Chapter 9: For Other Books in Other Times

The publishers of this little work entertain for it the hope that it will inspire the writing of other books dealing with the forces which are making Cleveland a People’s University. Cleveland is teaching its citizens to live more abundantly. In the ideal city that Cleveland tokens to be, everyone is at once an instructor and a student.

And it seems to us that the text-book of this mighty school is the Constitution of the United States. Instead of simply harboring institutions, as the river’s mouth receives its ships, Cleveland is using them consciously and directly for the benefit of its citizens.

The city’s churches, from the old Stone Church standing sentinel on the Square, to the vaulted cathedrals, are enlisted in the effort to Americanize, to utilize every soul within the city’s gates.

Cleveland is the first city to have its churches thus controlled through a central church organization. Four hundred and ten Cleveland churches are extending their area of influence intelligently and effectively. Ninety-five per cent of the Protestant churches are federated.

The Moravians were the earliest religionists to settle near Cleveland. The Episcopalians held the first religious services in the frontier town. By 1830, three churches had been erected. The presence of the church in the settlement in the clearing served as a reminder of the Word.

Today institutional churches are fortresses in the war on the evil influences that fatten on a growing city. Such architectural triumphs, as Trinity Cathedral, the Euclid Avenue Jewish Temple and the Saint Agnes Catholic Church, which stand in their majesty, are permanent reminders of the reverential attitude of a great city.

Cleveland is a good parent. There are seventeen agencies for the care and protection of children in the city. There are fresh air camps, dispensaries, hospitals and visiting nurse associations.

The settlement houses — Hiram House, Alta House and Goodrich House give “courage to the arm of the disappointed.” They renew fair, educate and refine. Cleveland’s eighty charity societies are responsible to a controlling welfare organization established in 1913. In Cleveland, to give is to help a man to help himself.

In 1800, Cleveland built its first school near Kingsbury’s run. Another school for children opened in 1802 in Major Carter’s “front room.” From this humble but sincere beginning, the educational forces of Cleveland have gathered strength and influence until the public school system ranks with the first ten in America. Night schools and manual training courses supplement the general work.

The name of the Western Reserve is perpetuated in the University — the finest tribute which could possibly have been paid to the New England men who developed Ohio. The Connecticut men were school men. Moses Cleaveland was a son of Yale. Western Reserve University is educating its own historians.

In instituting its Adelbert College, the College for Women, the Medical College, the Graduate School, Franklin T. Backus Law School, Dental School, School of Pharmacy, the Library School, and the School of Social Sciences, Western Reserve University has made rapid strides. Today, in co-operation with the Advertising Club, it has an extension school, one of the most practical advertising schools in the world.

The property of Western Reserve University is valued at ten million dollars — perhaps the best investment that any community could make.

And science has not been forgotten, for in 1881 was founded the Case School of Applied Science. In founding this school, Leonard Case Jr. carried out the wishes of his father from whom had come the gift for a school in which Cleveland youth could thoroughly master the sciences. Cleveland with its varied industries offers splendid opportunity for the practical application of scientific problems.

The talented engineers who have been graduated from Case School stand as examples, telling why this institution holds such a high rank among American scientific schools.

It is now hoped and planned that a merger of the Case School of Applied Science and Western Reserve University will be effected. The welding of these two useful schools is in the line of good management. Combination courses between the Case and Western Reserve schools are now available.

Cleveland’s public libraries are work-a-day hives of knowledge — not mausoleums of literature. In one year three million four hundred thousand books were circulated by Cleveland’s libraries. It has always been considered that leisure was required for reading. And yet statistics show that Cleveland’s busy folk are the most consistent readers in America. One out of every four Clevelanders is a book-borrower — a record not equaled in other cities.

The Cleveland library started with a selection of books on the second and third floors of the old Central High School. When this building was destroyed, the library went to the City Hall. It now occupies the fifth and sixth floors of the Kinney and Levan Building, awaiting its permanent home — a temple of the intellectual graces to be erected as a part of the group plan on the mall.

The main library has more than three hundred thousand volumes, and with its branches, 625,000 books. The Cleveland system with its fifty branches and 650 agencies is the third largest library system in the country.

The Alta House, a combined library and settlement house, is the gift of John D. Rockefeller. Many of the branch libraries are evidences of the generosity of Carnegie. The open shelf idea originated in Cleveland — the Cleveland library being the first large library to give free access to its shelves.

The efforts of the Cleveland Art Museum in bringing to the city rare specimens of the applied and fine arts, ancient and modern, will do much to make Cleveland an Athens-on-the-Lake. Under the direction of Mr. Frederick Allen Whiting, director of the Art Museum, there exists between the Art Museum, the city’s schools and the community a unique relationship.

The new museum building, permanent because built in undying style, was completed in 1916. The museum building was made possible by bequests of Horace Kelley and John Huntington. A bequest from H.B. Hurlbut has given a purchasing fund.

The Cleveland School of Art, founded by Mrs. S.M. Kimball, now has a permanent home on Juniper road and Magnolia Drive. Henry Turner Bailey, dean of the Cleveland School of Art, has done much to endear him to Cleveland art lovers. He is closely allied with every movement for the beautifying of the city. His word as an art critic is highly regarded.

Cleveland is one of the half-dozen cities in America giving popular support to a symphony orchestra. The Cleveland Orchestra, although recently formed, compares favorably with the best orchestras of this country.

The Singers’ Club of Cleveland, a company of those who sing for the pleasure they may give, has developed many notable artists. The club has sent forth to the Metropolitan Opera House members whose names symbol golden song.

The publicity voice of the city will function directly through the new Convention Hall. The great renaissance building, which is now on its way to completion, will have a seating capacity in the arena of twelve thousand people, the theatre or concert hall of two thousand seven hundred and the ball room of one thousand six hundred.

There will be six halls accommodating from one hundred to five hundred auditors each. The stage is located between the arena and the theatre to be used by both and thus viewed by fifteen thousand people. Cleveland will bid for the conventions which name Presidents and make history.

Cleveland’s clubs have contributed their quota of culture to the city’s life. There is the stately Union Club, the liberal City Club, the progressive Athletic Club, the unique Hermit Club, the bibliopegistic Rowfant, the University Club, the Tavern Club and the Chagrin Valley Hunt Club, where the hounds are followed after the romantic manner of the Virginia fathers.

Cleveland is justly proud of its women’s clubs — organizations that are full of helpful activities. Among other clubs of power for women are the Woman’s Club, the Women’s City Club and several progressive organizations for business women.

Cleveland stands as a leader among the cities of the nation in its women’s suffrage activities — not a small amount of the progress of this great movement having been possible through the able leadership of Clevelanders.

When the New York Bureau of Municipal Research took a vote in thirty leading cities as to which commercial body had achieved the most for its town, industrially and socially, the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce won the bay leaves. One of the most potent forces in the city is the West Side Chamber of Industry.

Without her banks Cleveland could tell no golden story. They have guarded the city’s accumulations and extended a helping hand to struggling business with a wise paternal care. Cleveland’s first commercial bank was the organization now known as the National City, which was founded in 1845.

Today there are forty-one chartered banks in the city, not including the hundreds of branches, private banking and brokerage houses. The Society for Savings, by encouraging sensible economy, anticipated the Government’s thrift campaigns of the present day as far back as 1849.

The head of the Society for Savings is Myron T. Herrick, former Governor of Ohio and afterwards Ambassador to France. Cleveland’s bankers have been entrusted with numbers of important missions for the nation. Cleveland has given to New York one of its most discerning banking executives in the person of former Senator Theodore E. Burton. Cleveland became a Federal Reserve city in 1914 — the Capital of Federal Reserve District number four.

The city’s hostelries, mellow in memories, deserve a book of “Friendly Cleveland Taverns.” There was the old American House, where Abraham Lincoln addressed the people, and the hospitable Stillman, which stood for a long time where the Statler now reigns.

The lobby of the Hollenden calls forth recollections of the great and good men who have been its guests. If an old-time visitor should come out of a Rip Van Winkle sojourn in the valley and arrive at the Public Square in search of a tavern, he would not be disappointed. For in place of the old Forest City House, there is the Hotel Cleveland. The Hotel Winton honors itself by bearing the name of the city’s eminent automobile designer.

It is said that Cleveland’s population doubles every twenty years. By one concerted movement of it s suburbs, it could make a bid for place in the population figures of American cities that would be dramatic. The City’s important suburbs, East Cleveland, the Heights and Lakewood, are municipalities of themselves and therefore cannot be included in Cleveland’s census compilations.

Cleveland has not forgotten that fresh air and sunshine and a glimpse of growing things are as necessary as office buildings and factories to a city’s strength. It has forty-three miles of boulevards and two thousand six hundred and seventy-three acres of park and meadow.

Cleveland goes about the business of reconstruction as blithely as if the city’s resources of men and money had not been tapped by war. The fact is that Cleveland gave not only men to bear arms, but men to bear burdens.

Supplementing the fighting men, many of Cleveland’s biggest executives abandoned, for the time, their private interests and went into the service of the nation. A former Mayor of Cleveland, Newton D. Baker, is Secretary of War.

Cleveland pioneered the collective campaign idea, and was one of the first American cities to provide a war chest. Cleveland accepted and over-subscribed in every Liberty Loan a quota based not on her resources but on her enthusiasm. Cleveland’s factories became arsenals.

The Cleveland Advertising Club, by common consent in advertising circles the most vigorous publicity organization in the country, has set sail on a marvelous expedition. With several other organizations it is about to advertise Cleveland not only to the world, but to its own people.

When the newspapers were first issued in Cleveland, they were delivered on horseback as far as Painesville and announced, in the case of the “Herald,” by the blowing of a horn. The Cleveland Advertising Campaign Committee, numbering some of Cleveland’s most active citizens, is about to blow Cleveland’s horn loud enough to be heard around the world. And we imagine that the committee will use a golden horn to tell Cleveland’s golden story.

The advertising committee intends to advise the world that through the deepening and widening of the Welland Canal to the St. Lawrence River, Cleveland will become an international sea-port. Then piers at East Ninth Street perhaps will say bon voyage to oceanic traffic. Tropical products used in tires and other goods will be distributed from Cleveland.

The advertising campaign will encourage new enterprises to come to the city, accelerate the building of homes, attract labor to Cleveland and publicize the city as a national leader in “progress, prosperity, philanthropy and public spirit.” We can well leave to the Advertising Club the media and means of setting this information before the world.

What concerns us here is the spirit. And the Cleveland spirit is that of a man who has found his work. Cleveland is frankly desirous of success. But more than this — the city covets the world’s friendship. Most of all, Cleveland wants the city’s children to be happy.

Cleveland looks to its future. Soon its interior transportation might not only be a problem but a puzzle. The city council has approved a fifteen million dollar bond issue for a subway on Euclid to East 22nd Street and west through to the bridge.

Hall Caine recently told an America woman who visited him on the Isle of Man, that he remembers the length and steepness of the hill above the Lake Shore Station at Cleveland on a stormy night. If the illustrious Manxman again visits Cleveland, and not too soon, he will arrive at a Pantheon-like station on the Public Square, ranking with the terminals of Manhattan, which competent critics believe are its chiefest architectural beauties.

Maurice Maeterlinck, on his recent visit to Cleveland, in contemplating and visualizing in his poet’s mind the group plan and the mall, said that Cleveland awakened an interest in him, reminiscent of his beloved Paris. For the mall, flanked by the institutions which represent law, order, education and art, will typify the Cleveland spirit, Here the courthouse, city hall, auditorium and library are being arranged in a plan avowedly the glory of American municipal achievement.

Cleveland’s golden story is to be continued. Other men in other times, standing aloof will look with judicial eyes and estimate the worth of Cleveland and her people. Who may now presume to reconcile such divergent characters as Mark Hanna, maker of national policies and Tom L. Johnson, civic leader, both of whom loved and labored for Cleveland?

Lord Beaconsfield said: “A great city whose image dwells on the memory of man is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; faith hovers over Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world-art.”

Cleveland typifies the Nazarene ideal that a city is a home in which the health and happiness of the individual is a public concern. If the writer of this narrative were asked to set forth Cleveland’s great idea, he would employ but two words — Cleveland cares.

Cleveland will grow richer but not scornful, more powerful but not ungentle, more illustrious but not forgetful. And for this ideal, Cleveland’s image will ever dwell like a kindly light on the hearts of men.