400 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS It had one big room, which held Carter's own family. A guest or two could be stowed in the loft. If the food and lodging were rude, they were the best within a day's journey. Carter had a complete monopoly of the hotel business. In 1801 his place attained the dignity of a regular tavern license, issued at the courthouse in Warren, then the county seat. A year later he built a combination home and hotel of hewn logs, elegantly boarded over outside, with two rooms and a spacious attic, near the top of the hill on Superior Street. His son Alonzo opened a tavern on the west side of the river. Amos Spafford had a little tavern near by in the same period. George Wallace built one farther east on Superior, near Seneca Street (West Third Street) . David and Noble Merwin in the early '20s built a grand edifice of two stories, a frame building called the "Mansion House," with ceiling so high that a tall guest could stand upright without touching the ceiling. That was Cleveland's favorite hotel for many years. Phinney Mowrey has the distinction of picking out the most famous hotel site in Cleveland, on the southwest side of the Public Square, and opening an inn called "Mowrey's Tavern" in 1815. David McIntosh bought it a few years later and named it the "Cleveland Hotel." It had many owners, was later called the City Hotel, and burned down in 1845. It was replaced three years later with a brick building erected by David B. Dunham and named the Dunham House. In 1852 it was bought by William A. Smith, former manager of the Franklin House, and renamed the Forest City House, continuing under that title well into the twentieth century. The present Hotel Cleveland took its place. Thus on that site there have stood a succession of hotels almost continuously for 117 years. The Franklin House, on Superior Street east of Water (West Ninth), built by Philo Scoville (later Scovill) in 1826, was a lofty structure of three stories, elegantly furnished and equipped and headquarters for the stage coach lines of that period. How well Cleveland was supplied with public houses may be seen from the list of "Principal Hotels and Coffee Houses" CIVIC GROWTH - 403 given in the city directory of 1837. There were the American House, Cleveland House, Cleveland Center House, City Hotel, Clinton House, Eagle Tavern, Franklin House, Farmers and Mechanics Hotel, Globe Tavern, Washington House, City Coffee House, Cleveland Recess and Shakespeare Saloon. Even the Franklin House, apparently, was not good enough for this period. The Herald was complaining in 1836: "We would respectfully inquire of our capitalists and owners of real estate how much longer the traveling public are to suffer for want of the necessary accommodations for their comfort while sojourning with us. The city is really acquiring a notoriety in this respect by no means enviable." Steps were taken immediately to remedy the situation. The American House, one of the most famous of Cleveland hostelries, was opened in the autumn of 1837, and is still remembered, perhaps, by a majority of living Clevelanders. The spot itself was historic. It stood on the site of the log cabin built and occupied by the second surveying party of 1797. Participating in three-quarters of a century of crowded events, and outliving itself in a shabby-genteel old age, it finally passed to make room for the great modern Terminal development. Thus it seems to span the whole of Cleveland history. Of its days of glory, during the period we are now concerned with, Samuel P. Orth has written : "It immediately became the place for holding the fine balls and banquets of the town. The fire department and the Cleveland Grays held their annual balls there. From its little iron balcony have spoken many of the great men of the nation, among them William Henry Harrison, General Scott, Lewis Cass, Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay. Daniel Webster was its fleeting visitor in the year of its opening. He remained only an hour, but long enough, tradition has it, to patronize its bar. Stephen A. Douglas was a guest in 1860. It was the gathering place of politicians, and visiting statesmen often shared its hospitality. In 1852 a great dinner was given there to John P. Hale of New Hampshire. Ladies were present and liquor absent, so that the distinguished guest was prompted to say that it was the first time 404 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS he was ever at a dinner where "the bottles were discharged and the ladies admitted." Salmon P. Chase and Joshua R. Giddings were among the speakers. When in July, 1853, the body of Henry Clay arrived here, a committee of noted Kentuckians who came to Cleveland to receive the remains of the great statesman stopped at the American House and there planned the journey of the funeral car through Ohio to Lexington." Nothing is more indicative of a city's progress in industry and trade than the growth of its hotels. Only ten years after the appearance of this super-tavern came a larger and more modern competitor on the other side of the street, at the corner of Superior and Bank (West Sixth). This was the Weddell House, opened in 1847 and proudly called "the Astor House of the Lakes." It was a huge pile of sandstone and brick, towering four stories high with a spacious attic, built symmetrically on the two streets, with an impressive and useful corner portico supported by Doric columns. This portico, opening from the second and third stories, made an admirable speakers' stand and was the scene of many a public harangue. Crowning the structure, directly above this portico and itself a landmark visible from afar, was an octagonal cupola sixteen feet high which, to compare small things with great, might remind the present generation of the top of the present Terminal Tower. As one of the newspapers proudly announced at the time : "The view from the cupola is the best in the city. The elevation is so great that the eye takes in the entire City of Cleveland, Ohio City, the valley of the winding Cuyahoga, its forests of masts, and farms and forest-covered banks stretching far away to the southward and a large sweep of lake and adjacent country." There was a promenade on the roof, which proved popular in spite of the lack of an elevator to carry visitors up to that dizzy height. Local enthusiasm was echoed by no less a judge than Thurlow Weed, famous editor, traveler and president-maker, and patron of the most luxurious hotels of the East, who wrote for his Albany Journal: "We arrived at Cleveland before sunset last evening, and enjoyed another view of this thriv- CIVIC GROWTH - 407 ing city. Among the striking features is the Weddell House, one of the most magnificent hotels in America. This building looms up like the Astor House and is furnished with every attainable luxury." Many of the great events of Cleveland for half a century centered around the Weddell House. To quote again from Orth : "It was Cleveland's most historic hotel. From the day of its opening until about 1872 it was the leading hotel of the city and was widely known throughout the West. It was constantly crowded before the war, and often cots were placed in the parlors for accommodating the guests. Its contemplative eagle, looking down from the cornice above the classic portico, beheld many historic pageants pass beneath and saw many of the nation's great men enter the doorway." The greater part of the building was razed in 1903 to make room for the Rockefeller Building—one of our pioneer skyscrapers. But a considerable section of the original structure remains, on West Sixth Street, still serving its original purpose in a modest way, and preserving its antique memorials. Thus the old Weddell House still survives. When the Rockefeller Building was acquired transiently about 1920 by Josiah Kirby, that talented promoter and financier unexpectedly found himself, as he said, "with a hotel on his hands." Being appealed to by the manager to do something for the venerable institution, Kirby stepped in and looked around and developed a lively interest in the place. Returning to his office, he dictated a circular letter to all his tenants informing them that he had just discovered, in the rear of the building, a hotel of proved excellence, serving good food and "strongly recommended by Abraham Lincoln, Horace Greeley, General Sherman, Jenny Lind, Bishop Potter and other competent judges." The result was a notable revival of patronage, especially for the noonday meal. Another good hotel of the period was the Angier House, built in 1854 at the corner of St. Clair and Bank streets. Among the notable modern touches of this institution were a tank on the roof from which water was distributed through the building, and more remarkable still, a "steam process" 408 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS heating system. After the war this hotel, refurnished in "solid black walnut," became the Kennard House, under which name it is still operated. The attractive lobby, with its marble pillars and quaint fountain, imitating a room of the Alhambra, was long a fashionable center. The glory of its Victorian era departed, and its neighborhood gone into wholesale business, it became a modest resort for traveling men. It remains an oasis of the past. Drama.—The first theatrical show ever given in the city was in the ball room of the primitive Cleaveland House, which stood exactly where the Hotel Cleveland now stands. There was a week's entertainment by a repertoire company called Manager Blanchard's Troupe, a fact which speaks pretty well for the dramatic interest of a village of 500 souls. The players arrived and departed in a sailboat called the Tiger. The plays seem to have been romantic rather than classic. Other companies followed. Shakespeare, arriving in 1831, was dignified by presentation in the brick courthouse on the Public Square. That building served as a theater, along with its legal functions, for several years. Playgoing now gained rapidly in popularity. During the '30s small theaters were built at various places around town, usually as parts of commercial buildings and serving the purpose also of halls for lectures, concerts and public meetings of various sorts. The financial crisis of 1837 nipped a promising plan for a real theater on Seneca Street, to be built by a financial circuit with local assistance. In 1839 and 1840 a theater was maintained in Mechanic's Hall, at the corner of Ontario and Prospect. A satisfactory little theater holding 500 was built in 1848, but burned down in two years. In the same year Apollo Hall was built, opening with "Damon and Pythias." Chairs in the pit cost 25 cents and boxes 50 cents. The first theater that really distinguished itself was the Globe, on the north side of Superior Street east of Bank Street, which started in 1840 and is credited with lasting longer and offering a greater variety of entertainment than any other house ever did in Cleveland. No kind of perform- CIVIC GROWTH - 411 ance, apparently, was too good or too bad for it. Grand opera, classic drama, melodrama, minstrel shows, cheap variety, lectures, concerts, everything was grist to its mill. The name was changed to Melodeon Hall, then to Brainard's Opera House and back again to Globe Theater. It won its legitimate fame along with its artistic infamy. Laura Keen, McKean Buchanan and many another great actor played there. It heard Patti's voice, and first-rate opera companies. It passed out in 1880 with a final performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Theater Comique, on Frankfort Street behind the Weddell House, built in 1848, provided good shows and enjoyed fashionable patronage for a few years. Clara Morris is said to have made her first appearance there, playing small parts, before John Ellsler gave her a better opportunity in the Academy of Music. This latter house, the Academy of Music, made dramatic history in Cleveland and won national celebrity. It was built on Bank Street (West Sixth) by a Pittsburgh man named, Charles Foster, who was so eager to improve the theatrical status of Cleveland that he soon returned to Pittsburgh bankrupt. It was "Uncle John" Ellsler, a Philadelphia actor-manager trained with Joseph Jefferson, who took hold of the Academy and made it known to the world. Financially the theater under his management was uncertain, but histrionically it won high and almost uniform success. Ellsler maintained a stock company in which many of the best remembered artists of the American stage got their training. Among the actors he is credited with developing are Lawrence Barrett, John McCullough, Clara Morris, James O'Neill, Roland Reed, Jimmie Lewis the comedian, and his own daughter, Effie Ellsler. The Booths, Forrest, Cushman, Davenport and their like all played there, at one time or another, during the '50s, '60s and early '70s. The heyday of the Academy would probably have lasted longer if Ellsler had not made the business mistake of building the Euclid Avenue Opera House away out on East Fourth Street, as far from the night life of the city in 1875 as University Circle 412 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS is now. That, with the rest of the artistic development of the last half-century, is another story. In the '50s the famous P. T. Barnum had a theater in the Kelley Block on Superior Street, opposite Bank Street. Music.—Music was slower developing in Cleveland than drama. We learn from Jane D. Orth that the first piano appeared in Cleveland in 1832, and in 1852 one of the newspapers informed the public that "reed organ is the name of a new instrument for churches." There were few musical instruments of any kind during the city's first half-century, and little musical instruction. Yet sound views were held. Strangely modern is an editorial in the Herald, in 1838, insisting that music should be taught in both public and private schools because its study disciplines the mind and its practice cultivates the feelings, while singing is also a wholesome form of physical exercise and a means of controlling unruly children. That little village was almost ripe for rhythm classes. Fortunately appreciation of fine music, or at least of fine singing, does not demand special training. The best is nearly always sure of a hearing anywhere. Thus when Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," came to the city in 1851 and sang in Kelley's Hall, the house was filled to its capacity of 1,300 people and the street was crowded with eager spectators. And when she sang Haydn's aria "On Mighty Pens," people who were huddled on the roof to listen fell through the skylight in the dome and almost precipitated a panic. Appreciation of the piano solo played by her accompanist was less emphatic, wherefore the generous Jenny stepped out before the audience and set an example of applause, explaining later that "people did not always understand piano music." That, too, was to come in time. The violin then, as now, spoke more surely to the heart. When Ole Bull, the great Norwegian violinist, came to Kelley's Hall two years later, he had a fair audience; and when he returned the following year, the hall was sold out at a dollar a seat. His greatest success was the new popular song, "My Old Kentucky Home." Then in 1855 Adelina Patti sang in Melodeon Hall, so im- CIVIC GROWTH - 413 pressing the community that a newspaper critic declared, "Patti in time will probably take front rank among musical stars." And in 1857 Sigismond Thalberg, the pianist, drew an enthusiastic and profitable audience to the same hall. More important than any visits of notables, in the development of musical culture in Cleveland, was the organization of singing societies. There had been some small groups of this sort in the early decades, but they lacked knowledge and background and regarded singing as pleasant pastime rather than a serious cultural pursuit. The big impulse came with the revolutionary Germans of the '40s, people with a deep love of music and many of them men of education and artistic training. The first gesangverein, called the "Frohsinn," appeared in 1848. Though this organization disappeared in a few years, its influence was felt throughout the city and seems to have had a pronounced effect on the dominant New England population. Thus we find, in the City Directory of 1853, this evidence of progress : "The Cleveland Mendelssohn Society.—This society was formed for the purpose of elevating the standard of sacred music in Cleveland. It has been in existence two years, and is composed of 112 members. The oratorios of 'The Creation' and 'David' have each been publicly performed by the society. The influence of this society has thus far been highly satisfactory in developing much of the latent musical talent of the city, and in promoting an acquaintance with music composed by the masters of the art. The society is now engaged in rehearsing 'The Seasons,' which will be brought out during the coming winter ; they meet for rehearsal every Thursday evening." And then this interesting list of the society's officers: "President, T. P. Handy; vice president, J. L. Severance; secretary, O. P. Hanks; treasurer, T. C. Severance ; conductor, J. P. Hollingbrook ; pianist, J. Long; trustees, S. W. Treat, F. Abel, J. H. Stanley." Not more than one German name among them ! New Connecticut was showing Germany that it, too, could sing. And it will not be overlooked that from this group, in a straight line, is derived 414 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Severance Hall, jewel of University Circle and finest music hall in the world. The Germans continued their work with unflagging enthusiasm. Cleveland Gesangverein, with Fritz Abel director, was started in 1854, apparently absorbing a large part of the "Frohsinn" membership. The next year it held the first saengerfest, a festival lasting three days, with 300 singers contesting. Four years later came the second saengerfest, with 400 singers, held in the National Hall, and closing with the opera, "Alessandro Stradella," given in the Cleveland Theater. This was Cleveland's first opera. Hence musical progress continued in a swelling stream. The first good band, called Hecker's, had been formed in 1850. There was professional instruction possible now, through the Cleveland Academy of Music (having no connection with the theater of that name) opened in 1854, with independent teaching available along many lines. Courthouse.—Cleveland's first courthouse was in Warren, the original county seat, Cuyahoga County being at first a part of Trumbull County. With that building we have no concern. The first courthouse of interest to this community was a two-story log structure built in 1812, five years after the creation of Cuyahoga County. Until the erection of this building, court had been held in a store on Superior Street. It was a pretentious temple of justice, 25 by 50 feet, costing $700, standing among the stumps at the northwest corner of the Public Square. Adjacent woods furnished the logs for the walls. The nails and glass were hauled from Pittsburgh by Levi Johnson, architect and builder, in his one-horse wagon. The lower story, meant to serve as a jail, had walls three feet thick. It was divided into two roomy cells, one for "criminals" and the other for "debtors." The building gained external elegance from clapboards laid over the logs. The upper story, along with its judicial functions, served as public meeting-house for purposes ranging from church services to dances. There was a fireplace at each end for supplying CIVIC GROWTH - 415 heat. An old sketch shows the edifice looming majestically behind a rail fence without any visible roadway, standing alone in an open field. Cleveland at the time had eighty inhabitants. The next courthouse was an impressive two-story structure, somewhat larger, built in 1826. It was of brick, trimmed in stone, "the front ornamented with pilasters of the Doric order, supporting a Doric entablature, the whole crowned with an Ionic belfry and dome." Its cost was $8,000. It stood in the southwest section of the Public Square, facing Superior Street. The lower floor contained the county offices and the upper floor the courtroom and jury room. It was supplemented in 1832 by a stone jail in the rear, fronting on forgotten Champlain Street, with several cells and a residence for the sheriff. A bigger and better jail, vaunted as "fireproof" was built in 1841 on the northwest corner of the Square. It survived as the nucleus of successive jails, made by improvements and enlargements on the same spot, for ninety years. The second courthouse was, even more than the first one, a center of community life. Its ample courtroom, lighted with tallow candles and heated by bulbous wood-burning stoves, held many a festive and religious gathering, echoed with the eloquence of many a public meeting for the discussion of local or national affairs. There the Cuyahoga County Agricultural Society was organized, and in and around the building were displayed the vegetable and animal exhibits of the first county fairs. Then in 1857 came a new courthouse fated to be known to succeeding generations as the "Old Courthouse." It was a fine, capacious building of dressed sandstone, 80 by 152 feet, three stories high, standing between the new jail and the "Old Stone Church," on the northwest corner of the Square. The comparative wealth of the city in this epoch may be judged from the cost of the building, $152,500. Eventually two stories were added. It is now gone. City Hall.—Cleveland citizens have always been home- 416 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS owners. Cleveland as an official entity lived for more than a century in rented quarters. As a village it merely lived around in private buildings, driven from place to place by the exigencies of business, often housing its various activities in different places at the same time. After the city's incorporation, its quarters were at 61 Superior Street in the Commercial Building. In 1855 it leased the two upper stories of a brick block on the south side of the Square, using the top floor as a council chamber and the floor below for its offices. Not until 1875, when it took over on a long-term lease the new Case Block on the northeast corner of Superior and Wood (East Third) streets, did the city have an adequate home for its municipal functions. Even then it was but a tenant, vaguely dreaming of proprietorship. Markets.—The first public market was established in 1829, on Ontario Street south of the Square. By 1837 there were four public markets maintained by the city. These were little more than open-air markets, with slight accommodation in the way of buildings and stalls for shelter in bad weather. From early years there was an open wood market at the foot of Water Street. In 1839 the first city market house was built on Michigan Street. The market problem grew more serious as the community grew, especially after the city was incorporated. Development and municipal regulation were forced by the feuds of the hucksters, market men and grocers. It was recognized that while these groups all had their rights, the rights of consumers to buy at convenient places and low prices were paramount. In 1856 the city bought a piece of land at Ontario and Broadway and built the Central Market House. The market men and hucksters were reluctant to move from their old stands on Ontario and Michigan streets, and were only persuaded by a combination of new privileges and coercion. "Producers" were still allowed to sell anywhere, to anyone, as a privileged class. Further markets were provided as required. The West Side enjoyed adequate facilities after 1840, when two private citizens provided a CIVIC GROWTH - 417 parcel of land at the corner of Lorain and Pearl (West Twenty-fifth) streets, known as Market Square. That spot has been, ever since, one of the busiest and most useful bits of ground in the county. It was enlarged by additional gifts in later years, and a market house was built there shortly after the Civil war. CHAPTER XI STREET RAILWAYS The first street railway was a fiasco. As might be suspected of any such enterprise started in the expansive days of 1834, it seems to have been primarily a real estate venture. The Cleveland and Newburgh Railroad, authorized to use animal power, steam or any other mechanical force, ran from the Public Square down town, out Euclid Avenue, across Doan Brook and up to the stone quarry on the Heights. Its capital was $50,000. Its track consisted of wooden rails laid on sleepers or ties of the modern sort. Its motive power during its period of operation was two horses driven tandem. Its cars made two round trips a day. Its depot was in the barn of the Cleveland Hotel on the Square. Some stone was hauled ; but from the fact that building lots were promptly laid out along a large part of the route, it may be assumed that the promoters counted more on passenger traffic than freight. It expired in a few years, leaving its old track in the middle of the street as a memorial. The city was not ready for such transportation, but the premature effort pointed the way. The first genuine and rational effort of the kind came in 1859, when the East Cleveland Railway Company was organized. The following year Henry S. Stevens, president of the company, breaking ground at the first eastern terminus, East Fifty-fifth Street, invited patrons and stockholders to meet him at the other end of the line, West Ninth Street, in three weeks, and celebrate its completion. He seems to have made good on his invitation. This was known as "the first street railroad in Cleveland and in the state." The Kinsman Street Railway Company, likewise organized in 1859, built a section of its line out Woodland Avenue (for- - 418 - CIVIC GROWTH - 421 merly Kinsman). The East Cleveland line prospered and was extended as far as Doan's Corners (East 105th Street) in 1863. In that year the West Side Railway Company appeared, proceeding out Detroit Street. In a decade or two there was a network of city and suburban lines extending from East Cleveland to Rocky River and from the Public Square to Newburgh. All of these were horse car lines except the Rocky River line, which ran by steam. Good-sized cars drawn by two horses ran on iron rails. They were as important a factor as any in the city's growth and expansion in industry, trade and population. They prepared the way for a great and famous system of local transportation. It was only twenty-five years from the inception of that little line from the river to East Fifty-fifth Street until the first electric street car in America was rumbling along Quincy Avenue. Union Depot.—The proudest building achievement of this constructive period was the Union Depot. A "passenger house" had been built in 1853, on the lake front at the foot of Bank and Water streets, by the cooperative effort of three pioneer railroads, the Cleveland and Columbus, the Cleveland and Erie and the Cleveland and Pittsburgh. When this wooden structure burned down in 1864, a more substantial and durable station was undertaken by the same lines under partly new names—the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula and the Cleveland and Pittsburgh, plus the western extension of the shore line, the Cleveland and Toledo. This depot was built almost wholly of stone and iron, 108 by 603 feet, and was regarded justly as a great architectural achievement. But in nothing has there been more progress than in the construction of railroad stations. That old depot still stands, a little, filthy, inconvenient relic of the past. Anyone who wants a good comparison of the old and the new railroading need only take a look at the depot down on the lake front, if he can find it, and then at the Union Terminal on the Public Square. Slavery.—As far back as 1827 the city had been agitated by the slavery question. In that year was organized the 422 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Cuyahoga County Colonization Society, a branch of the national organization of the same name, whose object was to solve the problem by shipping all the slaves to Africa. As usual, rival groups of reformers could not agree. The simon-pure abolitionist insisted on freeing the slaves and letting them live where they pleased. In 1837 there were two anti-slavery societies in the county. By the year 1841 the shadow was drawing closer to the free shores of Lake Erie. There was a steady trickle of slaves northward to Canada. Cleveland, as a principal lake port and the head of the Ohio Canal, was a convenient point for receiving runaways from Kentucky and Virginia and forwarding them beyond the reach of the Fugitive Slave Law. The abolition movement was growing stronger. Yet there was still a prevalent feeling that law was law and property was property, and whatever the higher ethics might be, there was a legal obligation to return fleeing slaves, or at least not to aid and abet their escape from their owners. Thus when three slaves kidnapped at Buffalo were brought to Cleveland and lodged in jail, under Federal jurisdiction, two of the city's leading Abolitionists, John A. Foot and Edward Wade, sought to defend them. They were refused permission to approach the prisoners, because of their radical views. Thereupon Thomas Bolton, who was not a professed Abolitionist, had his sympathies aroused. Gaining access to the negroes, Mr. Bolton undertook their defense and, in spite of popular opposition and violent threats from officious upholders of law and order, obtained their discharge on the technical ground that they had been seized illegally. Slave-seekers after that generally took care to avoid Cleveland. Feeling ran higher in the '50s. The most celebrated slave case in Cleveland originated in Oberlin, which was the center of Abolitionism in Ohio and the leading station of the celebrated "underground railroad" by which fugitives were secretly harbored and transported to Canada. Several slaves belonging to a Kentucky planter, escaping across the Ohio River in 1856, scattered on their way northward. One of