CIVIC GROWTH - 375 a few, was speedily followed by others, and a residence on Euclid Street, with a front yard of from two to five acres, soon became one of the prominent objects of a Clevelander's ambition." One of the tragedies of progress is the obliteration of that beautiful ridge, the destruction of its noble and spacious homes and their replacement by business institutions. CHAPTER V1 BANKS Banks.—The Directory of 1837 showed two banks in the city, the Commercial Bank of Lake Erie, with a capital stock of $500,000, and the Bank of Cleveland, with $300,000. The former weathered the panic. The years immediately following were not favorable for the banking business. The first growth of financial institutions came in the prosperous '40s and early '50s. The year 1845, which saw the beginning of so many important movements and institutions, including a new and more adequate state banking law, seems to have been especially auspicious for finance. In that year was incorporated the City Bank of Cleveland, which had originated in the Fireman's Insurance Company, with Reuben Sheldon president and T. C. Severance cashier. When its charter expired twenty years later, it was reorganized as the National City Bank of Cleveland. At the same time appeared the Merchants Branch Bank of the State of Ohio, with P. M. Weddell president and Prentis Dow cashier, becoming the Merchants' National Bank in 1865. Also the Commercial Branch of the State Bank of Ohio, whose first president was William A. Otis, the pioneer iron manufacturer, and whose cashier was T. P. Handy. This institution at the close of the war became the Commercial National Bank. The Bank of Commerce likewise obtained a charter, but delayed opening until 1853. It changed to the Second National Bank ten years later. There was the Canal Bank, too, organized in 1845, coming to a spectacular end nine years later. The most famous bank of the period is the Cleveland Society for Savings, which obtained its charter in 1849 and immediately began its long and honorable career under John W. Allen, president, S. H. Mather, secretary, and J. F. Tain- - 376 - CIVIC GROWTH - 377 tor, treasurer. Upon Mr. Taintor's withdrawal shortly afterward, Mr. Mather assumed the duties of both secretary and treasurer. He continued in the active service of the bank as long as he lived and was president at the time of his death. The characteristic policy of this bank was that it aimed to serve the poor rather than the rich. Such a policy, already proved practical in the East, was novel and doubtfully regarded in this part of the country. The bank started modestly in part of one room, twenty feet square. Its growth was slow but steady and solid. By 1857 it had outgrown its quarters and moved into a building at the corner of Bank and Frankfort streets. Ten years later it moved again into a block of its own on the Public Square. In another twenty years it settled down in permanent quarters in the brown stone structure on the Square which has been a landmark ever since, and which when it was built was a veritable skyscraper. The private banking house of Wick, Otis and Brownell opened in 1851, becoming a few years later Henry Wick and Company. Several other private banks were started in the '50s. The enactment of a Federal bank law in 1863 resulted immediately in the establishment of half a dozen national banks, foremost among them the First National, which immediately absorbed the private banking house of S. W. Chittenden and Company. Its first president was George Worthington and its first cashier S. W. Chittenden. In the late '60s came the Citizens' Savings and Loan Association with J. H. Wade president, and the People's Savings and Loan Association, a West Side institution. Thence banks continued to multiply until the great era of consolidations which came in the twentieth century. Panic Again.—In the great financial panic of 1837, half the banks in Cleveland, which is to say one out of two, went under. Again in 1857 one local bank failed, but it was only one out of nearly a dozen, showing exceptional soundness of the local banking structure as a whole. In the rest of the state there, were 64 failures. 378 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS The Canal Bank had expired before the trough of this new business depression was reached. Its death in 1854 was marked by a picturesque incident. Dr. H. C. Ackley, a trustee of the State Asylum for the Insane at Newburgh, had deposited in the bank $9,000 belonging to that institution. When it closed, he demanded the money, declaring that without it the asylum could not be opened for more than a year, and during that time there would be 100 patients deprived of care. When he failed to get the funds, he swore out a writ of attachment and got Sheriff M. M. Spangler to take possession of the bank. The sheriff demanded the keys to the vault. When they were refused, he summoned several deputies with sledge-hammers and crow-bars and proceeded to break through the brick walls. Bank officials looked on helplessly. A great crowd gathered. Efforts were made to enjoin the sheriff, but he ignored them. Finally, to prevent more destruction, the assignees surrendered the keys and the sheriff seized and turned over to Dr. Ackley, for his wards, the total contents, amounting to $1,860. Insurance.—The insurance business developed along with banking. The pioneer Cleveland Insurance Company was chartered, in 1830, for both purposes, though restricting itself to banking for many years. It was reorganized as an exclusive insurance company in 1861. There were many adventures in this field, which proved to be more precarious than banking. The Cleveland Mutual Fire Insurance Company, incorporated in 1849, died a lingering death. The Commercial Mutual Insurance Company started two years later and operated successfully until the great Chicago fire in 1870. The Washington Insurance Company, the City Insurance Company of Cleveland, the German Fire Insurance Company, the Buckeye Insurance Company, the State Fire and Marine Insurance Company, the Sun Fire Insurance Company and others all suffered the same mortality ; those that survived until the big fire were wiped out by the losses it caused them. The only insurance institution surviving this period was CIVIC GROWTH - 379 the important Board of Fire Underwriters of Cleveland, organized in 1846 with J. L. Weatherly president, C. C. Carlton, vice president, H. F. Brayton, treasurer, and George May, secretary. Except for an interim from 1864 to 1866, at which latter date it was reorganized, it has continued in operation until the present day. Life insurance was a later development. CHAPTER VII POPULATION Population.—All these various lines of growth take on new significance when viewed against the background of population. In 1800 Cleveland had seven people; in 1810, 57; in 1820, 150; in 1830, 1,075; in 1840, 6,071; in 1850, 17,034; in 1860, 43,838, and at the close of the war, according to the local census of 1866, it had grown to 67,500 and was a big city. Much of this numerical gain resulted from the absorption of its twin-town, Ohio City. The '40s were, as Kennedy observes, a period of prosperity and promise. "The lake fleet was at its summit of popularity, and of service as a means of passage, as the railroads had not yet begun to make the destructive inroads of a later day. The stage coaches were kept busy carrying travelers to and from Cleveland, manufacturers reaching out and extending, the municipality was in a progressive mood, and Cleveland had earned the right to be called a city in fact, as in name." Union.—A new state constitution was adopted at the turn of the half century. Immediately the General Assembly repealed all the municipal charters and enacted a new law for the government of cities. The last mayor elected under the old charter was Abner C. Brownell in 1852. He also has the distinction of being the first mayor under the new charter. A police court, separate from the mayor's office was established. Administrative functions were further differentiated, as befitted so thriving a city, and there was a considerable gain in the number of elective officials, with attendant increase of interest in public affairs. The first important fruit of this interest was a revival of the long-pending project of combining the two towns on the Cuyahoga. - 380 - CIVIC GROWTH - 383 It seems to be a principle of geography and economics that a river unites, rather than separates, the people on opposite sides. Thus political separation is unnatural. Cleveland City and Ohio City were one community. All that remained was to make them a complete organic whole by political consolidation. The first official action on the matter was obstructive. In 1850 a resolution offered in the Cleveland City Council took notice of "an effort being made by several individuals to obtain from the legislature a law annexing Ohio City to the City of Cleveland," and by a majority of five to three, declared that it was "at this time not desirable, and not believed to meet the views of our citizens, at so short notice." So great a matter must be handled with due deliberation. But there was not much real rivalry between the two towns, and no insuperable prejudice. Population then, as now, was greatly to be desired. Ohio City's more than 4,000 people looked increasingly good to Clevelanders, and Cleveland's prestige looked increasingly good to Ohio City dwellers. So it came about that the very next year the question of annexation was submitted to voters east of the river. It lost by 1,098 to 850. But annexation sentiment was obviously gaining fast. A year later a councilmanic committee was appointed to confer with the West Side council. Negotiations were lengthy. The conclusion was for both towns to take a vote at the same time. This was done in the regular city elections of 1854, and both sides of the river voted for union, Cleveland 1,892 to 400, and Ohio City 618 to 258. This was probably the most important decision made since Moses Cleaveland had decided to locate his capital city of the Western Reserve at the mouth of the Cuyahoga rather than at Conneaut or Fairport. The practical details of the merger were arranged with less difficulty than might have been expected. The commissioners for Cleveland were W. A. Otis, H. V. Wilson and Franklin T. Backus; those for Ohio City, W. B. Castle, N. M. Standart and C. S. Rhodes. They tactfully avoided possible causes of friction. Territorial and political difficulties were 384 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS simplified by adding the four wards of Ohio City, as they stood, to the seven Cleveland wards, and allowing the officers of the annexed wards to serve out their terms. The property of each city became the property of the joint corporation, which assumed the debts of both. Ohio City, however, was left with separate liability for the bonds it had issued to pay for a certain railroad stock, and it was provided that whatever funds Cleveland realized from stock subscriptions to several railroads should be spent for parks or other public purposes. This detail is a curious bit of history, in the light of the modern attitude toward such ventures. It was a common thing in the pioneer days of railroads for cities to take "fliers" in their stock. Cleveland, always eager to improve transportation facilities, had gone further than most of her sister-cities. Many lost money from such participation, just as they had from gambling in canals. What happened in the present case is almost incredible. Not only was Ohio City able to pay its liability for railroad bonds by subsequent sale of its Junction Railroad Company stock, but Cleveland made good on a far greater speculation. The story is told by S. 0. Griswold in the "Annals of the Early Settlers' Association": "It is well know that the city realized a large surplus from its stocks, after the payment of its obligation given therefor, perhaps the only case of its kind in the entire country. In addition to this fund, the city also realized a considerable amount of stock from the sale of its lands north of Bath Street, on the lake shore, to these several roads, to which it had given its credit. March 28, 1862, an act was passed by the legislature creating a board of fund commissioners to take charge of this fund. Nothing more need be said of the management thereof than that from this fund over $1,700,000 has been paid to discharge the debt of the city, and over $1,000,000 still remains (1884) in the hands of the commissioners." It was essential for the destiny of Greater Cleveland that the community should develop as a unit. Something of this sense of manifest destiny must have animated the voters, CIVIC GROWTH - 385 particularly those of the smaller city which surrendered its historic identity for the benefits of the whole. Again and again, in succeeding decades, have other governmental units on the periphery of Cleveland likewise merged themselves in the greater city, though in no other case has such a sacrificial contribution been made as that of Ohio City. In the last quarter-century has come a change of attitude among suburban municipalities which threatens the future of the entire organism. The mother-city is constricted by a hardening circle of haughty suburbs until growth in area and population has become almost impossible. Expansion is hampered, except on the outer suburban edges. Natural functioning of the metropolitan organism as a whole grows more and more difficult. Industry and trade are restricted, problems of transportation and public utilities are complicated, public enmities arise, public offices are needlessly duplicated, public services are confused, logical and intelligent city-planning becomes impractical. This situation cannot long continue. It is unthinkable that city and suburbs should destroy each other. Either direct annexation or compromise through some form of borough government, with suburban autonomy in local matters and unity in matters of metropolitan concern, is inevitable if Greater Cleveland is to be greater still. The joint city council, meeting in June, 1854, after clearing up a mass of detail connected with the merger, proceeded immediately with enterprises of vital moment to the community. Some of these were made simpler by the elimination of double jurisdiction, particularly river and harbor affairs. The old river bed was improved and the ship channel deepened. The next thing was the provision of an ample supply of pure water. This deserves more than passing notice. - CHAPTER VIII WATER Water.—Water is usually a simple matter for primitive man and pioneer communities. As people multiply and cities grow, it becomes a very serious matter, even with such a plentiful supply in sight as nature had provided for Cleveland. Our first settlers dipped water from the river and lake and found springs along the banks of the river and its tributary creeks. There was a famous old spring beside Lorenzo Carter's cabin, near the eastern abutment of the Detroit-Superior High Level Bridge, where many neighbors came for water. There was another at the foot of Maiden Lane, supplying Bryant's distillery. It was easy to obtain good wells by digging through the sandy loam into the gravel bed beneath. No rock drilling was required. Cisterns, catching roof water, were in common use, especially for a supply against fire. One well often supplied several families. Town pumps were common. There was for many years one on the Public Square and another at the corner of Superior and Water streets. There was a popular spring at the northwest corner of the Square, and a pump and watering trough for horses at the corner of Ontario and Prospect. Mrs. George B. Merwin tells of a spring of soft water on the south side of Superior Street, opposite the old City Hall, where the women used to gather to do their washing, hanging their clothes on the bushes to dry. The water supply was a friendly, neighborly thing. There were water carriers, too, famous among them the little man with a wooden leg, an old white horse and a little wagon, who peddled river water around town in barrels. He was the first waterworks. A legislative charter was granted in 1833 to the "Cleve- - 386 - CIVIC GROWTH - 387 land Water Company," represented by Philo Scoville and others, to provide the village with "good and wholesome water." It was capitalized at $25,000. This project hung fire until 1850, when the company's rights were extended and some stock was sold, but that was as far as it got. The second attempt may have been inspired by an offer made in 1849 by M. H. Fox and Brothers to bring water from a spring near the foot of Huron Street to the Public Square in a half-inch pipe. There was to be a fountain with three small, ornamental jets, throwing a stream 12 to 15 feet, "diffusing a cooling spray and filling a big tub with water, for the consolation of thirsty horses." Water was wanted by that time for the consolation of thirsty people, and in larger quantities. Springs and wells were inadequate, and the quality of the supply was deteriorating. There were public meetings about it. And there was much debate as to whether the water should be obtained by private or public enterprise. A majority finally came around to the rather novel view that water supply was a public func- tion. In the same year that saw the futile revival of the "Cleveland Water Company," a petition was presented to the city council asking for the appointment of a competent hydraulic engineer to study the available sources and the cost of the necessary waterworks. Council took such action in January, 1851, at the instance of William Bingham. Mayor William Case, son of Leonard Case, Sr., was named head of this committee, and he picked as associates William J. Warner, Dr. J. P. Kirtland and Col. Charles Whittlesey. From such a body results could be expected. They carefully surveyed Mill Creek, Shaker Run, Tinker's Creek and Chagrin River as possible sources, and concluded that any of these streams might be adequate, but that "Lake Erie is the only source to which we can resort for an unfailing supply of pure, soft water." The wisdom of this verdict has become more evident with every added year. They had no illusions about the relative merits of private and public enterprise. They observed that "all experience shows such undertakings can be carried on more economically 388 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS by individuals or companies than by municipal corporations, and also better managed after construction," and recommended public ownership and operation only because it would be impractical to obtain enough private capital for so big an undertaking. Their plan was to pump water from the lake with "Cornish engines," providing "a supply of 3,000,000 gallons by daylight," sufficing for 75,000 people—about four times the existing population. This water was to be stored in a reservoir 150 feet or more above the lake and thence distributed through the city by gravity. They proposed to extend the intake pipe 1,500 feet into the lake, "to avoid the impurities of the shore." The cost was estimated at about $253,000. They recommended a Cincinnati engineer named Theodore R. Scowden to design and construct the works. Among the samples of water reported from the numerous tests was one from the Cuyahoga River "taken at a time of low water, in August, at a depth of 10 feet, so as to avoid the impurities of the surface and the slime of the bottom," and found to be "clear and soft and almost limpid with a scarcely perceptible, light flocculent sediment." More tempting was one from the lake, half a mile from shore and one mile east of the lighthouse, taken "in a calm, sultry evening in August," and yet found "limpid, cool and pleasant to the taste." The engineer was appointed, the estimate was raised a little, and in 1854 a board of waterworks trustees, elected by the people, consisting of H. B. Payne, B. L. Spangler and Richard Hilliard, proceeded with the task. The waterworks were placed entirely on the west side of the river, for convenience and economy, with an engine house at the foot of Kentucky Street and a 5,000,000-gallon reservoir on Kentucky and Prospect streets. The work required a little more than two years, being completed and ready for operation in September, 1856, at a cost of $526,000. The water was taken from the lake "three hundred feet west from the old river bed, by laying an inlet pipe made of boiler plate three-eighths of an inch thick, 50 inches in diameter and 300 feet long, CIVIC GROWTH - 389 extending from the shore to the source of supply, at 12 feet depth of water." The inlet was protected by a circular tower of piling and broken stones. On shore the iron pipe connected with the pump well by means of a brick aqueduct. The water was forced up an iron stand-pipe, encased by a brick tower, 148 feet high, with spiral stairs rising to a "lookout" from which visitors could see all over the city. The reservoir on Kentucky Street stood on a natural ridge 30 feet high. Its sloping outer surface was grassed over and there was a walk around the top. It was a pretty and popular spot. Visitors could see "a fine panoramic view of the city and the village of Newburgh six miles away." The steam pumping engines were the first of their kind "west of the mountains," and a never-ending source of interest. It must be added regretfully that in ten years these magnificent works were obsolete. The volume of water might have been adequate for some years more, but its quality was hopelessly bad. Sewage and river filth were destroying the purity of the lake. The intake had to be run out a great deal farther. In 1874 a shaft and five-foot tunnel were completed under the lake floor reaching to an intake crib 6,600 feet from shore, where the water was 40 feet deep and free from the dirty shore current. An interesting detail of the tunneling was that "the workers twice crossed the old pre-glacial river channel, filled to a depth of 60 to 80 feet with soft clay." Twice since that, new tunnels have had to be built. CHAPTER IX CEMETERIES Cleveland, even in its early village days, never had a "country churchyard." For more than a quarter of a century there was not even a municipal burying ground. Such was the easy-going, neighborly spirit of the community that all interments were made in private property, with the consent of the owners. The first burial, that of David Eldridge of the surveying party of the Connecticut Land Company, drowned in the Grand River in 1797, was brought to Cleveland and laid to rest in the forest at a spot known to future generations as the east side of Ontario Street, at the corner of Prospect Avenue. Alonzo Carter, telling of that first funeral, says : "We got some boards and made a strong box for a coffin. We put him in and strung it on a pole with cords to carry him up to the burying ground. Built a fence around the grave." There was doubtless reason for that fence. Other burials followed. Finally in 1825, with the canal boom starting and population creeping eastward from the river, Hiram Hunt, owner of the property, served notice that he intended to build there, and forbade further interments. It was necessary then for the village to provide a public cemetery. A ten-acre tract was obtained on Erie (East Ninth) Street, against strong objections on the part of citizens who disapproved of a burial place so far from town. Little by little the public became reconciled to it. The area was divided eventually into about 3,000 lots, nearly all of which were sold, and most of them occupied, by 1860. It is here that such modern Clevelanders as are moved by reverence for the past look for the graves of their pioneers. Remains of the earliest settlers were exhumed from the Ontario Street lot and buried - 390 - CIVIC GROWTH - 391 in two long lines, running east and west, just inside the entrance of the new cemetery. There are memorable names among them. Here remain the human roots of Cleveland's oldest families. Here in spite of neglect—or possibly because of it, because the neglect emphasizes the age of the place—is atmosphere of the older and simpler time such as can be found nowhere else in Cuyahoga County and in few places west of the Alleghanies. There was a time when the city took proud and scrupulous care of the place. In 1870 it built a fine iron fence around God's ten acres, with a dignified Gothic gateway, at a cost great for that time. Latterly interest, public and private, has lapsed. A sort of unconscious vandalism has permitted the descendants of many of the pioneers to remove their bodies to other cemeteries, as if a family tombstone there were not a badge of nobility. The city itself has been buying the vacated lots with a view to ultimate abolishment of the cemetery and diversion of it to other use. The once beautiful spot is now ugly and dirty, its grass and trees are blighted with noxious smoke. It is an eyesore to modern progress. Yet there are those who appreciate it and make pilgrimages there, and in so doing come to understand their city better and gain a new hold on old virtues and values. Cleveland will miss it when it is gone. Monroe Cemetery was provided for the West Side in 1841. Twelve acres were obtained on Monroe Avenue at Mill Street (West Thirtieth) , and in 1874 it was improved somewhat like Erie Street Cemetery, with a stone gateway and an office and waiting room. Like its prototype it has long passed from active use. The North Brooklyn Cemetery on Scranton Avenue was opened in 1849. Woodland Cemetery, so named from the fine grove of trees that formerly stood on its site, has some distinctions in addition to its natural beauty. With its 60 acres on Woodland Avenue, just beyond East Fifty-fifth Street, it is the largest of our municipal cemeteries. It is also closest to the heart of the city of all the large burial grounds, though it was 392 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS far out in the country when opened in 1852. Its purchase seems to have been inspired, naturally enough, by the cholera epidemic of 1849 which laid so heavy a toll on the population. The New York landscape artist who laid it out wisely preserved the old Indian mound in the middle, 60 feet in diameter, and built a walk around it. The cemetery has given its name to the thoroughfare, formerly known as Edwards Road and Kinsman Street. Newburgh, originally a separate village, had an official cemetery before Cleveland did. Its exact date is uncertain, but its beginning cannot have been long after 1800. It was eight acres in extent, situated on Axtell Street (East Seventy-eighth) a little north of Broadway. It has been vandalized by progress more than any of the others. When it was sold in 1880 to make way for a railroad, the more than 3,000 bodies resting there were removed to Harvard Grove Cemetery, furnished by the railroad for the purpose. There rest the oldest Newburgh families. Lake View, most noted of the modern burial grounds, with the finest natural location, was established in 1869 by a private association consisting of some of the foremost citizens of the community. They acquired 200 acres of sloping hillside and forest on Euclid Ridge, with a beautiful little stream flowing through it, and had it laid out by a good landscape engineer. It contains, among many well known monuments, the Garfield mausoleum and the Wade, Hanna,' Hay and Burke memorials. Riverside Cemetery was created in 1876 by a similar association, from a hundred-acre farm at Scranton Avenue and Columbus Street, and has become one of Cleveland's pleasantest cities of the dead. St. Joseph's, the first Catholic Cemetery, on Woodland Avenue east of Wilson, was consecrated by Bishop Rappe in 1849. Its 15 acres, now thickly populated, retain much of the beauty given them by Bishop Gilmour and Rev. Chancellor George F. Houck. St. John's, likewise on Woodland, the street of cemeteries, was added in 1855, comprising a plot of 13 acres. It was CIVIC GROWTH - 393 not parked, but laid out in the antique manner, and has been used primarily for the burial of priests. The smallest of the Catholic cemeteries, St. Mary's, on Burton Street and Clark Avenue, was opened in 1861. Calvary, most modern and of most present importance among Catholic cemeteries, dates from 1893. It covers a tract of a little more than 100 acres on Leland Avenue, several miles south of the Public Square, and is one of the beauty spots of Greater Cleveland. The Hebrew cemeteries are numerous and comparatively small units scattered about the city and suburbs. There are also various small Protestant and Catholic cemeteries not mentioned above. Public Squares and Circles.—Cleveland's first park was the public Square, laid out by the founder of the city as a part of its basic plan. This act of wisdom was little appreciated for half a century, because during much of that period Cleveland was nearly all park. The ten acres destined to become the focal center of the city's life, a central breathing spot, a meeting place of traffic streams, a key to the street system and the hub of the metropolis, were long a neglected bit of woodland, then a clearing full of stumps, where cows grazed and hogs rooted. The area served as a site for the first log courthouse, later replaced by a more dignified, two-story temple of the law. It was adorned for many years with a town pump, and later, when the city rose to the modernity of a piped water supply from the lake, the pump was superseded by what the constructing engineer described as "a capacious fountain of chaste and beautiful design, from which was thrown a jet of pure crystal water, high in the air." There was indeed evidence before this of park-mindedness. Public gatherings were held in the Square with growing frequency, as the stumps were cleared away. In 1840 fences were first built around four sections and the southern part was smoothed over and sown with grass. After several years of effort, and the appointment of a committee to determine the legality of the act, in 1857 the entire Square was 394 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS enclosed and the courthouse was removed. Ten years later, when direct transportation had come to be important, it required a lawsuit to remove enough of the fence to open up Superior and Ontario streets for through traffic. A more complete account of this great civic center will be given in another part of the history. During this mid-century period the city council turned down an offer of Nathan Perry to sell it seven acres on Euclid Avenue near Perry Street for a park, at $2,000 an acre. The price was exorbitant, and besides, the city had a park. A futile effort was made in 1856 to obtain a park in the east end, between Case and Willson avenues (East Fortieth and East Fifty-fifth). Other efforts of the kind were ignored by the stand-pat council, despite growing insistence. It was not until the end of the [Civil] war that a council committee reported favorably on a constructive park policy, and prepared the way for the acquisition of a park on the lake front. Outlying parts of the city to the west and south had done something along this line in a small way. Thus the tiny but famous Franklin Circle was laid out in 1836 by the original owners of Brooklyn Township "for public grounds." It was a genuine circle with a radius of 140 feet, used by farmers as a market place until 1857. At that time the city council fenced in the central part of it, leaving a thirty-foot street around the rim, and adorning the diminished circle with a painted fountain and wooden pavilion. Later Franklin Street itself was run straight through the little circle, as Superior and Ontario had been run through the Public Square east of the river. What was left of the parked space gained, along with a stone pavilion and flagstone walks, a choice structure of "rock work." That was the form taken by the original "rock garden" vogue in Cleveland, later exemplified in the southwest corner of the Public Square. There was also a speaker's stand crowded into the butchered Circle. And they called the perfected outfit "Modoc Park." Clinton Park, on the water front at East Eighteenth Street, was laid out by an enterprising group of subdividers at the height of the real estate boom in 1835. There was a CIVIC GROWTH - 397 mineral spring there, with good air and a fine view of the lake. This little park, less than two acres in extent, dedicated to the public, was to be the center of a fashionable residence section. Several attractive homes were built there. For a while "Spring Cottage," with hot and cold shower baths, was a popular watering place, "three-fourths of a mile from the courthouse," with a coach running every half-hour from down town. Hard times killed the project. The park remained, becoming in time a recognized part of the general park system, and used for a children's playground. Miles Park corresponded in purpose to Franklin Circle. When Ahaz Merchant, county surveyor, platted Newburgh village in 1850, he designated a lot about the same size as Clinton Park as "given for a public square, as commons, to be used and improved as such, in setting out shade trees and beautifying it with walks." The donor was Theodore Miles, a Newburgh pioneer. In 1860 it was used as a site for a town hall, and when Newburgh was annexed to Cleveland in 1873 the hall became a public library. All the other parks in Cleveland—the real parks, as they would be called now—came after the war. Hospitals and Asylums.—Philanthropy, of the kind which cares for the sick and afflicted, and for which Cleveland is noted, had its beginning in this same fruitful period. The first hospital in the city was a temporary military hospital built in 1813. The story is worth preserving because of its pioneer flavor and the slightness of local military history. When a company of regular troops arrived here in May of that year, under command of Capt. Stanton Sholes, with instructions to make Cleveland their headquarters, it was necessary for them to build a fort. But finding a number of sick and wounded soldiers who had been sent here from Detroit after Hull's surrender, and more on the way, the captain proceeded to build a hospital first. For material he used the chestnut trees on the lake front, probably in the vicinity of the present city hall. "They were crowded into a log cabin," he says, "and no 398 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS one to care for them. I sent one or two of my soldiers to take care of them, as they had no friends, and soon set to work to build them a hospital. I very soon got up a good one, thirty by twenty feet, smoothly and tightly covered, and floored with chestnut bark, with two tiers of bunks around the walls, with doors and windows, and not a nail or screw or iron latch or hinge about the building. Its cost to the government was a few extra rations. In a short time I had all the bunks well strawed, and the sick and wounded good and clean, to their great joy and comfort, but some had fallen asleep." One would like to know something of the nursing they received, of their food and medicine, of such rude antisepsis and hygiene as were possible. In 1837 was built a "city hospital," which seems to have been little more than a shack, on Clinton Street. Its life was short and uncertain. It is said to have been transformed into an institution for the infirm poor and the insane, merging finally with the city infirmary completed in 1855 on Scranton Avenue. About this time the United States government bought nine acres on the waterfront at Lake Avenue (now Lakeside) and East Ninth Street for a marine hospital. Construction began in 1847 and the hospital was opened in 1852. Simultaneously with its opening, a state asylum for the insane was authorized by the legislature, and the building at Newburgh was finished in 1855. The present structure replaced the original when it burned down in 1872, and has been greatly enlarged and improved. The first adequate hospital for general service in Cleveland was St. Vincent's or "Charity," as it is popularly known, representing the great out-pouring of Catholic energy in this era. It was the creation of Bishop Amadeus Rappe, built with funds contributed by citizens of all creeds and classes. With the need resulting from the Civil war as a final incentive, it was started in 1863 and ready for service at the war's close. The other hospitals with which Cleveland is now so generously equipped belong to a later period. CHAPTER X HOTELS, THEATERS, ETC. Hotels.—If hotels did not play so great a part in the early lice of the city, they played a more human part than they can ever play again. Hotel-keeping was less a highly organized business than a direct human service. In the era of :inns" and "taverns" it was personal and intimate. The landlord and his family lived in the hotel, knew their guests, ate with them and fraternized with them. A "table d'hote" meal was what it purported to be, with the host at the head of the table, fulfilling his traditional function. It was such hotels as Cleveland possessed in its early decades that might justify the words of the poet who found "his warmest welcome in an inn." Hostelries were small until near the middle of the century. The guests themselves could know each other and live a sort of communal life. The difficulties of travel and the distance between towns made all the more attractive the hospitality and good cheer that came at the journey's end. The hotels did far more than minister to travelers. They served as centers for the social life of the community. They were semi-public clubs. In their lobbies and tap-rooms the men-about-town would gather for an evening's gossip. Affairs of state were settled around the big stove on many a winter's evening. The dining rooms and ball rooms—often the same—held many a political conference or celebration, many a dance or lecture or concert. They served likewise as theaters for touring troupes or local talent. Mention has been made of Cleveland's first public house, which it seems strange to dignify by such a title. It was the log cabin built near the river bank at the foot of St. Clair Street by Lorenzo Carter when the town was one year old. - 399 -