Abstract
In this 2012 interview, Herb Ascherman talks about his experience as a longtime Shaker resident. He focuses on Shaker Heights education and the elitist attitude that he thinks was instilled in Shaker Heights students in the 1950s and 1960s. He describes current and past race relations, and the problems Shaker now faces as a community. Later in the interview, Mr. Ascherman tells stories of his childhood and of visits to restaurants in Shaker, Coventry Village, and the ever-growing ethnic community in the city of Cleveland.
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Interviewee
Ascherman, Herb (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Halligan-Taylor, Gabriella (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
6-20-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
62 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Herb Ascherman interview, 20 June 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915013.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/501
Transcript
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:00] Why don’t you start with your name?
Herb Ascherman [00:00:04] Herbert Ascherman Jr.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:07] And where do you live in Shaker?
Herb Ascherman [00:00:10] At the minute I live at 2680 Green Road, which is one driveway south of Shelburne.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:15] And did you grow up in Shaker?
Herb Ascherman [00:00:17] I am a third-generation Shaker Heights resident.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:21] Wow. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather and father. How did they come to Shaker?
Herb Ascherman [00:00:26] Both grandparents moved into Shaker Heights in 1932. They lived on opposite sides of what was then, I believe, Moreland Boulevard, which was then renamed Van Aken after the mayor many years later. My father went to Shaker Heights High School and graduated in 1941. My mother went to Laurel and graduated in 1945 or 6, someplace in there. I went to Shaker Heights High School. My son went to University School for a while and then came back to Shaker Heights High School and graduated in 1991. I graduated in ’65. He graduated in ’91. And with the exception of a brief 10 or 12-year period abroad, the family has lived contiguously in Shaker Heights since 1932. I grew up on Stockholm Road and, and went to Fernway and then we moved to Green Road 10 doors down from where I live now and built a house in 1960.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:01:30] Did your grandparents and dad ever kind of compare Shaker Heights at the beginning, you know, in the 1930s to what it is now? They ever, kind of make comparisons or has it kind of always stayed the same as far as community?
Herb Ascherman [00:01:48] Oh, the community has- Okay.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:01:58] I’m going to start it again.
Herb Ascherman [00:01:59] Ask the question again.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:02:02] Do they ever kind of compare the community back in the 1930s kind of going through up until present day?
Herb Ascherman [00:02:10] They never did, but I did because I’ve lived here since 1952 myself. My father went away to college, went to the army, went to Harvard, came back, and bought a house. And I’ve grown up here and lived here most of my life. Now, the answer to your question is that the original Van Sweringen manifest, which was the publication that they printed in 1915 to go to prospective buyers of the city, stated very clearly that a prospective property owner would not be bothered by the likes of Catholics, Hebrews or Negroes. So that when I was growing up in Shaker Heights and graduated in 1965, the high school was 35% Jewish. And out of the 630 kids in my graduating class, there were 30 Black. All but 10 of those 620–30 kids went to college. And I can probably remember the names of the ten. One guy walked the Appalachian Trail a couple guys got drafted in Vietnam or went to Vietnam, enlisted, maybe one girl eloped with her boyfriend. But the rest of them were all raised with the mentality and perspective that we were college bound, that we were made to contribute to the society at large. And Shaker Heights, which in the ’60s had the single highest income per capita of any city in the United States. It was over $15,000 for every man, woman, child and dog. There was an article in a national magazine that compared the teachers parking lot as a used car lot compared to the students lot who all drove new cars. So we grew up here knowing that we were different, knowing that we were elite, if you want to use that word, knowing that we were college bound, knowing that we would be professionals, knowing that we would be facilitators and administrators, and knowing that the advantage that coming from Shaker Heights education system. I took three and four hour finals in high school. When I got to my graduate degrees, two hours was a breeze. I could knock that off with my eyes closed practically so that we were prepared, we were trained, we were, academic standards were phenomenally high. The AP classes back then was something I never got in because I was a mediocre student until I got to college. Compared with today where the AP classes are for those who can really do the work as opposed to those who can’t. And that’s how they split them down. The city has changed in terms of its racial complexion, as you well know. In the days that I grew up here, there were areas primarily north of South Woodland, if I’m correct, that were where any Jew, any Black, most Catholics were locked out. The real estate agents wouldn’t even show you those properties until the early ’60s when it really opened up into the areas of Green Road and East. From there. The racial barriers held very strongly, the societal barriers held very strongly. Up until the mid early ’80s, I think, there were no Blacks at Shaker Heights Country Club. Why? Because they were excluded. Why were they admitted in the ’80s or I think late ’70s, whenever it was? Because a Black lawyer sat down and figured out that Shaker Heights owned the property, not the country club. So therefore the club could not be exclusive. So they admitted, started admitting Blacks at that point. But up to that point the white, primarily Protestant as that there were no Jews in the club at that time, held very tight control of both the society and the secular environment of the city. So that’s pretty much a round history which I’m sure I’ll be delving back in and out of now. One of the reasons why we have such A heavy Black population in Shaker is because when the Van Sweringens cut a deal with the city of Cleveland for the rights of the rapid transit, they said, okay, we will admit Cleveland residents into the Shaker school system who lived in the South Moreland area, which at that time was white working class. And when I grew up, it was still white working class. As the years progressed and the neighborhood changed, that area went inner-city Black. And those people were still admitted by this law, this 99-year lease into the Shaker school system, which caused an influx into the Ludlow area, which caused an outflux of a lot of white residents at that time. Blockbusting it was called. And the nature of Shaker moved from that area of Cleveland up through the Scottsdale Ingleside area. Fernway is pretty solid these days. But that’s how that population came from Cleveland into the Shaker Heights school system, which no one expected. And that’s, you know, who knows what the reasons are? But there was in the ’50s and ’60s, ’60s particularly, a lot of white flight people leaving those areas of Shaker because they had bought and planned on being in a fairly white residential community. And all of a sudden there were inner-city neighbors that were buying houses with the help of NAACP for their professionals to come into these areas and put their kids in the finer system.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:08:08] How do you think, how did education play into that role in the white flight?
Herb Ascherman [00:08:14] The Blacks who were sponsored by the NAACP were primarily young professionals in the market who knew the value of education. And the Cleveland school system since the ’20s and ’30s, when it was really a good system, in the ’40s even, had deteriorated tremendously. So these were people who definitely saw a tremendous advantage to living there and raising their kids in that environment. And many of the, Ron Adrian, for example, is a judge of 35 years in Cleveland who graduated high school with me. And I don’t know for sure, but I think his parents came in those early days through one of those programs. It gave him tremendous advantage. And he has returned the education, the benefits of that education to Cleveland for 30 years. He’s one of the finest judges in the city and a great guy. So it’s hard to measure what the results are. In the early days, the results were more relevant and more measurable because those people are now in the positions of responsibility and power throughout the city and country as my generation. In subsequent years, parents may have recognized the value of an education for their children and brought their children in, but many of them still had an inner city mentality and disposition, particularly towards an antagonism towards schoolwork and towards discipline, which caused great problems in the high school once these kids got in there and didn’t understand and respect and potentially seize the opportunities that they were given. My son graduated, went to US [University School] for eight years. He didn’t like it there. He came to Shaker. All of his friends were expat US kids. That was his clique. There were a whole bunch of them that came over and he went through three or four years of Shaker. He graduated and he got a BFA and a master’s degree from Columbia and a master’s degree from John Carroll. He recognized the value of the educational foundation that he’d been given. And I’m still paying off his student loans. So the emphasis, the property value, the tax base that Shaker has always touted has been because we can produce a better than average student. Now it’s much more competitive. Beechwood, Solon, Orange, whatever, Pepper Pike systems out there have become the outer ring suburbs as opposed to Shaker, which is now an inner ring suburb. And educational. The efforts are still the same. The students have changed, the values are still the same. The efforts have changed, the tax base has changed. My taxes keep going up in Shaker, and I’m at a point to, you know, what are they producing for all the money that I’m paying, which is substantial? And is there a return for my value other than maintaining my house, the value of my house and my property? So nowadays people are looking more critically at the financial aspect and saying it’s ROA, return on investment, ROI. And what is the value of the Shaker school system as opposed to what it used to be? Is it still producing? Is it still worth what we’re paying in taxes to get the quality students out of it? Or has the whole system deteriorated? So it’s a long, involved, socially, racially charged argument and conversation. Very few people want to have it. But it’s in your face.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:12:02] And it’s currently happening right now?
Herb Ascherman [00:12:04] It’s currently happening right now.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:12:06] How would you kind of compare what you did as a student in Shaker Heights school system compared to what you think students do now?
Herb Ascherman [00:12:17] Well, I was trained, as a child, my mother told me from day one that - and I remember this verbatim - Herbert, they can take the clothes off your back, but they can’t take what’s in your head. And this is now post World War II, post Holocaust, post McCarthy. This is a nation under Eisenhower that’s rebuilding and recoiling and becoming much more conservative than it was in the ’20s and ’30s. So the value of education. One of my sisters is a PhD. The other went to art school and then talked, looked at my grandfather and said, I can’t get a job as an artist. So she has like 14 different degrees as an accountant. So it was pounded into us from day one, the value of education. And as I said, after a three- or four-hour final at Shaker, I could do anything. I was trained, I was prepared, and I was a real mediocre student. I was like C plus at Shaker compared to the other kids who were A students and AP students and everything else. I didn’t recognize who I was or what I was until I got to my graduate degrees and then found out that I could really do things well at that level. So coming up through the ranks, you went along with the system, you obeyed your teachers. There were no discipline problems. There were dress codes. There was, I was in one fight in 12 years, which was the last day of school. I caught the punch and didn’t hit back. It was over a girl - that neither one of us ended up with. But today you have a system where half the school is Black, over half. And they don’t have the same educational or societal or commercial values that I was raised with. The parents don’t have them, they can’t give them to the kids. The teachers are babysitters and at times guards. And you’re dealing with a different type of student than was raised when I came through the system, which were, we were raised to be academicians. And today the school system is raised to get the kids in line, teach them how to read and write, and then at 18, they’re on their own. And you can tell by the college, the proof is how many of these 500 and some odd kids that graduated from Shaker this year go to college. And I think it’s like 65% as opposed to 99% when I was in school. So the system is still there to teach the values. The homes don’t teach the values. The society doesn’t teach the values. The street sure as hell doesn’t teach the values. And consequently they don’t learn. And they will, although they can claim a Shaker Heights education. You know, what’s the proof? Show me how much you’ve learned. Can you sit down and put two sentences together and form a paragraph? Does education value to you as it does to me and to my family and to my son and to my grandson, whom I tried to get to move into Shaker, but they moved into Beachwood. I tried. I really did. I tried. And when you talk like this, sure, there’s a racial and a cultural undertone, but when you look at the high school, you can draw clear lines and you can see that the larger percentage of the Black children don’t go on, don’t take advantage of the system, whereas the majority of the white children do. Obviously, there’s some on either side that don’t make it, but on a percentage basis today, I’m sure the school system will bear me out that despite their best efforts, there’s still a 35% drop in college admissions from the time to that there were in 1965, 45 years ago, 47 years ago.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:16:12] Do you think that’s more of a racial problem or like a class problem or just kind of a society problem in general?
Herb Ascherman [00:16:19] Yes, yes and yes. When you have a society- Alright, my wife was a nurse at Huron Road Hospital 20 years ago, it now closed. It had a 99% Black clientele. It had 3,000 births a year. The age of the average mother coming in for her first baby was 14 to 16. The age of the average mother coming in for her second child was 15 to 17. When you have babies, having babies, you have a downward spiral in society. You have an unbreakable spiral of poverty, lack of education, lack of societal commitment, lack of involvement in the community at large. You have a welfare system that’s built to support people who can’t afford to live on their own because they don’t have jobs. You have a school system in Cleveland primarily that doesn’t train anyone to get any education whatsoever, let alone a job. And you have a culture of three, four, five generations that doesn’t prize education, that doesn’t prize cultural movement, that doesn’t prize society or class, that prizes a family unit based on each 15, 17, 18, 20 year generation having more children. And you have a situation where the men are not taught to appreciate women, to respect women, to protect women, as opposed to potentially violating women, which is why there’s so many pregnancies in one scenario. I mean, there are many reasons more. If I was in charge, I would have every church and every school system preaching and teaching sex education from grade two on. And it’s got nothing to do with religion and it’s got nothing to do with race. It’s common sense to prevent these children from binding themselves in life for life and not being able to have any opportunity whatsoever. You can’t if you’ve got to take care of an infant, how can you? So there is a residual effect that filters into Shaker. I’m sure there are. In my day, there was maybe one pregnancy every two or three years that you heard of, maybe, and maybe a couple you didn’t hear of. But today, you can walk down the halls of Shaker Heights and see pregnant teenagers. So it’s an entirely different class, societal, racial system in place today in many of the inner-city communities like Cleveland, where they refuse, for whatever the reason, to teach sex education, to teach, to preach or to teach, and to try to stop the spiral of poverty which we see in Shaker Heights, the answer to being education. And it’s always been that way. So my son went through, you know, as I said, three colleges. I have three, two master’s degrees, one and a half, actually, and a B.A. My wife didn’t go to Shaker, has five degrees. My father had two. My mother barely got out of Laurel. She got out. She got married and had children. But the emphasis has always been always, always, always on education. And that’s the greatest strength of Shaker Heights, which is lacking in places like Cleveland.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:58] With the integration movement in Shaker in the 1960s, particularly with the Ludlow Community Association, do you think there is such a cooperation among all races, whites, Blacks, Asians? And do you think that kind of cooperation has ceased, or do you think it’s still here?
Herb Ascherman [00:20:27] Well, as in any situation, you have public dogma and you have private dogma, and the public dogma is we embrace all people, we teach all people, we educate all people. All people are welcome. Privately, there’s a tremendous amount of racism. Cleveland is one of the most racially divisive cities in the country. Up until the late ’60s, there were no Black mailmen on the west side of Cleveland because they’d be shot. There are story after story after story of racial incidents in the city of white on Black, of Black on white, of Black on Black. That’s a heavy part of the criminal scene today. So that you can’t answer a question like that politically correctly, which I don’t believe in at all. I think that’s just a lot of garbage. But we’ll get to that later. As far as political correctness, because you’re taught to say the right thing when, in effect, you go home and you sit at the dinner table and everyone spews as to what really it is or what the problems really are or what they should be. So in the ’60s, we embraced the kids in the class. They were Shaker students. They competed with us. They had the academics to compete with us, many of whom were much better than I was academically. I mean, there was no competition, there was no jealousy among us. We were all Shaker students. And when we stood up there, we represented, as I said, Judge Adrian, represent Shaker Heights as the best of the best of the best. In the years of my son’s class in 1991, I said, why don’t you go out for sports? He says, well, they’re all Black. He says, the only thing I could play would be baseball. The football team was all Black, the basketball team was all Black, the cheerleaders were all Black. And they had formed tight cliques that he didn’t want to get involved with. And he was a pretty racially open kid. What they are now, I don’t know because I’m not involved with the schools. But race played a tremendous part of the education of the student throughout the system because everybody clings to its own, you know, his or her own group. My Ida clique of young Jewish kids, we rarely mixed with the Gentile kids socially, rarely who had their own country clubs as we had our own country clubs. And we just, we just never mixed. We would go to school socials together. We play in the same team, but we always sat with our own people. There’s no answer, there’s no solution. I don’t think there’s any real, other than education, education, education, where you try to give everyone the benefit of the best that the school can provide. There are no solutions and it will never go away. Particularly in Cleveland, which as I said is extremely divisive. And as a photographer, having done 1,731 weddings and over 6,000 portraits in a 33-year period, I have been to 90% of the churches in the city, Black and white. I have been to every synagogue. I have been to homes from one end of the spectrum to the other socially. So I can see the difference in the cultures and the difference in the racial and religious aspects. Being Jewish, there were clubs that I couldn’t get into for the first 17 years as even working. And even though I was part of these people’s families and were at their most wonderful and familiar events, I was never invited back for dinner. They had their cliques, their clubs, I had mine, I had my friends. And we mixed socially, in public and in privately everyone retreated to those that they know best and most comfortable with. Has the situation changed any? No, I think it’s just gotten more divisive as the problems arise with Cleveland that are melting into Cleveland Heights, University Heights. East Cleveland is a wasteland. All these inner-ring suburbs are suffering the same way. It’s not just our problem. Shaker Heights High School graduated its last all white-Jewish class in 1965, the same way that I did. It’s now 85 or 90% Black. My son taught there for a year. I said, tell me about it. He says, there are no textbooks. I said, why? He says, because the students don’t bring them back. Every lesson has to be written out that day, Xeroxed and done in class because the students don’t have a responsibility to bring back a textbook that they would take home and study, et cetera, et cetera.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:25:12] Kind of shifting gears a little bit kind of outside of the education system. When you were growing up, what were kind of some fun things that you like to do? Any activities, any places you would go?
Herb Ascherman [00:25:27] Thornton wasn’t built when I was young. That came along a lot later. So there was no place to go in Shaker Heights where you did anything. I mean, you like to go to Van Aken and go to Draeger’s, and you like to go to, God, where else? Boudin’s. Oh, that was our favorite delicatessen in the corner of Van Aken and Avalon. And we’d go there every Sunday night for dinner with my grandparents. That would be the big treat of the week and I’d get a hot dog, which I think was like 35 cents or something. So there were local Gruber’s. Oh, my God. I had my first lobster at Gruber’s at Van Aken. And there were these great restaurants which were. You could only go with your grandparents. My parents were divorced very, very young. In 1955, I was 7 years old or 8 years old. So it was always my grandparents taking us out someplace. But those restaurants were seminal. And after dancing school, which we went through from seventh, eighth, ninth grade, whatever it was, we’d go to Manners Big Boy, which is now the Wendy’s at Van Aken and Warrensville used to be a Manners Big Boy. And that was a tremendous treat to be able to have a big boy after dancing school. I mean, because you will go, you will participate, you will keep your mouth shut, you will behave, and you’ll have a treat afterwards. So that’s how dancing school was raised. So there was nothing specifically cultural about Shaker Heights. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. All the activities were elsewhere. But it was a great place to live and a great place to grow up. And the streets were safe and you didn’t have to lock your door. And you played with all the neighborhood kids, regardless of who they were or what their backgrounds were. Because everyone lived together on Stockholm when I grew up. And both my grandparents lived in Shaker Heights until they all died. One lived at Shaker Square, which was great because we could walk around the square after dinner and go to Miller Drugstore. Shaker Square is not in Shaker, it’s in Cleveland. So we would go to Miller drugstore and have a chocolate phosphate after dinner if we were good or something like that. And we were. And my other grandparents lived on Kemper. So they were always. We always walked everybody after dinner. Always went for a walk when you went to your grandparents house. So we would walk around Shaker Square or go down to Shaker Square and see the lights at Christmas or go to the restaurant Stouffer’s used to be at Shaker Square, which was a great family place to go because they always had a big toy box. And when you were done, you could pick out one toy and go home. So I remember culturally the most exciting experiences were eating because there wasn’t anything else to do as far as Euclid beach or Chagrin Falls, the Falls, or I don’t know, there was another amusement park way out or something. But those were major journeys for the day as opposed to just coming home, playing in the neighborhood.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:28:36] Where did you go to dancing school?
Herb Ascherman [00:28:39] Florence Shapiro, who lived in Shaker Heights in a house right off Fernway and Avalon, north of it turns into something else. Ran a dancing school for 20, 30, 40 years. And she was the dancing instructor with her castanets. She would always click. And her sister played the piano. And I think the brother lived in the house too. None of them ever married. So we would carpool down to the Masonic hall at Lee Road and Mayfield and disgorge from the car, run up the stairs, run in. Boys on one side, girls on the other side. You sat around in a big square or big U around the stage, hands in your lap, mouth shut, waiting to be told what to do as far as which dances to go. You had to mix and match. You could never dance with the same girl twice. And there was always a lady’s choice where the girl get to pick the partner. And then afterwards you’d break down into carpools and you’d go to McDonald’s. You’d not go to not McDonald’s, you’d go to Big Boy, you go to Draeger’s. Or you’d go wherever you went for your treat afterwards. So it was a social and societal affair. Everybody went. Myself went, my sisters in their cute little frilly dresses and black patent Mary Janes and white gloves. Girls always wore white gloves. And it was part of the coming of age in Cleveland at that time. All Jewish. This school was all Jewish. The Gentiles had their own school.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:05] Did you do traditional Jewish dances?
Herb Ascherman [00:30:09] No, no, this is ballroom dancing. This is waltz, foxtrot, whatever they call it. She never used the word rock and roll. She used some other word. No, this was formal, formal country club dance. It had nothing to do with being a kid.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:31] What is it kind of like going to, I know that you were interviewed for the 75th anniversary, correct?
Herb Ascherman [00:30:37] You know what? I didn’t-
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:39] You were interviewed for the 75th anniversary?
Herb Ascherman [00:30:41] Yes, yes.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:41] What is it like kind of looking back? You know, there’s a hundred years of Shaker Heights. Does that ever kind of hit you in any way, or is it just kind of?
Herb Ascherman [00:30:52] Well, what you see is the transitions. You see Van Aken going bust and being torn down at some point. If they can’t sell it. You see massive ideas like putting a tunnel through the Van Aken to run the traffic straight up someplace else or whatever it was on the drawing boards. You see the Clark Freeway rise and fall. You know what the Clark Freeway is?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:15] I’ve heard of it.
Herb Ascherman [00:31:16] In the late ’60s, some county engineer wanted to connect 271 with downtown. So he looked and he saw a railroad track. And he said, well, we’ll just take the railroad track out and we’ll put a freeway in. And it would have destroyed Shaker Boulevard. It would have destroyed 260 some odd houses. And his comment was, what’s all the hubbub? There are only homes. But it would have been through the heart of and destroyed the ethic, the ethos, the pathos of Shaker Heights and the elegance of the city, the way it stands. Plus every house on Shaker Heights, on Shaker Boulevard would have been torn down. So this was a major fight. We would have not had the Shaker park system, the Shaker Nature center, and they’ve got a huge display showing the map where it would have gone. That would have taken out the Van Sweringen lakes, it would have taken out Shaker Boulevard, it would have taken out North Park, different areas down there, and put in a fucking freeway. So one of the elegant aspects of Shaker Heights is the continuity in the housing and that it’s there after year after year after year. Plus the Forest City, the city of trees. It’s one of the most beautiful cities. I’ve traveled all over the world and it’s one of the most beautiful cities - Cleveland itself, actually, and the suburbs - in the world. Because we plant trees, because we appreciate green space, because we have an appreciation for quality, and visually as well as in a sense of living, and a sense of environment and a sense of experience. So I grew up, I can see this building across the street. And I knew that there was Nickel Sporting Goods in there and there was a shoemaker in there. And on the corner was a drugstore where I used to get a Coke for a nickel after school or something. So I look at the city and I see the ghosts. This area over here, where the Heinen’s is, used to be a row of stores. And the Chagrin with the Kinsman Lee Bowling Center. The used to be Kinsman until they renamed it Chagrin because they didn’t want to bring the inner-city Kinsman out to the suburbs. So they renamed it. And Kinsman picks up again in Kinsman, Ohio, the other side of Hunting Valley. I see the ghosts. I see where I used to ride my bike. I used to go over to Horseshoe Lake. In those days you ranged. It’s not like today where you don’t let your kid out of your sight. In those days, at 7, 8, 9, 10, I’d come home from school and go for an hour bike ride. Where are you going? Out. What are you doing? Nothing. Where were you? Nowhere. And you go for a bike ride and you go play. You go to a park and play. You go to Horseshoe Lake and play. That’s recreational. And your parents didn’t worry about it because you knew you’d be home for 6:00 for dinner. And everybody knew the police and the police knew everyone. And they were neighborhood patrols and you knew them by the first name. And your mother would get up in the morning and put on her mink coat over her nightgown and drive you to school and drive home. There was never any fear of anybody being attacked or anybody being stopped. It was a very safe community, a very solid community and a very comfortable community to live in. So you couldn’t, as a child, I couldn’t have grown up better anyplace else. So I had the environment, I had the parks that I loved. And I had the school system, which I also loved too. I enjoyed going to school.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:34:59] You were mentioning the Van Sweringens a lot and how they kind of affected the housing, especially with regards to race.
Herb Ascherman [00:35:09] They didn’t affect it, they commanded it. They were the ones who dictated what it was going to be.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:15] How was that, has the history of the Van Sweringens kind of commanded, using your word, your, kind of how Shaker developed?
Herb Ascherman [00:35:27] Absolutely, because they were in full force until, I guess, they died in the late ’40s or early ’50s, and they owned all the property. And so Van Sweringen Company owned Shaker Heights. Shaker Heights didn’t become a community on itself. They bought it. They laid out 45 miles of streets and they created the environment that became Shaker Heights in 1915. So it was directly relevant to who they were and what they wanted to do and how they wanted to present to who they wanted for neighbors.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:57] The Van Sweringen and homes that they built, they’re like mansions, aren’t they?
Herb Ascherman [00:36:01] The Van Sweringen mansion, which is on North Park, has 12 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms. When my mother built our house in 1960 on Green Road, we paid something like $62,000 for our house. The Van Sweringen mansion was for sale for $60,000, in 1960. The difference is it was $3,000 a month to heat in the winter back then because you had six different furnaces or whatever the hell was going on inside the house. So it was totally impractical. It wasn’t insulated. It wasn’t air conditioned, blah, blah, blah. Since then, it’s gone through a dozen owners, and each owner has upgraded it. I drove by there this morning on the way over here. The lawn looks like a country club. I mean, the house is absolutely magnificent. It is the centerpiece, the cornerstone of Shaker Heights. It’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s well taken care of. Who knows what it’s worth today. But it’s their shadow that Shaker Heights benefits from.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:37:10] Did that mansion kind of set the bar for Shaker Heights?
Herb Ascherman [00:37:15] Probably. There’s certainly, to my knowledge, there isn’t anything bigger. There are other houses that are more elegant. The one across the street on that little turnaround right in front of Horseshoe Lake, which I believe was the Halle mansion, was a phenomenal house, which they’ve just renovated and cut back all the brush that you can actually see it, which I think is a stupid idea. I wouldn’t want to see anybody. So there are others of that caliber, but I don’t think any house surpasses it. I doubt very much, to my knowledge, in Shaker. [inaudible comment from interviewer] Well, with the size, with the physical size. All the adjoining properties have been sold off in the ’40s and ’50s, and there are contemporary houses next to it. But that one house sits on an acre or two acres of land, whatever it is, and it’s just a showpiece for the city.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:37:58] I never actually drive by it.
Herb Ascherman [00:37:59] Drive by it, drive by it today. It’s not even five minutes from here.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:38:09] You mentioned to remind you about Coventry Village.
Herb Ascherman [00:38:16] When I moved in back to Cleveland in 1977 - I moved 1975, get it straight - I had a little tiny operation in a warehouse downtown until I got my head together and figured out what I wanted to do. And I’m driving down Coventry and I see an open store. Made arrangements, got the store, my father helped subsidize it for the six months on the basis that if it didn’t succeed as a photographer I couldn’t find something else to do. And for years he was very pissed off at me because I succeeded. And every conversation was when are you going to put away the cameras and get a real job? So I looked at the address and I looked at the community and I said Coventry Road doesn’t mean anything. I changed my,I personally changed my address on my stationary to Coventry Village. Post office comes over, what’s this? I said, this is a little village. Let’s just, Coventry Village. Newspapers would call up, where’s Coventry Village? Well, it’s Coventry, but it’s the commercial area. The name stuck, the name grew. It’s now Coventry Village. It came from me in 1975 and my stationery.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:39:42] Do you still own that store?
Herb Ascherman [00:39:44] No, long gone. I was on Coventry intermittently for 18 of my 33-year career.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:39:50] Was it for photography or was it for?
Herb Ascherman [00:39:52] No, no photography studio. And, I had the only nonprofit photography gallery in Cleveland’s history, which I ran for 28 years. I founded it, funded it, directed it, held 169 contiguous photography shows - contiguous means back to back - over a 28-year period in three different locations I think, or four or whatever it was. So I became known as the center of art photography in Cleveland. There was a commercial gallery that sold fine prints on the west side. My mandate was to show 50% Cleveland and Ohioans, 50% out of state, which I held for 28 years. Half the shows went to Clevelanders and Ohioans. And someone said well, are you a kingmaker? And I said no, I just want to put people into the system and teach them how to do a show. I’ll give them, I’d rather give someone their first show than someone their 50th. To get them into the system and to teach them how to function so that they can go on and be successful elsewhere. As have many people who showed with me for the first time.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:40:54] Do you still run the galleries?
Herb Ascherman [00:40:55] No, long gone. Just the attrition of business and the attrition of Cleveland and the fact that I had to move so frequently or often, not frequently, that I moved the studio several times and each in the last, I’ve been, I closed the studio in 2009, so previous to that, each move was just to a smaller location to cut overhead. And at one point, heartbreakingly, I had to let the gallery go. But I also ran the Jewish Community Center photography show for 12 or 14 years. And I’m involved with other projects photographic throughout the city. So one door closes, three, four more open. With my background and expertise, I’m able to work in a lot, a number of different areas simultaneously, all promoting photography. At the minute, I’m the president of the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve downtown. I’m the president of the board for- This is my third year. And we preserve art. We have 59 archived artists in perpetuity and we have a huge plant and an office and managers. And we put up exhibitions half dozen times a year and we collect and archive Cleveland artists. So I’ve segwayed into a broader scheme other than just photography.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:42:19] Do you preserve public art as well as, you know, physical photographs and paintings?
Herb Ascherman [00:42:25] No, we are, we house art. We have 59 artists who have committed their collections to us. And we, It’s always a fight, but we fund the maintenance of the organization to sustain those and then we exhibit their work. So it’s mostly flat art. There’s some sculptures in there, there’s some two dimensional art. But we have nothing to do publicly. We are strictly a private organization. You can be a member, anyone can be a member of the organization. But you have to be vetted and selected to be an archived artist because those are the people we put our resources behind.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:43:02] With kind of backtracking a little bit with Coventry, when you first kind of arrived there, what was the scene?
Herb Ascherman [00:43:09] The scene was hippies. The scene was biker bars. The scene was Harley-Davidsons parked in the middle of the street. The scene was all-night beer parties and pot parties going on in front of you. It was a Wild West. It was the Haight-Ashbury in the Greenwich Village of Cleveland. It has since, and I always said in those days that I wished it would be a strip of restaurants, at which point we’d open at noon and stay open till 9 o’clock at night when people walked. I didn’t understand or predict at that time that all the restaurants would be sports bars. So there are very few boutique little restaurants and boutiquey little stores left, as opposed to a mecca for college students and sports nuts to come and sit and drink beer and yell at the TV screens, which is really horrible because they’re not the kind of people who will shop the neighborhood. So I was president of the Coventry Village Development Association for many years in terms of redeveloping the area, of getting, of evolving it. Little stores go out, other stores come in. We still don’t have any chains other than Marc’s, which is fine. And to keep the boutique atmosphere of Cleveland Heights, but it has changed tremendously. Case in point, for 30 years, there was an annual Coventry Street Fair. Two years ago, there was a flash mob of Black teenagers where all of a sudden they poured in from the north end of the street, Mayfield and North Coventry, and filtered through the whole area. The cops shut the whole thing down and there hasn’t been another street fair. They got on these kids, got on their texty thingies and said, Coventry, be here now. There were several small fights. It could have erupted into a major racial bash. And the city just pulled the plug on, said, we can’t enforce this. It’s racial if we don’t allow Black teenagers in. But that destroys it for the other 25,000 whites that come. So, Coventry lost a tremendous publicity vehicle and a lot of its ambience because people came in who couldn’t appreciate what was there and were only there for their own devices and disruptions.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:45:24] With Coventry, for my generation, we call them hipsters, kind of, you know, modern-day, I guess, hippies. And they still kind of go to Coventry. Coventry is kind of like the cool, cool place. So I think that kind of, you know, scene has stayed the same a little bit. But what specifically do you think kind of do you think is just the sports bars that change that?
Herb Ascherman [00:45:53] The nature of the neighborhood. Everything changes everything. If you look at Cleveland, Cleveland had 60, 70, 65 registered ethnic groups. Okay, primarily eastern European, Catholic, but lots of everybody else. The whole west side is now - it’s second generation or third generation - but it was first-generation working-class, primarily Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Russian, working Eastern European, Ukrainian, Latvian, whatever. And the first thing that a community would do when it moved in is build a church, which is why we have hundreds of churches from the 1840s and ’50s, some with magnificent interiors still. And the second thing they do is build a bakery. And then the community would come. And between the church and the bakery, which then became a butchery and which then became there would be a little, a grocery store and a haberdashery. Cleveland evolved as a city of neighborhoods. And when you drive through today, if you blink, you’ll miss the lines of demarcation between one neighborhood and the next neighborhood. Or if you want to call little diocese, whatever you want to call them. These were all, 99% of these were all Catholic on the west side and the east side was Lutheran, Methodists, Baptists, smattering of Jews out in the Heights. Well, the Jews started out on Euclid Avenue, 105th also, and then moved progressively east. So the religious, the cultural, the class, the racial implications of Cleveland were there from its onset when it was a city of tiny little communities. There are 58, I think, different principalities in Cuyahoga County, and each one fractured so that you have your own clan, your own type of people, your own living arrangements, own racial, own class wise per suburb. And then inside those suburbs became enclaves in different areas of different types of people who lived in different areas. There are, there’s Little Italy. Little Italy was founded because the Protestants who built Lake View Cemetery in the 1860s wanted gorgeous monuments. So they imported Italian stone makers. They’re not going to live in Shaker Heights, so they sit on the side of the cemetery where they work so they could walk to work every day. They built the huge stone wall that’s Mayfield Road as you come down the hill. And they did 99% of all the monuments in those days to the, you know, well into the 20th century, at Lake View Cemetery. You wanted- God, something just slipped my mind. Next question. I was going to talk about other neighborhoods in the city, but that’s, I’ve forgotten.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:49:02] That’s fine.
Herb Ascherman [00:49:03] Don’t print that.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:49:07] You’re a photographer, so I’m sure you’ve been in a lot of these churches, if not all.
Herb Ascherman [00:49:12] Most.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:49:13] Right. Are there any certain ones that stick out, as far as, you know?
Herb Ascherman [00:49:16] St. Michael’s on the west side has over 150 handmade wooden sculptures of saints because they brought over German sculptures. One of the other areas, there’s a church directly adjacent to the parking lot at the Westside Market, which is now Spanish, where they went in and painted white wooden carvings in the entire nave that had taken a decade to carve in natural wood. They didn’t like it, so they just painted it white. So some of the stuff has been destroyed. Each, a lot of churches are just empty, you know, Gothic structures that are meant to intimidate and others where they brought the craftsmen with them are magnificent works of art and should be preserved as many museums unto their own. Because we have a culture in Cleveland which is unlike any other city in the country where they came in and they built these edifices. All of the inner city synagogues, there’s two major ones on Euclid Avenue, are now Baptist churches. Many of the older WASP-y churches, the one on the corner of 105th and Chester, big, black, big dark structure needs to be cleaned, was one of the most prominent white churches in the city, you know, went Black umpteen years ago. However, Epworth, the church of the holy oil can, the one down at University Circle, has maintained - I think that’s Episcopal - has maintained a tremendous white following from the suburbs. So it hasn’t, that one hasn’t followed. So every neighborhood is different. Holy Rosary is still, does mass in Italian in Little Italy for that generation, of which there are very few. They do Latin and they do, I think they do Latin and I think they do Italian. The priest speaks Italian, because there’s still many vestiges of that old, old, now it’d be a third. It would be my grandparents who. Who are all dead. It’d be my parents, generation who are dying off rapidly that still live in that neighborhood that speak Italian. The other, that’s what I was going to say. My wife is from, is Italian, from Ireland. Is Irish from Ireland. Scratch that. She’s Irish from Ireland, born here. But her parents were the youngest of seven, the youngest of eight who were born in the US but conceived in Ireland. And the largest contingency, there’s an island off the west coast of Ireland called Achill Island. And the west, the largest contingency of Achill Island, Irishers outside of Ireland, is on the west side of Cleveland. So Cleveland is a magnet for major ethnic groups from around the world. And when we were in Ireland, I stumbled on a tombstone. I took the photograph and sent it to the historical society. And it said, indebted in memory from your comrades in arms, Cleveland, Ohio. So even back in the 20s, during the Troubles, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. During the Troubles, there were US Irish that came back to Ireland to fight on the side of the Irish against the British.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:52:35] During Bloody Sunday era, right?
Herb Ascherman [00:52:39] U2. Yeah. Yes. They call it the Troubles, 1916–1922, that era, where it was just open revolution against the British.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:52:52] With kind of this melting pot of Cleveland, what do you think initially attracted all these European?
Herb Ascherman [00:53:00] We had 28 steel mills in 1900. We have one left. Cleveland was the second largest manufacturing base. It went Detroit, Cleveland, Birmingham, Alabama, for steel in the United States. We were on the lake. We had harbor access, we had shipping, and we had a need, a necessity for a blue collar labor force. Which, whose children went through the Cleveland school system and became eminently educated. So that even into the ’60s, ’70s, before it went from primarily white to Black in many of the areas, we had one of the finest trained educational workforces in the country. Not to debase the Black workforce, but the white workforce had been educated primarily on the west side for now, you have to have some water here or something, from two generations at that point, or three or four. So we were a strong manufacturing base. We had people who were in the factories every day and came from these neighborhoods where a father would work and get his son a job or get his brother a job or get his neighbor a job at the Ford stamping plant. We had a half a dozen car manufacturers here. We had major steel production. We had pre war and post war. We had huge industrialization which dissipated in the ’80s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, because there was. Companies were closed, companies merged, companies were outsourced, and there was no need for the workforce anymore. So now I don’t understand how Cleveland survives. I don’t see any commerce. You know I see people working in one store, buying stuff in another store, and they’re just trading money that no one’s getting ahead. No one’s building anything. What’s the largest single company in the state of Ohio? Cleveland Clinic, the largest single employer. Second largest employer, University Hospital. So you’re a doctor, a nurse, or an orderly or a clerk. Those are the jobs that they provide. 49,000 jobs at the clinic. Doctor, nurse, orderly, clerk. But these aren’t, you know, you can make a career out of it, sure, but it’s not like working in a manufacturing environment or working in a professional environment where you have opportunity for advancement and success and that kind of succession.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:55:29] And also I feel like the Clinic kind of imports a lot too.
Herb Ascherman [00:55:34] There’s a lack, sure, there’s- There’s a huge lack of doctors in medicine and in nursing particularly. They have feeder organizations in the Philippines and in India and different places to bring over here. Which begs a moral question, are we taking away from a country, third world country, that needs their own people as much as we need them here? But they have no opportunity for employment. Very little salaries are a fraction of what they are here. No opportunity for social advancement. It makes it worthwhile. The biggest mistake the United States made during the Chinese uprising, the Tiananmen Square. There were something like 65,000 Chinese students in the country at that time, all enrolled in advanced math and sciences and technology classes. The US Government should Have looked at each one and said, here’s instant citizenship. Stay here. We would have sucked China’s brainpower instead of letting them go back. We need that kind of underpinning. There’s a commercial, horrible commercial on TV by an oil company and it says the top 19 here are the top countries that, here are the countries with the top science education programs. Finland is first, the US is 19th. We should have kept those, if they’re willing to come here and work for us and benefit our society, give them instant citizenship. I don’t care. My life will only improve because of their contributions to the society.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:57:05] I like that argument that you said before. Kind of especially with people in kind of lesser developed countries like not necessarily India, but you know, India was always a big one but you know, Asian. Most people kind of think of that, oh, like they’re stealing American jobs. But I like that argument. Well, really we’re kind of stealing from.
Herb Ascherman [00:57:28] Sure, sure. To benefit us, which we return in lend lease and foreign aid. I mean, we don’t just take without giving back. There’s a tremendous give back. But it helps our society at the level of you break your leg, you need a nurse to attend to you and if there’s nobody there, you suffer.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:57:48] Just kind of one last question, we’re almost at the hour. I know you-
Herb Ascherman [00:57:52] No, I’m, because I do have one story I want to tell you. But what’s your question?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:57:56] I was going to ask you just if you had any final thoughts?
Herb Ascherman [00:57:58] Alright. When I was a little boy, I grew up at 3326 Stockholm. Behind our house was a huge field owned by the city of Shaker Heights. And in the middle of that field was a boulder, a real honest to goodness glacier boulder of basalt. This thing probably weighs 1500, maybe 2000 pounds. Big fucking boulder. And when I was a child, that boulder was Iwo Jima. That boulder was a pirate’s castle. That boulder was Never Neverland. Under that boulder lived a gorgon. And down a long twisting series of stairs, once you got past the guardian snakes was a huge treasure. And we played on that boulder every day. And I would be sitting there and we had a housekeeper and she would come out with milk and a PB&J sandwich and I’d eat my lunch on the boulder and I reigned, and all our friends, I mean it wasn’t just me, it was all the neighborhood played on that boulder. So when I moved back to Cleveland in the ’70s I was driving by, I had lived in an apartment over off of Coventry - and then I rented a two-family house which I bought on Chagrin and Stover - and I’m driving down Chagrin down Lee Road towards Chagrin, and I see this boulder sitting in the middle of the yard. I cast my eyes leftward, and all of a sudden my entire history of my childhood flashed before me. I made a U turn and went to the Shaker Heights city service. And I walked in and I said, who’s in charge? He’s in charge. I said, I’m Herbert Ascherman. I live on Stover. I want my boulder. Looks at me and I said, it was Iwo Jima. It was a pirate’s castle. It was never Never Neverland. If you move it, you gotta be careful because there’s a gorgon underneath and they got nasty snakes and you gotta get the treasure out. And he looked at me. He says, where exactly is this boulder? And I looked over and I pointed to the map of Shaker Heights. And he picks up the phone, he says, Frank? Yeah, this is Henry. You know that goddamn boulder we have to mow around every time we plow the place? Yeah, it’s been a pain in the ass. Yeah, we’ve got to, there’s a guy here who wants it. Yeah, okay. Hangs the phone up. He says, 75 hours. Where do you want it delivered? I said, wow. So I went to my two-family house and I put a stake down, and I said, just drop it in the front yard where the stake is. Ten years go by and I sell the house. But I write in the contract, I’m coming to get this boulder when I can get it. My boulder. Years later, I hire the gardening people that I had. One day I’m at home and there’s a sound like a Sherman tank coming up the driveway. And I look down this little Bobcat with this huge boulder on the front of it. And it’s coming down the driveway, and there’s 16 guys there. Where do you want it? Well, over here. So they dump it. And I said, no, doesn’t look good there. He says, we’re leaving. I said, we have to move it. He says, we’re out of here. I said, but it’s not right. It just, physically, it doesn’t fit right. He says, see you around. I said, Here’s 20 bucks. He says, okay, where do you want it? He picks the boulder up, replaces it at a different place in the backyard. So, I called up a friend of mine who manages Mayfield Cemetery, and I have my plots. And I said, Pat, I’m bringing a boulder. He says, what? I said, when I go, this boulder is coming with me. He says, what kind of a boulder is it? I said, it’s basalt. He says, fine, because sandstone deteriorates. He says, okay. So I told my wife, if I go first, I want a brass plaque. Herbert Ascherman with my signature, he liked to take pictures, and the dates. And that boulder is going to go on me forever. So a little bit of Shaker Heights is coming over to Mayfield Cemetery and will be forever entwined with a longtime Shaker Heights resident.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [01:01:50] Wow, that’s great.
Herb Ascherman [01:01:51] Who really loves the city and enjoys living here.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [01:01:59] Great. That’s great stuff. Thank you so much for doing this.
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