Abstract
In this 2012 interview, Jan Devereaux talks about her involvement in Shaker Heights politics. She was on City Council, and explains her involvement in different projects under both Mayor Mearns and Mayor Rawson. She also talks about the Landmarks Commission: how it works and its role in local government. She also talks about the process of getting Shaker Heights on the National Register.
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Interviewee
Devereaux, Jan (interviewee)
Interviewer
Smith, Kelsey (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
7-13-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
33 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Jan Devereaux Interview, 13 July 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915024.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/490
Transcript
Kelsey Smith [00:00:00] I just want to have you say your name for a second.
Jan Devereaux [00:00:02] Okay. I’m Jan Devereaux.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:06] And today is July 13, 2012.
Jan Devereaux [00:00:09] Yes.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:11] So we’re just going to- I’m just going to ask you a little bit about yourself, like where you were born.
Jan Devereaux [00:00:16] I was born in Portland, Oregon. Yeah. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon. And I left to go to college, and I never have really lived there since then, but I have, most of my family is still in Portland, Oregon.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:33] So how did you end up here?
Jan Devereaux [00:00:36] I would say my husband and I took a flyer on Cleveland back a long time ago in 1977. And we came because he wanted to take a position. He’s a physician. He’s a neurologist. And he wanted to take a position at Mount Sinai Hospital, which is a wonderful hospital that is no more. It’s been demolished. So he was there for a number of years, and it was the kind of position that he wanted.
Kelsey Smith [00:01:07] Did you move to Shaker Heights?
Jan Devereaux [00:01:09] We did, and we moved to the house where we live now. We bought it in a week. And we actually, we had a couple criteria when we came to Cleveland. Since my husband was born and raised in LA, Los Angeles, he wanted a short commute. So we basically looked at Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, and we knew that we wanted a good public school system for our kids. And we looked at Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, and we decided that Shaker was more consistently supportive of its public schools. And so we picked Shaker.
Kelsey Smith [00:01:51] And do you live in an older home?
Jan Devereaux [00:01:53] We do. We live in a house that was built in 1921. So it’s coming up on 100 years. So. And we’re still in it. So we talk about maybe we should think about downsizing and moving out, but we are still in it.
Kelsey Smith [00:02:13] So you’ve been quite involved in Shaker itself. I know it says you, Gail said that you were on city council. So do you want to tell me how you got involved?
Jan Devereaux [00:02:22] Sure, sure. Well, you know, I guess maybe stepping back, as I was thinking about doing this interview, I would say that my life in Shaker has had sort of three. Well, several, at least two big chapters. Three big chapters, I guess. And one was my- The chapter of raising our children and being involved with the schools and the school community. And the school community in Shaker is very strong. And I think that, you know, there’s this old saying, a community is known by the schools it keeps. And I think that Shaker really believes that. A lot of people in Shaker really believe that. And so it’s a very strong community, and I think it has had very professional leadership, both in the administration and at the teaching level. And so for a number of years, I cycled through a lot of positions in the school and ended up running one of the school levies, which passed by 43 votes, and which was really a close one, but it passed. And so that was sort of the first big chapter of my life. And our kids went all the way through the Shaker schools and graduated. And then I began to get more involved in the community at large. And a friend who had been serving on city council for a number of years, Pat Mearns, decided that she would run for mayor. And she did. And I had supported her on each one of her runs for council and then supported her for mayor. And someplace along the line, I decided that I would like to try to see if I could get elected to council. And so I did. And then I served for 12 years. I served under the first and second women mayors of Shaker, Pat Mearns and Judy Rossen. And so that was, that was 12 years. That was 12 pretty exciting years.
Kelsey Smith [00:04:51] Were there any big projects that you worked on?
Jan Devereaux [00:04:56] Well, I guess, you know, maybe. I think one of the project that was more of a community project that happened under Pat Mearns was a strategic plan. And it was a huge year long, more, even more than that long process that was led by some consultants who came in from New York. And it was just an incredible, incredible process and involved lots of residents. It was a very interactive process, and there was a lot of leadership from the city, from the planning department. And it ended up. We ended up with a strategic plan which we are still using, which is still providing guidance. But a couple things that I worked on during the time I was on council that are, that I had more individual involvement with. There was a committee called the Inter Institutional History Committee that I chaired and involved the city and the schools and the library and the Shaker Historical Society and a volunteer, a woman named Carol Proven, wrote a grant. And the upshot of it was that we ended up with a local history room at the library here. And we’ve had some really, Kristen Poole and now Meghan Hayes. We’ve had some very strong and talented staff people. And so there has been a lot, a lot done to kind of develop the local history of Shaker Heights. So that was a project that I was very interested in, and, you know, maybe goes back to the days when I was a history major in college. So. And then another project which was. Which Proved to be quite challenging, although I didn’t think that it would be in the beginning, is it started out as a preservation project. On the corner of Warrensville and Shaker. There was an old real estate office that the Van Sweringens actually dated back to the era of the Van Sweringens, and it was their real estate office. And it was going to be demolished. And so the portico, the pillars, and the kind of the front porch of it were saved and ultimately became something called the Shaker Heights Community Colonnade, which is an outdoor structure that sits near the library and the community building and is used in the summer for music and theater performances. And so that was a project that I helped in. And frankly, I wish there were more use of the colonnade now because it’s a nice outdoor structure. You can bring your picnic and your blanket and sit and listen to music. But that was something that happened when I was on council. So Judy Rawsen was the second woman mayor, and she was interested in economic development in many ways. And one of the things that she did that to her great credit is she led the development of a number of housing projects, kind of cluster townhomes, sort of empty nester housing. And the idea was to push the envelope so that whatever neighborhood a development was built in, it was supposed to kind of help raise the price of houses in that neighborhood. And she was quite successful at it. And both she and Mayor Mearns were also very involved in the First Suburbs Consortium. Pat helped to found it and actually gave it its name. And Judy provided a lot of leadership. So both mayors did a lot of other good things. And I guess one of the things that I learned on council was just the capacity of an individual to provide leadership and, you know, how one person can really make a difference.
Kelsey Smith [00:09:26] What is the First Suburbs Consortium?
Jan Devereaux [00:09:29] The First Suburbs Consortium is now called, I think, the Northeast Ohio First Suburbs Consortium. And it grew out of all of the thinking about urban sprawl and the damage that’s being done to cities all over the country by people moving out and out. And there’s a man at Cleveland State, Dr. Tom Bier, who was, he documented this early on, and just the phenomenon of how sort of the problems of the city and some of the urban problems just would kind of roll out through the suburbs as people moved out and moved out. And so the First Suburbs Consortium was a circle of communities around Cleveland that came together to do certain things, to fight sprawl, is in existence today. And actually there are others in Ohio and across the country, there are similar organizations.
Kelsey Smith [00:10:41] And then I was going to ask you about the local history room at the library where is that located?
Jan Devereaux [00:10:46] Yeah, well, it’s in the library, it’s on the first floor and there’s a collection. I think what they do is collect information about Shaker Heights, books written about the city, articles they collect. For instance, a Shaker organization could contribute its papers. They are about just increasing the knowledge of Shaker Heights. And there are several centennial projects that have come about. There’s a building card project where all the city building cards to help you research your house, that a lot of knowledge about individual homes has been put computerized and so that you can research your house. This oral history project is something that the library is very interested in. And there are a number of other things like that that have come about. They also, I think, have collections of books written by Shaker authors. So it’s a, you know, Shaker Heights is a pretty well known community nationally and it just is, you know, so it’s pretty appropriate that we have a good collection of information about the city and its history.
Kelsey Smith [00:12:20] I didn’t know what order all of this came in, but if you, is there anything while you were, what positions all did you hold while you were working with the schools?
Jan Devereaux [00:12:29] Oh, golly, no, no. Early on I think I did a lot with legislation. I was very interested in, you know, laws in Columbus and in Washington that would have a bearing on education. And the PTAs - PTO, Parent Teacher Organization - always had a position for someone who followed legislation and would report on it. So I did things like that. And then each school had a group of people who elected officers. And so I was a unit president. And then there’s something called the PTO Council, which is the umbrella organization. And I was the president of that for one year. So there’s also an organization called the Shaker Heights Citizens Committee, which helps to bring forward good candidates for school board. And it’s a citizen driven committee. And I was very involved with that for a while. In fact, one of the things that I’m very proud of is that chaired a screening committee that brought forth Marty Kolb, Martin Kolb and Earl Leiken, who was the current mayor. Mr. Leiken was. We brought him forth for reelection because he’d already served one term. But so just two terrific people that came through that process. And so I was glad to be able to be involved in it. So. Yeah, so.
Kelsey Smith [00:14:10] So now you said that you’re on the Landmarks Commission?
Jan Devereaux [00:14:13] Yes, yes.
Kelsey Smith [00:14:15] I’m first going to ask you how, where does that fit within Shaker city government?
Jan Devereaux [00:14:19] Okay, okay. Alright. Well, I was on it. I first became involved in it when I was on the council, and then subsequently I stepped down in 2003, and then I was appointed again in 2006, and I’m still on it. So it’s a group of seven people, and some of them are architects or planners or the local library historian is on the commission. And it’s staffed by somebody in the Planning Department. And we work with the Architectural Review Board, and we often meet jointly. There are 45 or 50 locally designated landmarks. And for instance, we have a locally designated district, the Winslow, the Winslow street, which is 165, two family homes. And so, you know, one of the things, I think one of the things that has been particularly good about Shaker is its efforts to preserve the quality architecture that it’s had. So that any house in Shaker has to, when it wants to, when the owner wants to make an exterior change, has to go before the Architecture Review Board. And if it’s a landmark, then they meet with the Architecture Review Board and the Landmark Commission. So obviously, we have a smaller purview. But it was through the Landmark Commission also that Shaker got onto the National Register. And almost two thirds, three fourths of Shaker is now a national registered district. And it was a city employee who wrote the documentation, but it came through the Landmark Commission. So the commission has done tours, we have publications, and then we review. We review changes to properties. So at any rate, I think that the city’s commitment from the very beginning, we had an Architecture Review Board since the founding of the city. And so that commitment to design, plus the efforts to maintain property, which would come through, for instance, the Housing Inspection Department, the Building department, those two things, I think, have combined to really ensure that, you know, that what’s good about Shaker is being preserved. And I think another thing that’s really important is that if you look at our public buildings, the schools, for instance, we went through a school reorganization, and none of those buildings have been tossed aside. They’re all being used either as schools or for some other purpose, sometimes educational, but, you know, kind of a variety of purposes, but they are all. They’re all being used. So I think that that’s, you know, some communities do not have that kind of allegiance to, you know, to preserving. So I think that that’s worked to our benefit.
Kelsey Smith [00:17:54] And how did you get involved?
Jan Devereaux [00:17:57] In the Landmark Commission? You know, when you’re on council, you are appointed to serve on different committees and you work with the mayor. And, you know, there’s a finance committee, there’s a safety, police and fire, there’s recreation, you know, all the different services that the city provides. There’s a citizen and council committee that works with that department. And so I think that Mayor Mearns and I thought maybe that would be something that I would be interested in. And it really turned out she was right. And so it’s led to kind of a long term involvement with it.
Kelsey Smith [00:18:45] How does, how does a, how do you determine how does a building become a Shaker landmark? I guess?
Jan Devereaux [00:18:55] Well, there are a whole set of criteria that you evaluate it against. And, you know, some of them could have to do with more with design. Some of them could have to do with, like, for instance, if it was something that was designed, a structure designed by Charles Schneider, who designed City hall, and there are some homes in Shaker that were designed by Charles Schneider, or it could be its role in history or maybe somebody in, maybe somebody who was well-known nationally, lived in that house for a long time. So there are a set of maybe 8 or 10, 12 criteria that and the structure could meet that in several categories or multiple categories. And so there’s quite a study that’s done and a paper that’s written. And then in Shaker, typically, we have sought the support and endorsement of the current owner. We have tried not to make something a landmark if there wasn’t the support of the owner, the person who lived in it. Some of our landmarks are public structures. For instance, City hall, and some of them are churches like Plymouth Church or First Baptist Church. Some of them are RTA structures. Like, there’s a little building at Coventry and Shaker and one at Van Aken and Parkland that are both named landmarks. A couple of them are commercial. Like there’s a building at the corner, the Kingsbury Building at the corner of Lee and Van Aiken. And then there’s a building on Lee in Scottsdale, which used to be the First Catholic Ladies Slovak Association Building. And we named that a landmark. And then, you know, most recently I would say was the Winslow Road project, which is this street that’s so unique because it’s all two families and a lot of wonderful architecture.
Kelsey Smith [00:21:31] So I’ve actually been in a house like this.
Jan Devereaux [00:21:34] Oh, have you? Okay.
Kelsey Smith [00:21:36] I interviewed Susie Zimmer.
Jan Devereaux [00:21:36] Oh, Susie Zimmer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful, isn’t it? Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful.
Kelsey Smith [00:21:42] So do you guys seek out landmarks or do people nominate?
Jan Devereaux [00:21:47] You know, it works both ways. Sometimes people come to us and ask us to consider, and you Know, you can see that we haven’t named that many. I think the National Register district, you know, for so much of the city is an important designation and there was a, that requires a tremendous amount of work and it goes through the National Park Service and you know, they’re contributing buildings and non contributing buildings and it’s, you know, there’s a, you know, half inch thick report that was written to document that application. And so, you know, the housing stock, the buildings, but also it goes into, in Shaker’s case, into planning. You know, just sort of how the Garden City model and how the city was planned was part of the rationale for why the city deserved to be put on the National Register. So in recent memory, the district has been expanded a bit. So I think, you know, that’s a significant designation.
Kelsey Smith [00:23:05] What did the expansion include?
Jan Devereaux [00:23:08] Oh, golly, you’re going to ask me that. You know, I think we just, we added certain, just certain parts of the city that hadn’t been included. One of the criteria is that, you know, it has to be at least 50 years old. And so I think there were maybe that there were those kind of things. I wish I could remember exactly, you know, what all the criteria. But you know, the city is there more and more of the city that is, you know, approaching 100 years old. So at any rate.
Kelsey Smith [00:23:45] So when a building is designated a landmark, what does that do for the building? A Shaker landmark?
Jan Devereaux [00:23:50] You know, it’s, I would say it’s more honorific than anything, but if someone, something is designated a landmark, it does mean that the owner has to go through an additional level of review and that there’s a certificate of appropriateness that they seek and they have to come to the landmark commission. And there are certain things that, you know, that a landmark building might not be allowed to do that that a building that wasn’t a landmark would be able to do. For instance, I doubt that a house with vinyl siding would be selected to be a landmark. And so there are certain standards that a local landmark would have to meet. So, and then the certain, the review and you know, in recent memory, some of the reviews, you know, people have been quite cooperative when they came to understand, you know, the significance of the kind of property they had.
Kelsey Smith [00:25:14] And you said you were a history major at a point. Is that why you’re so-
Jan Devereaux [00:25:18] Interested in that? You know, I think, I think I would say yes. But I was also, I’ve also always been interested in kind of public participation, you know, civic involvement. And I think that there has been a lot, Shaker is a community where a lot of. I’m sure there are lots of other communities too, but Shaker is a community where there’s a lot of public participation and so that it really is a community where people get involved and they do get involved. And I also think, you know, I like, I enjoyed being involved in government in Shaker. And, you know, a lot of people now have very negative feelings about government, you know, and about elected officials. And I would have to say my experience in Shaker, you know, just doesn’t corroborate that at all. That I think we’ve had a lot of very good leadership and, you know, there’s been a level of discourse. It’s not that people aren’t. Don’t get impassioned about what they think, but I think I came away from having very good feelings about what government can do. And I also came away with a lot of respect for the people who work for the city of Shaker Heights, because I worked a lot with people at City hall and there are some very talented people. And I think one of the things that has been good about Shaker is that it’s a very planful community. They are forward thinking and they don’t just sort of react without thought. So that, for instance, right now, you know, one of the things, Shaker Heights has been a residential community for decades. You know, a residential community with a very strong public school system, strong private schools and. But we realize now that the revenue generated from a residential community is just not enough to pay for the services that are needed. So that the big push now is to bring in business to stimulate some innovative, entrepreneurial new business in Shaker. Commercial, maybe some retail, although we don’t need a lot of retail, but some retail that residents want. And with the idea that these are things that are good for the community, but they’re also good revenue generators. So the times have changed and what Shaker needs to be working on has changed.
Kelsey Smith [00:28:45] I don’t think I have any more questions unless there’s anything you would like to add.
Kelsey Smith [00:28:52] Because I know you said you were thinking about what, what you wanted to-
Jan Devereaux [00:28:54] What I wanted to say. Oh, golly, I don’t know. You’ve asked me some good questions, I think. I guess that’s it. Just maybe to just add that this oral history project is something that’s coming about because of Shaker’s celebration of its centennial and 2012. The whole year is being dedicated to lots of different kinds of celebrations and lots of really great projects have come out of the planning for the centennial and through the leadership of Ann Williams. And so I think that it’s a celebration, but it’s also just been the spur for a lot of projects that are of real value to the community.
Kelsey Smith [00:30:13] Gail actually noted that you were also on the committee for that. That’s not surprising.
Jan Devereaux [00:30:16] Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s really, it’s- I mean, I just, I can’t say enough good things about the woman, Ann Williams, who’s been the coordinator of the centennial, and just the amazing projects that have come out of it, really just wonderful things.
Kelsey Smith [00:30:36] So what other projects have come out of it?
Jan Devereaux [00:30:39] Well, I mean, there are things kind of fun things. Like there’s a Shaker cookbook that’s been, you know, lots of different people have contributed to it, and we have some celebrity chefs in Shaker. So that has been done. We’ve been, you know, there are a lot of people that are interested now into gardening, you know, and kind of raising food locally. And there’s been a whole series, I think there are like, 24 different workshops that are focusing on gardening and growing your own vegetables and fruits and that kind of thing. There’s a project called Community Reads, where we’ve picked a book called Hometown by Tracy Kidder. And we’re having like five or six sessions, you know, whether at restaurants, the library, coffee houses, where the through the year, where this book will be discussed. And then Tracy Kidder is actually coming to Cleveland in October and is going to be speaking. There’s a big weekend over Labor Day called Come Back to Shaker, where there’ll be school reunions, but also there’s a big community birthday party in the afternoon on Saturday and an adult party in the evening. And then on Sunday, there’s a house tour that’s being planned. And also in conjunction with that, the art and architecture critic of the Plain Dealer, Steve Litt, will be talking kind of kicking off the house tour. So this oral history project, then I mentioned the housing card index, even this Cleveland Historical that came about through a grant that was thought about as part of the planning of the Shaker centennial. So there are just a number of things all year long. A lot of events that happen during the year regularly then have been kind of ramped up and given a centennial twist. Our Memorial Day parade. And, you know, so there are a lot of things that have been done that are being done that are being given a centennial flavor. It’s also the hundredth anniversary of our school system, so there’s a lot of things that are being done in the schools. So at any rate, it’s a good year. Good year for Shaker. Yeah. Yeah.
Kelsey Smith [00:33:21] Well, if you don’t have anything else.
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