Dugway Brook, one of several bluestone streams that flow into Lake Erie, is largely invisible today. Generations ago, Dugway's serpentine branches were covered up by streets, parking lots, and parks. Almost 50 percent of the watershed flows through Cleveland Heights, but all that is visible within the community are a 300-yard stretch bordering Euclid Heights Boulevard just east of Coventry School, a deep ravine in Forest Hill Park, and a secluded spit inside Lake View Cemetery. Altogether, nearly 95 percent of Dugway is culverted.

Dugway’s two branches begin in University Heights and South Euclid and cut through Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland before they merge in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood and run north to a single outlet into Lake Erie in Bratenahl. The west branch begins near John Carroll University. Much of this branch runs through a giant culvert under Meadowbrook Boulevard to its intersection with Cedar Road east of St. Ann's Church. Two small segments of the brook can be seen between Coventry and Washington on Berkshire and East Overlook Roads. The west branch flows underground through the Coventry Village district before reappearing briefly in Lake View Cemetery.

The east branch begins in South Euclid running parallel to and north of Cedar Road. A small portion of this branch flows above ground to the north of Washington Boulevard east of South Taylor Road before disappearing beneath Cain Park. It reappears along the western edge of Cumberland Park to the north of Euclid Heights Boulevard and emerges briefly once again in Forest Hill Park.

Bluestone brooks were so named for the presence of bluish sandstone deposits along their banks. To the east of Dugway, the most visible example is Euclid Creek, the site of a large quarry whose sandstone was used to build everything from building faces and sidewalks to cemetery markers and mausoleums. In the 1930s, legions of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employees extracted untold tons of Euclid Creek sandstone.

Along Dugway Brook's scenic courses, visionaries chased dreams. In the 19th century John Peter Preyer carved orchards, vineyards, and cider and grist mills from the Dugway valley in the vicinity of what is now Cumberland Park. Although Preyer's Lake View Wine Farm gave way to early suburban residential development soon after the turn of the 20th century, Preyer's homestead on Superior Road, made of one-and-a-half-foot-thick, locally quarried stone walls, survives as the oldest house in Cleveland Heights and among the oldest in the former Western Reserve of Connecticut (as Northeast Ohio was known into the early 19th century).

Others who developed the Dugway Brook watershed included Orville A. Dean, who built a successful dairy business just northeast of the Preyer farm; John D. Rockefeller, whose Forest Hill summer estate straddled the east branch of the brook; architect Eric Mendelsohn, who designed the domed Park Synagogue on a site straddling a small tributary of the east branch; and Frank Cain, Cleveland Heights mayor who, in the 1930s, used WPA funding to culvert Dugway through Cain Park and spearhead development of an amphitheater.

East siders mostly forgot about the brook amid relentless suburban expansion. Cleveland Heights, 60,000 strong by 1960, was a mosaic of suburban neighborhoods and business districts. Heights High teens joined many others in the humming Cedar-Lee and Coventry areas. In both places the only evidence of Dugway Brook's branches was often the sound of rushing water heard through covered manholes in the streets. A two-mile greenbelt of parks (Cain, Cumberland, and Forest Hill) transformed Dugway’s east branch into ball fields, playgrounds, and other recreational facilities.

By the 1960s and 1970s, devastating floods in low-lying University Circle prompted new concerns about Dugway (and its neighbor to the south and west, Doan Brook). This led to the construction in Lake View Cemetery of what was the largest poured-concrete dam east of the Mississippi River up to its time. Completed in 1978 as the first project of the newly created Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, the dam stands 90 feet high and spans some 500 feet. Today Dugway Brook suffers from years of neglect and pollution during storms. Many have begun to seek ways to resurrect this fragile yet important natural resource.

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Is that a tree growing out of the roof of that house? This is a common reaction when first viewing this home at 3111 Monticello Boulevard. Built in 1954, the house stands out from most other homes in the Forest Hill neighborhood. Local architect Albert J. Sgro admired the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and his ground-breaking Prairie Style. Many of Wright's stylistic trademarks are evident here--horizontal lines, low pitched roof, overhanging eaves, a central chimney, and an open floor plan. The pin oak tree is on a small patio that opens out from the living room and one of the bedrooms.

Wright was deeply influenced by nature, telling students to "study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." He developed a new philosophy of architecture, which he termed organic, promoting harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design approaches, including natural building materials, furniture, and close attention to how the building related to the site. The choices made by Albert Sgro to use natural stone both inside and out and large windows, which help to bring the outside in, reflect these beliefs.

This home, one of three by Sgro in the neighborhood (the others are at 3142 Monticello and 3167 Burlington) was built for Morris L. Finneburgh, who lived in the home until 1994. Mr. Finneburgh appears to have been a forward-thinking person. He was the vice-president of the Finney Company, which manufactured television antennas, a relatively new industry in the early 1950s, and he commissioned this unusual house in a style that was not common in the Heights. According to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1967, he and his wife Frieda had developed an interest in the philosophy, culture, art and architecture of the Far East, and this home reflected their interests and gave them a place to display the treasures that had acquired in their travels.

If the Finneburgh house is a rare expression of Midcentury Modern architecture in a suburb filled with traditional homes, it also fits the Forest Hill neighborhood. Envisioned by John D. Rockefeller in the 1920s as a premier residential allotment, the Forest Hill development fell dormant in the Great Depression. A striking exception during these quiet years was the construction of five steel-frame houses on Monticello by the Arcy Corporation in 1936. After World War II the Rockefeller family divested itself of remaining Forest Hill property, but it remained a carefully planned development. Most of its curvilinear streets would be lined with modern ranch-style houses, many with slate or tile roofs. In the midst of this building boom, in 1959, Medusa Portland Cement Company erected a futuristic headquarters building on the southwest corner of Lee and Monticello boulevards. Much more than the Tudor-style Heights Rockefeller Building just a block away, which was planned as the gateway to Forest Hill, the curving concrete-and-glass Medusa building reflects how Forest Hill actually developed.

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On November 11, 1903, in a rented house on a brick street now called Radnor Road in the Mayfield Heights allotment of Cleveland Heights, Rev. Albert J. Alexander, pastor of Beckwith Memorial Presbyterian Church (later merged into the Church of the Covenant), led a few dozen people in worship. The "Mayfield Heights Branch" of Beckwith Memorial was born. By 1906, having outgrown the house, the congregation began using the basement of the old Superior Schoolhouse nearby. Just two years later it moved yet again, this time to a dedicated church building erected along Mayfield Road. The new church, renamed Cleveland Heights Presbyterian in 1918, boasted an organ paid for by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

By 1935, in the depths of the Depression, the church had dwindled to only 65 members. Under the energetic leadership of a new pastor who added services calculated to attract young families, it began a meteoric rise over the next quarter century. After World War II, under another dynamic pastor, Rev. Yoder Leith, Forest Hill Church grew so large it had to face still another move. The Rockefeller family, whose pre-Depression plans for a first-class residential allotment foundered after only a few dozen homes were built, sold its Forest Hill land across Mayfield Road for new suburban development. The Rockefellers allocated space for a church at the corner of Monticello and Lee boulevards. Forest Hill purchased the parcel in 1946, and in 1950, using souvenir shovels issued by Leith, church members collectively broke ground for a Colonial-style building that opened the following spring as Forest Hill Church, Presbyterian.

By the early 1960s Forest Hill Church counted some 2,000 members, many drawn from the upscale Forest Hill neighborhood with its enduring restrictive deeds, but it stood on the cusp of wrenching changes. Under the leadership of Rev. Leith and associate pastor Rev. Ned Edwards, the church began to embrace progressive social justice issues, especially civil rights, a commitment that would grow over time. Edwards' nomination as senior pastor in 1970 was literally a point of departure as hundreds of families left the congregation out of dismay at its progressive turn. With associate pastor Rev. Robert H. Barnes, Edwards, a committed activist in many social justice–oriented efforts in the Heights, steered a congregation that by 1980 had shrunk to half its early 1960s size. During the 1970s, Forest Hill played a founding role in the Heights Community Congress, the Forest Hill Housing Corporation (now Heights Home Repair Resource Center), and other organizations. Now several years into its second century, Forest Hill Church has continued to be known for its inclusiveness and its many and varied faith-based commitments to social equity.

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Canadian-born Cleveland real estate developer Barton Roy Deming was smitten with the verdant beauty of a craggy knoll just south of the recently closed Euclid Golf Club, which stood near the intersection of what are now Norfolk and Derbyshire Roads. In 1914, having decided to create a large suburban residential allotment nearby, Deming set out to build his own home on this sliver of land where Fairmount Boulevard branches off of Cedar Road. The home would serve as a unique marquee advertisement and gateway to Deming's Euclid Golf Allotment. Deming contracted with architects Howell and Thomas to design 2485 Fairmount, nestled into a narrow, steep, and rocky site with a deep gorge running through it. Howell and Thomas relished the challenge of building in such a location, and Deming was proud of the resulting four-story French Eclectic mansion, which embodied his aspirations for Euclid Golf.

Deming lived in the house until the death of his wife, Helen, in March 1934 and the marriage of his only daughter, Elaine Allen, to Weston Schmitt the same year. His nephew, Grant Deming, Jr., helped the elder Deming auction off his furnishings and lived with him in the Heights Rockefeller Building apartments at Mayfield Road and Lee Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. Deming then worked for John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to develop Rockefeller Sr.'s Forest Hill estate into the residential village that straddles the East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights border today. When Cleveland Heights established a Zoning Commission in 1920, Deming was one of its first appointed members.

Towards the end of his life, Deming lived with his sister, Millie, on Stoer Road in Shaker Heights. He served for many years as a trustee of the Cleveland Real Estate Board, and later established the Deming Ironing Company, which manufactured gas electric ironing machines. He died at Overlook House, a Christian Science Home, in Cleveland Heights, on Sept. 15, 1956, at the age of 81.

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Supported by a steel superstructure and faced with Euclid bluestone quarried nearby, Forest Hill Park Footbridge traverses Forest Hill Boulevard in East Cleveland on land that was once part of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller's summer estate. Spanning 347 feet across a deep valley in the Dugway Brook watershed, the 48-foot-high pedestrian bridge was intended to nestle in the hilly landscape of the Heights (the westernmost foothills of the Appalachians) on Cleveland's east side.

Designed by Wilbur Watson and Associates in 1939 with consulting architects F. B. Walker and A. D. Taylor, Forest Hill Park Footbridge was built in 1939-40--the work of more than 1,000 men toiling for two years. The men were paid with Works Progress Administration funds as part of its plan to put unemployed Americans back to work on useful projects. Wilbur Watson was a nationally known civil engineer and bridge designer who also engineered the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge over the Cuyahoga River. Taylor, who planned Forest Hill Park for the Rockefellers, was president of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a protege of the Olmsted firm founded by Frederick Law Olmsted, the "father of landscape architecture" who co-designed New York's Central Park. Taylor's sensibilities are reflected in the picturesque bridge.

Over the years the bridge suffered from neglect. A wire fence "cage" to prevent pedestrian falls, marred its graceful span, while vandals broke and removed stones from its parapet. Park volunteers repaired this damage in 2021, helping to ensure that the footbridge remains a beautiful presence for park users.

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When it opened in 1931, the Heights Rockefeller Building became a key component of John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s new Forest Hill development. Designed to serve as the commercial center of this upscale residential community taking shape just to its north, early tenants in the building included a Kroger grocery store, a beauty shop, a pharmacy, and a grand Cleveland Trust bank branch.

After the death of his wife in 1915, John D. Rockefeller seldom returned to his hometown of Cleveland. In 1923, Rockefeller Jr. purchased Forest Hill, the family's 700-acre summer estate, from his father for $2.8 million. He hired Andrew J. Thomas, a New York architect best known for his low-income housing projects, to develop a portion of this land (bounded by Glynn and Mayfield Roads to the north and south and Lee and Taylor Roads to the west and east) into an upper-middle-class residential community. Thomas envisioned a parklike setting for Forest Hill, with long curving streets and plenty of greenery. Thomas also called for a uniformity of architecture in the neighborhood, with all houses built in the French Norman style, featuring steeply-pitched tiled roofs, exteriors consisting of a mix of Ohio sandstone and brick kilned in a color specially designed for Forest Hill, tall chimneys, and oak half-timbering reminiscent of the Tudor style. The Heights Rockefeller Building, itself built in the French Norman style, exhibits many of these features. Also, to further the neighborhood's beauty, attached garages were placed out of sight behind each house at basement level, and utility lines were buried underground. Stately lampposts and street signs all featured an image of a dove, the Forest Hill emblem.

Construction on the first batch of Thomas's homes in Forest Hill, clustered around Brewster Road, began in 1929. By 1930, 81 Norman-style homes had been constructed. The houses did not sell well at first. By 1932 some empty houses were being rented out, while others eventually sold for nearly half of the original asking price. The Great Depression certainly played a part in the struggle to sell these expensive homes. Also, the development's uniformity of design, touted in advertisements as creating "all the harmonious charm of the delightful villages of old France" while ensuring that "families may establish their homes without the likelihood of incongruous architectural development nearby," may have actually turned off potential buyers. Whatever the case, Thomas did not build any more houses in Forest Hill, and his original plans for 500 more Norman-style houses, a country club, apartment houses, an inn, and other commercial buildings never came to fruition.

In 1939, Rockefeller Jr. donated over 200 acres of his land west of Lee Road (originally intended to be the site of Forest Hill's country club) to Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland to create Forest Hill Park -- a public park. Rockefeller Jr. also sold the Heights Rockefeller Building in 1939, and in 1948 he sold all of the undeveloped lots in Forest Hill to George A. Roose.

Thanks to the post-World War II housing boom and increasing suburbanization, Roose quickly sold the empty Forest Hill lots. New developers built more modest houses on the lots in a variety of styles, largely abandoning Taylor's original plan for Forest Hill. The original 81 houses that Thomas designed, however, were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, as was the Heights Rockefeller Building. The Rockefeller Building has changed hands a number of times over the years with various tenants coming and going. Today, the building remains a vibrant anchor for the Mayfield-Lee commercial district.

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Forest Hill was once the sweeping estate of oil baron John D. Rockefeller. Originally from a small town near the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, Rockefeller purchased the land along Euclid Avenue as a commercial venture in 1873, opening (along with other investors) a "water cure resort" centered around a Victorian mansion built on a hilltop overlooking Cleveland and Lake Erie. After the resort quickly went out of business, the mansion became the Rockefeller family's summer home, often referred to as "the homestead." The Rockefellers split time between here and their home on Euclid Avenue's Millionaires' Row until the family moved to New York City in 1884, after which point they returned to Forest Hill each summer. After his wife died in 1915, however, John D. Rockefeller seldom returned to Cleveland and Forest Hill. The summer home burned down under mysterious circumstances in 1917.

Rockefeller sold Forest Hill to his son John Rockefeller Jr. in 1923 for $2.8 million. In 1939, Rockefeller Jr. donated 235 acres of the Forest Hill acreage to the cities of Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland with the express stipulation that they be used for public recreation. This land included the site of the old Rockefeller house (now used as a sledding hill), and was developed into a public park by the landscape architect and Cleveland Heights native A. D. Taylor. The park opened in 1942, allowing members of the public to at last savor the cool lake breezes previously enjoyed by the richest man in the world. Picnic areas, walking trails, ballfields, and a swimming pool were some of the amenities added to the park over the years.

On the land east of Lee Boulevard, Rockefeller Jr. commissioned Andrew J. Thomas of New York to design a Garden City-influenced residential and commercial development. The resulting Forest Hill subdivision included 81 French Norman–style houses situated with common back yards that formed greenswards, as well as the gateway business block now known as the Heights Rockefeller Building, before the Great Depression prevented a fuller expression of the Rockefeller-Thomas vision. After prolonged difficulty in developing the remainder of the Forest Hill residential allotment, Rockefeller Jr. sold the land in 1948 to a Toledo-based syndicate that in turn sold lots to individuals who built mostly California ranch houses.

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