Sherman's post in this section got me started on a response. But it got so involved that it probably requires its own thread........

 

 

Who remembers this? This is the Eagle Avenue lift span and viaduct complex rising over the Stones Levee bridge. Photographed April 25, 1928 by Walsh Construction. Sourced from the Cleveland State University Michael Schwartz Library Special Collections.

 

The Eagle Avenue lift span is abandoned, the viaduct is long gone - demolished in 2005, but the Stones Levee viaduct still stands.

 

Ah, but do you remember what was there before the Eagle Avenue Viaduct, plus its ramp to West 3rd and lift bridge to Scranton Peninsula? It was something very unique.....

 

Let's go way back in time when this area was called the Haymarket District. This was a bustling market district in the 19th century and about halfway into the early 20th century, but it was made so by the construction of the Ohio Canal link to Ohio's farms and the Ohio River. The canal was at the bottom of the hill. At the top of the hill was the Central Market (built 1856), the Sheriff Street Market (built 1891), and many large and small wholesale food and mercantile businesses that comprised this district. The name itself is revealing -- the Haymarket District itself tells of its origins and how important hay was to fuel a horse-powered economy before railroads, streetcars and automobiles. Many Italian and Greek immigrants settled in this area to manage and staff wholesale food businesses where the Northern Ohio Food Terminal would soon be built (where the main post office is today)....

 

 

 

Eagle Avenue at Woodland, looking northeast away from the valley, 1878, an etching by Cleveland artist Otto Bacher. Many more of his works are at the Cleveland Museum of Art, including many 19th century views of Cleveland. It shows a peaceful neighborhood. That may have been the scene at night, but during the day it most certainly was not peaceful....

 

 

 

Of, course there was one little problem with the Haymarket District. How do you get the goods off canal boats in the Cuyahoga Valley to the markets at the top of the steep, 400-foot-long, 65-foot-high hill in the Haymarket District? The steepness of the Factory Street (later the name Eagle Avenue on the east of Ontario was extended to the west side of it) hill was told years later with this tragic story http://www.clevelandmemory.org/ginney/P07.html. Just as sleds would slide down this hill, so would wagons that broke free of their horses and most certainly caused great damage, injuries and possibly worse during their free-fall down the Factory Street hill. Cleveland never had an inclined railway like Pittsburgh, Johnstown or Cincinnati. But it did have an inclined road. This road. And it was built in the middle of Factory Street by a private entrepreneur named Col. Isaac D. Smead who was a patentee and construction engineer. It was a simple design involving a continuously moving rope (like the cable cars that many cities had) but involved a substantial construction project.

 

More than one wagon at a time could be pulled up the hill with a tow rope moving at a speed of 6 mph. The toll for carriages, wagons, barouches, buggies ranged from 10 to 50 cents with the most expensive being for "extraordinary loaded wagons" plus the driver. One person or passenger could be carried for 2 cents, which was pretty expensive considering you could ride across town on a streetcar for near that price.

 

Smead's Rolling Road opened in 1904. This is from an article in an issue of that year's Municipal Journal & Engineer. The article was titled "A boon to Cleveland shippers"....

 

 

 

Looking up the hill from under the Wheeling & Lake Erie RR approach track to its Ontario Street station in the 1910s. The building at top-left appears to be mostly an apartment building, as noted by the laundry hanging out to dry on the balconies facing the soot-belching Flats. On the other side of the building was the smelly Central Market which was often accused of unsanitary conditions. It appears the man standing at the bottom of the rolling road is an employee responsible for hooking wagons onto to the tow rope. His shanty appears at right, below the railroad bridge....

 

 

 

This was the view at the top of Smead's Rolling Road on Factory Street (later Eagle Avenue), with the Central Market behind the photographer....

 

 

 

This view suggests the uphill move via the Rolling Road was the only direction possible, as empty wagons were likely taken down the hill by horse to the docks and wharves along the river and canal (the diagram shown previously notes the bottom as the "entrance"). There were other, less steep routes to/from the Flats, but few were as direct as this....

 

 

 

For orientation, this is a view of the Central Market in 1915, looking north to Public Square. Eagle Avenue crossed in front of the part of the market facing the camera. To the left, off-picture, Eagle became Factory Street and Smead's Rolling Road. The building at left is the apartment building with the laundry hanging out on the balconies out back....

 

 

 

The steepness of the hill is best shown in this picture....

 

 

 

At the top of the hill was the toll both and gate, and a doorway to the towing mechanisms appears on the right side of the rolling road. If it was a steam engine, there is no smoke stack evident. Perhaps it used an electric engine?

 

 

 

Smead's Rolling Road was built too late -- right at the end of an era spanning thousands of years when horses were the dominant mode of transportation. By the 1920s, only a few horse-drawn wagons and carriages were still around -- not enough to maintain the Rolling Road. Trucks could get up the Factory Street (Eagle Avenue) hill under their own power. Smead's Rolling Road was closed down by 1927. It still stood, but not for long....

 

 

 

The Van Sweringen brothers' Cleveland Union Terminal project, to build a grand city-within-a-city on Public Square centered around a 27-track railroad and interurban station, meant the demolition of the rolling road. The CUT project was the largest excavation project in history at that time, moving more dirt than for the Panama Canal. It involved building entirely new, five-track-wide railroad rights of way into the heart of downtown Cleveland. It also involved removing the entire hillside below Ontario Street, including everything built on top that hillside (much of which was considered blight in the 1920s). That included houses, apartment buildings, factories, mercantile businesses as well as the W&LE railroad station, bridges and approach tracks. If built today, the CUT project would have cost nearly $2 billion, and none of it was government funding in the 1920s....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Armour Meats Co. (since merged with Eckrich, but I still remember their hot dogs!) was still getting railroad cars delivered by the Wheeling & Lake Erie, even though the structure and the hillside below it would be removed soon....

 

 

 

By 1928, Smead's Rolling Road was almost completely gone....

 

 

 

Later that same year, much work had been done, including progress on the new, more gently sloping Eagle Avenue viaduct to the Republic Steel mill on Scranton Peninsula and to West Third Street....

 

 

 

Just one year later in 1929 (the year my father was born), the viaduct was finished. Indeed, it was impossible to see where the rolling road or any of its surroundings had stood. They built things fast and they built them to last back then....

 

 

 

Roughly the same view in 1930....

 

 

 

Ground-level views. With so many BIG things around now, suddenly the gradient difference from the Flats to the old Haymarket District doesn't look so imposing....

 

 

 

 

 

Compare this 1952 aerial with the 1860 map earlier in this thread. Notice how properties, buildings, and everything have gotten bigger and bigger -- the result of changing from a pedestrian/horse-based transportation system to one that supports mass movement....

 

 

 

The Eagle Avenue ramp and viaduct in 2002, shortly before it too was demolished. The cost of replacing it was too expensive and there isn't enough money anymore to repair, rebuild or replace all the great things we have built. Mass movement itself may be in danger....

 

 

 

I wonder what Col. Smead would think today?

 

Great thread!

Well KJP, I've researched this area quite a bit, but you were able to come up with some really great photos and knowledge that I had not come across before.  Thanks for this fabulous post.  I really enjoyed reading through your commentary!

That was definitely interesting.

 

I am blown away by the trouble that people went through to move about before the industrial revolution.

 

Well done. Thanks for posting.

 

Thanks! Also note that Col. Smead was from Cincinnati, as was the company who built this: The Cincinnati Rolling Road Company!