In ninety years, three prominent Cleveland families have called 2540 Fairmount Boulevard home. The story of this house mirrors that of Euclid Golf, an early planned suburban development that benefited from the eastward spread of Cleveland's wealthy off of Euclid Avenue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and continued to serve as a favored address for professionals and industrialists.
The first owner of 2540 Fairmount was Alwin C. Ernst, founder of the public accounting firm Ernst & Ernst, the forerunner of Ernst & Young. Ernst is credited with pioneering the idea that accounting information could be used to make business decisions and with inventing management consulting. Born in Cleveland in 1881, he attended West High School and a business college, and then worked as a bookkeeper for the Audit Company. In 1903, he founded Ernst & Ernst with his older brother Theodore, who left the company three years later. Alwin Ernst went on to build the business to more than 50 offices in the United States and two in Canada. When Ernst died suddenly after collapsing in the Union Club on May 13, 1948, Cleveland Mayor Thomas A. Burke said, "No matter what occasion in Cleveland called for a civic group to help out, you could count on Mr. Ernst to be in the group."
The second owners of 2540 Fairmount were John and Susanna Carlin. John Carlin was a lawyer who had grown up on Millionaires' Row. His father, Anthony, had been a pioneer in the steel rivet business and was one of the last millionaires to build on Euclid Avenue. Susanna came from humble circumstances. Her mother was widowed and raised ten children on her own. They met at the Guardian Building. He was working as a lawyer at the firm Henderson, Quail, Barkley and Schneider. She was one of the building's elevator operators. Their fairytale wedding in St. John's Cathedral in downtown Cleveland was one of the most significant social events of 1941. The Carlin's moved from 3233 Euclid to their Euclid Golf home in 1950. When John Carlin died in December 1973, 2540 Fairmount was valued at $95,000 and his estate was valued in excess of $7 million.
Patrick Parker of Parker Hannifin Corporation, and his wife Madeline, were the third owners. They purchased the house in 1985 for $330,000.
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]]>Many residents of Shaker Heights know that the Van Sweringen brothers built the Shaker Rapid Transit in the early twentieth century to provide Shaker residents with quick and efficient public transportation service between their suburb and downtown Cleveland. Probably considerably fewer, however, know that more than a decade before the Shaker Rapid ran its first trains from Shaker to downtown Cleveland on April 20, 1920, the Van Sweringens had already created a public transportation system for Shaker Heights. That public transportation system, which also transported Shaker residents to and from downtown Cleveland, was the Shaker Lakes trolley line.
The story of the Shaker Lakes trolley line is the story of how the Van Sweringen brothers, unlike other Cleveland area developers of the early twentieth century, were able to successfully develop the 1300 acres of land in East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and Shaker Heights that was formerly the site of a colony of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance, more commonly known as the Shakers. In 1889, the Shakers dissolved this colony and the land was sold. During the period 1892-1906, several local and out-of-state groups attempted to develop the land for single-family residential subdivisions. All failed, except the Van Sweringen brothers who succeeded largely because they were able to build a transportation system along Fairmount Boulevard that persuaded wealthy Clevelanders to move from Cleveland to Shaker Heights.
The story of the Van Sweringens' first transportation system begins In 1906, when the brothers, following the development model earlier employed by Patrick Calhoun in the latter's development of Euclid Heights, persuaded the Cleveland Electric Railway Company to extend its Euclid Heights trolley line along Fairmount Boulevard from Cedar Road to Lee Road, a distance of approximately two miles. In this venture, the Van Sweringens also employed the F.A. Pease Engineering Company to design an extension of Fairmount Boulevard. Three years earlier, in 1903, the Pease firm had designed the conversion of Fairmount Boulevard in Euclid Heights from a single lane dirt road into a grassy divided highway, making it, according to several sources, the first such highway in the United States.
By 1907, the Van Sweringens had completed construction of the Fairmount Boulevard extension and the Cleveland Electric Railway had laid trolley tracks on the Boulevard all the way to Lee Road. Just one year later, the Shaker Heights Land Improvement Company, which was controlled by the Van Sweringens, was already building and selling upper class housing on Fairmount Boulevard.
The Shaker Heights trolley line was the the fastest public transportation route from Shaker Heights to downtown Cleveland from 1907 until 1920. This was a critical period for the development of Shaker Heights. During this time, the garden suburb grew from a population of less than 200 to one of approximately 1,500 residents--a more than 700 percent increase in population.
For residents who boarded the trolley at its terminus at Fairmount Boulevard and Lee Road, the trolley trip to downtown Cleveland took an average of 45 minutes. When the Shaker Rapid opened in 1920, the trip to downtown Cleveland was significantly reduced. When the line was completed, travel time was only about fifteen minutes. While the Shaker Rapid supplanted the Shaker Lakes Line as the quickest public transportation route to downtown Cleveland, Shaker Heights would not have developed when it did and as it did were it not the vision of the Van Sweringens and the Shaker Lakes trolley line.
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]]>The house at 18829 Fairmount Boulevard is not only one of the oldest in Shaker Heights. It is also a house which has been associated over the years with a number of Shaker Heights most famous families.
The Jacob Strong home is believed to have been built sometime during the years 1839-1847 by Jacob Strong, a Pennsylvania native who migrated to northeastern Ohio around 1830. In 1835, Strong purchased 160 acres of land in Lot No. 14 of Warrensville Township. Several years later, he built on that land the house which today bears the above address.
Strong farmed 100 of the 160 acres he purchased, selling the other 60 acres to a neighbor in 1838. On this land, Strong and his wife Clarissa raised their eight children--Lucina, Hannah, John, Ely, Spencer, Albert, Jacob and Myron. In 1853, perhaps hearing of more fertile lands in the west, Strong sold his farm to John Hecker and moved with his family to Indiana.
It is an understatement to simply write that the Hecker family lasted longer in this area of northeastern Ohio than the Strong family. John Hecker, and later his son Jacob, operated a dairy farm on the 100 acres purchased from Jacob Strong from the 1850s until the second decade of the twentieth century. Shortly after Shaker Heights incorporated in 1912, the Hecker Family sold their farm to Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen. Even after the Hecker Farm had been sold to this pair of famed Shaker Heights developers, the Hecker family remained active and involved in the community. John A. Hecker, a grandson of John Hecker, was a life long resident of Shaker Heights, served as a Councilman for thirty years during the first half of the twentieth century, and was one of the founding members of the Shaker Historical Society.
In 1919, the Jacob Strong home was sold to William W. Bustard. Bustard was a fiery and controversial Baptist minister who served as pastor of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland from 1909 to 1925. Upon purchasing the Jacob Strong home, Bustard commissioned the well-known Cleveland architectural firm of Walker and Weeks to make additions and changes to the house to convert it from Western Reserve Greek Revival style to Colonial Revival style. In 1921, shortly after Walker and Weeks completed their work, the house was the site of an attempted attack upon Reverend Bustard. In the evening hours of November 28, 1921, five armed gunmen cut the telephone wires to the house and assaulted an employee of the Church who lived with the Bustard family. Rev. Bustard was not at home at the time. While no one was ever arrested or charged in connection with this attack, which also involved a gun battle between the armed gunmen and Shaker Heights police in the middle of the night, many at the time suspected that the attack was in response to Bustard's fiery condemnation of former Cleveland Police Chief Fred Kohler who had recently been elected Mayor of Cleveland.
It has also been noted that during these years the Jacob Strong home was visited by John D. Rockefeller, the most famous parishioner of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. During the period 1909-1925, Bustard was not only Rockefeller's spiritual adviser when the latter was in Cleveland, but, as a former college athlete, Bustard quickly became one of Rockefeller's favorite golfing partners.
While perhaps the house at 18829 Fairmount has not seen in recent years the sort of political and social excitement which circulated about it during the years of its ownership by Rev. William W. Bustard or the Hecker family, it has remained a house which always seems to attract owners who become actively involved in the community and in politics. Thus, it should have come as no surprise that, in the last several decades of the twentieth century, the Jacob Strong home was owned by Margaret Anne Cannon, the long time and well-respected Law Director of Shaker Heights.
The Jacob Strong Home was designated a Shaker Heights landmark on May 14, 1966.
]]>At 22300 Fairmount Boulevard there stands an old farmhouse that, according to County records, was built in 1877. As such, it is among the oldest houses in Shaker Heights. While a question exists as to whether it was built by Jacob Strong, Henry Corlett or John Sayle, Cleveland Historical believes, based on county tax and deed records, county maps, and other documents, that it was likely built by John Sayle (1826-1894). Sayle was an immigrant from the Isle of Man who in 1871 purchased the 68.5 acre parcel of land in Lot 27 of Warrensville Township upon which the house was built just six years later.
Sayle was one of thousands of immigrants from the Isle of Man who came to northeastern Ohio in the early nineteenth century. Records are spotty regarding the exact date of John Sayle's arrival in the United States, but, at the time of the 1860 U.S. federal census, he was living on the near east side of Cleveland (in old Ward 6) and employed as a butcher. Residing with him were his wife Mary, an immigrant from Ireland, whom he married in Cleveland in about 1858, and his three children. His oldest child was from a first marriage and had been born on the Isle of Man in 1848. Therefore, John Sayle likely immigrated to the United States sometime between the years 1848 and 1858.
Like many of his fellow Manxmen, Sayle eventually purchased land and became a farmer in what was then the northern section of Warrensville Township and what is today the northeast section of the city of Shaker Heights. The Sayle family farmed their 68.5 acres south of North Woodland Road (today Fairmount Boulevard) for approximately 50 years from the 1870s until the 1920s. In 1927, John Sayle's son John E. sold approximately 67 acres of the family farm to the Van Sweringen Company which developed it into Van Sweringen Subdivision No. 28--located south of Fairmount Boulevard between South Belvoir Boulevard and Green Road. John E. Sayle and his wife continued to live in the old farmhouse at 22300 Fairmount Boulevard on the one and one-half acres of land that they retained until their deaths in 1937.
The house at 22300 Fairmount Boulevard was awarded a century home plaque by the Shaker Historical Society and designated a Shaker Heights landmark in 1976. The house is notable for its random width flooring and beautifully carved door frames and woodwork.
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