Abstract
In this 2005 interview, Charles Berry, a 33rd degree Scottish Rite Mason, discusses his life growing up in Cleveland in the 1930s and his involvement with the Scottish Rite Masons with whom he had been a member a the time of this interview for 48 years. Berry is a volunteer worker at the Masonic Library in Cleveland, and has acquired a wealth of knowledge of Masonic history by reading many of the books at the Library. Along the way, Mr. Berry has also met many famous Clevelanders who were members of the Scottish Rite Masons and is knowledgable of the history of the Masonic Lodge in downtown Cleveland. Mr. Berry puts together slide shows of Mason history, and makes presentations of the history of the Masons, a society of free thinkers, to Masonic lodges around Cleveland.
Loading...
Interviewee
Berry, Charles (interviewee)
Interviewer
McCafferty, David (interviewer)
Project
History 400
Date
11-10-2005
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
80 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Charles Berry Interview, 2005" (2005). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 400007.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/55
Transcript
David McCafferty [00:00:00] Hi, I am the interviewer. My name is David William McCafferty of Cleveland State University. Today is the 10 November 2005. I am interviewing Mister Charles Berry of the Masonic Library, the Masonic Performing Arts center downtown on Euclid Avenue. He is a 33rd degree Scottish Rites Mason. Mister Berry, thank you.
Charles Berry [00:00:20] Good afternoon.
David McCafferty [00:00:21] I just had a couple questions for you. I have a list of questions here for you. For this oral history. Let’s start off with just the basic. Where and when were you born?
Charles Berry [00:00:30] I was born in South Bend, Indiana. And my father left the city of South Bend to work for Westinghouse Electric in Cleveland. I was three years old when I came to Cleveland in a model T Ford and it took 20 hours. [laughter]
David McCafferty [00:00:47] What year were you born?
Charles Berry [00:00:49] I was born 12/27/28.
David McCafferty [00:00:51] 1928.
Charles Berry [00:00:52] 1928, right.
David McCafferty [00:00:53] So before the depression.
Charles Berry [00:00:54] Oh my, I was almost a depression boy. [laughter]
David McCafferty [00:00:58] So what was it like when you got to Cleveland? What was the neighborhood that you were living in like?
Charles Berry [00:01:02] Well, they rented properties. One had some bed animals and they had no way of fighting that sort of thing. So they simply moved away and left everything. And in those days it was quite different. My father, I don’t think he ever owned a house. He didn’t make much money when he started working and he always claimed until World War Two came along. They got overtime at Westinghouse and then he started to be able to put together some money. I have a younger brother, a year and a half younger and a sister who was a year and a half older and she’s already passed away in 1995. My brother has moved to Texas.
David McCafferty [00:01:52] So he always rented.
Charles Berry [00:01:54] He always rented, right. He always had secondhand cars. And times were extremely tough. Extremely tough. From time to time we would get a ride back to the folks in Indiana. Generally, if somebody was going that way, we couldn’t afford to train. And of course they didn’t believe in airplanes. So that’s how we got to go back to see Grandma and Grandpa and the folks there.
David McCafferty [00:02:26] Now, when you said life was particularly hard, as you mentioned, in addition to, like taking the train and hopping a ride, what other things, you know, were very difficult about life? Like we were discussing on the way here.
Charles Berry [00:02:38] Well, we had mostly boiled foods. My mother was always at home. I had an intact family. My father worked hard. He put in as much hours as he could. Then he always had a little part time job doing something around the neighborhood they didn’t have. We didn’t have very. We didn’t know we were poor, really because we had a lot of love and we had a lot of things we wanted, was on our wish list, but they were out of reach. As I grew up, they were fairly disciplined people. I mean, mother would hug you when you needed it and smack you if she didn’t need it, you know, and my father was the same way, you know, so we grew up loved, and, but they were strict disciplinarians. You didn’t talk back and you didn’t say anything to them, and you didn’t even say darn or heck or something, because he’d call you back and look you right in the face and tell you, I don’t want to hear out of you. You know, when we would walk to visit the neighbor, he would indoctrinate us going up the sidewalk. He’d say, now, you know what the rules are. I don’t expect to have to discipline you in this house, and so behave yourself. You know, that was all indoctrination. As we went up the sidewalk, he didn’t own a car. They had no antifreeze, permanent antifreeze. They used alcohol if they could run the car. But that boiled over, and it was unsatisfactory. So they put the car up on blocks, if he had one, and didn’t use it all winter long. He wrote public transportation.
David McCafferty [00:04:29] What kind of schooling did you have growing up? Did you attend? Did you attend [inaudible] high school, college?
Charles Berry [00:04:33] Oh, yes. I didn’t go to college. I served an apprenticeship in the floor business. My mother left home when I was fourteen. She ran off and decided she didn’t love my father anymore. And my brother stayed. My father, my brother, and myself stayed in an apartment which was 116th and Detroit street, and we lived there. It was a six room apartment with heat, and it was clean and comfortable and neat. My sister went to live with my grandmother because my father and her kind of were at loggerheads about certain things that he told her she was going to do, and she wasn’t going to do them. So she went back to Indiana to live with my grandmother, which was fine because grandma was a disciplinarian, too. So I lived above a linolium store, and I did a lot of work around this apartment, helping out with the cleaning of stoker and the furnaces. And if you know anything about a boiler, you have to, they have a bunch of tubes up above that the heat goes through. They fill up full of soot, and you have to take a long brush and push them through and what have you. And I was able to do that and make a few extra dollars when I was in Wilbur Wright Junior High. Then I went on to West Tech, which was 93rd and Lorain street. And I graduated from there. The man said to me, if you’re not going to school, come down and serve an apprenticeship. So that’s what I did. And I learned the floor covering trade.
David McCafferty [00:06:10] Were apprenticeships common at that time?
Charles Berry [00:06:12] Not too much, no. You needed a contractor who would accept you. And then you went to school one day a week at Max Hay’s School, which is 45th of Detroit. And then you worked with the journeyman, and they showed you what you needed. But, of course, you started out with the bullwork. You cleaned and you scraped and you chiseled up floors, and what have you. And you learned to do that first, and you delivered materials, and then pretty soon, they would let you do a few things on the job. Those days, they were pretty much of a… closed group. They didn’t really want to tell anybody anything.
David McCafferty [00:06:57] [inaudible]
Charles Berry [00:06:58] Yes, right. But once you came into the group, then they were helpful.
David McCafferty [00:07:02] You mentioned you lived on West 116th in Detroit. What was the neighborhood like?
Charles Berry [00:07:07] Well, it was the old Granada theater, if you remember. There was a beautiful theater. The neighborhood was. We had a lot of. There was saloons there, a lot of riff raff in the neighborhood, but most of it was pretty good. They didn’t bother us kids at all, you know, I had a bicycle. We rode around all over. I had a paper route. I carried the Cleveland News, and I also carried a Cleveland Press. They found out I was carrying two papers, and they stopped one of them on me because I didn’t tell the other one about what I was doing, you know. So they stopped one. So then I carried the Cleveland News, and, of course, I guess that went out of business first, and then the Cleveland Press went out of business. And then by that time, I had been working in a small drugstore. No, a small grocery store, stocking shelves, and I drove their delivery truck. I got a new driver’s license, and I got a job driving a delivery truck. And I thought, boy, that’s like winning the lottery, you know? And we were very careful. And I stocked groceries, put up orders, loaded the truck, and went out and delivered them. And it was just a little. A little grocery store.
David McCafferty [00:08:18] Have you gone back to that neighborhood since then?
Charles Berry [00:08:20] Oh, yes. It’s all changed.
David McCafferty [00:08:22] What’s the biggest change that really struck you?
Charles Berry [00:08:25] Oh, they built new things, tore down things. On the corner was a Fannie Farmer’s chocolate place, and that’s gone. And, of course, across the street was a chinese restaurant, which was quite unique and quite well liked, and that’s gone. The Cleveland Trust bank was on the corner. And of course, Cleveland Trust is no longer with us. They tore the theater down, and the Granada theater was really kind of a nice plush place, and they tore that down and put up some other things, buildings and what have you. One of them, they put up a gas station, so I don’t think it improved any. And going back there, it looks a little schlocky to me now, but then that might be a natural thing, you know, once you leave, it was the inner city.
David McCafferty [00:09:23] Now you’re with the Masonic Temple, the Masonic Library, specifically
Charles Berry [00:09:26] Yes.
David McCafferty [00:09:27] How did you come to get into that position? How’d you come by that?
Charles Berry [00:09:29] Well, I’ve been a Mason fourty-eight years. I joined in ’57, December of ’57, North Star Lodge, which is at the corner of Triscuit and Lorain and I joined that lodge and worked all the way through the chairs to become the master of the lodge. That takes about ten or twelve years in those days. And it was quite an accomplishment for a fellow who worked with his hands and on his knees all day, to get into the organization and get up off the floor and meet people that I never couldn’t have met, and learn the ritual and learning the rules and regulations and the. And we call it the ritual. It’s written in kind of a code. Now, some of it’s written in English, but some of it’s written kind of in a code, and you have to decipher it in your head and then put it, commit it to memory.
David McCafferty [00:10:32] You mentioned that. You just mentioned that it was something that you normally wouldn’t have done. Was people becoming Masons. They weren’t normally labor backgroundish?
Charles Berry [00:10:43] Oh, no, not at all. No. Masons come from all walks of life, policemen to professors, from doctors, and we have them all in the fraternity. That has nothing to do with it. I was only looking at it from my own personal standpoint as a laborer every day. To get into the mainstream of the lodge was a nice thing for me. I would suppose if I was doing something else, I might not have been. I also had an uncle that was a Mason. And during the school years, I was able to get back on the farms in Indiana. And when I was summer vacation, I would stay with him back in. This was around Rochester, Rackren, Indiana, in that neighborhood. And I would stay on the farm and help him all summer, then come back, go back to high school. And he was a Mason and kind of my idol, one of my idols. My father never was a Mason, but my father said if I wanted to join a fraternity, he’d pay my way in and at that time it was $125. And so it was a big chunk for him. I took him up on it, and later on I was able to give him back his money. But how did I get into Masonry? Well, I had friends and people, and I admired them, and they seemed to be the type that you would want to follow. They seem to be pillars of the community. They seem to be people that were pretty much of a… The kind of people that were role models for me. And I wanted to be like them.
David McCafferty [00:12:35] Going back to the library, where did you get your training to be a librarian?
Charles Berry [00:12:39] Okay, I’m not a librarian. I have no library training whatsoever. What happened was I had a boy who was a Cleveland policeman, and in fourty-four years he developed cancer and died. And I had been a Mason in my lodge and had done everything in my lodge. And I decided I would then change my Masonic comp set just a little bit. I come down to the library and they needed help there. And so I then began to help them. Did a lot of the cleaning and the sweeping and the work in that section. And I was reading books, and I’m an avid reader. I read everything I can get my hands on. And the books are so terribly interesting. And they’re tied up with early history of America, they’re tied up with early biblical history, and they’re intriguing. Some of them are just absolutely fantastic. I mean, by that, in order to understand some of this, you have to read the same book twice, and you also have to read a lot of books because you get a more rounded concept of what’s happening. One author has an opinion, and that’s what it is, an opinion. And then you must read a couple. They’re not textbooks as such, but they do have that type of Masonic text in some of them, and some of it’s accurate, some of it isn’t. So you read them all and read as many as you can. And there’s maybe fifteen or 20,000 things down there. So you’re going to spend a whole lifetime there.
David McCafferty [00:14:24] So you’ve been a Mason for fourty-eight years. How long have you been with the helping at the library?
Charles Berry [00:14:28] The last ten. Yes, I’ve been down there about ten years. It’s strictly voluntary. Nobody’s paid anything. Our fellow that manages gets a few dollars to offset his effort and his gasoline. He comes in from Mentor, you know, and also I have been able to put together talks and speeches and took photographs of the memorabilia and the things in the library and the men that are the history of the library. I put them together in slideshows, and I go to lodges and I show them. And I also have put together speeches on various subjects. For instance, the Morgan Affair or the Negro Masonry, or just all kinds of subjects.
David McCafferty [00:15:25] From just a brief question, because I know this is Freemasonry. This was a very big event. Describe very briefly, what was the Morgan Affair?
Charles Berry [00:15:35] Well, let’s see. I was trying to think in what town it was, I think was in New York, Bavaria in New York, or something like that. A man was going to expose Masonry, and he. He was rejected as an applicant for Masonry, and he was rejected. So he got together with another man and they were going to print an expose of Masonry. And, of course, that angered a lot of people. He was jailed for nonpayment of dues. This William Morgan was. And when he got out of jail, he disappeared. Now, there was a… And nobody knew where he went. He was married. They found a body that washed up on the shores of Lake Erie. They found a body that washed ashore? Not quite, exactly, I’d have to go back to the reference. Mrs. Morgan identified it as her husband, but another lady identified it as her husband, who was a Canadian, and his name was, I believe, Tom Williams or something to that nature. Well, anyway, they never knew what happened to Morgan. Catholicism has never liked Masonry because they were regimented towards Rome. And, of course, Masonry prides themselves on being pretty much free thinkers. The Methodist church didn’t like Masonry. I believe it was the Episcopalian church didn’t like Masonry. Thurlow Reed, who was a candidate for public office, and John Quincy Adams didn’t like Masonry. So politically, they beat him up very quickly, and Masonry crashed. Out of 600 lodges, they got down to sixty-five lodges. It had totally crashed, and it took about ten years for it to come back. And one of the reasons it came back was Andrew Jackson was a Mason. Stonewall Jackson was a Mason, and he fought and was considered a pretty good person. He got in. He was in Masonry. Then they lost their animosity. The people were out. We have Methodist ministers now that are Masonry. Mormonism had a terrible, if you read the history of Mormonism, it’s had a terrible history of persecution and polygamy, and they embraced Masonry and had their own lodges, and then they started dictating what the lodges should be, and they were taken away from them.
David McCafferty [00:18:39] Speaking of lodges, when did you start attending the Scottish Rites Lodge on Euclid Avenue?
Charles Berry [00:18:45] Well, I joined the Scottish Rite probably. Probably twenty, twenty some years ago, I would guess. I’m not quite sure of that. The Scottish Rite is an independent body. It’s family oriented to some extent. We can bring the family and they have organizations, they do things you can bring the family to, and they have the other degrees in Masonry, which are an appendent body. It would be like the first three degrees in Masonry is actually Masonry. And an apprentice fellow, craft and master Mason, that’s all there is to Masonry. But there are appendant bodies, and you can go on and work in those appendent bodies and they teach more a lesson. A degree in Masonry, basically, for lack of a better understanding, is a moral lesson based on some possibly biblical fact or some moral fact that’s obvious to most people. And the degrees, there’s thirty-two degrees in the Scottish Rite. So learning more and more, and it’s intriguing, and you meet more people. I’ve had an occasion to eat many times with the man who put the pipeline in Alaska, Charlie Spar, and we could talk just like perfectly old friends. If I met him on the street today, we would just stop and chat like old friends. Except Monday morning you’d go through four secretaries even to get in his office, if that was possible. You know, also Alfred Bonds, he was a man who did a tremendous thing for BW
Davis McCafferty [00:20:28] Baldwin Wallace
Charles Berry [00:20:29] Baldwin Wallace, yeah. And he ate dinner with him many, many times. In fact, we have a painting of George Washington in our hallway that he did. And it’s remarkably how nice that painting is.
David McCafferty [00:20:42] But the famous people have gone through the Masonic Lodge downtown.
Charles Berry [00:20:48] Famous people?
David McCafferty [00:20:48] Well, I mean, important people, famous people.
Charles Berry [00:20:51] Well, we don’t use that as a criterion. If you’re a doctor who probably [inaudible] oh, golly, it would be. I’d have to sit down and think about that because there’s just probably hundreds of them. One man was in the criminal courts building. His name was Bruce Butall, and he put together a little bit of the way the criminal system is down there in the Cleveland Criminal Division. Oh, an awful. Just an awful lot of men that have done some really great things. They come from all walks of life. Mayor of Cleveland, Brenton D. Babcock, a Lodge was formed after him. He was a Mason, and he was the very first commander in chief of Lake Erie consistory, which is the Scottish Rite, top of the Scottish Rite line. John W. Barclay was the mayor of Shaker Heights, and he was a principal in the Saunders Square Dempsey law firm. William R. Pringle was a representative of the legislature of Ohio. And you could go on and on and on, but we didn’t look at it from that standpoint. The man who comes off of the street is just as important, and we don’t use titles. In Masonry, if you’re a doctor, we don’t use the title. In fact, there’s a saying in Masonry. He was placed on the lowest spoke of fortunes. We all may be entitled to our regard. The time will come, the wise know not how soon, when all distinction except death will reduce us at the same state.
David McCafferty [00:22:49] How does one become a Mason?
Charles Berry [00:22:51] You must petition lodge. You have to find a Mason, a man you know, to be a Mason, and ask him for a petition for his lodge. Now, if he’s on the ball and you live in one part of town, he will then find your closest lodge for you and then ask for a petition. You sign a petition and turn it in. It takes a unanimous decision of the members of that lodge before they’ll accept your petition. In my lodge, it costs you $175. All of that money goes to charity. A little bit of it probably winds up in the funds of the lodge, but eventually it all goes to charity. A portion of that money goes to the George Washington Museum in Virginia. And a lot of it goes to different charities. The money is not kept at all.
David McCafferty [00:23:46] So you have to be a man in order to apply?
Charles Berry [00:23:49] Yes, to have to be a male, 18 years old. And if they accept you, then they will investigate you. They come out to the house to look and see where you live and what you do and talk to your family and talk to the wife, if she’s dead set against you getting into Masonry, you don’t make it. They don’t want to split families.
David McCafferty [00:24:10] When you joined the Scottish Rite in downtown, how many members were there? Was there. I mean, a great deal of Masons was there.
Charles Berry [00:24:17] I would suppose that there was probably 2000, possibly. I don’t know what it is today. I can’t tell you right off what it is today. It’s probably 15, maybe 1000, maybe 1500, something like that. I can’t tell you that. I don’t have the records of that.
David McCafferty [00:24:37] You believe it has declined over?
Charles Berry [00:24:39] Oh, I think yes, I think all things, except the looser things in our life has declined. I think churches suffered the same fate. I think places that we called, I don’t think young people are joining so much. There’s too much to grab their attention. They’re sitting hours and hours, look, staring into a computer screen. And every young person I know has a cell phone. My computer is not hooked up outside, nor do I intended to hook it up outside. I don’t have a cell phone because I don’t want people to know, really, where I’m at or what I’m doing. And the land phone was just fine for me. So it’s a difference in thinking, I believe, you know. And, of course, there’s much more in a young person’s life. He’s got schooling. It’s absolutely required at this point, although we seem to be coming back to. I’ve known several plumbers that make a tremendous amount of money, if money’s your goal. Men who install things, you know, or get your car fixed once and find out what that man’s making, you know, whether the apprenticeships still have their attraction. And, of course, you’re home and you’re not paying out huge fees to colleges in order to. So there are some things to say on both sides. Masonry declining. It probably is. I don’t believe young people know what Masonry has to offer. Masonry has to offer meeting people you normally wouldn’t, for instance, talking to you. Masonry has allowed me to come here and talk to you. Otherwise I would be over there on the Far West Side doing something else. You know, I have run into just a tremendous amount of people and continue to do. And, of course, there’s Masonic homes. Even if I run out of money and I still can go to the Masonic home and live out my life, and if I have no money at all, they’ll even see that I’m buried properly in their cemetery. And they look after my health. If I have Alzheimer’s, they’ll still look after that. And all I need is my little dues card in the back pocket. If you bought insurance to do this whole thing, what would it cost you?
David McCafferty [00:27:19] You know, so make up of the people that have, that are now Masons or applied, you know, in recent years. Does that change is like. [inaudible]
Charles Berry [00:27:29] Absolutely, Absolutely. It’s changed because I think morals have changed. Masonry has, You could say in six words, you could sum up Masonry. You could say, religious toleration. You could say political freedom and personal integrity. Religious toleration, we’re not concerned what your religion is. We do believe that your religion is how you live, not what you call yourself. You must believe in the supreme being and you must remain a good man. Political freedom, you pay your taxes, you’re patriotic and you obey the law, othewise, you can stand on a soapbox and preach all you want. We don’t tell you what to say. Personal integrity is just that. And I think society is losing these principles very rapidly. You pick up any newspaper and you’ll find people doing things that were absolutely, totally foreign to us. And teachers that are doing things to their students, criminals that are absolutely horrendous. I never remember that in my youth, you know, I never remember seeing those things, whether they happened or whether I was not smart enough to read about it. But not only that, don’t you think as this population increases, you know, I believe in 1850, there was a billion people, and today there’s six and a half billion. I think as we live closer and closer, we’re going to have more and more problems. You know, I just think that’s inevitable.
David McCafferty [00:29:16] What does Freemason mean to you personally and professionally? You yourself? How has it made you a better person?
Charles Berry [00:29:24] Well, obviously, there’s a peer group pressure. I don’t want to appear as a jerk in front of the people I know, and I’ve worked so hard in Masonry to teach young people the moral lessons of the degrees. And that’s what you do as you’re an officer coming up through the line as you join the Scottish Rite, those men down there are all upstanding citizens. You don’t want to be the oddball in the group by. Sure, it’s made a better man out of me, because the object of Masonry is probably to bring the light of God into the life of man. I think that’s. And we revere the light, because in the darkness, everything goes on. When you turn the lights on, everything hides. That’s not good, ya know. I think, in my own mind, I have been proud to be a Mason. I continue to be proud to be a Mason. The friendships I formed are lifelong friendships. This very evening, there’s a man who is ninety-one years old. His name was Virgil Legoring, and he’ll be laid out at the funeral parlor in Lakewood. And I intend to be there. Pay respects to that man, who was a hard working Mason all of his life. And we celebrate the victory that he’s achieved. I think, to some extent, one of the things about the fraternity is we still believe in a creator. We still believe, to some extent, in life hereafter. We don’t know what it is, and you couldn’t explain it if you wanted to, but I do believe that. But the country has to kind of becoming more and more atheistic. I believe, you know, whether whatever is true, I have no knowledge of what was really true. Maybe someday I’ll be able to figure that out. So Masonry means an awful lot to a man like me. I think I learned how to live and maybe how to die. Maybe that’s the lesson of Masonry, how to live, how to be a good man and live and get along in society and then how to die hoping for something.
David McCafferty [00:31:46] Let’s take a turn and actually, let’s discuss the building that houses the Scottish Rite downtown. What was the original purpose of the building itself?
Charles Berry [00:31:55] Okay. Masonry came into Ohio in 1811. There was fifty-seven souls in the city of. It wasn’t a city. It was just country. After Moses Cleveland was a Mason. He come from the Connecticut Land Corporation to survey the Cuyahoga Valley. Fifty-seven men, souls were in Cleveland, and they formed a lodge, Concord fifteen. They met in various taverns, various houses, any place where they could be private. They had no money. They used bushels of corn or a piece of ham or whatever to pay their dues. There was no hard money. They rented different places. And to make a long story short, they built a Temple at the corner of East 6th and Superior, where now stands the federal bank building. And that was the first Temple that the Masons owned in the city of Cleveland.
David McCafferty [00:32:55] Why there? Why east 6th?
Charles Berry [00:32:57] Well, there was, you know, lots in Cleveland would sell for $25, and nobody had the money. They just didn’t. There was no public square. There was nothing there, you know, and it was just on the corner of walk and don’t walk, really, you know. Well, anyway, that was the first building they owned, and it was somewhere around 1826, I believe. Masonry grew so with leaps and bounds, they needed another place to hold their decrees and hold their things, that they did. They built the auditorium first, and then it was 3515 Euclid, I believe Chester Avenue was called Russell street, and it was just two small lanes when they widened Chester. When they widened Russell street to Chester Avenue, they changed the address to 3615 Euclid. They found out that the building then had to go on 6th street, and they built the rest of the temple in 1921, I believe was dedicated in 1921, the rest of that big building there. And that’s basically how it came about, was the need for Masonry and its increase in membership. They needed larger quarters and everything. There was going to be a tower out in front, and it was going to be almost to the sidewalk. There was to be a restaurant in the bottom of it, and there was to be rooms for sojourning Masons or traveling Masons to house themselves there, but it never got built.
David McCafferty [00:34:45] Why?
Charles Berry [00:34:46] Well, I guess maybe by then, you know, the membership solidified, and then, of course, from then on, it was not feasible to do that. There was other hotels in the neighborhood, and people used those, and still do, you know, they generally use hotels downtown, or they use hotels out of, on the west side, Bagley Road. In those places. There normally they don’t come to the east side motels and then they’re a little afraid to come downtown to the motels, you know, at this point in time.
David McCafferty [00:35:22] Well, how was it different then? What was around the building at the time it was built, if you happen to know?
Charles Berry [00:35:29] Well, there was a travelogue motel there that was terribly notorious for everything that you can think of. And of course, I do know that my son was a policeman for eighteen years and the prostitutes for prospect and what have you were totally rampant. I mean, they would pick him up every day and book them and the city of Cleveland would slap their hands and send them back out again. And the policeman then decided it wasn’t hardly worthwhile do that. Since then things have been cleaned up and we’re going to get our new corridor in maybe. And so things are looking up and I think the building then will have much more attraction as we are now able to put together this corridor. If it works out.
David McCafferty [00:36:29] Why was Euclid Avenue or that plot of land on Euclid Avenue chosen to move from the east 6th and Superior location?
Charles Berry [00:36:37] It was the old. What was it? It was two properties, a Sterling Linder property. And there was another property that they purchased. And I guess they had the money. They sold stock. This is what the stock looked like. [noise of paper] Of course they sold the stock and to raise the capital. And there was an awful lot of Masons had some funds. There was very wealthy Masons. And of course, as you know, Euclid Avenue was the home of some very, very wealthy people. And a lot of them were Masons.
David McCafferty [00:37:17] Millionare’s Row.
Charles Berry [00:37:18] Pardon?
David McCafferty [00:37:18] Millionaires Row.
Charles Berry [00:37:19] Yes.
David McCafferty [00:37:21] Who were Masons that were among those Millionaires Row? I mean those. Those rich and wealthy.
Charles Berry [00:37:27] Oh, golly. Well, we know. I don’t know what we know Henry Ford was. And of course we know. I think just. I can’t tell you that right off. I haven’t gotten into that part of the history of the city. But I do believe that most of them were in a Masonic fraternity. As you know, most of our early forefathers were Masons. You know, the whole structure of the government was Masonic oriented from Washington on down to Revere and Hancock and Doctor Warren. And most of the men in the Revolution were. And they used their lodges as. Annapolis or a West Point because there was no Annapolis or West Point. And their lodges were secretive and they were places where we could discuss. We could discuss a lot of. They could discuss a lot of their war problems and things that they. To fight that revolution. They used it as you would today, you would use West Point or you would use Annapolis to grow up your men.
Dav
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
