Hi everyone, I'm doing research for an opera I'm writing and need to find information on a lost neighborhood known as the "Roaring Third Precinct." From what I've been able to find thus far, this was roughly the area of Cleveland bordered on the east by E. 55th, on the west by E. 9th, to the north by Prospect, and to the south by Woodland. The neighborhood was notorious as a red-light district in the early 20th century. It was demolished to make way for I-90, Cleveland State,Tri-C Metro, and St. Vincent Charity Hospital. Today a large part of the former neighborhood is known as Central.

 

If anyone has any photos of this area before 1950 (particularly the 1930s), I would be extremely grateful for the help.

 

Thank you!

That area would also be generally regarded as Big Italy. My Dad used to work at Stouffer's headquarters right at the corner of that area @ E. 55th and Woodland. That whole area was regarded as as tenderloin/ghetto area and photos are few and far in between, but I think I can round up a couple.

A large part of that area would also be generally regarded as Big Italy. My Dad used to work at Stouffer's headquarters right at the corner of that area @ E. 55th and Woodland. That whole area was regarded as as tenderloin/ghetto area and photos are few and far in between, but I think I can round up a couple.

The "Roaring Third" nickname dates from the period when that was Cleveland's black neighborhood. Police protection was basically nil.

Babygonzo, welcome to the forum - I might suggest doing some research at both clevelandmemory.org and if you are able to go to the Main library downtown, check their photo collection - Stokes building, 4th floor.

The Western Reserve Historical Society also has a lot of images you can search through.  I don't know what they have online, but you can use their library, though I seem to remember paying a small fee.

         

Cleveland then and now: Heights Arts show pairs images of same places decades apart

 

http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf/2015/04/cleveland_then_and_now_heights.html#incart_gallery

^^That's an awesome shot of the old Otto Moser's.  Wish that place had never moved to PHS.

Cleveland then and now: Heights Arts show pairs images of same places decades apart

 

http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf/2015/04/cleveland_then_and_now_heights.html#incart_gallery

 

What year was this pedestrian bridge eliminated?

 

 

I still want my Cleveland-Prague pedestrian Charles Bridge built....

 

Hi everyone, I'm doing research for an opera I'm writing and need to find information on a lost neighborhood known as the "Roaring Third Precinct." From what I've been able to find thus far, this was roughly the area of Cleveland bordered on the east by E. 55th, on the west by E. 9th, to the north by Prospect, and to the south by Woodland. The neighborhood was notorious as a red-light district in the early 20th century. It was demolished to make way for I-90, Cleveland State,Tri-C Metro, and St. Vincent Charity Hospital. Today a large part of the former neighborhood is known as Central.

 

If anyone has any photos of this area before 1950 (particularly the 1930s), I would be extremely grateful for the help.

 

Thank you!

 

Hi Babygonzo, Let me suggest some books to read that will give you information on the Roaring Third. One is Corn Sugar and Blood, the Rise and Fall of The Cleveland Mafia by Rick Porrello. Another is Eliot Ness, Rise and Fall of an American Hero. See if you can also find a copy of the PBS production "The Fourteenth Victim." Basically you're looking for information on how this neighborhood rose to be such a din of crime, and how after Eliot Ness arrived from Chicago to lead the Cleveland Safety Department, one of his early priorities was to target the Roaring Third district, including the pervasive police corruption that occurred there. Look for any Google books about that era, including by writers like Alan May.

 

The short version is that the Roaring Third goes back into the 19th century when Mediterranean immigrants from Sicily, Italy and Greece were pouring into the area. They established legitimate businesses primarily dealing in wholesale foods, produce, retail grocers and food importing owing to the presence of the nearby Ohio Canal, Central Market which dated to the 1840s and later the Sheriff Street Market and then the Northern Ohio Food Terminal. Before World War I, the area was referred to as Big Italy and the newer neighborhood of masons and craftsmen building monuments for the city's elite in Lakeview Cemetery above Murray Hill was called Little Italy. But as with any immigrant group, there are criminal elements within them. This included the Sicilian Black Hand which later evolved into the Mafia during Prohibition in the 1920s. In the 1910s and 20s, gambling dens, brothels and gin mills became more prevalent in Big Italy as did violence led by the Black Hand and its protection rackets and corrupt police officers who served as muscle for mob bosses. The law-abiding immigrants from Mediterranean nations moved uphill to East 110th and Woodland (which was called "the Bloody Corner" by the end of the 1920s!). Filling in behind them was the first wave of southern blacks starting in World War I. Central was the city's first black neighborhood and, like Harlem, was run by the Mafia. It was home to ever more brothels, gambling dens, cheat spots, speakeasies, numbers rackets, jazz clubs (that my pot-smoking aunt from Shaker Heights visited in the 1930s!) and more. It was a wild neighborhood that stretched from Huron Road at the edge of downtown east along Broadway, Woodland, Scovill (which had such a bad reputation decades ago it was renamed Community College Ave), Central and Cedar avenues to East 55th Street. The southern edge was basically Kingsbury Run which hosted shantytowns during the Great Depression. In pursuit of the Torso Murderer who butchered 12 or 13 victims in the late-1930s, Eliot Ness burned the Kingsbury Run shantytowns to the ground -- sort of a precursor to 1950s urban renewal!

 

Just found this wonderful account, from: http://www.clevelandmemory.org/italians/Partiii.html

 

Big Italy and Hiram House

 

Once the Italian immigrant had arrived in Cleveland two problems were given immediate consideration, where to live and how to earn a living. The concept of the ethnic neighborhood seemed to solve both concerns, for each ethnic settlement in Cleveland provided in varying degrees the security needed for adjustment and survival in the city. The first Italian community was commonly known as Big Italy and was located along Woodland Avenue from Ontario and Orange Avenues to East 40th Street. At the turn of the century this section was populated by about 93% Sicilians and was the center of the city's produce markets. It was in this locality that Frank Catalano and G.V. Vittorio began their enterprises, Catalano at 839 Woodland and Vittorio at 746 Woodland.

 

Originally the community was located in the downtown section which was then known as the "Haymarket" section but later moved eastward along Woodland Avenue from East 22nd to East 40th Street. Today Galucci's and Bonafini's Italian importing houses are the solitary remnants of this original Italian settlement. St. Maron's Church at 1245 Carnegie Avenue now serves Cleveland's Lebanese Americans but in 1904 was known as St. Anthony of Padua Church, the first Italian Catholic Church in Cleveland. It was the religious landmark of Cleveland's original Italian settlement.

 

Of the section known as "Big Italy" little is known except for scattered information surviving from the Hiram House Settlement. Originally this area along Woodland and Orange Avenues had the center of Cleveland's Jewish population. Hiram House, located at 2723 Orange Avenue, was an attempt to assist the immigrant with various social services, language classes, vocational training and recreational activities. In the early 1900's the area surrounding Hiram House was one of moral and social decay. A 1909 Visitor's Report from Hiram House indicated that "saloons are frequent here, some being the lounging places of the lowest type of men and women."15 Characters such as "Frog Island Kate," "Babe Downs," and "Old Mother Witch" gave the neighborhood an unsavory reputation.

 

I'll scan some pictures, but this is one of the most well known photos from the Roaring Third showing the legitimate businesses of the area at Broadway and Orange avenues in 1930 (the photographer is roughly where the Inner Belt is today, with Progressive Field on the right a couple blocks up):

 

 

This neighborhood got its start thanks to the proximity to the Ohio Canal and Central Market which began as a reputable, clean city-owned market house in the 1840s to reduce the disease and corruption of privately run market houses. As sailors and dockworkers on the Ohio Canal finished work, they came uphill on Eagle Avenue to the Haymarket District and its brothels and other vice-dens starting in the 1850s. This was the Woodland-Eagle neighborhood which was thriving in the 1870s:

 

 

A few decades later in 1915, the Central Market (the low-level building surrounded by streets on all sides -- Ontario, Bolivar, Sheriff Street and Eagle) was a business incubator for immigrants from Mediterranean nations like Sicily, Italy and Greece to start wholesale and retail grocery businesses. A former Greek co-worker of mine at Sun Newspapers said his grandfather recalled this neighborhood fondly despite that it was becoming rough and gritty, as you always met someone you knew on the streets and you were never a more than a block from hearing a flute, violin or mandolin coming from inside one of the buildings or if the weather was nice, from a balcony:

 

 

This is the view from the new Terminal Tower in the late 1920s, looking southeast into the Roaring Third, or Central Neighborhood to the left half of the picture. In the foreground is the original Central Market. To the left is the Sheriff Street Market (has a long "trainshed"-like structure connecting two identical 7-story buildings with four turrets atop each-- the northern two-thirds of this building caught fire in the mid-1930s), and to the left of it is the Sheriff Street Cold Storage (you'll soon see some 1980s-era pictures). The southern 7-story build of the Sheriff Street Market (which became the Central Market after the old Central Market was closed in the 1940s) and the Sheriff Street Cold Storage survived to about 1990. In the distance is the spire of one of the largest and oldest churches in Cleveland, St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church & Friary built in 1873 (more later):

 

 

From 1920 until Prohibition was repealed in 1933, gangsters seeking control of the bootleg liquor rackets (including ingredients like corn sugar for making booze) brought violence to the streets of US cities. One of Cleveland's largest mob families in the 1920s and 30s was the Porrellos who controlled much of the corn sugar market. Their rivals were the Lonardos and the new Mayfield Road mob run by the Milano brothers. Two of the seven Porrello brothers had already been killed by late February 1932 when assassins raided Todaro's smoke shop at East 110th and Woodland and blasted with shotguns two more of the Porrello brothers, Raymond and Rosario, along with one of their bodyguards. One hearse for each of the three victims of gangland violence awaited outside St. Anthony Church, 1245 Carnegie Ave. (next to today's Alladin's baking):

 

 

We're at a store "Cut Rate Drugs" at 2153 East 55th. The sign on the store says it's closed but only the Feb. 10, 1934 newspaper article that went with this photo says why -- because it was raided as an illegal gambling joint. Often times, these raids were just for show as police were often "on-the-take" back then. There were lots of gambling dens in the city back then, and especially in the Roaring Third before Eliot Ness was hired as Cleveland Safety Director:

 

 

Another cut-rate drug store, this time in a market building having the address 5412 Woodland Avenue, as seen in 1940. At the right is a Woolworth's. There's a mix of people waiting for a streetcar in a safety island on Woodland Avenue:

 

 

In the 1940s, this was the east end of Central. We're on Woodland (probably in the building shown above!), looking east to East 55th where Kinsman angles off to the right. There was a movie theater across the street, shops and residential hotels. Every building here except the gas station is gone:

 

 

From the Cleveland Press in 1957, showing how public housing was leveling everything from the old neighborhood. Back then, this was still considered progress:

 

 

And if you didn't level city neighborhoods with public housing, you leveled them with highways, which county Engineer Albert Porter did to great effect in the Central neighborhood in the 1950s (this image is also in 1957). Of course, this didn't address the problems of poverty, blight, hopelessness and crime. It merely pushed them into the next neighborhoods over, like Hough, Buckeye and Glenville. BTW, notice St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church toward the bottom of the photo (seen and referenced earlier -- and we'll see it again) at East 23rd and Woodland, facing the gash that was becoming the Willow Freeway/I-77:

 

 

The Northern Ohio Food Terminal in the foreground demolished large sections of the Central neighborhood in the 1920s and was later razed for the Main Post Office which opened in 1982. The Central Interchange is beyond. This scene is from the early 1960s:

 

 

The "new" Central Market was new as of the 1940s, but signs have a habit of surviving. The old Sheriff Street Market became the New Central Market when the 1840s-era Central Market got too run down and was considered a traffic hazard for all the new cars pouring into the downtown area. The Sheriff Cold Storage building also still stood when this picture was taken in 1987. But both only had a couple more years to live as they were razed for the Gateway sports complex:

 

 

Before county voters OK'd the sin tax in 1989 for Gateway, properties were being acquired for the Central Market Domed Stadium for football and baseball. The reddish-orange sign on the left side of the old Sheriff Street Market/New Central Market shows that this property was acquired for the domed stadium. This photo is from 1987 when I was a junior at Kent State and watching Bernie Kosar lead the Browns to their second consecutive AFC Championship vs. the Denver Broncos (ending in The Fumble):

 

 

This was the Sheriff Cold Storage, already acquired for the domed stadium. And there will still mob-owned and/or protected businesses in this area in 1987, including an adult bookstore and strip club that lasted to the 21st century.

 

 

Perhaps the saddest victim of the decline of the Roaring Third was its most beautiful and a rare symbol of goodness in the neighborhood: St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church & Friary. This was perhaps the city's largest church when built in 1873 at Woodland and East 23rd Street. It was certainly one of its most beautiful. This gothic beauty was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as its neighborhood was demolished by interstates and its congregation was urban-renewed out of existence. The church was closed and deconsecrated in 1986, leaving its future uncertain. That future was tragically resolved when it caught fire in February 1993. Its salvageable items found new homes in other area churches and the rest was demolished amid a community outcry that I remember well. Here, it stood in 1973 on its 100th birthday as the lone survivor of the neighborhood that disappeared around it in the prior decades:

Added several more pics and a wonderful brief from the Cleveland Memory Project about the neighborhood. The picture I added at the end was the most painful addition.

Much thanks for the in depth write up KJP.  I had some family who lived in Big Italy when they first immigrated to Cleveland -- they shared similar found memories.  It completely blows my mind the thinking/series of events that occurred during these different decades.

Cleveland then and now: Heights Arts show pairs images of same places decades apart

 

http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf/2015/04/cleveland_then_and_now_heights.html#incart_gallery

 

What year was this pedestrian bridge eliminated?

 

 

I still want my Cleveland-Prague pedestrian Charles Bridge built....

 

 

 

ha if only the winter weather was benign like that! how about a habitrail tube?

Great photo essay KJP - only one nit-pick: St Anthony church at 1245 Carnegie merged with the St Bridget congregation at 2508 East 22nd in 1938, and the buildings on Carnegie were transferred to St. Maron (Maronite) church to serve the Syrian and Lebanese Eastern Rite Catholic community in 1939.  The building is still standing.

 

(source: People of Faith: Parishes and Religious Communities of the Diocese of Cleveland, Kaczynski, 1998, p. 403)

 

http://www.saintmaron-clev.org/history/history-of-st-marons-church-in-cleveland/

 

 

You can see they expanded the original footprint on each side in a remodeling in the late 90's (same time as they built the parking garage with all the saint statues).

For some reason I have no memory of the church still standing. But I definitely remember the parking garage with the statues! I guess I didn't even bother looking for it when I read that the church had merged with St. Bridget into the St. Maron congregation. I figured the church had been demolished -- especially since I didn't remember it still standing. Thanks for the correction. I'm glad something of the old neighborhood survived!

No problem - the St Maron congregation also has a chapel and offices in Independence now (7800 Brookside Road) but Sunday services are still downtown...

 

https://goo.gl/maps/YQjeF

Vintage Postcards of Public Square:

 

http://photos.cleveland.com/4501/gallery/postcards_from_public_square/index.html#/0

Before East 4th, there was Short Vincent...

 

Short Vincent, 1954 (Image: Cleveland Memory Project) http://t.co/yMkXwTSxSw @DowntownCLE http://t.co/ZRUkKjVVia

I really appreciate all of your photos and descriptions of historical Cleveland, KJP. The photo of the Central Market from the Terminal Tower in the 20s is one of the best I've seen on this site.  It's mind boggling to see how much of the city was just completely wiped out for highways and urban renewal. It's fascinating to think of the meteoric rise that Cleveland experienced around the turn of the century.  Your post about the 70s provided a perspective of the opposite end of the spectrum- the collapse and disfunction of the city following the extraordinary period of growth and industrialization.  What an interesting city. 

I really appreciate all of your photos and descriptions of historical Cleveland, KJP. The photo of the Central Market from the Terminal Tower in the 20s is one of the best I've seen on this site.  It's mind boggling to see how much of the city was just completely wiped out for highways and urban renewal. It's fascinating to think of the meteoric rise that Cleveland experienced around the turn of the century.  Your post about the 70s provided a perspective of the opposite end of the spectrum- the collapse and disfunction of the city following the extraordinary period of growth and industrialization.  What an interesting city.

 

You could replace "Cleveland" with "Cincinnati" here and it would be 100% as true.  Not taking a shot or anything here - just sayin'.

This thread is also a pretty good example of the evolution of photography.  Compare even the 1987 pictures to the one of the Karluvmost.

Stumbled across this interesting comparison (and note the location of the potential design precedent).....

 

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/explore/tudors/religion/

The stark ruins of Gisborough Priory, Cleveland, suppressed in 1540:

 

The Erie Street Cemetery is Cleveland's oldest existing cemetery. When the land was first acquired by the Village of Cleaveland in 1826, it was considered far enough from the center of population that it wouldn't get in the way of new construction.

I really appreciate all of your photos and descriptions of historical Cleveland, KJP. The photo of the Central Market from the Terminal Tower in the 20s is one of the best I've seen on this site.  It's mind boggling to see how much of the city was just completely wiped out for highways and urban renewal. It's fascinating to think of the meteoric rise that Cleveland experienced around the turn of the century.  Your post about the 70s provided a perspective of the opposite end of the spectrum- the collapse and disfunction of the city following the extraordinary period of growth and industrialization.  What an interesting city.

 

You could replace "Cleveland" with "Cincinnati" here and it would be 100% as true.  Not taking a shot or anything here - just sayin'.

 

Not true at all. Cincinnati was much more of a slower growth city than Cleveland, and also experienced a slower decline. Just look at the populations of the two cities over time (cleve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland) (Cincy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati). Cleveland has much bigger periods of explosive growth and for much longer than Cincinnati.  Cle was growing by more than 40% through the 1920s.  Cincinnati, by contrast, had much slower and earlier growth, mostly hovering between 10-20% during the same period where Cle was growing by leaps and bounds.  Also, the declines have played out similarly.  Cleveland has seen faster and larger population loss, topping out at a 24% decline in the 80s. Cincinnati's biggest decade of population loss was also the 80s, but it 'only' lost 14%, with rates never really exceeding 10% any decade following.  Cle has been much more of a roller coaster than the slow burn of Cincy.  Totally different development histories.

^ It's a pretty similar story with highways wiping out neighborhoods and urban renewal though.

^ It's a pretty similar story with highways wiping out neighborhoods and urban renewal though.

 

Yeah that's the meat of what I was referencing.  We may mourn the loss of the the roaring third but imho the loss of the Cincy's West End neighborhood and all the rest of what was demoed to make for their highway system was much more egregious.  While the I-90 interchange in Cleve took out some well developed commercial areas, the neighborhoods were overall quite impoverished and the housing stock reflected that.  From the pictures I've seen, much of the neighborhoods that were removed were somewhat ramshackle wood houses while Cincy lost blocks of Italianate walk ups (thankfully they still have a huge volume of stuff that survived).

 

Also, I doubt urban Cincy was all that more "functional" in the 70s and 80s.  During that time, much of the urban area, including OTR was probably as dysfunctional as they come - we have people like Buddy Gray to thank for that.  By no means was this unique to Cincy or Cleveland as most established American cities at this point were in some sort of free-fall and racked with nearly insurmountable social problems.  All of this came almost immediately after the pre-war stability and growth Cincy and Cleveland shared, albeit peaking about 40 years apart.  I always viewed the 2 cities as some kind of kindred spirits, with Cincy being the slightly older, more southern cousin who pronounces her o's kinda weird.

Oh no doubt both cities suffered from disastrous urban renewal and highway development.  The cities do share similar arcs in terms of growth --> decline --> contemporary rebirth, but I think Cleveland has just a more amplified experience.  I mean, the city peaked near a million people at one point! Cincinnati never approached population numbers like that.  We largely did not receive the second wave of immigrants that led to the explosion of Cleveland in the early 1900s.  Cincinnati also has pretty consistently had a diversified economy, with no one sector growing large enough to trigger such rapid population growth as the industry did in Cleveland.  It also meant that when the carpet was pulled out from under urban America and the industrial jobs went away, Cincinnati didn't fall quite as hard as the Cleveland's, Pittsburgh's, and Detroit's of the world. Remember, the 70s was the Big Red Machine, and I have not heard accounts of the city being a terrible place at this time, but I don't know really. My parents aren't native Cincinnatians, and the people I know who were old enough to remember the 70s and 80s mostly grew up in Hyde Park, which has always been pretty stable and affluent- not exactly representative of the rest of the city.

 

Regardless, I find the history of Cleveland to be really interesting, and I'm excited to spend some time up there this summer. 

Regardless, I find the history of Cleveland to be really interesting, and I'm excited to spend some time up there this summer. 

 

If you'd like a tour, let me know! Much of its history can be seen along the rail and BRT routes. ;)

Hat tip to the great Twitter follow "This was Cleveland", here is a really nifty recount, with lots of pics, of the aftermath in Cleveland of Lincoln's assassination:

 

http://blog.fords.org/2014/08/22/cleveland-lincoln-assassination/

 

The best part: an angry mob heard a prominent architect and Democrat celebrate Lincoln's death, so they immediately chiseled his name off of the credit plaque on the outside of the county courthouse then in service (and also assaulted him):

 

Vintage Cleveland banks: Inside the ornate temples of commerce that made downtown rich (photos)

 

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/05/vintage_cleveland_banks_inside.html#incart_river

Hessler Street Fair: #Cleveland #hippie fest (vintage photos) @clevelanddotcom @inthecircle

http://t.co/FkLcthuj36 http://t.co/tW3bo4vHN0

Intriguing image of Terminal Tower under construction ca. 1929. #cleveland #thiswascle #thisiscle #ohio #theland #cle http://t.co/B5wos5FzOS

 

Hessler Street Fair: #Cleveland #hippie fest (vintage photos) @clevelanddotcom @inthecircle

http://t.co/FkLcthuj36 http://t.co/tW3bo4vHN0

 

The thing I noticed was everything was pre-1975 or post 2010.

Ok, I'm a pretty darn good fanatical Cleveland historical fan and I cannot figure out what the structure just to the left of the Terminal structure is - some type of U shaped building that is under construction?  I don't show any record of anything like this.  Can anyone help me under stand what this is?  Looking at historical and current photos, nothing like this seems to have ever existed here...

Isn't that just this building?

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.497873,-81.692161,3a,75y,186.87h,130.11t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sMLGqoQGoym-QdR2phP8XLQ!2e0!6m1!

Ok, I'm a pretty darn good fanatical Cleveland historical fan and I cannot figure out what the structure just to the left of the Terminal structure is - some type of U shaped building that is under construction?  I don't show any record of anything like this.  Can anyone help me under stand what this is?  Looking at historical and current photos, nothing like this seems to have ever existed here...

 

Wait, are you serious? That's the Landmark Office Towers. Still standing today...

In all fairness, there's a *lot* going on in that photo - I had no idea there was a bridge from Scranton Road over to where Tower City now stands, and what's going on with the bridge/street stuff between Huron and Prospect?

Sorry, that came off way more snarky than it should have.

 

The picture really gives you a good sense of the scale of the CUT footprint in relation to the rest of downtown. And it's neat to seat the site pre-Higbee Building

wow.  Sorry, that is Landmark Office Towers.  I'm embarrassed as a historian that I could not figure this one out.  The perspective is very strange to me...

wow.  Sorry, that is Landmark Office Towers.  I'm embarrassed as a historian that I could not figure this one out.  The perspective is very strange to me...

 

The fact that the Higbee building isn't even started yet threw me off for a moment too.

:cry: :cry: :cry: Ugh, it would be great to have that density back in the WHD.

In all fairness, there's a *lot* going on in that photo - I had no idea there was a bridge from Scranton Road over to where Tower City now stands, and what's going on with the bridge/street stuff between Huron and Prospect?

 

Second question first -- that bridge/street stuff between Huron and Prospect is a temporary roadway as Ontario Street and some 50 feet of earth below it was scooped out for the electric interurban railway approach tracks to Cleveland Union Terminal. In 1922 when CUT construction started, there were numerous electric interurban railways coming into Cleveland and the Van Swerigen brothers wanted all of them (and the steam railroads) to come into their new station. In 1930 when CUT opened, only three electric railways remained and only one would enter CUT -- the Vans' former Cleveland & Youngstown Railway which was renamed the Cleveland Interurban Railway in 1920 and was acquired by the City of Shaker Heights in 1942 which renamed it the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit. The electrical railway tracks below Ontario were parallel to the more numerous steam railroad tracks which were also electrically powered from Linndale through CUT to Collinwood but weren't below Ontario.

 

Here's a better, closer view of the temporary roadway around the construction below Ontario Street in 1928:

 

 

 

The bridge from Scranton/Eagle is West 3rd Street. Prior to the Cleveland Union Terminal complex demolishing everything SW of Public Square and scooping out some 50 feet of earth, West 3rd climbed up the hill, parallel to Ontario Street, and up to West Superior. This portion of West 3rd, formerly Seneca Street, along with Champlain Avenue, Long Street, Howe Street, Michigan Street and part of First Street all disappeared as did the buildings that lined them from the construction of Cleveland Union Terminal that began in 1922:

 

See my illustrated posting at:

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,766.msg595314.html#msg595314

 

Here's a circa 1900 street map (sorry for the low resolution -- I couldn't find a better one and tried to enhance it) before the construction of Cleveland Union Terminal and the late-1940s widening of the Cuyahoga River, especially at Collision Bend between the old West 3rd Street bridge and Eagle Avenue Ramp to Ontario. I believe West 3rd bridge was removed as part of the river's widening....

 

 

 

The West 3rd (Seneca) Street bridge below Collision Bend (looking east, Canal Road at left)....

 

 

 

Ditto, looking west with Canal Road in foreground and at right....

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

Here's an 1860 property map of that same general area....

 

Enthralling image of East 4th Street ca. 1910s. #cle #cleveland #thisiscle #thiswascle #theland #ohio #cwru http://t.co/K7FsFW3WU9

KJP I'm looking at the first picture and last picture (map) in your post...is that really the central market sitting in the middle of the intersection??  I assumed that building in the first pic was some kind of trolley/transit hub until I saw the map at the end.  It just seems odd to have the market sitting in the middle of a 5 way intersection.  I knew there was a central market, but for whatever reason that's not what I pictured.  If that's the market that is a piece of Cleveland history I didn't know, and I can't picture how that worked.

KJP I'm looking at the first picture and last picture (map) in your post...is that really the central market sitting in the middle of the intersection??  I assumed that building in the first pic was some kind of trolley/transit hub until I saw the map at the end.  It just seems odd to have the market sitting in the middle of a 5 way intersection.  I knew there was a central market, but for whatever reason that's not what I pictured.  If that's the market that is a piece of Cleveland history I didn't know, and I can't picture how that worked.

 

Yes, it is. Picture how it worked in the pedestrian and horse-cart/carriage city, which is what is was when built in the 1840s. This was also before Cleveland exploded with population growth after the Civil War. The city built it there because it was just uphill from the new Ohio & Erie Canal as a clean, accessible and reputable market house to avoid unhealthy conditions and unscrupulous privateers at smaller markets scattered throughout the city. Diseases like cholera were a huge threat to urban populations back then. Many of those were from the backs of wagons parked in the streets, back when streets were as much for pedestrians as they were for vehicles. A known open-air market district at the confluence of streets like British, French, Leonard, etc. on the Columbus Road peninsula in the Flats.

 

Back then, there were no public sector health and food inspectors as government had no statutory mandate or resources for the inspection and prosecution of unscrupulous privateers. Instead, the way the public sector regulated the private sector back then was to compete with it via subsidized competition. So the city created a superior, modern venue to compete with the private markets by offering clean settings, clean water, working plumbing, weather-protected shelter for product-browsing customers etc. Vendors could apply to the city for a space to display and sell their goods and wares. Only those who met the city's standards for cleanliness and quality food products could win and retain vendors licenses at the market. So food customers soon knew where to go get quality meats, produce, dairy products and other perishables.

 

It was so successful that the Haymarket District grew up around the Central Market and was THE district to go to for wholesale and retail buyers of fresh foods. Getting across the Cuyahoga Valley was difficult back then since there were no high-level bridges so the West Side Market was soon formed (across West 25th from the current one). The Sheriff Street Market (Sheriff Street became East 4th) was a much larger, privately owned market house that followed in the footsteps of the Central Market. But half of it burned down in the 1930s.

 

Ironically, by the 1940s, conditions at the 100-year-old Central Market became unsanitary and the city had outgrown the decaying market house. Also car traffic on Ontario Street, Woodland Avenue and East 4th (which continued through to the Central Viaduct -- later replaced by the Lorain-Carnegie Hope Memorial Bridge) got so heavy that it virtually cut off pedestrian access to the island-like Central Market. It was deemed a traffic hazard -- as many pedestrian-oriented settings were deemed in the post-World War II years. The death knell was a fire in 1949. The old market house was demolished, but the Central Market remained. Its vendors were relocated into the remaining structure of the Sheriff Street Market until the 1980s when it, too, was demolished. This time it was razed for the Central Market Domed Stadium, later recast as the Gateway Sports Complex.

 

Read more:

http://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/676#.VWdi7tLBzRY

 

http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=CM

 

See the photos at:

http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cdm/search/field/subjec/searchterm/Central%20Market/mode/exact

 

In 1915:

 

In the 1940s:

 

With the newer, 1890s-built Sheriff Street Market in the background:

 

Sheriff Street Market (the south tower became the 1950-1987 Central Market):

 

The former Central Market site in 1950, giving way to the almighty car:

Wow.  Thank you for that history KJP!!  Those old photos / postcards are awesome. 

Tremendous history and photos... Now, about that KJP book... all this research and information can't just be for we UO shlubs.

Tremendous history and photos... Now, about that KJP book... all this research and information can't just be for we UO shlubs.

 

I require a $50,000 advance. :) Besides I'm already working on a book of family history. See my blog at http://prendergast-rent-war.blogspot.com/

Shame that we don't have that Sheriff St. market anymore that thing would have been great to use nowadays.

It's amazing how old school European some of architecture was, and even moreso how much of it we destroyed without even a world war fought in our cities.