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In
honor of the Lakewood Home Tour on September 10th, I offer
a brief tour of some of the city’s physical remnants.
Many of these individual sights may be familiar to you,
but my tour explores the cumulative effect of such
vestiges on our community’s identity. As Cleveland
Heights author Michael Ruhlman states in House:
A Memoir... “The structures, the physical objects of
our days, shape our thoughts more substantially than we
often realize.”
The
tour begins with two of Lakewood’s oldest roads,
Warren Road and
Detroit Avenue. Both were originally Native American trails that
became plank (or log) roads and, gradually, paved
roads. Beginning at Franklin, head north on Warren (named for pioneer Isaac Warren) and note the Lakewood
Board of Education Annex on your left. The engraved
letters on the building read “East
Rockport Central School,” with “1879” a few feet
below. In 1889, the hamlet
of Lakewood
was established; East Rockport
was its previous name. Just farther north, on your
right, the KeyBank building’s engravings read “United
States Post Office” and “Lakewood Branch,” among
other imprints and the year “1935.”
For
me, these literal traces of Lakewood's past always conjure up historical
images. This time-travel usually triggers additional reveries of
Warren as a dirt road and, before that, a narrow trail through
large
forests. Such swift changes
in landscape are documented by Jim and Susan Borchert in
their book Lakewood:
The First Hundred Years. As
they explain,
in the 1800s “settlers and their descendants would
successively carve from the
wilderness a frontier outpost,
a farm
settlement, and finally a highly specialized and
tightly-knit agricultural community.”
As
you continue north and reach the historic heart of
downtown Lakewood,
at Warren
and Detroit, take a moment to appreciate the recent renovation of the
building on the northwest corner by First Federal of
Lakewood (pictured above). On the corner facade, the
renovation includes three clocks that seem to nod to both
the past and the future of the city. One clock is
old-fashioned with Roman numerals and two faces, while two clocks are
digital and part
of a Times Square-style
ticker board.
If
you turn left (or west)  onto
Detroit, however, you will quickly see another
clock that has always intrigued me. It is an old
clock built into the
upper façade of the building on the northeast corner of
Detroit
and Cook Avenue (currently the Operations Center of First
Federal of
Lakewood).
Most
distinctive is its lack of hands. Obviously,
the clock is in disrepair, but it seems to convey the
classic, timeless nature of a place like Lakewood, Ohio.
Whenever
I pass by, I have to glance at the clock, as if to make
sure Lakewood is still, paradoxically, timeless. Thea Gallo
Becker’s Images of
America: Lakewood contains a picture of
this clock from 1933, in which it
has working hands. At that time, the
building housed the Union Trust
Company.
The
next stop on the tour takes you farther west on Detroit and then north (or right)
onto Summit Avenue. As you travel down
Summit, the tree lawn on the west (or left) side will soon
present the oldest tree in Lakewood, an enormous white oak
which is also believed to be the city's largest tree.
The
small plaque on the tree declares “This is
a Moses Cleaveland Tree,” which means it
pre-dates Cleaveland’s landing in the area in
1796. The trunk of the tree is so wide the sidewalk
has to curve around it, as if bowing to the weight of the
past.
 The
weight of the past is also integral to our next
stop.
Continue
north on Summit to Clifton Boulevard, then turn west (or
left) and follow Clifton Boulevard to where it meets
Clifton Road. On the tree lawn at the northeast
corner (on the right) lies an old horse trough that
resembles a bath tub full of flowers.
According
to Dan Chabek in Lakewood
Lore, concrete horse troughs “once were spaced along
the curbsides of Lakewood’s main streets” because “everything in
pre-car Lakewood was horse drawn.” Indeed, horses drew wagons for
many goods and services... ice, fruits, vegetables, milk, coal,
garbage, bricks, and even fire equipment, to name a few.
Chabek
explains that at one point
long ago the trough was removed, but nearby residents
objected, so it was returned. Over the years, several
residents tended to
the planter, and now it is an official Adopt-a-Spot, part
of the Keep Lakewood Beautiful program in which residents
volunteer to care for an area. Currently, the
Lakewood Garden Club cares for the trough and its
plantings. Poetically, a remnant
from Lakewood’s roots continues to function as a planter for new
life, maintained by generations of residents.
Our
last two stops involve driving east on Lake Avenue to view the
remnants of estate walls, which Craig Bobby recommends
as an “interesting diversion” in his tour of the
“‘Hidden’ Victorian Architecture of Lakewood,
Ohio” (available on Lakewood
Public Library’s website).
From the
horse trough’s location, turn right on
Clifton Road, then veer right on Lake Road, then turn
right  again on
Webb
to reach Lake Avenue. Turn left (or east) on Lake,
and the
wall remnant
on our tour is at Lake and Belle Avenue, inside the traffic
circle at the entrance to Lakewood Park.
At
the west end of the wall, “The Hickories” is etched
into the stone column, which was the name of Robert
Rhodes’ house built in 1874, on the grounds of what is
now Lakewood Park. In 1918, the City of
Lakewood
purchased the Rhodes’ estate, and the Borcherts explain
that the house “served as a convalescent hospital for
wounded soldiers during World War I, and handled overflow
patients from Lakewood Hospital during the deadly influenza epidemic of November
1918.” The house became City Hall in 1920, but a
new City Hall was built in 1959.
The
Borcherts observe
that the city’s purchase of the Rhodes’ estate was important because
it restored lakefront
access to the public. In their view, Lakewood Park
“represented the belated efforts of suburbanites to
correct the excessive privatization introduced by earlier
settlers.”
Imagine for a moment the absence
of Lakewood Park, and the city’s identity seems
shaken. On a more
symbolic level, public access to the lake (our most
permanent remnant) ensures that everyone benefits from the
fresh lake breezes that invigorate both body and mind.
In
a related remnant of Lakewood
Past, the Borcherts reveal that from 1914 to the 1920s,
Lakewood presented an annual “Chautauqua Week” that included
“serious entertainment, popular education, and political
oratory.” For
me, Lakewood has always been a “thinking city,” perhaps because of
our location on the water. As Herman Melville’s
narrator in Moby
Dick states, “meditation and water are wedded for
ever.” Evidence of the city’s mental exercise
can be found in its award-winning library, websites, and
community groups. From planning for the West
End development project to spraying for the West Nile Virus, spirited
debates usually accompany our city issues.
The
final stop on our tour is farther east on Lake
Avenue. Turn left out of Lakewood Park and take note of the estate wall remnants on the north
side of the street. One of the last ones is from the
estate of Alexander Winton, an auto magnate whose mansion
used to stand where Winton Place now rises into the sky. Though Winton’s estate was
named for a town in his native Scotland, the engraving on
his estate wall’s gateposts also
seems a fitting end for a story about Lakewood remnants
with roots that continue to grow... “Roseneath.”
Vincent
A. O’Keefe is a freelance writer with a Ph.D. in
American literature. His
writing has appeared in The
Plain Dealer and Northern
Ohio Live, among other publications. His poetry
will appear in the forthcoming book “Favorite
Lakewood Poetry” to be published by
LakewoodBuzz.com. During
October
2006, his photography and poetry will be featured at the
Rocky River Nature Center in North Olmsted, Ohio.
Most
of the books mentioned in this tour are available at
Lakewood Historical Society's Oldest Stone House Museum
at Lakewood Park, or at the Lakewood
Public Library.
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