Abstract
Robert Wheeler, professor of history at Cleveland State University, discusses the history and importance of Euclid Avenue. He describes the local impact of immigration, the development of Cleveland's Little Italy neighborhood, and moments of conflict between ethnic groups. Wheeler also deliberates on the impact of the Cleveland's medical and cultural institutions in the growth of Cleveland's economy and recent revitalization efforts.
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Interviewee
Wheeler, Robert (interviewee)
Interviewer
Miller, Emily (interviewer); Calder, James (facilitator)
Project
Project Team
Date
7-18-2008
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
58 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Robert Wheeler interview, 18 July 2008" (2008). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 999064.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1006
Transcript
Emily Miller [00:00:02] Today is July 18, 2008. Emily Miller and Jim Calder are here with Dr. Robert Wheeler. Dr. Wheeler, we’d like to start off by just asking you a little bit about your background. Where are you from and how did you come to Cleveland?
Robert Wheeler [00:00:20] I grew up in Maryland and went to school, college, that is, in New Jersey at Rutgers and then a year at William & Mary in Virginia and then my PhD at Brown in Rhode Island, and then I came to Cleveland State because I applied and got a job. And so I’ve been here ever since. I came in ’71, you know, probably before most people were born. So I’ve been here a long time and, and that’s the scoop.
Emily Miller [00:00:54] So what got you interested in Cleveland history, local history?
Robert Wheeler [00:00:58] Mostly because I wanted to actually teach something that was relevant to students. I know that’s not supposed to be right but- So I started doing Hale Farm and Village, the first, that wasn’t open very much, but I used Sturbridge Village as a model and then generated- They had a lot of primary sources they used with elementary school kids and junior high school kids. I got a grant, went off to the Historic Society with a couple of students, got some primary sources of this area, and then started teaching a course called A Town in the Western Reserve based on those primary sources in ’73, ’72–73, and took them down to Hale Farm, dressed them up in the costumes of the people, and sort of forced them to shovel various kinds of animal droppings and other things. And that was the beginning of my career. And theirs. And none of them became farmers, but three couples got married. I don’t know if that was escaping the various things they were doing or whatever, but that’s the scoop.
Emily Miller [00:01:54] And you’ve written a few local history articles. Do you want to list them or tell us about them?
Robert Wheeler [00:02:01] Well, the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History was the first thing I did, pre-1860 essays. And then, then they combined the sort of front descriptive matter into a book called Cleveland; A Concise History. And we sort of updated that a couple times. So that was, I think, first came out separately in ’90 or ’91 or something, and then it had a bicentennial edition in ’96 or something. And actually I’ve just signed a contract to write several essays for a basic history of cities in the United States. These are four vignette kind of things from starting in 1878 through ’99 and then through 1952. Four essays, so, to, I guess, utilize my knowledge of Cleveland to- So at least this thing thinks that Cleveland was at its high point between 1868 and 1952. It doesn’t- There will be no essays on Cleveland after 1952. So. I don’t know what that says about the Euclid Corridor or anything else, but there you have it.
Emily Miller [00:03:19] Well, speaking of Euclid, what makes the Euclid Avenue, what makes it unique in Cleveland?
Robert Wheeler [00:03:26] Well, first of all, the name. It was actually a bunch of, basically a protest movement, which is indicative of the labor movement in Cleveland. I guess the surveyors who came out with Moses Cleaveland a year later basically weren’t getting paid and they went, hey, we need some compensation. So they said, okay, we’ll give you a township. It’ll be away from Cleveland. And so it was called Euclid Township. But the surveyors obviously used Euclidean geometry. And the township, the street that went from the center of Cleveland to that place, was called Euclid Avenue. So that was sort of weird because most places don’t have Greek named sort of, you know, streets. The other thing is it was the eastern side of the hub of the city and as it expanded out, it was residential, especially beyond East Ninth. And then as you then as you- Everyone knows the expansion that took place after 1850 or ‘60 included sort of affluent people who didn’t want to live near the industrial soot-producing kind of stuff of the Flats. And so they got far enough out, starting at probably 40th or 30th, and then as you know, all the way out into the 60s and 70s all along Euclid, and that became Millionaires’ Row. And that sort of still had houses being built on it into the early 20th century, but its heyday was in the late ’70s through probably the mid ’90s. And then as everything in history, it had seen its brighter days and people frankly just started moving further out and so they didn’t want to stay that much. Even Rockefeller, who was on East 40th, I think, and Euclid, moved to Rockefeller Park, which is sort of a combo of East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, and had his nine-hole golf course and his stables and all that kind of stuff. And so he was indicative of that before he eventually went to New York City in 1880. So, you know, it has a proud history of basically, in most cases, self-made people. The people along it were, oh, some of the people who invented or helped proselytize Western Union, you know, people who were big in machine tool industries which supported the Industrial Revolution and the changes here. Cleveland in the late 19th century was the place that had the most patents of any city in the country and maybe in the world, I’m not sure, but certainly in the country. So it was a beehive of activity. And some of those people wanted to sort of live together in what I think to be sort of overdone places, you know, houses. But a lot of them had like, well, running water and the first electricity and just all kinds of wild sort of stuff. Ballrooms on the third floor, just like the Mather Mansion does.
Emily Miller [00:06:40] Speaking of which, could you tell us a little bit about the Mather family, one of the Euclid Avenue affluent families?
Robert Wheeler [00:06:47] Well, yes, I guess. One of the things that the Mather family is- I’m trying to remember. It’s mostly iron ore, maybe. And it was- I think they were, and I’m not really sure of this either, they were involved in Cleveland Cliffs, which is an iron ore manufacturing or mining place that was originally founded in the 1850s using the Mesabi Range in northern Michigan to bring iron ore here to be processed. I think the Mathers were especially big in the shipping of iron-ore deposits. And the thing I think now has been taken over by the Great Lakes Science Center is the William G. Mather name for one of the sort of major people in that period. So they- And that, Cleveland Cliffs still exists as a company. They just bought some smaller steel or iron-ore producing company, just, I don’t know, within the last couple days. So they’re still viable. And the precious price was like $10 billion, so apparently they’re doing well since they have cash to do that. Basically, the Mather family also, I think, is one of the stories that Clevelanders who like to think of New England roots like to talk about because at some point all those Mathers are related to Cotton Mather and Increase Mather and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. I don’t actually know how if they’re directly genealogically linked. My guess is they probably are, but I don’t know. So it’s sort of a continuation of the New England tradition of rich people coming here and finding their strengths in the economy and then having it develop. And so they- I don’t remember which Mather actually built the Mather Mansion, which is, I think was completed in 1901. The trick with the Mather Mansion is that it was- It imported not just the materials for it, but actually the craftsmen, Italian especially, lath workers and sort of people who - the plasterers - who made all the sort of fancy sort of walls and the ceilings and stuff like that. I don’t recall where the wood comes from. But it’s fairly spectacular in terms of that. One of the things that when I first came to Cleveland State was that it had been, after the family gave it up - I don’t know the exact provenance - but AAA had moved into it and had put vinyl tile on the floor and things like that. Then they ultimately moved out. I think they ended up with a place on East 55th near the Shoreway. But Cleveland State took it over at that point. And probably the two most interesting things about that is it created a college that I was involved with called First College, which was housed in the main house of it. And I actually had an office that had a fireplace. And in the early ‘70s, I would bring my St. Bernard in and have her sit, lay down in front of the sort of fireplace and sort of snore loudly, which is basically what she did. And students would come in and out and she wouldn’t actually notice. That was the first thing that was neat. So it was a fun place to have, because it was taking people who generally were working-class folks, students, and putting them in the house of an affluent. I always thought that was a better use for it than it is now, where it’s basically exclusively for other rich people who donate. You’ll probably X this out. In any case, the stables actually that are connected underground to the portion that’s now a parking garage or something like that was actually a- The stables had been converted. First, the Art Department had some sort of, some of their studios there. But in the other part was a bar called Fat Glenn’s, which many people would go to. And the First College people, because all you do is go downstairs, were frequent visitors too. So it had a sort of long and interesting history. And then the university and the League of Women Voters decided to put some money into it. I was on some committee that tried unsuccessfully to get them to not only restore the front of the building, but I argued that it should restore the servants’ quarters because that’s probably where most people who were actually there- They didn’t agree. So I would usually take my students around and go, See, here’s the knotty pine stuff or whatever. That’s the stuff for the servants, and these are the back staircase for the servants. Because there were actually more servants- The busy work and the volume of the house was actually more in the servants’ area than it was in the front piece, which is mostly show in some ways. So.
Emily Miller [00:12:06] Could you explain a little bit more about the interior, like the physical layout? [inaudible]
Robert Wheeler [00:12:10] Well, yeah, when you go in, it has a brilliant entry hall that’s now been restored. We removed the rubber tile from the- AAA put it there. But I guess AAA did a good job in the sense that they preserved the stuff underneath. And then there’s this gorgeous- There are a couple of rooms, including a room that you’re facing when you come in that has a sort of a water fountain and some sort of statuary, I don’t remember exactly, big fireplaces and the whole thing. It’s all wood paneling. And then the ceilings were some sort of stucco or plaster sort of well-done by these Italian craftsmen. But to the left there is this massively wide - and I recall oak, but I could be wrong about the wood - staircase that goes from the first to the second floor. And then there’s an equally significant staircase that goes up to the third floor. This is all in the front of the building. And that third floor is a place where there was a ballroom and it had sort of a little area above it. So this is third floor, but it’s quite a high ceiling. And presumably that’s where they entertained, you know, their friends in sort of balls and various things. And I don’t know if we have specific invitation lists and things from that particular place, but we do from Euclid Avenue, which shows, you know, they had massively coursed meals and, you know, just affluent stuff. And moreover, they were really big on, like, theme parties. So they had costume parties all the time where they’d all dress up like Shakespeare or characters or French, whatever, you know, and so they’d go all out. That is these, you know, rich people who- I don’t know that all of them were from Euclid Avenue, but certainly a healthy portion of them were. And so they would go dancing around there, presumably. So that’s the front of it. And there are some bedrooms in the front and mostly that look over, well, what would be Euclid Avenue. But there is a reflecting pool. The setback is maybe, I don’t know, 100 feet or more. And there’s a pool that comes out, rectangular heading from the house toward Euclid Avenue. And that was always maintained. I assume it is today. But in any case, some of those bedrooms looked out over that. I don’t actually remember the style of it. That is, the front work of it. But it’s certainly Italian-inspired. But I don’t- My guess is- Everyone was always asking me this, is this the last one of the- I think the answer is it’s the last of the Euclid Avenue houses, the only one that’s been preserved over to the present. And that’s because institutions took it over like AAA and CSU that were able to keep it spiffy.
Emily Miller [00:15:06] What happened to the other mansions in general? I mean, when you mentioned the-
Robert Wheeler [00:15:09] It’s simple. Car lots. The Bedford Automile was first in Cleveland from about 30th to 55th. And basically the data suggests that by the time the Mather Mansion is being built and the auto industry is developing, that no one could afford, private people could afford or chose to afford the cost per square foot and the taxes. But businesses who sold cars, maybe 20 or 25 car salespeople all up and down. And it was still there in the ’70s, but it was deteriorating a bit and people were moving out. But I think that the big reason was- I mean, I think the irony was, and everyone said this a hundred times, but that J.D. Rockefeller’s house was torn down and a Sohio station was put there now. Those of you who don’t remember Sohio, it was Standard of Ohio when Standard Oil was split up by the trust busters and is a precursor of BP stations. So this Ohio station that- Standard Oil is what Rockefeller founded. So there was the station sitting there on his property. So in some sense it was consistent.
Emily Miller [00:16:32] Thank you.
Robert Wheeler [00:16:33] I don’t know if that makes sense.
Emily Miller [00:16:36] Do you mind if we switch gears?
Robert Wheeler [00:16:37] No, sure.
Emily Miller [00:16:39] The League of Women Voters you mentioned they were in Mather Mansion for a while or they wanted to serve it. What can you tell us about-
Robert Wheeler [00:16:47] You know, I’m wrong about that. It was a Junior League. I really screwed that up.
Emily Miller [00:16:51] That’s okay.
James Calder [00:16:52] That’s alright. I’ll edit it out.
Robert Wheeler [00:16:54] The Junior League was, was- And they were like, you know, they all had like- They don’t have crusts on their bread. You know, they sort of, you know, they have these little petit fours. Okay.
James Calder [00:17:05] We’ll throw “Junior” in there.
Robert Wheeler [00:17:07] Yeah, Junior.
Emily Miller [00:17:08] Well, I want to ask you about the League of Women Voters. Before they came to the City Club, where. Do you remember where they were located or-
James Calder [00:17:17] And they hit a connection with East Cleveland. East Cleveland was supposedly like really progressive with-
Robert Wheeler [00:17:26] Yeah. East Cleveland was, as I recall, one of the first communities in the area that had women, allowed women to vote in municipal elections. There were a couple others, I don’t remember. But East Cleveland was. So East Cleveland was really a place, if you recall, we talked about this move out Euclid Avenue. Well, East Cleveland is one of the places that people moved to. And especially along Euclid Avenue beyond the Euclid corridor, there are a lot of, or were a lot of affluent houses. And so in some cases, they just kept going. And so the women who went with these families were active and suffragettes for the most part, and convinced, presumably the males and the community too that they should be able to vote, especially on, I think, issues of education, where women are deemed to be more expert, and also on just the fairness of it. So my guess is that- And I don’t know the history of the League of Women Voters here, but my guess is there’s a significant element of active East Cleveland women who sort of formed one of the cores, at least, of the League of Women Voters. And the idea of the League of Women Voters is that they’re nonpartisan. They present issues and basically inform women. And obviously this is in the aftermath of or because of women’s suffrage and its success in the early 1920s, so there was a reason for women to, for other women to help those who might not be informed, to sort of see what. And they dealt with judicial appointments and elections and other things. That is, a broad spectrum of political offices, not just presidential and sort of congressional and senatorial elections, but sort of ones where they were at least vetting the validity of the candidates in a sort of neutral way. So I think that’s- They continued that sort of informational kind of piece, and at least in my recollection are steadfastly neutral in terms of the political. You know, although my guess is they vote themselves, the members, you know, and one could guess how they would vote, but I don’t actually know.
James Calder [00:19:49] That’s true, what you said. We interviewed someone from the League of Women Voters, and they still keep the neutral stance. [crosstalk] Yeah, it’s actually- Yeah, no, they can’t support issues. And the woman we were talking to said it was funny that people come in with their, like an Obama pin and stuff because they’re all really politically active people, but then they have to take it off. So it was a good story.
Robert Wheeler [00:20:15] Yeah. The fact is there’s no League of Men Voters, so it performs a neutral function, you know, and, you know, it really means that women in that sense are superior to men.
Emily Miller [00:20:31] Let’s move a little more east. Little Italy. When did Little Italy develop?
Robert Wheeler [00:20:37] Well, there are two migrations of Italians and two areas of migration of Italians to Cleveland. The Big Italy, East 55th sort of area was especially- And there’s a couple of west side enclaves and stuff like that, but the East 55th Street area were basically Sicilians, and not exclusively, but mostly. And so they sort of controlled that area. The Little Italy area were mainland Italians, especially from Campobasso and some sort of areas in central Italy. And they had a long tradition of stone cutting. And they brought some of the stone cutters with them. Some of the stone cutters were used on the Hope Memorial Bridge. So in some ways they transferred not just their people, but their expertise. In addition to that, to Little Italy they brought their own priests and sort of Feast of the Assumption or whatever that was actually initiated because it was from several of the towns in that area. The migratory stream is ten villages in this particular region of Italy that supplied most of the migrants to Little Italy. And the effect of that is that it’s a culturally fairly tight-knit area, or at least was when it was founded. And a lot of the cultural institutions were founded based on institutions in Italy. So, it was always a tight-knit- If you still go there today, the particular architecture is sort of cramped, but it has a sort of a more European flair. More people eat outside. There are sort of very, still, restaurants that are dominated, I think, exclusively by Italian restaurants. The church is right on Mayfield Road, which comes sort of out of the off of Euclid there. And another significant thing was that there’s a railroad track that runs just to the north of it. And there were office jobs and railroad jobs in Collinwood and other places that Italians who didn’t work in the stone-cutting industry were able to work. It’s also the site of one of the most dramatic sort of incidents in integration of Cleveland Public schools, where in ’64 through ’66, some African American students who were overcrowded so much so that they had to be bused to other areas were placed in an elementary school in Little Italy, separate from the residents of the community, but nonetheless in the building. And that produced a significant spitting, stone throwing kind of thing. Ultimately it was maintained, but there was a considerable amount of objection to Blacks being in the area. And, you know, so that was sort of, the area demonstrated it was a tight knit community and one that really didn’t want outsiders, especially those of another race. But I think the tight-knit nature of it meant that the response was more consistent or coherent than it might have been had it not been, had it been in a community where ethnicities and other things were mixed significantly. So, you know, and even today it’s a center of art. The elementary school that actually had a pool in it and stuff like that. It has a lot of art shops and things like that in it. Graduate students and other people from Case still sort of live in small apartments there. And the other significant thing was the leadership of the Italian community convinced Rockefeller to form Alta House, which is a charitable. And he agreed to form that with some contributions from the community named, I think, after his daughter who’d passed away or something. In any case, that was in the teens, I think, maybe 1915, I’m not sure. But that was also founded in Little Italy. And so it showed that the Italian community could do some outreach. It also showed Rockefeller’s sort of generosity. He tithed from his first salary on and gave actually money, we know from a diary and book entries, to an African American church and to a German church and some church for sailors and stuff like that as early as late 1850s, before he had made much money at all. So he consistently was willing to do that. And it benefited Little Italy because of Alta House.
James Calder [00:25:47] Was that atypical of, I think, neighborhoods to be so, I guess, tight-knit and almost, I don’t use static in like a bad sense, but I guess permanent? I’ve heard like a lot of other ethnic neighborhoods were more, you know, they’d be really established for a while, but then sort of disperse and-
Robert Wheeler [00:26:07] Well, yeah, this is one of the few communities that stayed long term. In the 1970s, there was a refurbishing of - nationwide but in Cleveland - of the revival of ethnic heritage. And that’s where Slavic Village sort of was touted as something to be sort of recollected and festivals created and things like that. Little Italy had kept it a long tradition, but it became more prominent in those things. Greek festivals had gone on, they became bigger because people were looking back to their roots, partially, I think, because they were sort of losing that context. Typically people moved out of those neighborhoods. So too did many Italians. Still today. I mean, I was at a restaurant, Little Italy, two days ago, okay, for lunch. And the waiter was Italian. That is, his English wasn’t very good. So the fact is there are still people coming over from Italy into Little Italy today. And that’s, you know, and that- I don’t think that’s typical. I agree with you. But there’s a context for that community that’s unusual. And the church is still- One of my best friend’s sons got married in that church. They weren’t members of that church, but it was symbolic of the sort of connection with the Italian community. So. Many Italians moved out Mayfield Road and sort of kept moving into various portions of the east side. Not that there aren’t west side Italian enclaves, but that’s the process. But what’s unusual, I guess is that that one main street, and it was a tight-knit community. It’s buttressed or cut off by the hill and the Lake View Cemetery on one and the railroad tracks really on the other. So it’s a fairly small, compact community. And I think that might have helped it, you know, sort of stay there. Had it been disparate, it probably wouldn’t have stayed as coherent.
Emily Miller [00:28:15] Should we ask about the other ethnicities? Like other ethnic groups like Hungarians and Poles came around similar time?
Robert Wheeler [00:28:26] Well, as you know, the 1890s and beyond produced what we call the southern and eastern European migrations. And they, especially Poles, Russians, especially Russian Jews, but a series of other groups of people came into it because the jobs- That was when Cleveland was expanding massively industrially, and there were amazing amounts of jobs. And many of these people lived in areas just above the Flats where they could walk to work, built their own houses gradually as they went on, lived in very compact sort of areas. And most importantly, they created a sort of problem, I guess a good problem, but a problem nonetheless for the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church had been dominated by Irish and Germans. Well, these people didn’t know their saints, didn’t, wanted their own vernacular sort of services, and so they basically founded their own separate churches. And there was a clash between the- And in every major city. Cleveland was unique in that at all. But the Catholic Church was expanding dramatically, certainly from 1880 on, partly because of that. So each of these communities generate their own series of churches and often, not exclusively, have their services in their own language and bring their priests in some cases from the old country and sort of keep those connections. But gradually, as we know, in the second and third generations, people need jobs and they learn English and they go to school and it breaks down. Those sort of things. And moreover, they move out. They’re replaced by another recent set of arrivals that appreciate the ability to live in cheap rental places so they can send either more money back home to bring other people, other family members or whatever, or they can save up money to sort of move to other areas. But they typically move then their churches as well as their- That’s why many of the inner-city Roman Catholic churches are now in dire straits because most many of their parishioners even today come from the suburbs, you know, and there are fewer of them and there are, you know, many of them are suburban, now, bound for that reason.
James Calder [00:30:54] Can you talk about, I don’t know if this will be something off the top of your head, but just different, I guess, geographic areas of the city where different immigrant groups moved into?
Robert Wheeler [00:31:10] Not with enough precision. I need the map of those ethnicities in front of me because I haven’t studied those groups precisely. The Germans are an exception. The Germans flooded the west side. They had their own newspapers starting in the 1849–50 period. And basically that was concentrated. There are still some German restaurants and other things in that area. They were the largest immigrant group in Cleveland in the 19th century and they continued to be throughout the 19th century. So regardless of how many Italians came, the Germans still dominated and the Irish were second. Partly because of the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe and then the German unification that kicked a lot of people- A lot of people who wanted to leave, left. So they continually- The Franco Prussian War, et cetera, all those things kick people out of Germany. And they came here partly because their countrymen were already here and they could find jobs and other kinds of things. Same way with the Irish. The Irish continued to come over the period. We always think of potato famine and that seems to be it, but the fact is the Irish come consistently over this whole period of time. So those are the two groups that they dominate were the Roman Catholic Church and they dominate ethnicity. And they still dominate proportionately, even into the 20th century. But these new groups that come in are separate, are often Catholic and often have sort of differing attitudes and dress and all the kinds of things that keep them sort of unique. But the point is they are in most cases hard workers. And they get into the industrial sort of machine of Cleveland and they do amazing- They can get money, they can sort of support other people, and so they do that. I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the. Like where the Hungarians live. I know about murdering Hungarians, but that’s probably not what you want.
James Calder [00:33:18] Murdering Hungarians. I think that sounds interesting.
Robert Wheeler [00:33:24] Well, just let me say that one of the things that’s curious about. I have a course that over the past probably six, eight times called Homicide is History where we analyze coroner’s records using coroner’s inquests. And I would say after about 1885 or ’90, those murders that aren’t domestic ones, where husbands and wives kill each other for various reasons, mostly husbands killing wives, obviously, but our interethnic sort of fights in bars. That is, somebody feels insulted, somebody beat him at cards, somebody looked at him askance. And moreover, he’s from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s a rival ethnic group. He’s a rival group within a certain ethnicity. And they either go outside or they fight each other or they have various weapons. And a lot of that happens. Moreover, the Italians come to this country with the highest homicide rate per 100,000, I don’t know what it is, and it continues to be fairly high. They respond. So some of the coroner’s inquests of the first decade or two of the 20th century are filled with Italians, unfortunately love triangles, losing at cards, you know, all kinds of things. And, you know, folks being unhappy with someone else and ending their life or at least trying to. So the interethnic sort of stuff is not just about rival churches; it’s also just about, you know, different kinds of things. When I first came to Cleveland State, there was a display in the library of, I think it was Slovaks - I don’t actually remember - a hero. But to Czechs, Czechoslovakia, this person was not a hero; he was a terrible person. And so there were actually fist fights in front of the displays because that ethnic sort of distaste was still prevalent in 1972 or ’3 or whatever the heck it was when you would have thought everything would have been calm. But no, and it’s still the case. We know from recent wars in the Balkans and other places that these roots of dissatisfaction run deep and over centuries. But it was sort of interesting to me that people would fight over a display case in a library, you know, but it was their ethnic sense of the relative importance of either a hero or a, you know, or a disastrous sort of negative guy that he got killed. So there you have it. Or sort of.
Emily Miller [00:36:28] Could we- We’re going to switch gears, if that’s okay.
Robert Wheeler [00:36:31] Yeah.
Emily Miller [00:36:33] Can you give us a characteristic of kind of like, what is Midtown and what their business is? What are kind of characteristics? How is Midtown different from other areas in Cleveland?
Robert Wheeler [00:36:46] Well, you mean the Midtown Corridor kind of stuff? My understanding, at least what it was supposed to be - I don’t know if it is anymore - but the Midtown Corridor was, you could avenue beyond East 55th. And the idea there, it was an area that we would have called, in the ’50s, blighted, an area that a lot of people had abandoned houses that were hard to upkeep for a while. There were pipes and various other things that could be sold for scrap or being taken out of them. And ultimately the city and the county, I think, needed to do something. So what they decided was they would create this Midtown Corridor business sort of startup kind of opportunity area. And the idea was that they would, A, flatten some of these buildings that were problems for the police and others and then encourage, I think, sort of small to middle companies that would be innovative in one way or another. And so they got grants and they sort of, I assume - I don’t actually know who funded the Midtown Corridor, that is, or whose idea it was - but my guess is it was the downtown people who thought, we need startups, we need a way to do this. And this area of Euclid between Euclid and Chester certainly wasn’t doing much else other than that. And so the Midtown Corridor’s goal was to create innovative companies that would then potentially expand, presumably move out of the corridor, because it wouldn’t- I think what we found is some of that happened. I don’t know that a lot, as much as it happened that they wanted to. What we have is the sort of creeping behemoth of the Clinic moving back down toward the sort of- But I mean, the fact is they have actually created an area that basically has razed almost all of that, the area around Euclid, in their bailiwick. Moreover, they’ve created communities that are separate from the areas north of Chester by putting up cement blocks to stop people from driving through so that personnel that are employed by the Clinic are not hassled by people driving through. I don’t think that’s the only reason, but at least that’s one of them.
Emily Miller [00:39:12] Okay, let’s move towards University Circle. The botanical gardens. What kind of purpose does it serve to the community?
Robert Wheeler [00:39:25] You know, the problem with botanical gardens, it seems to me, is where it is. It’s like it might have been a great idea to put it on- Basically, it’s on Martin Luther King Drive, basically out in the middle of nowhere on the way to the lake. And it’s a great place, but I don’t- It’s not central to anything. And therefore, I mean, I’ve gone there a couple times. I thought it was interesting. The idea was there. Moreover, at one point, early ’70s, something, someone’s going to combine that with some aquarium, move it out to the lake, or maybe even change that space there to a big aquarium or something like that, maybe a lake aquarium. I’m not really sure. None of that happened, obviously. I mean, there were plans for it, close it, move it, something like that. My guess is it’s a spinoff from Tebeau’s, one of Tebeau’s favorite things, and that is that drive and the various gardens of the ethnic groups. And that it- Since there was a heavy concentration on shrubbery and sort of the plant material that was around these. I don’t know actually which was founded first or which created the building first. But my guess is that’s part of the reason would be my guess why they’re there. Plus, I don’t know who owned that property, but it seems to have never had houses in it that I know of. I don’t know if they were all torn down to make that thing. That doesn’t seem to me like it was in a sort of a ravine or something like that. So my guess is that’s part of it. That was an area that could be developed, at least for public purposes, because it wasn’t- And gardens and various things because of that. But other than that, I don’t know. I mean, it’s really a good collection of material, but it’s, you know, you have to really know where it is to don’t find it. It seems to me, I don’t know how many. I would say that mean number of visitors is probably low, but I don’t know. Then they moved, of course, to the University Circle. Right? Well, that was an interesting move, you know, and they developed the gardens there. I mean, there are two sets of gardens. You know, maybe I’m talking about- Erase all that. Maybe that’s the City of Cleveland greenhouse I’m thinking about on Wade Oval. Whatever. But the one that’s the botanical- [crosstalk] Okay. Okay. Well, okay, so. Okay, so. [makes bleeping sound] Here’s what’s interesting about the Cleveland Botanical Gardens that’s in University Circle. It has some marvelous Japanese gardens. It has some marvelous sort of- But it was sort of lingering a little bit since its more affluent sort of neighbors. The Art Museum for sure and the Museum of Natural History and maybe even the Western Reserve Historical Society all sort of on that oval. And I think they had good stuff. I actually went there for camera clubs and other kinds of things. But it seemed to me like it was a fun place to go for a brief moment. But it didn’t have- It had orchids. It had some great things there. It didn’t ever seem to attract huge crowds, but it was interesting. And then they went through this massive rebuilding, which I think in retrospect wasn’t probably the best thing to do because I don’t think the attendance has shot up to warrant this. But they were trying to make it a sort of more robust place, a more visitor-friendly place. And my guess is that it hasn’t lived up to the hype. But you know what? Neither has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or any. The hype that gets the funding is partly. Seems to be optimistic by a factor of two to ten in terms of attendance and stuff like that. So I think it’s a useful institution. Its grounds are beautiful, you know? I worry about its life expectancy, to be honest with you, because I haven’t been in there in a couple years, but when I was, it was like- I’ve gone to a lot of other botanical gardens in St. Louis and New York City and Montreal, and it’s- It’s not as robust, I’ll put it that way, even in its new iteration.
James Calder [00:44:08] Do you know anything about the Cleveland Zoo, the original Cleveland Zoo that would have been, I believe, on that same site?
Robert Wheeler [00:44:15] I don’t know. No. Hmm. You mean on the side of the Botanical Garden?
James Calder [00:44:21] More or less like kind of right across from Western Reserve?
Robert Wheeler [00:44:26] No, I don’t actually know the rationale for that circle. I mean, you know, it seemed like. I don’t know if it was just a circle and then someone plopped the botanical gardens in there. I don’t know if on the original plans the botanical gardens was part of that. It doesn’t seem like it would be. It’s like a circle. Right? So I’m not sure what the goal is or when it became part of that context. Yeah, I don’t know.
Emily Miller [00:45:00] Cleveland Marshall School of Law. At what point in history was it the place to be?
Robert Wheeler [00:45:09] I have no idea. I don’t know much about Cleveland Marshall School of Law. I know Tim Russert went there.
Emily Miller [00:45:16] Okay, so what?
Robert Wheeler [00:45:18] I mean, yeah, I don’t actually know much about the history of it. I don’t actually know why it’s called Cleveland Marshall School of Law. I don’t know if it’s after John Marshall. I have no idea. I don’t actually know how old it is. So-
James Calder [00:45:33] It’s crossed off the list.
Robert Wheeler [00:45:35] It’s many things I don’t know. Yeah.
Emily Miller [00:45:41] Something I think you do know something about, like the Euclid Opera House and Central Market area, East Fourth-
Robert Wheeler [00:45:47] Central Market… What’s interesting about the Central Market, at least in its iterations, is that you can see the Central Market site on some of the sort of bird’s-eye views of Cleveland, some of the first ones in the ’50s, 1850s. You can see this sort of just like you’d imagine, sort of long, covered sort of thing sitting there where people- It doesn’t show people in and out, but it looks like there’d be stalls in there. And obviously it’s sort of the equivalent, but I think it’s more broadly based than the West Side Market. The West Side Market tends to be mostly for individual people. I think the Central Market was businesses as well. I think the businesses now have a separate depot down by the Orange Avenue where the post office is or something like that, where they go for their sort of produce. I don’t think they stand in line at the West Side Market to buy stuff. But I think initially that Central mMrket site was the main market for distribution of fresh things to the city of Cleveland. My guess is both retail and wholesale. And so in that sense, it provided a significant sort of central point of doing stuff. And I also- I remember this. There’s a book written by an Italian kid who grew up in Cleveland, named after his mother who’s called Maria. The guy’s name is Michael De Capite. And he describes- His mother was sort of a homebody who eventually at some point went to- And what I’m saying is this will be the West Side Market but my guess is the Central Market provided the same thing. One of the first things she ever did outside of her community, which happened to be Little Italy. And then she moved to the west side because of her husband. But in any case, she was going there and sort of amongst the sort of clamor and the sort of clutter and the sort of, and people yelling at her and talking about prices and sort of,it was sort of like capitalism, My guess is sort of capitalism at a high pitch and where you can sort of- You have to be prepared to go on public transportation. You have to sort of use stuff. And then- And I think it’s a scene that is repeated throughout much of the period, even in the 1850s, ’60s and ’70s. I’m not sure how long the Central Market lasts. I don’t know if it goes into the ’80s, I’m not sure. But it’s central to that sort of sharing of those sort of fresh produce, I guess. And in that sense, it’s probably a collection point where you can see people that you wouldn’t see otherwise. But I think what she found, at least in her Italian sort of context, was there were all kinds of languages being spoken. It sort of got her out of that ethnic enclave kind of thing. And my guess is it performed that service for almost everybody who went there in the period. Because in the 19th century, at least, the word grocery didn’t mean what we think it means. There were specific kinds of things, just like the English sort of green grocers and dry goods stuff. They were separate in some ways. And moreover, almost every grocery store somewhere near the Flats offered liquor by the glass. And there were sort of lots of people partaking of the liquor by the glass option. My suspicion is that helped them all stay in business, but I’m not really sure.
Emily Miller [00:49:45] The Opera House, which was in similar area, East Fourth. Are you familiar?
Robert Wheeler [00:49:51] No. I know there’s a music academy which is over north of Euclid, but I don’t- And I could just remember that sort of vaguely.
Emily Miller [00:50:03] What about the Karamu Theater? Do you- Have you ever been there?
Robert Wheeler [00:50:07] Sure.
Emily Miller [00:50:08] Or maybe have the history. Can you tell us any stories you know about going there?
Robert Wheeler [00:50:14] Well, what I know about the Karamu House is like simultaneously personal experience. And then I had a graduate student who’s now about ready to finish her PhD who did a paper on Karamu House, an African American graduate student. So it was so interesting because it is an African American-focused institution that was founded by two non-African Americans in the 1920s, sort of as a settlement outreach house. It’s always had a sort of interesting contrast or conflict embedded in it that most of its funding comes from non-African American sources and most of its clientele on the other hand, is African American. And so over the time it has created especially theater, but also dance. And then in the ’70s, I took, and a bunch of the people in the history department took pottery lessons there from a woman from West Virginia who was not African American, but you know, who had kilns and taught. There were dance classes that my brother-in-law went to in the ’70s there. One of the members of the history department’s wife, Joan Hartshorne, taught actually dance at Karamu. And it had a reputation at that point of being a very sort of professional sort of theater group that packed people in, frankly, and had sort of was a way of the community, especially the east side community, sort of non-African Americans sort of joining that community. Try to understand its roots or dealing with it’s cultural outreach. I guess I’d say over the years it had serious conflicts with the neighborhood because the neighborhood generally was working-class and especially in the ’60s and ’70s it seemed to be sort of a bastion run at least by whites and was not as well respected as everyone thought it might have been. It weathered those storms, but I think it still represents the sort of tension between whites and Blacks. I don’t think it’s as popular as it once was in terms of its drama. But it did first-run things. It did some spectacular sort of- And it was an interesting thing. It didn’t compete directly with Play House, which is fairly close to it. I think it’s 89th or something and I don’t know, not Euclid, but something, not Carnegie maybe, you know, even west or south or whatever it is of Carnegie. But it had the sort of goal of being an arts cultural center for African Americans and African, but African American sort of culture, preserve it, sort of celebrate it. And I think it’s kept that context. At least from some of the research that’s been done, it seems to me like sometimes it comes up against trends in the African American community because it’s still funded by non-African Americans for the most part, you know, Cleveland Foundation, et cetera. And it sort of has to sort of vet its programs, et cetera, through those, through those sort of venues. And there it’s a little more constrained, I think, than something that would have been not so much, you know, directed in that way. At least that’s what the research that one of my students did says. I’m not- Yeah, I haven’t gone there and a bunch of years, but I don’t live as close as I would. I don’t know if other people do or not. But I looked at some of the material of the programs, et cetera, through the period, and they weathered the issues in the late ’70s and early ’80s. They converted themselves to a more sort of more integrated and more sort of engaging the working-class local neighbors, if you will, of the community. And I think that was good for them. It’s certainly a feather in Cleveland’s cap because it’s one of the few long-lasting cultural institutions. I don’t know that it ever - or that it still does - reflect the African American community wholly. I think it reflects a combination, and maybe that’s good.
Emily Miller [00:55:02] That’s all I have for my list. Is there anything else you would like to add to the Euclid Corridor Oral History Project?
Robert Wheeler [00:55:17] [laughs] Not for- Yeah, you know, I mean, I have some questions about the project. And you’ve seen just recently, I think within the last couple days, the portion from downtown or maybe 9th to 14th has opened up and you know, you see all these business equipment going, Yeah, great. Well, you destroyed me. Now I’m going to have to try to- So I think there are a lot of people and I read Feagler’s column recently about it, or his older column, but I just read it recently where he’s arguing, What the heck is this? You know, and I keep, I keep, I tell you what I keep thinking. What do the West Siders think of all this stuff? It’s like, well, we don’t get something for the west side, because what’s that about? You know, so I’m not- I don’t know how that plays out on the west side. My guess is not as well as you might have. We’ll have to see if it does what it’s- Well, you’re supposed to know. I don’t know what it’s supposed to do. You know? Other than make Euclid wider and have bus things and kiosks that talk to you if you have to wait. Yeah. It’s almost like the purpose of it.
James Calder [00:56:22] It’s really a vehicle for the kiosks.
Robert Wheeler [00:56:24] Yeah. Yeah. It seems to me like you have to wait. Right? If the buses come right away, no one will listen to anything.
James Calder [00:56:31] Yeah, that’s what we told them. We said that- [crosstalk]
Robert Wheeler [00:56:33] Yeah. You got to make it slow.
James Calder [00:56:35] [inaudible] -history kiosks. We’re going to need a better looking street. So.
Robert Wheeler [00:56:39] Yeah. [crosstalk] Yeah. It seems sort of crazy to me. I’m glad- There was something in the paper that said it brought 4.5 billion new dollars down to downtown or down to whatever. I’m thinking, okay, how much of that is non-Cleveland Clinic is what I keep thinking. It’s like, okay, you know, I just don’t know. You know, I know it’s been disruptive as all get out, you know, but I don’t know what the positive “then what” is. I mean, I think the idea of these kiosks is great, you know? I don’t know. You know, they better be robust.
Emily Miller [00:57:19] They should be able to withstand - what did the guy say? - all types of weather.
James Calder [00:57:24] The kiosks? Yeah.
Robert Wheeler [00:57:25] Yeah? I think it’s more human. Don’t you think?
James Calder [00:57:30] They’re indestructible.
Robert Wheeler [00:57:31] Okay.
James Calder [00:57:32] You can’t destroy the kiosk, according to the guy.
Robert Wheeler [00:57:36] According to the guy who sold it to you. Yeah.
James Calder [00:57:37] It didn’t have speakers the first time, so I was calling them. I was like, this is an oral history project. You need to get us a speaker. And he just kept saying, well, you could put. If it had the speakers- We put them in, you know, the Upper Peninsula in Michigan in the worst weather and they still worked after six months. I’m just like, doesn’t help me. I need the speakers now. It was, it was funny. He was real proud.
Robert Wheeler [00:58:03] Yeah. Upper Peninsula. Yeah. Of course no one’s listening to ’em because there’s no one on that.
James Calder [00:58:08] No, no, it’s the weather.
Robert Wheeler [00:58:09] Yeah, the weather’s tough.
James Calder [00:58:11] Couldn’t keep down the kiosks.
Robert Wheeler [00:58:15] Yeah, good. We’ll send them up there for a training.
Emily Miller [00:58:19] Thank you for being part of the Euclid Corridor Oral History Project.
Robert Wheeler [00:58:22] Oh, I don’t know if any of that was useful. Good grief.
Emily Miller [00:58:25] God, you have no [idea].
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