saw substantial growth, and following the 1956 revolution, the HUNGARIANS community was partially revitalized.
Of greater consequence from 1945-65 was the growth of non-European migrant groups who, like the Europeans, were attracted by the area’s still-growing postwar economy. In the immediate postwar period Cleveland’s Puerto Rican population began expanding. Initially brought to work in the steel mills of Lorain during the war, Puerto Ricans began moving eastward to Cleveland in the late 1940s and by the early 1960s formed a substantial community. Mexican immigration also continued; and following the Cuban revolution of 1959, the city received a substantial number of Cubans. Predominant in the period, however, was the continued movement of blacks into Cleveland. By 1960, the city’s black population was over 251,000. The postwar period also saw the large-scale migration of people from the depressed areas of Appalachia to the Cleveland area. Though many Appalachians had earlier migrated to Akron to work in the rubber industry, it was not until after the war that a further move north to Cleveland was made in any great number. The repeal of the Natl. Origins (Quota) Act in 1965 and its replacement with regulations restricting overall numbers of immigrants, but giving no preference to any country or countries, formed the basis of the most recent migration to Cleveland. During this period, the city’s economy began to falter; it was not, therefore, as attractive a destination as before, but it still managed to gather one of the most diverse, if not substantial, groups of immigrants in its history. In particular, the relaxation of restrictions on Asian immigration brought numbers of CHINESE, KOREANS, INDIANS (ASIAN), and Pakistanis to the city, many of them attracted initially by the area’s colleges, and later by the growth of its medical and research industries. War and economic decline in Southeast Asia, Central and South America, and the Middle East brought the city its first groups of VIETNAMESE., Guatemalans, and Palestinians during the 1970s and 1980s. Though not as large as previous immigrant or migrant groups, these newer communities represented a complete shift in the pattern of migration to Cleveland.
The pattern of broad-based immigration to Cleveland and Cuyahoga County continued into the 1990s. Although a number of new immigrants from the “Pacific Rim,” Mexico, and South America, continued to come to the area, their presence was not proportionately as large as it was in the southwest or on the East or West coasts. The census of 1990 (in which figures were based on a random sampling) showed over one-half of the foreign-born in the area to have European origins. Traditional older European groups, such as Poles and Italians, were still relatively large in the city. New groups, including immigrants from the former Soviet Union, buttressed these European figures. Much of the new European movement could be attributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union and economic problems in the states of the former Eastern Bloc as well as to ethnic unrest in eastern Europe. The first Bosnian refugees were arriving in Greater Cleveland by the early 1990s.
The changing international situation and economic position of Cleveland have shaped the nature of migration to the city in the past and will continue to do so as long as the area remains economically viable. It is important to note, however, that while the sources of migration have shifted innumerable times throughout the city’s history, few of these have ever totally ceased supplying people to the city. English immigration to the area, for instance, continues into the 1990s, as does the movement of native-born white Americans. Nor does the city permanently retain those people it attracts. While no major study of movement into and out of the city has been completed for Cleveland, it can be assumed that the city shares in the phenomenon of rapidly shifting population. Indeed, a limited study of the 25-block area around HIRAM HOUSE social settlement showed that during the early part of this century, over 90% of the residents in that area moved during a 10-year period. Cleveland, thus, is not an end point for movement but often a temporary haven in the pattern of national and international population movement.
John J. Grabowski
Western Reserve Historical Society
“A Quiet Crisis” Important 2001 Plain Dealer Series About Northeast Ohio
“The Quiet Crisis”. An important series of articles created in 2001 by the Plain Dealer
Most of the links below have been disabled. Some new versions are here
The link is here (disabled)
Some of the links from the articles below can be found here
Here are some of the article links:
» Roundtable: Regional cooperation key to survival
» Brent Larkin: Quiet Crisis not so quiet anymore
» Doug Clifton: Region’s needs won’t wait any longer
» Joe Frolik: Northeast Ohio must shape up to contend again
» Roundtable: Where are the new paths to prosperity?
Chattanooga vs. Cleveland: Comparing the comebacks
» Dick Feagler: Cleveland not hip? Perish the thought
» Letters: Hip city makeover would attract workers
» ‘Comeback City’ fights old-shoe image
» St. Louis learns, leapfrogs over Cleveland in efforts to market itself
» Mark S. Rosentraub: Make the city family-friendly
» Joe Frolick: Who’ll lead the region out of its crisis?
» Edmund Adams: Don’t let DeRolph derail the future
» Brent Larkin: Ohio and this region need Taft to find his nerve
Letters: It’s time to get growing again – but not only in Cleveland
» Brent Larkin: Airport deal in peril
» Cleveland economy growing, but barely
An untapped industry could give Cleveland the vibrancy it needs
» Panel discussion: Getting down to the arts business
» Panel discussion: The fine art of taxing to support culture
» Panel discussion: Bridging arts and enterprise
» Joe Frolik: The arts & the future
An untapped industry could give Cleveland the vibrancy it needs
» Panel discussion: Getting down to the arts business
» Panel discussion: The fine art of taxing to support culture
» Panel discussion: Bridging arts and enterprise
» Joe Frolik: The arts & the future
Joe Frolik: Crossing the town-gown gap | Building ties | Building trust
» Greater Cleveland’s cloudy future
» Joe Frolik: Making business feel at home
» Editorial: Light ahead?
» Joe Frolik: A role model for homesteaders
» Joe Frolik: A leap of faith
Panel discussions:
» Editorial: A helpful push
» Donald T. Iannone: Regional cooperation isn’t enough
» Brent Larkin: The port in a storm
» Policies that cross city boundaries can spur economy
» Richard Shatten: The picture of a losing region
» Joe Frolik: Turn an asset – diversity – into an economic catalyst
» Editorial: The chronic crisis
» Northeast Ohio drives toward uncertain future
Dave Lazor: Nurture upstarts
» Joe Frolik: NE Ohio appeals to entrepreneurs, but can do more
» Reversing the Quiet Crisis with a business buzz
Joe Frolik: The high-tech route to City Hall
Biosciences: The next big thing or one of many
» Biotech incubator sets high standards
» Panel discussion: Commercial research inspires the classroom
» Panel discussion: Getting ideas out of the ivory tower
» Joe Frolik: Research links science with economic impact
» Panel discussion: A key strategy: Go for the research stars
» Universities need to court top-tier researchers
Panel discussion: Failure is easy to spot
» Panel discussion: Public vs. private
» Panel discussion: Like a corporation, only better
» Richard J. Scaldini: A legion of liberal arts grads
» Brent Larkin: Unappreciated, a native son packs his bags
» Brent Larkin: Losing by degrees
» Penny-wise Ohio is not playing to win
» Short-changing Ohio’s future
» Ohio’s economy is losing by degrees
» Joe Frolik: Higher education’s slippage throws Ohio into a vicious cycle
John D. Rockefeller Documentary History Channel
A brief overview of the life of John D. Rockefeller
The link is here
Brand Whitlock from Wikipedia
Primary and Secondary Education by Scott Stephens
Scott Stephens has been an award-winning journalist for 30 years. He is currently a senior writer with Catalyst-Ohio, a quarterly, nonprofit news magazine that documents, analyzes and supports school-improvement efforts in Ohio’s urban school districts, with special emphasis on Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus. Previously, he worked at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer for 18 years, the last 15 covering education. He has written extensively about issues such as testing, charter schools, school vouchers, desegregation and school funding.
Before coming to Cleveland, Stephens worked for newspapers in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio, and served as a stringer for United Press International in Mexico City, D.F. To many Clevelanders, he was best known as The Plain Dealer’s beer critic, establishing the paper’s first beer column. Stephens was also a long-time leader and activist in The Newspaper Guild-CWA, and served for six years as regional vice president on the board of North America’s largest media workers union.
Healthcare as an Economic Opportunity by Chris Seper
Chris Seper is the president and a co-founder of MedCity News. While serving as The Plain Dealer’s awarding-winning technology reporter, he became the first member of the staff to blog. Later he became the paper’s first online medical editor, responsible for creating destination sections for consumer health and health-care business and advising the paper’s online editor on topics including social media. Chris’ byline has appeared in The Plain Dealer and Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor while working as a journalist in Cambodia.
He holds a master’s degree in political science and a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science from Eastern Illinois University.