KJP

I was saving this story for the right moment in this string, and responding to StrapHanger's message seemed as good a time as any.... A few years ago, I was getting on the elevator in my building here in Lakewood. A black woman was buzzed into the building by someone and she didn't seem to know her way around. I figured she was a new resident, so I wanted to make her feel at home: "Are you new here?" I asked. "No. I'm just visiting," she said. "Oh, well welcome anyway." "Thanks. It's my first time over here," said said. "Where, here in the building?" I asked. "No. On the West Side." The woman was probably in her 50s.

Problem was, they demolished the train shed prior to the 1920s. You can see in the first picture I posted of it that the trainshed is gone.

By the way, that Hotel Sinton in Cincinnati is absolutely beautiful. I'm almost afraid to ask what it was demolished for -- and when?

Yep, I see the shade difference, too, right above the fourth floor.

I'm not going to vote because I lived on the East Side for the first 26 years of my life, and on the West Side for the last 12. I moved only to be closer to a girl I was dating at the time. Most history books will tell you the reason for the east-west division stems from the early 1800s, when Cleveland had a "war" with Ohio City (then called the City of Ohio, and a separate municipality -- there was a rivalry even before the Bridge War, as the City of Ohio became a municipality the day before Cleveland could). Here is a brief history of the Bridge War from.... http://www.clevelandmemory.org/SpecColl/gamut/1981s/mbc/mbc3.html MOVABLE BRIDGES OVER THE CUYAHOGA RIVER Cleveland now has a greater variety of these beautiful and practical structures than any place in earth; but in 1837 "Two bridges or none!" was the battle cry of the famous Bridge War with Ohio City. Sara Ruth Watson and John R. Wolfs A contemporary view, from Detroit Avenue, of the old Columbus Street Bridge, built in 1835, and focus of the "Bridge War" between the City of Cleveland and Ohio City. [begin excerpt] After passing under the Detroit-Superior and Union Terminal Bridges, we come to the Columbus Road Bridge, the other bridge site in the "Bridge War," a bit of early history worth a digression. In 1835 two land developers, James S. Clark and John W. Willey, who owned considerable property along Columbus Street, as it was then called, improved the roadway, graded it down to the river, and built an imposing bridge at the ferry landing. This bridge, the first important structure across the Cuyahoga, formed the final link in a short route to Cleveland from South and West, practically sidestepping Ohio City across the river nearer Center Street. A description of the new bridge in the first city directory printed in 1837 reads as follows: The bridge was supported by a stone abutment on either shore or piers of solid masonry erected in the center of the river. Between the piers, there is a draw sufficient to allow a vessel of forty-nine feet beam to pass through. The length is two hundred feet, the breadth, including the sidewalks, thirty-three feet, and the height of the piers, above the surface of the water, may be estimated at twenty-four feet. The whole which, with the exception of the draw, is roofed and enclosed, presents an imposing appearance and reflects much credit in the architect, Mr. Nathan Hunt.2 In 1835 the new Columbus Road Bridge was the most remarkable structure in Ohio; visitors from all over the state come to view it and gasped at the work which had cost the enormous sum of $15,000 to build. In 1836, first the City of Ohio and then the Village of Cleveland were incorporated, and the rivalry between them grew tense. The merchants of Ohio City were entirely willing to have the Columbus Street Bridge, but they also wanted one at Center Street, and so there arose the slogan "two bridges or none." What resulted was the Bridge War, celebrated in the annals of Cleveland. In 1837 the Cleveland City council directed the removal of its half of the old floating bridge at Center Street. This was an attempt by Cleveland to divert all through traffic to the Columbus Street Bridge, thereby by-passing Ohio City. The mandate of the council was carried out at night, and, when the people of Ohio City realized what had happened, they were enraged. At an indignation meeting they declared the Columbus Street Bridge a public nuisance. Their marshal gathered a posse of deputies, who damaged the bridge by a charge of powder under the Ohio City end. Then the marshal and his deputies marched to the Cleveland side of the bridge, dug a deep trench at the approaches, and did likewise at the Ohio City end, thus rendering the bridge useless. Ohio City held a council of war and staged an all out attack upon the bridge. Nearly a thousand men, armed with clubs, rocks, and rifles marched to the bridge, accompanied by a chaplain and a lawyer. But Cleveland had learned about the attack from scouts. The Ohio City posse found itself confronted by a company of militia with muskets. Even an ancient cannon had been rolled down to the river’s edge. At this point Wiley, who was the first mayor of Cleveland, stepped forward, but before he could utter more than a few words, he was greeted by a volley of rocks, and the fight started. At the other end of the bridge was an apron that could be raised or lowered, and the one at the Ohio City side was let down to provide a shelter for the anti-bridge forces. The men went at their destructive task, ripping up planks and throwing them into the river. One Ohio City man named Deacon House picked his way through the Cleveland lines and spiked the cannon with an old file. He became quite the hero of the battle of the bridge. Some men were injured, but none were killed. Finally the fray was stopped by the Cleveland marshal, who also was sheriff of the county. He took possession of the bridge, obtained a court order against further interference, and posted guards at either end to maintain movement of traffic. This Battle of the Bridge produced a poet-laureate in D.W. Cross who wrote a mock epic poem, in heroic couplets, entitled "The Battle of the Bridge," which was published in the Magazine of Western History. Its model was Alexander pope’s Rape of the Lock. There is space here to quote but a few lines. On hills, like Rome, the cities might be seen, (Meand'ring Cuyahoga flowed between); Whose rival spires in rivalry arose, The pride of friends, the envy of their foes. Each rival ruler of each rival town On his would smile, but on the other frown. Each sought for greatness, in his rival’s fall, Regardless that the world was made for all. Envy and hatred waxed to frenzied height! Naught could appease but fierce and bloody fight. The culmination came! A peanut stand Erected by a "combination" band Of desperate men of capital, who swore No trade should be diverted from their shore. They claimed that Clark and Willey, reckless, sought To build a bridge. The right of way was bought Already! and they then designed to build Columbus Street and bridge! This rumor filled Their souls with madness, and their eyes with tears! To think that peanut stand, the toll of years Should for the want of patronage decay And trade and barter turn some other way. They all agreed this could not be allowed, And boisterous bellowing agitate the crowd! The result of the Bridge War was that the West Siders gained their point, and two bridges were provided. The Center Street Bridge was completed after much discussion and the Columbus Street Bridge was equipped with a movable center span. The Columbus Street Bridge of 1835 marked the beginning of the first period of bridge building over the Cuyahoga River -- bridges of wood with masonry piers, designed for wagon traffic. As late as 1853 there were still three of these: the Columbus Street Bridge, one at Seneca (West Third) Street, and one at Division Street (Center Street). There was agitation for a new one at Columbus Street, but because the two towns could not agree on a plan, the county re-built the span. In 1854 Cleveland annexed Ohio City. And immediately after annexation, Cleveland built the Main Street Bridge, re-built the Center Street Bridge, and constructed the Seneca Street Bridge. [end excerpt] ######

Not to change the subject, OK maybe I am, but I thought you all woud find this 2005 document of interest... http://www.downtownclevelandpartnership.com/pdf/FactBook.pdf

Straphanger, Good job! I found in several books of mine the following: It was originally a four story-tall building, built in 1907 for the William Taylor, Son & Co. Department Store, with an arcade through to Prospect. It was first located farther west on Euclid, west of East 4th Street, and relocated to the new building, listed as 630 Euclid Avenue. I don't know when the additional five floors were put atop the existing building, but the colorized photo I posted earlier looks like it happened by about 1920, judging from the style of cars and the Peter Witt streetcars on Euclid. I've scanned and posted a photo below of what the building originally looked like with four stories....

I'm trying to find a picture of Cleveland' youth workhouse, before the operation was relocated to Warrensville Township. The predecessor building looked downright medieval!

^ That sucks! I wouldn't mind if something was built to replace it. All we need is another parking lot downtown.

I wouldn't say "announced" just yet for the Front Street Lofts. Nothing is for sure until it's built.

^ I believe those are two separate buildings. The Schofield Building (now the Euclid-Ninth Tower) is right at the corner, and the City Club Building was apparently separate. Here's some pics of the 668 Euclid Avenue/Atrium Building from "back in the day": It's the white building at right (the larger building next to it is the old Hippodrome Theater and office building, which was demolished for the surface parking lot...ugh!) You may get a kick out of this c1900 photo. This is what was there before the Atrium Building (and Hippodrome) was built -- a row of low-level commercial structures, around the time Euclid Avenue was kicking into high gear...

In my opinion, it's because their reporting places greater emphasis on taking "meeting minutes" of what's happening in the metro area, rather than looking deeper into causative issues and probing longer into the future on how to address them.

If that building can be reused with that many employees, it will be a big boost to Lower Euclid Avenue. That area seems to be the "dead spot" between East 9th and Public Square, what with the 668 building and the surface parking lot next door. Besides, the 668 building simply looks terrible.

Read Sun Newspapers instead.... :wink:

In Denver, the transit agency RTD had to prove itself and prove the value of rail before the voters would embrace something more substantial and catalytic. RTD earned awards for customer service, built a short, 7-mile light rail line (mostly as a streetcar right of way) in and near downtown, and produced rail ridership that exceeded expectations. They then built a second light rail line as part of a major highway reconstruction and improvement project. And it, too, exceeded ridership expectations. That led to the call for a $4.6 billion system of electrically powered light rail lines, diesel powered commuter rail lines and a bus rapid transit route. The lesson is that revolutions usually don't succeed, as people tend to fear change or, more appropriately, fear the unknown. But evolutions usually do succeed, if built on a sound foundation of trust between voters and the transit agency to spend the taxpayers' money effectively. COTA is going to have to prove itself first.

Try something more Columbus' size. Take a look at what Denver voters just approved. It's at least as bold as what L.A. has done (yet L.A. had planned to do much more)... http://www.transitalliance.org/fr_railandbus.htm http://www.transitalliance.org/ From transit to sushi to arts funding, Denver reinvents itself http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0415/p01s02-ussc.html COMMENTARY - Can rail prevail the first time around? http://www.railwayage.com/jun00/intransit.html And then there's the folks on other side of the debate, who lost in Denver but are still crabbing.... http://taxpayersagainstcongestion.org/tacnews.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060126/lf_nm/life_sprawl_dc Morning traffic heads toward Manhattan, December 23, 2005. (Seth Wenig/Reuters) Suburban sprawl an irresistible force in US By Alan Elsner Thu Jan 26, 8:19 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Across the United States, an unprecedented acceleration in suburban sprawl is prompting concerns about the environment, traffic, health and damage to rural communities, but opponents appear powerless to stop the process because of the economic development and profits it generates. .........

I represent Lakewood (where I live), Cleveland (what I advocate) and Berea/Bainbridge/Kent/Highland Heights (where my memories take me back to places I've lived). But I also have soft spots for Youngstown (I have family there and memories of what it was like before the bottom fell out), Toronto (what I want Cleveland to be), and the hilly rural areas southeast of Canton and southeast of Erie Pa (where I often take drives to clear my mind). I know, too complicated....

^ I don't like the sound of that....

I used to live about a mile from the Geauga Lake station, and rode my bicycle or walked there quite often. I even scoured the grounds with a metal detector I got for Christmas in 1979, but all I came up with was a rusted old lock. My family moved out to that area a little more than a year after the commuter train stopped running in January 1977, and some parents of friends of mine used to take the train to work every morning from the Geauga Lake station. One of my friends even rode the commuter train with his family downtown for a fun trip. I guess I'd heard the station was to be demolished, or was going to be, I can't remember which. But I'm sorry to hear it's gone. There were various plans over the years to reuse it. Even my mother mused about opening a dollhouse/hobby store in there, but it was probably just a side-comment sort of thing.

A well done site.

^ I agree. When a friend of mine and I were walking on Connecticut Avenue at M Street in D.C., he and I marveled at the neighborhood. It's a mix of 10-story office buildings and, away from Connecticut Avenue, lots of brownstones and, of course, tons of pedestrians at 9 p.m. on a weeknight. He remarked "I wished we had something like this area in Cleveland." My response was that if you took Key Tower (it was brand-new at the time), sliced it up into six 10-story buildings, you would have something like this. In fact, I think many American downtowns would be more vibrant if we didn't have so many skyscrapers, and instead spread them among numerous 6- to 15-story buildings on all those ugly and lifeless surface parking lots. That's still excellent density. Of course, we'd need the transit to support that, like D.C. has below Connecticut Ave. Instead, we have all these parking garages beneath or next to skyscrapers that allow the suburban commuters to avoid ever having to step out on a sidewalk. Downtown Cleveland... Downtown Dublin Ireland (both shots below)...

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,16781,1695893,00.html Passengers abandon northern flights for Virgin's high-speed west coast tilting Pendolinos · Branson firm sparks row with ticket giveaway · Airlines attack advertising claims over punctuality Andrew Clark, transport correspondent Friday January 27, 2006 The Guardian A new age of the train has dawned on one of Britain's key transport battlegrounds, according to figures showing that the recently modernised west coast mainline is causing huge damage to airlines flying between London and Manchester. BMI, British Airways, Eastern Airways and VLM have all seen their passenger numbers slump on the lucrative artery since a £7bn upgrade cut 35 minutes from journey times on the intercity rail line, triggering questions about the future of commercial flights on the route. Since September 2004, Virgin Trains' tilting Pendolinos have been able to cover the 184 miles in two hours six minutes, at an average speed of 88mph. In the 13 months since the change, Virgin's market share has surged from 40% to 60%, a remarkable revival which will go some way towards vindicating the government's decision to pump public funds into the long-running and troublesome upgrade of the railway line. To celebrate taking the lead over aviation, Virgin Trains said this week it intended to hand out 10,000 complimentary first-class tickets, typically worth £311 apiece, to any air passengers holding a used London-to-Manchester boarding pass. Its aggressive tactics have provoked fury among the airlines. A British Airways spokesman asked: "Is it right that a rail operator which receives £90m of taxpayers' money should be giving away £3m?" BA has also objected to advertisements claiming that Virgin's trains are 13% more punctual than flights. BA said the comparison was on a carefully chosen nine-month period between February and October last year. The period did not include autumn and winter, when rail services are frequently hampered by leaves on the line, high winds and snow. A breakdown by the Civil Aviation Authority suggested that Britain's second-largest full-service airline, BMI, was suffering some of the worst damage at Virgin's hands, with a 26% collapse in passengers between Heathrow and Manchester between September 2004 and the most recent month for which data was available, October 2005. BMI needs the route as a feeder for its transatlantic services from Manchester airport and its European network from Heathrow. The airline has responded by offering one-way fares from £25 and by frequently replacing its 195-passenger Airbus A321s on the route with smaller A320s and A319s, which carry 156 and 132 people respectively. A BMI spokesman said: "We can't deny passenger numbers are down - we're matching that by reducing capacity." He added that the fall was from an unusual high point for the airline, during huge disruption to trains by work on the railway line. "There was a very inflated peak of passengers who came over to the airlines when the west coast line was suffering badly. Now that work's finished, a lot of people are naturally drifting back to the trains," he said. British Airways, which carries far more transfer passengers than BMI, has experienced more modest falls of 2% on its Heathrow flights and 5% on Gatwick services. A BA spokesman said: "We're still very committed to the route and we'll be fighting tooth and nail to keep it." Smaller operators such as Jet2, Eastern Airways and VLM experienced drops of varying degrees depending on their catchment areas: Eastern Airways, which flies from Stansted, maintained it had held up well because most of its customers were travelling to or from Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. Transport experts said the picture was familiar, as flights only tended to be commercially viable on journeys taking at least three hours on the ground. Eurostar's accelerated services between London, Paris and Brussels have prompted a similar migration from air to rail. Other continental routes, including Paris to Brussels, have been virtually abandoned by airlines unable to compete with high-speed trains. Environmentalists applauded the shift. Richard Dyer, aviation campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "This will mean a major reduction in emissions per passenger. Rail passengers account for an eighth of the carbon dioxide emissions of airline passengers per kilometre." Although Virgin's fastest timetabled service takes two hours six minutes, many trains still make frequent stops and take considerably longer. All is not lost for the airlines, as passengers have given the train service only qualified approval. The railways' National Passenger Survey, published this week, showed that 80% of travellers were satisfied with Virgin's punctuality and 83% were happy with the speed of their journeys. However, only 53% were happy with the toilets and just 49% were content with the way Sir Richard Branson's rail firm dealt with delays. ######

This is a very positive development for helping to rein in urban sprawl. Combined with other recent actions, these should prove to be even more powerful influences, in total: > the merging of the land conservancy districts and their plans for expanding land acquisitions around the edges of the metro area; > Cleveland's Joint Economic Development District's in partnership with outer areas for requiring the sharing of tax dollars in exchange for extending city water lines to new development sites; > the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency's insistence on focusing most of the road funding it controls into Cuyahoga County (yes, even NOACA!); > local, state and federal incentives to draw private developers into the city, which locks up private lending dollars that otherwise might have been spent in outer areas. As long as the state doesn't stick its nose in and screw things up to support its rural bias, these things should help restrain the temptation for developers to go for the "easy money" at the urban fringe and do what's best for the metro area. That is, make developments at the fringe reflect their true costs to the metro area. And, further, revitalize what we've already built and invested in, rather than spread the region's stagnant population and purchasing power ever thinner over duplicative, tax-supported infrastructure. A lot more needs to be done, but these are very positive steps!

Keep thinking. You need the practice. If you're a city safety worker have no other choice but to take that job, then it violates liberty. Show me how that applies here. Furthermore, the safety workers have unions, which give them more power than other voters to influence who their bosses are. Getting the endorsement of the International Association of Fire Fighters or the Fraternal Order of Police is worth a lot to other voters. How many other workers in the world get that much power to choose their bosses? But with the state government's heavy-handed rewriting of voter-approved city charters, why should a locally elected official care as much what safety worker union says at election time anymore? Their political power has been weakened. So much for liberty. Oh boy, here we go with the partisanship again! Political parties -- mankind's greatest contribution to group-think (an oxymoron), laziness, and normalizing prejudgment of an individual's beliefs. Check the voting record on SB82. Democrats and Republicans voted to weaken residency laws, and they voted against the bill, too. Judge a human being one at a time. It may take longer, but you'll find the results are much more satisfying.