White Mansion. It featured a third-floor ballroom, as many mansions did during that era. The Cleveland Orchestra occasionally entertained there during parties-and some of those gatherings had guest lists topping people.
Their daughter, Constance, became the mistress of the house and coordinated all of the entertaining that took place there. Located at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 86th Street, this room mansion was constructed in Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Drury also built a summer estate in Gates Mills that today is part of Gilmour Academy.
That is a larger duplication of the Euclid Ave. Today there would have been more outrage. Out of all the lost grand mansions, which one does Dutka consider the biggest loss?
It would have been nice to save. Coming Up. When: 7 p. Register: cuyahoga. All rights reserved About Us. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.
Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Ad Choices. Skip to Main Content. Published: Nov. Footer Navigation More on Cleveland. Mobile Mobile Apps. Within four decades Euclid was lined with homes from what is now Playhouse Square to University Circle with the beginning of the street east of the Square given over by to the commerce that came in the wake of growth and expansion. The homes, particularly those sited on the north of the street, were outsized showplaces of wealth and power with lots that stretched north from Euclid to what is now Perkins Avenue in the section of the avenue between what is now E.
Families like the Mathers , Paynes, Worthingtons, and Severances had histories in the city dating to before the Civil War and would eventually build homes on the Avenue, but others such as railroad builders Henry Devereux and Amasa Stone, whose daughter Flora would marry into the Mather family, were first-generation Clevelanders.
Rockefeller, whose house on the street did not fit the now mythical image of the man who owned it. The creation and rise of Standard Oil is a textbook example of business and wealth in the Gilded Age, one which has its roots in Cleveland. In Rockefeller, along with many other Clevelanders, became interested in petroleum as a commodity — one which could be refined into kerosene and paraffin for lighting.
Those who joined with Rockefeller, including Clevelanders Harry Payne, Steven Harkness who moved to the city , and Louis Severance became immensely wealthy because of that association.
It was his Standard Oil fortune that financed perhaps the most spectacular home on Euclid. Andrews cashed out of Standard Oil in and began the construction of his home on Euclid at the northeast corner of what is now E. Completed three years later the house was immense; so much so that in a short period of time it proved to be unmanageable. Andrews lived there for only several years.
His son Horace would later use the house periodically, but it stood largely vacant until demolished in It was and remains somewhat of a metaphor for the excesses of the Gilded Age.
Underneath the Gilding. Ironically, the years that bookend the construction period — — of the Andrews House also mark two of the most noted local labor actions in Cleveland during the Gilded Age. While these contractions diminished or destroyed great fortunes their greatest impact was on the wage laborers in the industries of the age.
A hands-on, shop-floor manager, he was beloved by his workers. Together they gathered funds to build his memorial in Lake View Cemetery.
The following year the country entered into recession as railroad building waned. A strike ensued , one marked by violence as immigrant Polish and Czech strikebreakers were brought into the mill. The strike failed, but three years later those who had been strikebreakers went on strike because of another wage cut. It was violent, with strikers marching downtown from the mill neighborhood near Broadway and Harvard.
Some carried the flags of socialism and anarchy. It was not the first, nor the last major labor action in Cleveland during the Gilded Age, a period both locally and nationally where the rights of workers in an evolving wage-labor economy were set against the perceived rights and substantial powers of owners, businesses, and monopolies.
It was a time of not only dissention, but of fear. Those fears came fully to the fore nationally during the great railroad strike of Its origins stemmed from deflation and wage cuts which followed the Panic of which was initiated by the collapse of Jay Cooke and Company. The Ohioan Cooke had been the genius of the Civil War bond promotion, but the panic proved his undoing. His banking house perhaps the most noted in the nation overspent its capital in promoting the development of the Northern Pacific Railroad.
That, in turn triggered a fiscal crisis that lasted the better part of a decade and created an era of wage contraction. A series of wage cuts by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and then other lines sparked violent strikes which spread across the nation.
Nationally, over one hundred people were killed in confrontations between police militias and workers. In Pittsburgh, shootings of workers led to the burning of the yards, depot and other properties of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The strike lasted forty-five days. Cleveland, although a rail center, managed to escape the violence of the strike. Led, in part, by a Czech immigrant socialists Leopold Palda and Frank Skarda , the strikers, many of whom were immigrants themselves, also called for a general strike in the city, inviting all workers making less than a dollar a day to join them.
Those fears led to reflexive actions. In October a group of prominent Clevelanders organized an independent military unit, Troop A, to serve as a bulwark against possible labor violence.
The following year leading citizens created the Cleveland Gatling Gun Battery. The Battery built an armory, complete with loopholes, on Carnegie Avenue as a last bastion defense against labor violence.
Both organizations would evolve into social organizations for their members, and Troop A eventually became part of what would be the National Guard. With a more egalitarian membership it served in both World Wars. The angst of the era also found its way into a novel which would become a best seller in Published anonymously in , The Breadwinners was a melodramatic but message-laden saga set in the mythical town of Buffland in which the wealthy residents of equally mythical Algonquin Avenue successfully fight off socialist labor unrest.
Buffland was the pseudonym for Cleveland and Algonquin was a stand-in for Euclid Avenue. His views on the rights of labor were colored both by his own elitism and fears. They were not only clearly expressed in the novel, but in his personal communications as well.
Strikes continued on a smaller scale. In workers at the Brown Hoist Company took to the streets when their request for a nine-hour day they worked a ten and a half holiday shift on Saturdays and the reinstatement of several dismissed workers was met by a lockout by the management. It turned violent and the state militia, as well as Troop A were called out to restore order. One of the other issues in the streetcar strike was the recognition of their union.
That was not achieved, but overall, the Gilded Age saw the growth of unions, mostly representing the crafts and trades, in the city.
The Knights of Labor formed fifty assemblies in the city which encompassed both skilled and unskilled workers. The American Federation of Labor created the Cleveland Central Labor Union to compete with the Knights and established 26 locals between and In , Max Hayes who came to epitomize the cause of labor in the city began, along with Henry Long, publishing The Cleveland Citizen.
National party candidates such as Eugene Debs and local candidates like Charles Ruthenberg polled well — well enough to be perceived as a threat to American ideals and government, particularly at the municipal level in industrial cities like Cleveland.
Trying to Govern Growth. Cleveland entered the Gilded Age with a city government structure dictated by the state and which perhaps would have functioned reasonably well in a small city. The General Municipal Corporation Act of essentially reduced the mayor to a figurehead with no real authority over a ward-based city council and more importantly, placed much decision making and spending power in the hands of the council and a series of administrative boards and commissions.
The act also made previously appointive positions, such as the commissioner of waterworks and the police judge elective. Essentially, this created a system lacking in strong central direction and peppered with smaller power centers in the council and boards. Babcock a coal merchant; and George Gardner , commission house broker and banker. Many of these men had also served as council representatives or on some of the boards and commissions that truly wielded power in the Gilded Age city.
Herrick , began his political career as a city councilman in Cleveland and would then go on to become governor of Ohio and eventually ambassador to France , Despite the figurehead status of the mayor, two managed to navigate the city through its labor troubles.
Rose played an important role in seeking accommodation between the owners and workers during the railroad strike of and Gardner ordered William Chisholm to restore wage cuts in order to end the Rolling Mill Strike, but only after threatening to use artillery against the strikers.
But, others recognized the frustrations of the office. Otis and Payne refused second terms so they could return to manage their businesses and Babcock argued for moving to a Federal system in which the mayor would have true authority to work with council representatives in governing. Even with the change the effort to deal with the urban infrastructure necessary to support the growth and gilt of Gilded Age Cleveland was an enormous task.
On a bad day the residents of Euclid Avenue could easily sense the origins of their good fortune when lake winds blew the smoke from the Otis Steel mill on the lakeside at E. Once known as the Forest City, Cleveland began to lose many of its trees to pollution during the era. The solution was to plant more resistant species such as sycamores.
Over and over again, arguments against air pollution in the coal-powered city were seen as anti-growth. How could Cleveland compete with Pittsburgh if it hamstrung its industries with fines and regulations?
As the city grew in population and size the task of creating infrastructure became enormous. Wood block streets had to be replaced with stone and stone eventually gave way to brick. But even by , when the street network totaled miles, less than two miles per year were being paved with brick. Similar needs related to expanding the water and sewer system, a project compounded by the need to continually construct water intakes further into the lake to find water unpolluted by industrial and human waste.
Similarly, the increase in population dictated other changes. In the public schools enrolled 9, children. By the enrollment had risen to 58,, but that number represented only The need for family income often trumped an education beyond the elementary level. As the city grew it became both an employer and more importantly the source of lucrative municipal contracts to create and maintain its expanding.
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