The historic land upon which the Perry-Payne Building at 740 W. Superior Avenue stands, and much of the land that surrounds it in Cleveland's Warehouse District, was first commercially developed by the Nathan Perry family. Nathan Perry Sr. (1760-1813) was an innkeeper in western New York's Genesee County when, in 1796, he was hired by Moses Cleaveland to provide food supplies to the surveying party that founded Cleveland. Almost a decade later, he, his wife Sophia, and their children moved here. In 1806, Perry purchased six acres of land northwest of the Public Square. On that land, which had frontage on Superior, St. Clair and Water (West 9th) Streets, Perry opened a trading post in a cabin that stood less than fifty feet from where the Perry-Payne Building stands today. 

Nathan Perry, Sr. was one of Cleveland's first merchants. Less than a decade after arriving in Cleveland, however, he died unexpectedly. Four of his six acres, including the land upon which the Perry-Payne Building stands, passed to his son Nathan Perry Jr. (1786-1865), who transformed his father's trading post into a dry goods store and, in 1819, replaced the cabin with a two-story brick commercial building, one of Cleveland's first. Nathan Jr. operated his dry goods business in that building until 1826, when he sold the business but retained ownership of the building and the land upon which it stood.

In addition to running his dry goods business, Nathan Perry Jr., as early as 1814, had been making shrewd purchases of land in Cleveland, and, by 1830, he had become one of the city's wealthiest landowners. In that latter year, he moved his family from the simple frame house they had lived in on Water Street, just north of his dry goods store, into an early-era mansion on Euclid Avenue. It stood where Berkman Hall stands today on Cleveland State University's campus, just east of East 22nd Street.

In 1835, Perry decided to lease some of his land near the corner of Superior and Water to two hardware merchants, William Cleveland and Elisha Sterling. The terms of their two leases—drawn up by a young Cleveland lawyer named Henry B. Payne—required them to construct two three-story brick commercial buildings on the land they leased. Each of the two brick buildings they built had two storefronts. The buildings with their four storefronts became known as the "Central Buildings" because the corner of Superior and Water was then the center of Cleveland's commercial business district. It was in these buildings that William Bingham, George Worthington, and other prominent early Cleveland merchants, who were mentioned in the Plain Dealer article of April 15, 1888, got their business start.

As important as the Central Buildings were to the enlargement of Nathan Perry Jr.'s real estate portfolio, lawyer Henry B. Payne, who drafted the leases that required they be built, would soon become even more important. In 1833, Henry B. Payne was a law student in Hamilton, New York, when he was impelled to travel to Cleveland to help nurse his best friend, Stephen A. Douglas, who was suffering from a severe illness. Douglas, who later became the Illinois Senator whom Abraham Lincoln famously debated in 1858, left Cleveland after recovering. Henry Payne chose to stay. Payne completed his law studies here and, in 1836, when Cleveland officially became a city, Henry Payne became its first solicitor. In August 1836, Payne, who had in 1835, as noted above, served as Nathan Perry's lawyer, married Perry's only daughter, Mary, who thereafter became known to all in Cleveland as Mary Perry Payne. 

Henry Payne practiced law in Cleveland for more than a decade before he decided to leave the practice. In 1849 he joined forces with Alfred Kelley and Richard Hilliard to build Cleveland's first railroad, the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati ("CCC"). In the process, he became that railroad's first president. In 1855, Payne turned his attention to government service and was appointed to the City Waterworks Commission. It built Cleveland's first waterworks system. Then, in 1862, he took on the work of chairing a city sinking fund board which reportedly stabilized Cleveland's finances for years. Henry Payne also became active in local and state politics. He served in a number of Democrat party positions, before being elected in 1874 to the United States House of Representatives. A decade later, in 1885, he was elected Ohio's first United States Senator from Cleveland.

It was during the second year of Henry Payne's term as a United States Senator that local newspapers reported that Senator Payne was planning to build a new commercial building on Superior Avenue that would be named the Perry-Payne Building.  Different reporters and different historians writing in different eras have speculated differently as to the reason why Henry Payne named the Perry-Payne Building as he did. They all, however, may have been looking to the wrong person for an answer to their question.

When plans were made to build the Perry-Payne Building, the land upon which it was to be built was owned by Mary Perry Payne. The decade of the 1880s was one in which American women were beginning to acquire greater property rights, including the right to own, develop and dispose of real property in their own name. Henry B. Payne was uniformly said to be a progressive person of kind disposition who had a very loving marriage with Mary Perry Payne. Given all of the foregoing, there is no reason not to believe that Mary Perry Payne, probably with her husband's full support, was the person who chose the name of the building that was to be built upon her land. So perhaps the question that we should ask today, even if it was not asked by newsmen in 1887, or by historians thereafter, is: Why did Mary Perry Payne choose to so name her building? While we do not know the answer to that question with any degree of certainty, it might be as simple as that was where she first met Henry Payne.

In proceeding with their plans to build the Perry-Payne Building, Henry and Mary Perry Payne selected Cudell & Richardson, one of Cleveland's most prominent late nineteenth-century architectural firms, to design it. Cudell & Richardson, in additional to this historic building, also notably designed the following buildings still standing in Cleveland: St. Stephen Roman Catholic Church on West 54th Street; Franklin Circle Christian Church at 1688 Fulton Road; Belden Seymour Block at 2513-2525 Detroit Avenue; Franklin Castle at 4318 Franklin Boulevard; the George Worthington Company Building at 802-832 W. St. Clair Avenue; the Root and McBride Building at 1220 West 6th Street; and the Bradley Building at 1212-1224 West 6th Street. Additionally, Cleveland's Cudell Commons Park and the city's Cudell neighborhood are both named after Frank Cudell, one of the two named partners in that architectural firm.

The building Cudell & Richardson designed for Henry and Mary Perry Payne was described in a June 19, 1887 Cleveland Leader article. It was to be constructed "of brown stone and granite, in the Rennaissance style of architecture. The side and rear walls will be of brick. . . . The floor joists will be of iron and the floors fire clay tile. . . . [T]he stairs will be made of iron and cement or marble. Iron balconies will be provided on the fifth and seventh floors." The article stated that the building would be "eight stories high in the middle and seven on either side, with a basement. It will have a frontage of 138 feet, a depth of 100 feet, and will be 120 feet high." The article noted that the first floor of the building would be designed for the offices of banks, and the upper floors would have a total of 46 offices with an average size of 18 x 26 feet.

Other articles noted that the interior of the building would feature an eight-story interior court illuminated by a sky light. (The design of this light court, as well as the building's front facade, were reminiscent of Chicago's Rookery Building designed by Burhnam and Roots.) Other interior features of the Perry-Payne Building were its modern elevators and mail chutes that carried mail from all of the building's upper floors down to a first floor mail room. Designed with interior iron support columns, the Perry-Payne Building is notable architecturally as a transitional building between earlier buildings with masonry support walls and later buildings, including the Society for Savings Building erected just one year later, having interior steel support beams which enabled them to be built to great heights and led to them becoming known as "skyscrapers."

Construction of the Perry-Payne building commenced in the summer of 1887 after all of the old commercial buildings on the site had been razed. While construction was expected to be completed in 1888, financing difficulties encountered by Henry and Mary Perry Payne appear to have delayed completion of construction until the summer of 1889. The first tenants of the Perry-Payne Building included Bingham Hardware and National City Bank, who opened their offices in the new building on July 1, 1889.  When the Perry-Payne Building opened, it was the tallest and most grand commercial building in Cleveland, and it attracted many of the largest iron ore, coal, and shipping companies in Cleveland as tenants. It also attracted a number of Cleveland law firms, including a new firm named Squire, Sanders and Dempsey (today, Squire, Patton and Boggs), which has since become one of the city's largest and most historic law firms. 

In the first two decades of its existence, even as larger and grander commercial building went up in downtown Cleveland, the Perry-Payne Building continued to attract more than its fair share of Cleveland's coal, iron, and shipping-related businesses, as well as a number of law firms and insurance companies. However, almost all of its core tenants departed after 1913 when Marcus Hanna's son Dan completed his construction of the enormous 15-story Leader Building on the corner of Superior Avenue and East 6th Street. Thereafter, for decades, the Perry-Payne Building survived with much less than full occupancy.

During its early years, ownership of the Perry-Payne Building remained with the Perry-Payne family and their descendants through the Perry-Payne Company formed in 1899, several years after the deaths of Henry and Mary Perry Payne. However, in 1945, that company sold the Perry-Payne Building to another corporation that was unrelated to the family. The building had many new owners in the years that followed and these new owners struggled to find and hold onto tenants. Then, in 1965, the State of Ohio leased the entire building for a number of its agencies with offices in Cleveland. This, however, only temporarily solved the building's occupancy problems for, in the summer of 1979, the State agencies departed when the new Frank J. Lausche State Office Building, directly across the street, opened.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the owners of the Perry-Payne Building struggled anew with occupancy problems. In 1994, however, a new partnership purchased the building, hired an architectural firm known for its restoration work, and proceeded to restore the front facade of the Perry-Payne Building; renovate the remainder of it; and convert it into an apartment building with 91 apartments and 8,000 square feet of retail space. As of the writing of this story in 2024, the Perry-Payne Apartments remain a prestigious address in downtown Cleveland's Warehouse District.

If Mary Perry Payne were alive today and learned that her Perry-Payne Building had been converted into an apartment building, she might say that it really didn't matter, so long as Clevelanders today believe, as she and her husband and Clevelanders of her generation more than a century ago believed, that the Perry-Payne Building stands at a place of historic memory.

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The origins of the founding of Franklin Circle Christian Church, located at 1688 Fulton Road, lie in America's Second Great Awakening, an early nineteenth century movement which was characterized by a resurgence in religious enthusiasm and a diversification in Christian religious groups. Northeastern Ohio became a center of this new religious fervor and home to a number of new Christian religious groups, including the Mormons (Kirtland), the Shakers (Warrensville Township), and the Amish (Holmes County). In this era, as Cleveland State University history professor David Goldberg taught his graduate history students, Ohio beckoned to religious enthusiasts much like a century or so later California would beckon to altruistic baby boomers.

The Disciples of Christ, which founded Franklin Circle Christian Church in 1842, was another new Christian group that grew out of the Second Great Awakening and found fertile ground for its new religion in northeastern Ohio. The Disciples of Christ were adherents to the religious philosophy of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, father and son ministers, who urged Christians to put aside the doctrinal differences that divided different sects and return to the principles of the primitive Christian Church. In 1848, the parish built its first permanent church on Franklin Circle. It was large and cavernous and was known to its parishioners as "God's Barn." Three decades later, the parish hired the noted Cleveland architectural firm of Cudell and Richardson to design a new church on Franklin Circle--on a parcel of land just south of "God's Barn." The new church was built in the years 1874-1875 and has become one of the oldest and best known landmarks on the near west side of Cleveland.

Franklin Circle Christian Church and the Disciples of Christ have a long history of promoting education and engaging in social activism in northeastern Ohio. In 1850, the Disciples of Christ founded the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, which later became known as Hiram College. Future United States President James A. Garfield was a student at the new college in the early 1850s and returned to it in 1858 to become President of the College. In 1857, Garfield also served as pastor at Franklin Circle Christian Church. The Church's members also included fervent supporters of the nineteenth century Temperance and Prohibition movements. Long time parishioner Abraham Teachout, a lumber merchant who lived on Franklin Avenue, was the church's Sunday School Superintendent for 25 years in the late nineteenth century. In 1884, he ran for Congress on the Prohibition ticket and remained a fervent Prohibitionist until his death in 1912.

Franklin Circle Christian Church today continues to engage in educational programs and social activism that serve a constituency very different from the Franklin Avenue neighborhood of the nineteenth century. Today, the Franklin Avenue neighborhood is home to many working class and immigrant families. The Church's outreach programs minister to the needs of this new community.

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The High Victorian Eclectic style stone house located on the north side of Franklin Boulevard across from West 44th Street is still known to many Clevelanders as "Franklin Castle." The home has been a witness to much of the history of Cleveland's west side in the 125 years of its existence.

Tiedemann House was built in the period 1881-1883 by Hannes Tiedemann, a German immigrant who became prosperous first as a wholesale grocer and then later as a banker. The house was designed by the famed Cleveland architectural firm of Cudell and Richardson. When Tiedemann built the house in the late nineteenth century, Franklin Boulevard was one of the most upscale residential avenues in Cleveland, perhaps second only to famed Euclid Avenue's Millionaires' Row.

Hannes Tiedemann built his grand house on Franklin Boulevard, not only to provide a more upscale residence for his family, but also to provide a temporary place for friends, family and others emigrating from Germany to stay when they first arrived in Cleveland. The house replaced an earlier house on the property which was razed during the construction of the new house. Hannes, his wife Louise and their two surviving children, August and Dora, moved into the new house in 1883. There, the two children grew to adulthood. Both children later married and provided Hannes and Louise with a total of six grandchildren--all boys.

Hannes Tiedemann sold Franklin Castle in 1896--just one year after his wife Louise died. In the century that followed, the house saw many new owners and several new uses. For forty-seven of those years--from 1921 to 1968, the house was known as Eintracht Hall. During these years, it was the home of the German-American League for Culture, an ethnic cultural organization that, in its early years, was involved in political causes, and, in later years, functioned as a German singing club.

Around the time that the German club sold the house in 1968, rumors began to circulate around the west side of Cleveland that the house was haunted by the nineteenth century ghosts of Mrs. Tiedemann and her daughter Emma, who died before the house was even built. In the mid-1970s, one owner of the house capitalized on these rumors and offered tours of "haunted" Franklin Castle to the public.

In 1985, Michael DeVinko purchased the Tiedemann House and spent a large sum of money restoring it. DeVinko, whose stage name was Mickey Deans and who was the last husband of legendary singer and actress Judy Garland, lived in the house for over a decade. Shortly after he sold the house in 1999, the house was torched by an arsonist, causing substantial damage to it. A new owner spent a large sum of money in repairs, but, as a result of the two economic recessions in the first decade of the twenty-first century, was unable to complete restoration of the house. In 2011, the house was purchased by a European couple, who have made substantial progress in restoring it.

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Prior to its absorption into Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (C.E.I.), Brush Electric Light & Power Co. developed the equipment used for Cleveland's first electric streetcar line. The line was operated under the East Cleveland Railway Co., with the streetcars being powered by a Brush-developed generator. Not everybody was excited about the success that these innovations and developments brought to their inventors. Heavily involved in the city's street railways, Marcus Hanna saw the need to respond to his rivals' actions. Recognizing the immense profitability associated with street railways, Hanna famously referred to his control of such lines as his own savings bank. In order to preserve his lucrative position, Hanna quickly recognized the need to develop along with his rivals. He therefore commissioned the building of a new powerhouse to generate power for his own electric streetcar line; the Woodland Ave. & West Side Street Railway Co. (W&WSSR).

The Viaduct Power House was built in 1892 on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River. C.E.I., who powered the east-side rival of Hanna's west-side line, responded by building the Canal Road Station in the Flats in 1895. Thus situated on opposite sides of the Cuyahoga River, just across from each other, these two streetcar powerhouses were the only such facilities of their kind in Cleveland.

Hanna granted the commission for the Viaduct Power House to architect John N. Richardson, formerly of the renowned firm Cuddell & Richardson. The Scottish-born, Cleveland-based architect was regarded as one of "the most important and innovative architects in Cleveland during the 1880's." As part of Cuddell & Richardson, he designed many of Cleveland's architectural gems including the Franklin Castle, St. Joseph's Franciscan Church, the Perry-Payne building, and the Bradley building. Richardson designed the Powerhouse in the Romanesque revival style; built to resemble the European factories of the time with gabled roofs, arched windows, and thick window sills made of stone. The original structure was built in 1892, and was the first power plant dedicated to providing electricity to streetcars in Cleveland. However, the 1898 absorption of Hanna's W&WSSR into the Cleveland Electric Railway Co. (CER) resulted in a significant 1901 addition, nearly causing the Powerhouse to double in size. Despite this expansion to meet the demand of more streetcar lines, the powerhouse did not thrive long thanks to the rapid rise of the automobile. Cleveland's streetcars officially gave way to the automobile in 1920 when the CER permanently ceased operation, and the Powerhouse closed.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the old Viaduct Power House, restyled "The Powerhouse," acted as a turnstile for several comedy clubs, restaurants, and even retailers. As of 2012, the 70,000 square-foot edifice serves as a mixed-use entertainment complex still rooted in its foundation as an industrial facility. The most recent addition to the Powerhouse is the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. Funded by Jacobs Entertainment at a cost of $33 million, it was designed by the New Zealand-based company Marinescape, which has a reputation for refurbishing preexisting structures as aquariums. Paying homage to the Viaduct Power House's industrial past, the aquarium incorporates exposed brick walls, coal tunnels, smokestacks, and steel girders into its decor.

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