Abstract
An Interview with William Barrow who discusses his relative Thomas Cooper Barrow and his driving range on Euclid Ave. The Hole-in-One was a unique business that served as a transition between the glory days of Millionaire's Row and the period of decline that followed. The discussion includes various remembrances of Millionaire's Row and other general aspects of Cleveland life from the 1920s to the 50s.
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Interviewee
Barrow, William (interviewee)
Interviewer
Bell, Erin (interviewer)
Project
Project Team
Date
7-11-2008
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
39 minutes
Recommended Citation
"William Barrow Interview, 11 July 2008" (2008). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 999060.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/744
Transcript
William Barrow [00:00:00] Yeah, I don’t know the details. He probably knew the guy’s name and everything, but.
Erin Bell [00:00:05] Okay, we’re rolling. I’m just going to do a quick intro. This is Erin Bell. I’m at Cleveland State, and we’re speaking with Bill Barrow of the Special Collections at CSU’s library. And we’re going to be talking about his great uncle, Tom Barrow.
William Barrow [00:00:20] Yeah. Thomas Cooper Barrow.[crosstalk] Yes.
Erin Bell [00:00:23] And the driving range that he had on Euclid Avenue. Tell me what you just told me about George Condon?
William Barrow [00:00:32] Oh, yes. As we were testing the microphone here, I remembered something George Condon told me the other day at lunch. He knew of a story of the former announcer for the Indians, the stadium announcer, who before the days of electrification and everything, would be hired to go out into the outfield and stand there at the big megaphone and announce the lineups and any other news that the people on the stand should know. So when it came time to start doing play-by-play and broadcast on the radio, they hired him to do that. And his first performance was marred by him screaming into the microphone and blowing out everybody’s eardrums because he hadn’t realized he could speak in a normal voice. He thought he had to really project his voice to reach the listening audience out there.[laughs] So George would know the details. I just reminded of it while we were testing the mic here.
Erin Bell [00:01:25] Do you happen to know offhand if that was WHK?
William Barrow [00:01:28] I don’t know. No. I say that’s a detail George would know,[laughs][crosstalk].Thomas Cooper Barrow in the Hole in One.
Erin Bell [00:01:39] How much do you know about him?
William Barrow [00:01:41] Well, I only knew a little from what my aunt and grandparents had mentioned about my grandfather’s brother, who Tom was. And he was a lifelong bachelor who had been, I found out later, born in Ironton, New York, in 1883. And the whole family, including my grandfather, were kind of being born as they moved down the Ohio and Mississippi. And the whole family wound up down in New Orleans. And then from there after the parents’ death, my great grandparents, the eight children just sort of scattered around the country, and Tom ended up in New York. He had a sister who was living there, working as an executive secretary at the Juilliard. And he had a job as a hotel person of some sort. I don’t know if he started off as a bellhop or what, but he kind of rose up a bit and then came to Cleveland in the ’20s and apparently had made enough money in New York that he could by some parking garages or parking lots in Cleveland and kind of had his own little small parking empire, a garage and a few surface lots, and he operated those out of his hotel room. He was a longtime bachelor and he lived in the Carter Hotel. So anyway, that’s where he lived. And his brother John, my grandfather Ed, and my father William James, all worked for him at various times. So they have no Depression-era stories because they were all employed by Uncle Tom through the Depression. And I did some research on him for a class for Tom Campbell here at Cleveland State History Department back in the early ’90s. We had to do a personalization of Cleveland history. Somehow that was the topic. So I thought, okay, I’ll do something on Tom and his parking garage and how that reflected anything about driving and parking problems in downtown Cleveland. So I had a little paper “Uncle Tom’s Garage” about that. So that’s how I found out about Tom and at that point could interview my aunt and his former assistant. Well, I think it was really his longtime girlfriend who was by then in retirement in Arizona. So anyway, in all of those stories, one of the things that came up was this Hole-in-One golf course and a few pictures. And so I thought when we were talking about the Euclid Corridor, that might be kind of an interesting, little-known thing.
Erin Bell [00:04:25] Yeah, for sure. Was it actually an outgrowth of one of the parking lots then or?
William Barrow [00:04:31] I doubt it. No, his parking lots were all down on Bolivar and right in the heart of downtown. I don’t suspect that he was trying to run a parking lot out of 30th and Euclid. You know, might have just been some land he found out about or leased. I mean, I’m purely speculating at this point, but no, I don’t have any reason to believe it was tied to parking in any way.
Erin Bell [00:04:51] Can you describe some of the pictures that we have?
William Barrow [00:04:54] Sure. They seem to be just a collection of people driving golf balls. There’s no particular order to them logically that I can see. There’s a picture of several people sitting in chairs looking out over the range. I have to assume these are people who are going to get up and drive golf balls at some point. Or maybe they’re just spectators. I mean, there’s enough of them that I wonder if that many people were wandering around on Foot at 30th and Euclid in those days to just sit and watch people drive golf balls. So I’m not quite sure why they’re there, but maybe there was some competition going on. The range itself seems to have a series of little chain link, maybe, panels separating the tee off spots. And there’s a string of lights overhead suggesting that it was a nighttime thing as well. But again, all we have to go on is what we see. Another shot of this same group of people taken a little farther back shows much the same detail, just more people. And 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. It looks like there are about a dozen and a half people there. You can see some of the mansions off in the background too. Let’s see, we have a shot of somebody teeing off. We have a shot of some cars and a parking, some parked cars, which, as I say, I don’t think have anything to do with the parking garage. I think they were just people who came out to the course. And one shot of somebody just looking out over the field. So actually, I think there were five shots. One of these looks like a duplicate, so we may have to correct the record on that. In the background you can see a couple of the mansions that were still standing. I know those were torn down from one in 1933 and the other in ’59.
Erin Bell [00:06:59] Do you know the names of those mansions?
William Barrow [00:07:01] Yeah, I do, but I’m going to have to look it up. Do you have my email that I sent you on that? Because I put it in that. And then the course itself, the driving range was on probably here, from the looks of it, would have been on the Andrews Estate, right on the corner of 30th and Euclid. Andrew’s Folly, that was torn down in 1923. And then between Andrew’s Folly and the two that are still standing, there was a fourth estate that doesn’t seem to be visible and that was torn down in 1930, according to Jan Cigliano’s “Showplace of America” book. So if that’s the case, then these pictures must have been taken between 1930, when that mansion was torn down, in ’33, when one of the ones shown in the pictures was torn down. So. And I think that’s consistent with other evidence here. I don’t know automobiles well enough to tell you what year those cars are, but, you know, it’s not automatically inconsistent, anyway.
Erin Bell [00:08:01] So how would you put that in the context of Euclid Avenue, that there’s a- [Barrow laughs] All of a sudden there’s like a huge piece of open land that’s used for what appears to be like a pretty, like casual [crosstalk] driving range?
William Barrow [00:08:16] Yeah, yeah, a few lights and I mean, some. Some money went into developing it. I mean, it wasn’t just a flat-out piece of bare dirt with a couple of OTs. I mean they put the panels up and the lights and whatnot. But you know, I think it was probably just part of the uncertainty about what was gonna happen to that land as the mansions came down. I’m sure I would like to have been around. In fact I was having been born in ‘46, so I probably went through that area as a kid but I didn’t pay any attention. But as the transition from the Showplace of America, Millionaires’ Row sort of place to what we see today was occurring, I’m sure there were a lot of mansions in decline. AAA and other things, Red Cross were taking them over. Others were torn down and the lots were just bare. I mean I’m sure it was a transitional zone and filling it in with a low-level moneymaker like a driving range would probably just, one response to that opportunity.
Erin Bell [00:09:22] You’ve mentioned AAA and Red Cross. Were those in Mather Mansion?
William Barrow [00:09:27] Yeah, I believe AAA was in the Mather Mansion and I think Red Cross was up the street. I couldn’t tell you offhand which one it was in but. But that was just a recycling of the buildings that hadn’t been torn down to find some other use. And some of them survived that as the Mather Mansion did to kind of get a little bit of its old glory back and others just, that was just the last stop before they were demolished.
Erin Bell [00:09:54] Do you know of any other kind of oddball things that ended up in specific mansions?
William Barrow [00:10:01] No, I don’t. But I know that Cigliano’s book gets into some of that.
Erin Bell [00:10:07] I know that a lot of this is something that you kind of discovered well after the fact. But do you know any specific stories about the driving range?
William Barrow [00:10:16] No, nothing. There’s no family history about it. It’s just a collection of photos. Tom was, oh, he was kind of a difficult person. When my grandfather became ill in the ’40s, at one point his doctor told him he had to stop working outdoors. I was curious about that, whether that had anything to do with pollution levels or something. But anyway, he couldn’t work for Tom anymore. And Tom took that as a personal affront and was kind of in a snit about it the rest of his life. My aunt and grandparents, you know, have told stories about Tom. You know, he was the beloved brother but you know, kind of a, kind of a problem. So. Yeah, but nothing came down other than the pictures about the driving range. It might have just been a temporary thing. It might have only been there A couple years or something. And didn’t amount to anything in anybody’s recollection. But I think my grandfather. Well, see, ’30s. No, I guess my grandfather would have been working for him at that point, more than likely downtown, down on Bolivar somewhere. But we’d have to ask people long gone [laughs] to hear that story.
Erin Bell [00:11:31] Yeah. I wonder if it was in operation during the Cold War.
William Barrow [00:11:36] Yeah. Don’t know. I think it was probably a gunnery range by that time. No. [laughs]
Erin Bell [00:11:45] You mentioned the possibility that maybe one of the factors of him needing to stop working outdoors or your grandfather needing to stop working outdoors was the environmental pollution.
William Barrow [00:11:56] Well, yeah, that’s pure speculation. All I know is that grandfather was supposed to stop working outdoors and couldn’t work for Tom. But I know he was also at some point working for White Motors in the parts department. And I don’t have the chronology of that straight. My recollection was it was after he worked for Tom. So apparently he wasn’t forbidden to work altogether. It was just outdoors. Who knows? Maybe he got a doctor to tell him he couldn’t work for Tom because he got tired of working for Tom. I mean, [laughs] you can overanalyze this, trying to look for great meaning. And it was nothing more than he didn’t like his brother all that much. [laughs]
Erin Bell [00:12:41] Well, the reason that I brought that up was because it is kind of interesting to have this big open space in the middle of the city that at the time is still booming with industry and is a smoky, messy place. What do you think about that?
William Barrow [00:13:00] About having the space? Well, as I say, it’s a transition zone. You know. The old uses are gone. There aren’t millionaires building on the avenue anymore. But there’s still enough houses and probably a few residents floating around. So it hasn’t been something you could clear and put in a steel mill. Not that anybody would let you put a steel mill in at 30th and Euclid anyway. But so, you know, there was just an opportunity. Somebody probably enjoyed having a few nickels come in from running at the time to drive golf balls on. It wasn’t incompatible with the uses. I, I also have a picture of the 1900 East 30th Street Apartments, and I found it in the Press Collection. And it was built in about 1948. It’s still there. It’s between Chester and Euclid on the west side of the street, which would have been right across the street from the driving range, although I’m sure the driving range was long gone by then. And it backs up on the Innerbelt across from the Mather Mansion. And my earliest recollections of life are living in that building. We moved there after my young parents moved out of the grandparents’ house. And I was about 2 years old at best. And I remember being up on the roof of that building. And the reason I bring this up is when I was up there, I remember people were doing something down below like playing badminton or tennis or something. I mean all my life I thought that I saw people doing something. I’m sure it wasn’t driving golf balls, I mean, but there was still something semi-athletic happening maybe. I’ve never looked to see if there were any mansions still around or an apartment building or just who would have been down there below the 30th Street Apartments. Maybe even the apartment had some sort of a tennis court or something in those days. But that was the recollection was just looking down from the roof of the building that people playing some game down there like tennis or badminton.
Erin Bell [00:15:01] Do you remember ever seeing other things? Was that something you would do is go up on top of the building? Did you ever-
William Barrow [00:15:07] Well, I think it was just being up high like that, you know, just stuck with me. I was quite young at the time and there seems to be a recollection. I think I remember I was up there with my father. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but you know how these are. You just had this hazy thing. You’ve told the story to yourself for so many years. You can’t remember now if you really remember it or you remember remembering it, [laughs] you gotta find.
Erin Bell [00:15:32] Someone else that was there to bury it.
William Barrow [00:15:33] Yeah, right. But that’s my story and I stick with it. I was up on the roof of the 30th street apartment. It was about 1948 and somebody was playing tennis and Dad was up there. That’s the stock story. So the building, as I say, is kind of new. Frank Lausche, I believe, lived there, Bill Veeck lived there. It was kind of a little bit of an in building. It was right after the war. There was a housing shortage from all the GIs coming back and starting families. And just like my parents, you know, moving out when they couldn’t get along with the grandparents After a while. And we had a little bit of a problem, of course, finding housing. But Dad was working for Central Cadillac at the time, and that’s right around the corner. And the family legend again, I don’t know if it’s true, is that Dad met the manager of these apartments and that guy was looking for a car which was also in short supply. So Dad put him at the top of the list to get a car, and he put Dad at the top of the list to get an apartment. And that was the- That was the trade off. So, you know, nice story, whether it’s true or not.
Erin Bell [00:16:47] Do you have any other stories about Central Cadillac? We actually interviewed the owner of Central Cadillac about a year ago.
William Barrow [00:16:54] Did you?
Erin Bell [00:16:54] Yeah. I mean, they’ve been around forever.
William Barrow [00:16:57] Yeah, they have. And you can still see several buildings along there. They had the Cadillac logo, you know, in the terracotta, not that I can conjure up right away. We have an enamel, not ashtray, but a very flat enameled dish plate kind of thing that has the Cadillac emblem on it. And it was from when Dad worked there. But no, he went on to work for Harris Seibold and Addressograph Multigraph. And Central Cadillac was way off in the distant past. It’s just one of those things you knew happened but not much about it.
Erin Bell [00:17:34] And then. So he also had another auto connection at White Motors?
William Barrow [00:17:38] Grandfather did. My grandfather. Tom’s brother.
Erin Bell [00:17:43] I’ve never heard of White Motors.
William Barrow [00:17:46] Never heard of White Motors? Oh, wow.
Erin Bell [00:17:49] Is it an auto company or is it dealer?
William Barrow [00:17:51] Well, of course, you know, you had the White Motor car, which was built in Cleveland. And this was the- What he did was he worked in the parts department. And I’ve wondered about that because one of the other things that my father and my grand- And my aunt, rather. I’m sorry, Aunt Helen Barrow. My father and aunt both worked for- What was it called? Western Auto. No. Yeah, Western Auto. And they had an uncle on my grandmother’s side, Grandmother Barrow, she was a Burdick. And her uncle, her, I don’t know what he was to her, but to them he was called Uncle “Burdie” Burdick. And he had something to do with these Western Auto stores and he got jobs for them during the Depression and early part of the war. And the fact that my grandfather had an in law in the auto parts business and then ended up working in the auto parts department at White Motors, kind of makes me wonder if Uncle Burdie, you know, used a connection to get him a job. I mean, this is real speculation. I’m just going on the fact that it was auto parts in both cases. But, you know, who knows?
Erin Bell [00:19:13] So you mentioned Western Autos or Western Auto, White Motors- I mean, there were a ton of car makers in Cleveland.
William Barrow [00:19:23] Yeah, yeah. There were a number of automotive manufacturing firms. And of course, Cleveland was a real big center for auto parts and other, you know, Fisher Body plant. You know, there was a lot of automotive related things. It was a big automotive manufacturing center real early on. And even after most of that ended up going to Detroit, it still did an awful lot of the contract work, you know, the parts and pieces.
Erin Bell [00:19:49] Do you know where any of these places were headquartered in terms of neighborhoods?
William Barrow [00:19:55] Offhand, no. I’d have to look it up. I mean, it’s probably well known where they were.
Erin Bell [00:20:01] Did you grow up in the Midtown area then?
William Barrow [00:20:05] I was born at University Hospital in University Circle and my grandparents were living in East Cleveland, so I spent the first couple years or years, so probably not two years in East Cleveland. There’d be ’46, ’47. And then we moved to the 30th Street Apartments. And then my parents decided they wanted to live out in Mentor, at least for the summer, because they liked the beaches and the amusement parks out there. So they picked up and went out for the summer and never came back, basically. They just put down roots out there. And I grew up in Lake County, but since my grandparents were downtown, I would come back for holidays and weekends and stay over. And my grandmother and aunt and I would take the bus in the rapid downtown, do the usual traditional downtown Christmas stuff that everybody of my generation remembers so fondly, and Silver Grille and Higbee’s and Christmas Tree and, you know, all of that stuff. So even though I didn’t live downtown, I’m probably the only member of my generation and my family who has any real downtown connection that way. Everybody else were Lake County kids, but I was enough older than they were that I still got the downtown bit.
Erin Bell [00:21:26] Do you remember ever going to see the lights at Nela Park?
William Barrow [00:21:30] Nela Park? Yeah, oh, yeah, definitely. In fact, I lived just about a mile from Nela Park now. But yeah, that was just part of what one did. You just got in your car and drove over there and snaked your way through the long line of people and cars, you know, going in and out of the park and kind of took the tour and just saw the buildings lit up. It was quite spectacular. And-
Erin Bell [00:21:53] And was that something you looked forward to as a kid?
William Barrow [00:21:56] Oh, certainly, certainly. It was just- I don’t know if I separated that one out in particular, but when you look forward to Christmas, you look forward to a whole package of things. The Sterling Lindner Christmas tree and seeing Santa and, you know, all of that. And yeah, certainly going to Nela Park was one of them. It was just right up the hill from where my grandparents lived. So basically walking distance, but I think we always drove. Yeah, I was very sorry when they decided to shut the interior of the campus off and just put it up along- Put the lights up along Noble Road. But as I say, I only live a few blocks south of them now in East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights. So I go by there at Christmas time every year and take it in. I see in the paper today that Nela Park and the lighting division of General Electric is being spun off. GE is getting rid of its lighting division perhaps and spinning it off as a separate company. But apparently Nela Park isn’t threatened immediately by any of those developments.
Erin Bell [00:23:04] I didn’t read that. That was in the paper today?
William Barrow [00:23:06] Yeah, yeah, I mentioned it yesterday somewhere too.
Erin Bell [00:23:09] We’re trying to interview someone from GE and she keeps canceling on us.
William Barrow [00:23:13] Oh, yeah.
Erin Bell [00:23:17] So you had mentioned that Thomas lived at the Carter Hotel. Where was that?
William Barrow [00:23:24] Yeah, the Carter Hotel. What’s that? On Prospect. And it’s also called the Pick-Carter at one point. It was a nice hotel in its day and he had a suite up there. And there was a mayor, the mayor of Cleveland at the time, Burton, maybe? I’d have to look it up. It was a buddy of his and – maybe it was Burke – and he’d come over and play cards or drink or chat or something with Tom and the Peckinpaughs would come. I got to get my Peckinpaughs straight. I’ve got it in the article I wrote for Tom. But they owned or managed the Indians at one point. And that’s probably also why Tom went on to spring training a lot for the Indians in those days. And anyway, one of the Peckinpaughs I interviewed for my Tom Morgan story or Tom Barrow story, and he had a couple recollections of Tom that I added in.
Erin Bell [00:24:39] Can you tell me? Can you tell?
William Barrow [00:24:43] Yeah, just read the whole article. [laughs] Let’s see here. We have dead air. Do we have to worry about dead air here? Or you just edit that out, huh? [crosstalk] My eyes aren’t falling right on it. But he had given Peckinpaughs some money and told ’em how to invest it. Like a couple dollars or something. My eye’s not falling on it. I don’t know why. Very odd. Well, sorry, I don’t see the details here of that story, but I don’t know, I don’t think Tom was a real gregarious guy. I think he kind of a bachelor and a bit of a loner and business guy, but kind of a one man business sort of person. The Barrow family is full of bachelors and people who married late and never had kids and they just seem to be a particularly lonesome bunch. You know, my great grandfather had eight kids and only two of them ever ended up having children that survived. One of them got married late and the child died in infancy. But really two of the eight had children. One of them was my grandfather who had a son and a daughter and the daughter never married and the son had a bunch of us and only a couple of us have had kids. So, you know, it just seems like instead of a big spreading pyramid, it seems to be a truncated pyramid where it keeps starting over again. But. So anyway, Tom was one of that group who never married. And I think this secretary or assistant that he had might have been his longtime girlfriend. That was the family rumor, but, you know, who knows? [laughs]
Erin Bell [00:27:20] So in a way, I mean, having this golf course in the parking lots definitely fits right into his personality.
William Barrow [00:27:27] Then say it again.
Erin Bell [00:27:29] The kind of businesses that he ran, that they really fit into his personality?
William Barrow [00:27:34] Yeah. Oh yeah, very definitely. Yeah. I mean, he didn’t- I’m surprised that this family story that he was in with the mayor because I’m not quite sure what that would have been all about. Poker buddy or something, but. But yeah, otherwise he hired family members and probably hired other people too. I don’t mean to say that grandfather and Dad and John were the only three people that ever worked for him, but. But yeah, it was kind of a one-man operation at the top and he was pretty much by himself and didn’t seem to go out of his way to try and make friends or anything. The Peckinpaughs remember the hotel staff surprising him with a birthday cake and he sent it back because he didn’t want any fuss. I think he was probably a little crabby half the time. [laughs] I don’t know. I want to make up a whole personality for him here. I never met the guy, or if I did, I was so young, I don’t remember him. Might have been a perfectly nice individual, I don’t know.[laughs]
Erin Bell [00:28:35] Well, I guess this is a tough one because neither one of us know that much about him.
William Barrow [00:28:41] No, no, no. I just wanted to raise the point just because I didn’t think you folks really knew that there had been a driving range on the corner of 30th and Euclid, and WEWS is there now. But you know, it just shed a tiny bit of light on the transition from Millionaires’ Row to Midtown Corridor kind of outcomes for Euclid Avenue. And Tom, with his small parking garage, was a bit player in and around the edges of what was going on early middle part of the century. I thought I’d share that with you.
Erin Bell [00:29:21] Well, thank you. It’s actually really interesting. I mean, and the pictures are great.[crosstalk] But I do have some other things, some kind of miscellaneous things I want to ask you.
William Barrow [00:29:31] Go ahead.
Erin Bell [00:29:32] Just to fill in the blanks for us. I’m gonna throw some out there, and if you don’t know, that’s fine. The original Cleveland Zoo at Wade Park. Have you ever heard anything?
William Barrow [00:29:41] The original Cleveland?
Erin Bell [00:29:43] Zoo?
William Barrow [00:29:44] No, just that it was in University Circle. I actually was talking to the librarian / archivist at the Botanical Gardens, which occupy much of that area now, and he said in their collection they have some pictures pertaining to the zoo. I don’t know that there’s pictures of the zoo. I think it might be surviving buildings that they inherited when the zoo moved. I can get you the contact information for him.
Erin Bell [00:30:16] Do you know when they moved? Do you know when it moved?
William Barrow [00:30:20] I don’t know, but that’s. Yeah. [crosstalk] Yeah. I don’t know. That’s probably look up in the encyclopedia stuff. I. The zoo and the Botanical gardens are in two areas I pay much attention to. So with that much attention, anyway,
Erin Bell [00:30:39] Do you know of the Ohio Knitting Mills Company?
William Barrow [00:30:43] No, I don’t. And, oh, Arthur was looking for something. I couldn’t even find a folder on Ohio Knitting Mills. That kind of surprised Bill Becker, our university archivist, who ran the Press Collection for years because he would have thought there’d have been something on it, so. But no.
Erin Bell [00:30:58] The first I ever heard of it was those signposts from RTA. And so we’ve been trying to find stuff ever since.
William Barrow [00:31:04] Yeah. Did he say where it was?
Erin Bell [00:31:09] I think Mark Tebeau told me it was over on East 70th and Cedar, maybe?
William Barrow [00:31:17] Okay. Well, I mean, I’ve certainly heard of it, but I can’t say I heard of it because I knew anything about it. It’s just one of those names that drifts through your consciousness a couple times, and it sticks. I don’t know if anybody checked the Press Collection clipping files. There might be something in that. We were only, with Arthur, we were only looking for photos at the time.
Erin Bell [00:31:41] Mather Mansion?
William Barrow [00:31:45] Oh. Yeah, the Mather Mansion.
Erin Bell [00:31:47] Do you have any stories associated with Mather Mansion? Because, I mean, that’s a tough one, too. That’s on the site list.
William Barrow [00:31:55] Why is that a tough one? I would have thought that the Mathers would have had enough visibility that-
Erin Bell [00:32:03] Well, because as of yet, we don’t have anyone telling us on tape who the Mathers are, so if you wanted to do that.
William Barrow [00:32:08] That what?
Erin Bell [00:32:09] Who the Mathers are or were.
William Barrow [00:32:11] Yeah. Oh, you don’t have anybody?
Erin Bell [00:32:14] I don’t have anyone talking about that.
William Barrow [00:32:16] There’s no surviving Mathers or anybody you gotta talk to. Gladys Haddad. Gladys is an American Studies professor at Case and she has run the Western Reserve Studies Symposium for quite a few years, first at Lake Erie College where she taught, and then out of Case and she’s still running it. But the emphasis has switched from the region’s history to more about economic development and, and economic and environmental sustainability and a few more trendy things like that. But she just did a book on Flora Stone Mather. So she’s been through all the Mather papers and knows how they’re related to everybody. And if there’s anything to be known about the Mathers, I would think she would probably be a good one to talk to, a real nice person.
Erin Bell [00:33:14] Well, Mathers aside, I mean, has CSU ever had any events or anything there that you’ve gone to that were interesting?
William Barrow [00:33:23] Well, yeah, we had, I mean, by CSU having it, we had a meeting of the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society, which is a collection of book dealers and librarians and collectors and we had an annual meeting up in the ballroom at the Mather one- And of course, you know, I’ve been to CSU-related events out at the Mather, so you kind of get to appreciate the building and its architecture. But I don’t know. Bill Becker, the university archivist might have more there. He’s been on campus for 30 years and is the custodian of all the CSU-Fenn College related material. So, you know, between his personal longevity and the collections he controls, you might have more on the Mather Mansion.
Erin Bell [00:34:16] Alpine Village. I mean, I know you’re going to talk to-
William Barrow [00:34:20] Herman Pirchner Jr. Yeah.
Erin Bell [00:34:23] Can you tell me anything?
William Barrow [00:34:24] No, not much. You know, it was before my time and all this coming downtown. When I was a kid, we never went over to the Alpine Village. So all I know about it is, you know, George Condon is another source of stories. You know, he of course hung out there and you know, he talked about it being a first-rate operation. Herman Pirchner was a former strongman and showman who, you know, would have this floor that would hydraulically raise up and performances could go on so that people could, sitting at the tables, could see what was happening up on the stage and then they’d lower the stage for dancing. And he talks about Herman, who used to have a record for how many pitchers of beer he could carry at one time, you know, like 50. I mean, something ridiculous, you know, a number that you couldn’t possibly believe. But how Herman could take a tray of couple layers high of beer glasses and run down the stage when it was elevated a couple feet off the floor, dressed in his lederhosen and in his Alpine hat and everything, holding this tray, and then drop down onto his heinie and just slide down the stage, still holding the tray of bottles until he got to the edge of the stage. And then he’d just roll forward onto his feet and run off out into the audience. Just part of his showmanship, apparently. But Herman’s son, you know, apparently worked there as a kid and knows a whole lot more about those kind of details than I do. I’m just- [crosstalk] I’m just channeling George Condon,[laughs] you know. Come in, George. Tell me about- [laughs] He always tells the stories better than I do.
Erin Bell [00:36:14] So you said Perchoner was a strongman. What did you mean by that?
William Barrow [00:36:20] Straw man? In what context did I?
Erin Bell [00:36:23] Strong. Was he like a bodybuilder?
William Barrow [00:36:26] Oh, strongman. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently he was, if not a weightlifter, he was just one. Well, I mean, carrying 50-something pitchers of beer. I mean, yeah, I think he might even have worked in a carnival or a circus or something as a strongman. Ask his son. You know, this is out of my depth. I’m just, as I say, second hand stories that I-
Erin Bell [00:36:51] And I guess the last thing I’ll ask you about is the Cleveland Rams.
William Barrow [00:36:59] No, no, no. They left town when I was born.[laughs]
Erin Bell [00:37:02] Do you know where they played, though? Did they play at- [crosstalk] I’ve heard different things. Like they played at Shaw High School and then they.
William Barrow [00:37:10] No, I don’t. I may have heard once, but I don’t recall what the details were. I mean, the stadium, of course, was up in the ’30s for the Great Lakes Expo, and I think League Park was still around for a while. So there may have been some sharing of fields, either one of those two or some other one altogether. But no, sports history isn’t anything I know anything about. [laughs]
Erin Bell [00:37:37] This is Cleveland, so we really wanted to include something about football because people love it.
William Barrow [00:37:43] Yeah, they do. But I don’t know. Does it have to have a Euclid Avenue connection?
Erin Bell [00:37:50] Somewhere close. I mean, if there was a League Park connection, we have a site for League Park.
William Barrow [00:37:55] Well, I think I can say this, although I can’t document it with authority, but I think I can say it unchallenged, and that is, at some point at least one member of the Cleveland Rams did traverse Euclid Avenue, so, you know. [laughs] At some point, he walked down a sidewalk. You know, I couldn’t tell you which one, where or when, but I think it’s safe to say he did.
Erin Bell [00:38:22] You said Cleveland had the best sidewalks.
William Barrow [00:38:24] Had the best sidewalks. Right.
Erin Bell [00:38:26] Well, is there anything else that you want to share with us?
William Barrow [00:38:30] Yeah, probably six or seven things. But it will be after we turn it off and I go back to my office [laughs] that they all occur to me. Yeah. Something was floating through my mind a minute ago, but it’s gone. You started talking about the Rams and something, and it vanished. But.
Erin Bell [00:38:49] I think before that we were talking about Herman Pirchner in the carnival.
William Barrow [00:38:52] Yeah. And this was something else altogether, but. No, afraid I’m done.
Erin Bell [00:39:00] Okay. Well, we’ll stop here, and if anything crosses your mind, I’ll come back down.
William Barrow [00:39:04] Okay.
Erin Bell [00:39:04] Maybe I’ll leave it set up. You can just come in here if something pops up.
William Barrow [00:39:08] Why don’t you give me back that? [recording ends]
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