Evie Fertman (Braman)

I will be there!  Please let us know the time of the event and if you want to schedule a mini reunion for before or after your talk at a local restaurant for whomever is available!!

Evie

Jonathan Meyers

Joe, if there is a transcript of your remarks, please post it.  I cannot be there in person, but I would very much enjoy reading what you had to say.

James Reese

Joseph G Blake

The time and date for the talk are 9/24 at 3PM at the historical society on South Park.

It will be built around a series of PowerPoint slides to tell the story. There is some discussion doing a video of it.

What would help to know is how many might want to come. It may be we may beed more space to accommodate the hords, 

It would also be nice as Evie suggested to meet in a mini reunion.

After the event I could write notes for the slides and send them with the slides to anyone interested.

Or worse yet let you read my senior thesis from college which is about the Vans and Shaker Heights. Its on line at the Cleveland Legacy Project at CSU. 

Here is the link if you are so inclined.

http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clevmembks/29/

The presentation will use a lot of visual pictures and talk more about the architects who shaped the early years.

There really is two parts to the story. Shaker before WW2 and then after. The type of houses changes dramatically after the war. The notable differences would be style of houses. There are more mid century contemporary houses (as HGTV calls them) and there are many houses with attached garages visible from the street (especiallu easr of Warrensville). Before the war garages were not to be very visible.More times than not they were fully behind the house which makes for some unusual lot layouts. In Fenrway and Malvern the streets really twist around and as you get to interesections the lots become odd shapes more like unusual geometric shapes than squares or rectangles. Driveways merge and sometimes the garage goes under the house.

But I digress.

Betsy Dennis (Frank)

I also would appreciate seeing the slides. I live in Indiana so can't make the 7 hour drive that day. :) Thanks, Betsy

Jonathan Meyers

Joe, 

Feel free to digress often; your comments are always fascinating!

There is a book, Distinguished Homes of Shaker Heights, which many of us might find both interesting and fun to read.  It is a wonderful survey (pictures plus commentary) of many of the more magnificent homes constructed in Shaker Heights over the decades.  Amazon offers a few copies for sale in its book section, as does www.abebooks.com.     

James R Krause

I have the book and the first few pages are about the history of which you speak.  For those of us who live far from our roots it is a sweet reminder of days long past. 

Ruth Ann Shehan (Rinto Gilliss)

When we have our 55th reunion in 2019 (which is only 2 quick years away), Joe should be our featured speaker and tell us about the history of the community we all came from!

Dana Shepard (Treister)

A bit of info about "my" 1920s vintage Shaker Heights house, at 3674 Avalon Road, betw Lomond and Scottsdale:

http://www.clevelandareahistory.com/2013/04/the-strange-disappearing-houses-of.html

AMAZING that someone actually made a study of all the demolished houses on " my"  block and the next.  My parents  purchased 3674 Avalon Road in the early months of 1947, and my mother sold it in the fall of 1974, when my she moved to an apartment in Beachwood.  I lived in that house from shortly after I was born, until I left for college – never lived anywhere else while I was growing up.  By the late ‘80s my mother had moved to Chicago to be closer to me,  and my family.

I was shocked to take a nostalgic drive up Avalon in perhaps 2004 with my former Lomond Rd playmate Lynda Green and her mother and to see only SOD where my house had stood.  Afterwards, Mrs Green – who at that point had already sold Lynda's old house and moved to an apartment -- contacted an old-timer still on Avalon and learned that allegedly the absentee owners of “my” house had been unresponsive to Shaker Heights authorities; eventually leading to the property being condemned and then leveled.  Rumor has it that drugs were being dealt from the house, at all hours of the day and night…

So now to see this video – wow!  It even has a clip of the last ad trying to sell MY house, before it was demolished, along with the architect of record and date built.  I would love to capture a scan of that ad --   I tried a basic Google search by the address, year, architect, but got nothing,  Ditto for info on Walter Welfel (architect and/or builder).

For decades I harbored this fantasy of walking up and ringing the doorbell and sweetly explaining that I had grown up there -and imagining being invited in - and taking a nostalgic walk back through time...  Well, I guess that might not have gone so well...  but now even the fantasy is gone - I guess you CAN'T go home again!

"Thanks for the memories..."  me at age 7 1/2, in front of MY house...

Judi Bachman (Holtze)

Joe a while ago you asked about houses designed by my grandfather.  Are you including any in your talk? It all sounds very interesting but rather far for me to join in.

Joseph G Blake

Jonathan's book suggestion is excellent. I was happy to see that author cited me as a source for his work. It's very well done.

I appreciate Ruth Shehan's kind suggestion for 2019. I will be there if wAnted. Of course that depends upon if I Am not pushing daisies with the Vans at Lakeview. Haha.

Dana 

I can send you the building card for your house on Avalon. They are all on line at shakerbuilding.com. My email is jblake9147@aol.com

The records are fairly comprehensive. You can search different ways including owner, builder, address or streets, and architect. The architect for your house Walther Wefel designed around 15 homes over 20 years in Shaker. But note owner and builder are often the same because some builders bought lots and built houses to sell. On some streets it can be several houses. Also note the building cost. Dana your house is estimated at 12,500 in 1929. 

My parents built in 1930 but owner is my father and the builder is given plus the architect. All different which meant the final owner was approved by the Van Sweringen Company. When the lots were sold to a builder, they lost control. For that reason from early days restrictive practices were not that effective. Deeds were changed in 1927 to require the Van Sweringen consent for resale. The goal was to obvious but the practical realities of economics and the depression meant if you had the money you got the house more times than  not. This change in the deeds occurred because a black MD bought a house in 1925 on Huntington. The Vans wanted to avoid the exposure and got most Shaker deeds changed. 

But the deeds never had specific restrictions about groups that were prohibited. Nonetheless Shaker never had an all are welcome sign in those days. It reflected the prejudices of the establishment of those days.

The architect for our house decided in the mid 30s to head west to Hollywood and became invovlved in Technicilor Inc and did very well. It clearly pId better and more reliably than designing houses for the affluent.

Last but not least, Judi please send me your grandfather's name again and I will research him and get some details to include in the presentation.

Thanks for reminding me.

If anyone has a question I will try to answer.

Joe 

 .

Joseph G Blake

I wanted to add a few comments about Dana's story about what happened to her home on Avalon.

The house was torn down. Shaker like many inner Cleveland suburbs that ring the city from Cleveland Heights to Lakewood have to face two harsh realities. Cleveland has lot 2/3 of its population since 1960 when it was the 7th largest city. IT was 5th largest in 1930. 

Cleveland like Detroit and many major industrial driven economies has lost its economic engine and its population. Cleveland Trust at 9th and Euclid is a Heinen’s; the Huntington Bank Building is virtually empty (it has more space per floor than any other office block in the USA except for the Pentagon. 

Shaker Heights was 37,000 in 1960 and today is 28,000. All of this reflects the changing demographics of the region and its impact on Shaker. More on that in a moment.

Housing priced peaked in Shaker in 2005 and have not come back from the housing collapse of 2007-08. A good bit of this was caused by the insane housing market financed by insane practices that securitized crap and called it AAA. Between 2000 and 2006 hosing was appreciating at 10% per annum versus a norm of 3 or 4%

Shaker housing prices have recovered much better than Cleveland Heights which was really clobbered in the period

It should be no surprise that foreclosures were the highest in Cleveland and Detroit and that reality impacted the pricing in Shaker and elsewhere. Dana you join good company. Mitt Romney's childhood home in Palmer Woods in Detroit was torn down. The house was purchased at the peak of the boom at over 500,000 dollars. When the owner lost the house it was looted and damaged. The house was not worth restoring and was torn down. My cousin told me a similar story about his parents’ home in another formerly well off section of Detroit. The house is still there and in good shape but probably worth no more than my uncle sold it for more than 50 years ago. 

Detroit and Cleveland have torn down many houses. 

I spoke with the current mayor of Shaker Heights Earl Leiken last month in preparation for this talk. What are the challenges the city faces? If shaker Heights were a suburb of Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Chicago every house would be worth twice as month- my comment not his. But the city faces challenges from its location which has a declining economic engine. I asked about housing demolition. There has been more demolition in Moreland than any other section. Some of the lots have been given to residents or made into parks with the proviso the neighbors maintain them. That seems to be happening. Now keep in mind more than half of Moreland was annexed into Shaker around 1920. The area south of Chagrin (Kinsman) and west of Lee was annexed to control it. The housing there is more akin to adjacent housing in Cleveland. Hence very atypical to the rest of Shaker.

The Vans always planned on a grand scale be it Shaker, The Terminal Tower or railroads. They had very high standards for everything but this also created a lot of financial risk. But they planned big in a way no one else ever did in Cleveland but Rockefeller. He thought in a massive scale for the oil industry and it worked. He owned 90% of the refining market and also reduced the price of kerosene 90% between 1860 and 1900. 

But the scale of Shaker Heights created a need to recover the investment. Keep in mind that 4 (Sussex, Lomond, Moreland and Ludlow) of the original 9 school districts are south of Van Aken and therefore so is the population density. To make that work you had to develop housing that would create lot/home sales that covered the cost of the infrastructure of the whole community. And the Vans never cut corners. What city has the infrastructure Shaker had then and still does? 

The vision was to build housing for the rising affluent and affluent in all stages of their life. I will use my 

parents as an example. They were married in 1927 and lived in the Sovereign Hotel at University Circle. In 1928 they rented in a two family on Avalon right across from the old Budin's deli. It was close to the Rapid and they soon bought a lot in Fernway which was always in running distance of the Rapid.

By late 1930 they bought the lot, got an architect to do the plan, build it and move in that November. IN 1981 they sold it because my father's health collapsed and he needed to live in nursing home and my mother joined her widowed friends in an apartment in upper Van Aken. She died in 1989. Many of you may know that process.

But that was in the design. Winslow was called diaper alley because of the young married couples that flocked there. No one ever called upper Van Aken or Shaker Square widows alley but I know the ladies did meet each afternoon to sip sherry around 4PM and share friendly gossip. 

The Vans however knew they needed the density but it had to look like a single house. The two family houses that are common on Winslow and in Lomond have one door and often very elaborate second floor living rooms which have big windows akin to some of the grander residences to the North. Often someone bight the house and rented the other apartment to pay for it. The third floor often had two bedrooms sometimes used by each family for a maid or another family bedroom. 

I mentioned the problem of corners previously. Streets wind a lot in Shaker Heights. It’s easy to get lost when you first get there. In addition to the two family (up and down apartments with one entrance), there are also a good number of duplexes, There are two houses each facing different streets but share a common wall. Sussex and Fernway have a good number of these. For example the houses at Avalon and Daleford and Avalon and Dorchester are duplexes,

But in the 70s the city was concerned that the area not become only tenants who rented from landlords not living there and began rigorous inspections. 

When the housing market turned south badly in 07 there was a new dynamic. Shaker required high escrow balances so that absentee landlords would not do to Shaker what happened in Cleveland. And to limit purchases of multiple houses by one landlord.  And I noted in the video Dana provided that the price for these houses was very low which suggests a lot of violations that may make repair and sale very unlikely but each house its own story. The question would be how many houses came down and where. I do not know

Those who still live there know well that Shaker has the highest real estate and income tax in Ohio. Does this mean they spend wildly? Shaker always offered very high services. They may still have trash pickup in the backyard. I still recall all you had to do was out the trash at the back door and they got it. No trash bins on the tree lawns. Not in Lomond or on South Park. But the demographics have really changed and this impacts the schools.

Shaker in a sense has two schools systems. It still does all the AP stuff we have come to expect as necessary and its college acceptance rates are very impressive. It still is a leader in SAT semi finalists and all that. But there is also another school system that has to address the learning issues of children from less affluent families. These may be children who have moved into Shaker from Cleveland. They often live in areas where rental housing is more common. 

At the reunion in 2014 at the high school staff talked about the school today and some of us asked about these issues. It is not the Shaker we knew but it is addressing the challenges of the shifting demographics. 

The city is trying to address those issues and maintain services that will continue to attract the affluent. The schools get a major part of their revenue from real estate taxes and the city from income taxes. Keep in mind that about half of Shaker households have incomes greater than 300,000 dollars and 33% more than 500,000. Their taxes matter in the equation and they expect good services.

Since 1970 if you look at the population decline for Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and Shaker Heights, Shaker has lost less relatively speaking as a percent of the 1970 census. Shaker has also done much better than Cleveland Heights, Lakewood or Parma. That takes creative leadership in the face of economic challenges.

The real issue is can Cleveland reverse the trend and become part of the economy based on intellectual capital. This is true of America in general which needs to develop a better trained work force possibly like Germany which leads in vocational training. But I leave that to better heads than mine.

The outcome of that debate will definitely shape the future of Shaker which I hope will always rank among the most beautiful of the garden suburbs that appeared in America in the pre WW2 world.

Finally Shaker Heights still has a AAA bond rating.

Joseph G Blake

If anyone wants to attend the talk I will give about the development of Shaker Heights and how the Vans shaoed the face of Cleveland here is the link.

http://shakerhistoricalsociety.org/events/591532-The-Story-of-the-Vans

The talk is at the Shaker Historical Society at 16740 South Park on Sunday Spetember 9.24/17.

If you have friends in Cleveland you might be interested tell them

Thanks,

Joe Blake

Dana Shepard (Treister)

Joe~

Thanks for all the additional info about my childhood home, and the www.shakerbuildings.com link. I have now saved my home's historic "House Card" as a pdf. What I learn from the "improvements" side of the card is that clearly my parents never bothered with builidng permits for work they had done, inasmuch as there a virtually NO entries between 1947 when they purchased the house, and 1974 when my mother sold it...  Shhhh ...  don't tell.

Joseph G Blake

Dana

I promise I will not tell.

Joe

Betsy Dennis (Frank)

Joe, Thanks for your comments. I find them most interesting. And I will look up my former home on Gridley. My parents moved there in 1958 and my mom lived there until 1998 when she had to go to assisted living. A young couple bought the house. It has since had a fire and they have done some remodeling as a result. Yes there were lots of duplexes. Our home and the Hazles next door were the only single family home on that block. Others were up and down duplexes. An interesting fact is that my parents moved there rather than stay in East Cleveland and move to Forest Hills because no Jews were allowed there. Joe, do you know if the restriction on first floor bedrooms still applies in the building codes? That restriction causes many to move out of Shaker as they get older.  Betsy

David Lee Rosen

My home on Strandhill is gone. I heard it was damaged by an explosion and abandoned. My grandfather built it, along with several other homes in the area. I remember a sticker on the side of the gas/forced-air furnace proclaiming that it would heat the house for $14 and change per year.

It seems, on street view, that the house to the south has an extra garage in the front yard now - very un-Shaker like.

Joseph G Blake

Betsy,

Your  comment about Forest Hills is very interesting. Of course it was a very samll development sitting in two cities. I was just thinking about the issue of restrctions there. It was my impression that it was more aggressively exclusonary than Shaker ever was. I had relatives there in the 50s and recall hearing exactly that.

In fact from the very beginning the Vans had a huge land commitmment and could not get too fussy about your religion because they owed too much. They frequently sold lots to builders who built for speculation to sell houses. And there are many well known houses in Shaker which were built by prominent Jewish Clevelanders in the 1920s. I refer notably to Salmom Halle's house overlooking Horseshoe Lake and the Samuel Horwirz Mansion on Parlkland Drive. That house is memortable for its giant two story leaded glass window. 

I have been looking at the work of Judy Bachman Holtze's grandfather, Charles Colman. He was a 1912 Cornell grad who after WW1 joined Walker and Weeks and then went on his own. He designed 26 homes in Shaker which includes the Diplomat Apartment on Van Aken overlooking that gentile paradise called the Shaker Heights Country Club. Mnay of his clients were Jewish. Most of his work is in streets off Shaker Boulevard. 

Now any black who wanted to buy in Shaker in the 1920 and 30 would have been shown the door. Yere was a black MD who bought a house on Huntington in the 20s form the original owner. Make a long story short, the city made life very uncomfortable for him. He eventually moved. The Vans then redeeded most of the Shaker properties in 1927 to include what is called the Van Sweringen consent. This meant that any property that was sold subsequently would require the OK of the Van Sweringen Company. 

Shaker deeds never included any specific restrictions regarding race or religion. That was declared unconstitutional in 1948. But the Van Sweringen consent remained operable for many decades thereafter. The effect was to affirm the deed restrictions which are largely zoning in character.

Now your question about one floor bedrooms is interesting. Before WW2 the genral rule was two story houses and the garages should be as inconspicuous as possible. There virtually no 1.5 story with one notable exception on Weybridge. But that house was designed by Charles Schneider for himself, he had a huge reputation then because he desinged the Sieberling Estate in Akron and other notable work. Its a gem of house on a double lot. Even better inside.

But this changes after WW2, Largely east of Warrensville there are many houses which violate both of these principals. There are many 1.5 story houses and almost all the houses have an attached garage which is often prominently facing the street. If you lived near Byron or Mercer you will know what I mean. And South Woodland above Warrensville you will see the same trend. This change reflects the huge housing demand that occurred after the war and the change in tastes and economics. 

My parents built in 1930 and in 1948 my mother was basically given a blank check to compleley redo the interior and she did. That meant we added a full bathroom on the third floor. There was a shortage of bath tubs and therefore we got a used tube with clawed feet. That was not the norm then bit when the house was on the market a few years ago the realtor used it as a selling point. I had to laugh. A used bath tub in 1938 was charm and character in 2010. 

I suspect that some of those 1.5 story houses may have had a bedroom on the first floor. Again very exceptional. Of course most of the houses did have two  floors but the bedrooms often had dormer windows. Some of them look like a movie set for Father Knows Best. I say that versus Leave to Beaver. Their house was two full floors and Ward's Aunt Martha lived in Shaker Heights. 

Hope that is not too much detail.

Penny Frank

I am sad to say that we have lost another one of our classmates. Ricky Messerman past away on August 16, 2017. I am not sure that the link I provided will work, so in case,the obituary is in this week's Cleveland Jewish News, 8/25/17.

https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/community/lifecycles/obituaries/messerman-richard-david/article_cad067c8-875f-11e7-b999-5b8f3ba9c8e5.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share

Betsy Dennis (Frank)

Thanks Penny for the notice. My copy of the CJN hasn't reached Indiana yet. And Joe I loved the detail. I was able to go online and find the original parcel for where we lived on Gridley. 

Joseph G Blake

Betsy

You made reference to Forest Hills and its apparent anti semitism.

I just found this today in re Temple on the Heights how it came to be built in 1926. Plus at th end some indication that confirms the reputation in Forest Hills for anti semitism.

http://www.chhistory.org/FeatureStories.php?Story=TemplevsRockefellers

Enjoy.

Joseph G Blake

I should have added that the link in re Forest Hills and the Temple on the Heights two comments.

The architect for Temple on the Heights was Charles Greco. He was a well known architect from Boston who also designed the Temple on 105th street near Mt Sinai Hospital. He was a Catholic who specialized in the design of churches and synagogues.

The other name was Dean Baily of the Cleveland School of Art. He is the great grandfather of Joan Baily Ingram, our class mate. He was well known for very creative lectures about art. He would spend the summers at Lake Chaataqua as well giving lectures. My mother had him as a student while doing her preparaton to be an elementary school teacher in Cleveland circa 1925. There are many stories about him that are quite interesting and amusing.

Evie Fertman (Braman)

Thanks, Penny, I already knew about his death but your post reminded me to change his status.

Evie

Gary D Hermann

Sorry to hear about Rick Messerman.   A very intelligent, practical guy.   I used to play poker with him quite a bit in high school and I learned a lot from watching him. He also gave me the nickname that I was called by many of my friends through most of high school.   

William J Lavin

Joe:  You've made reference to the restrictiive language contained in the property deeds for homes in Shaker and Cleveland Heights,  I'm not sure if you've discovered that many of the properties in Shaker were declared "Torrens Property" by the Vans.  Torrens (or registered land) was a second avenue available for the recording of property ownership in Cuyahoga County from 1914 thru 1993.  The process was long and protracted but after court hearings the property would be classified as Torrens Land, a bedsheet Owners Certificate (and Owners Duplicate Certificate) of Title were issued and any title defects were insured by the state (no need for future title searches since all liens, easements, etc were recorded on the back of the bedsheet.  If you retrieve an;y of the old Torrens Certificates for Shaker Hts or Cleveland Hts properties back then you'll find a number of property restrictions, everything from the color of picket fences to prhibiitions of "spirits, dancehalls, Italians, Negros, and Jews, etc".  As you stated, the ethinic prohibitions were declared unconstitutional in 1948 but it's interesting to see how the property ownership has changed from the original intent of the owners.  Talk about trying to control your property use even after death!  Torrens was used mostly on the east side of Cleveland but Torrens properties can also be found on the west side.  If the property was never sold, or never obtained a new mortgage or lien and is still occupied by the same family it is still considered Torrens property.  Once a sale is completed the property goes back into the normal land registry system of the county.