On September 15, 1921, Martin Daly used a silver spade to break ground near East 107th Street signifying the start of construction on Wade Park Manor, a high-end residential hotel. The announcement of plans for the hotel were made a year earlier by Daly, George Schneider, and Edwin Henn. Projected to cost $4,000,000 and contain 150 suites and 500 rooms, the hotel, its promoters predicted, would be “the last word in family hotel construction, equipment and service.”  

Residential hotels were built to serve the same purpose as a home or apartment but with the addition of different amenities and a community. Unlike transient hotels they were meant for semi-permanent or permanent stays. The first floor had public spaces and included a dining area for residents and visitors. Residential hotels were occupied by singles, widows and widowers, or young couples more so than families due to room sizing. Wade Park Manor followed this same pattern, catering to the middle and upper classes.

Headed by Daly, Henn, and Schneider, the Wade Park Manor Company commissioned George B. Post & Sons to design the hotel and John Gill & Sons as building contractors. Post & Sons was a well-known architecture firm that had designed The New York Stock Exchange, College of the City of New York, and the Cleveland Trust Company. They had their hand in the creation of other Cleveland hotels including Hotel Statler and Fenway Hall. The lead architect, Sydney Wagner, designed the building in the Georgian Revival style. The exterior was built of red brick in a U-shape that helped maximize lighting through the building. The lobby, made of stone and marble, was in the small vestibule that projected from the curve of the U at the center of the building. Attached at the back of the hotel was a three-story garage. Wade Park Manor boasted a variety of public spaces including a ballroom, dining room, library lounge, sun parlor, porches, and an enclosed heated sunroom on the roof. 

The interior was as well thought out as the exterior with the winning contract for furnishing going to Albert Pick and Company at over $500,000. Albert Pick and Company, once the third-largest hotel chain in the United States, had since become a hotel equipment supplier. The furnishings for Wade Park Manor were designed in the English style best exemplified by the grand fireplace and paneled walls found in the first-floor library lounge. Some of the rooms were outfitted with small kitchenettes including a sink, storage space, an outlet for appliances, and an electrical cabinet. Residential hotels provided dining services so it was expected that most residents would eat food made by hotel staff, but Schneider recommended small kitchens for cases when the hotel food was insufficient.  

Wade Park Manor opened on January 4, 1923, welcoming residents and visitors alike. Not only was it home to many Clevelanders, but the first floor acted as a social gathering place accessible to the public. Wade Park Manor soon became the exclusive, luxury place to be. There were conventions, weddings, small group meetings, and women’s events hosted at the Manor over the years. The hotel hosted some well-known guests including former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, Walt Disney, and Jack Benny. With its proximity to Severance Hall, Wade Park Manor also often housed several Cleveland Orchestra musicians. Outside famous individuals and large events, many people from the surrounding area also came and enjoyed dining at Wade Park Manor. The Lincoln Room, which opened at Wade Park Manor in 1942, was marketed as “the ultimate in dining facilities” and often the go-to spot for wedding anniversaries and celebrations. Others recount visiting Wade Park Manor for Sunday breakfast.

Although seen as the go-to place, there were multiple controversies around racial discrimination when it came to events being held at Wade Park Manor in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1947 there were claims that the management at Wade Park Manor had asked the Jewish Children's Bureau not to hold events there after discovering that there were black teachers in attendance. A second incident occurred in 1951 when the Delta Sigma Theta sorority was asked to cancel a dance at Wade Park Manor; the Manor had belatedly discovered Delta Sigma Theta were a group of African American women. In 1952, facing years of public backlash, management finally changed course, approving an application for the Boule Affair, a black men’s fraternity meeting. Cleveland Call and Post was prompted to publish an article with the headline "Wade Pk. Manor Quits Jim-Crow for Boule Meet."

Wade Park Manor remained a residential hotel for the upper and upper-middle classes until June 1964 when it was purchased by the Christian Residence Foundation. After purchasing the Manor, the Christian Residence Foundation renovated and transformed the hotel into a “full-service apartment house for single and married retired persons.”  Wade Park Manor, having lost its residential hotel status, lost its name in 1984 when Judson took ownership in 1983 from the Christian Residence Foundation. Newly named Judson Manor, the building underwent $7.3 million in renovations that were completed in 1985.

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When the Hotel Statler opened in October 1912, it quickly established itself as the ultimate place for visitors to stay and for Clevelanders to see and be seen. Impressive architecture, modern amenities, and attention to detail made the Statler a modern-day work of art. Not only was the hotel impressive from an architectural standpoint, the hotel’s founder and namesake pioneered effective hotel techniques. While the Statler’s Service Code for employees is still noteworthy today, the hotel company also forged a symbiotic relationship with guests and created a code of conduct for them as well. 

The Statler owes its creation to Ellsworth M. Statler, “a plain, rugged self-made man who started to work at the age of nine” hauling coal buckets in a glass factory and went on to build himself into a premier hotelier and businessman. He was a quick study of hotel operations, working his way up from bellboy to hotel manager by the age of nineteen. Statler spearheaded a number of ventures, some successful, some not, but in 1907 he realized his dream to own a hotel. Statler’s first hotel opened in Buffalo, New York. The eponymous hotel was the launching pad for what emerged as a chain once his Cleveland hotel opened five years later. While Statler’s main focus was to establish hotels for the middle class, he also focused on setting high standards in both design and service standards.

The 14-story, 700-room Hotel Statler was an enormous task to construct under the best of circumstances. Making it even more difficult, the contractor had about fourteen months from start to finish and a firm budget not to exceed $1,750,000, complete with all the furnishings and fixtures in the hotel. There was also an eye to the safety of the structure, with the design of the hotel ensuring that the building was completely fireproofed. While the budget may have been firm, Statler paid attention to detail and was unwilling to skimp on luxurious features.  

Statler planned every detail of this hotel to exude luxury and opulence. The exterior of the hotel boasts wire-cut red brick, granite and limestone. Designed by the architecture firm of George B. Post & Sons, the Statler was patterned after the Adams period of architecture while incorporating details of both the English renaissance and Italian lines. The Adams period of architecture is characterized by lots of detailed ornamental work and was balanced and symmetrical. The combination of these three styles created an impressive exterior of the hotel. The Statler, while impressive, soon typified hotel architecture. Looking from the outside, it could very well be another hotel, but for the name on the outside. Hotel Cleveland, built in 1918, had similar exterior features, with the exception of the red brick. However, the Statler was just as impressive on the inside.

As you entered the hotel and walk into the grand lobby, your eyes would be drawn to the expansive ceilings and long marble halls. You could not have helped but be impressed. “Indeed one of the architects glowingly exclaimed that he considered it one of the finest ceilings in the world.” The lobby was not to be outdone by the nine murals throughout the hotel. But the luxury of this hotel did not stop at the lobby. E. M. Statler wanted all of his guests to be impressed from start to finish in his hotel. Built into the specifications of the hotel, there was thermostatic control for the temperature of each of the guest rooms, so that each guest could set it at their own optimal temperature. A private bathroom was built for every room, complete with a hot and cold mixing of water for the bath and shower.

The attention to detail also showed in the furnishing of the guest rooms. These varied in layout and styles with coordinating furniture and linens, giving a welcoming, homey feel. Some rooms had fireplaces, but all rooms had comfortable chairs and sofas. Each room had a signature embroidered pillow matching the theme of the room and coordinating pincushions embroidered with the Statler logo, complete with black and white thread, and an assortment of needles were placed each room in case there needed to be an emergency stitch job. If you lost a button, not to worry, the hotel stocked a variety of buttons. There was also a pen with the Statler logo and stationery in each room, generally located beside the telephone on the desk. These personal touches, which were trailblazing in the early 1900s and considered luxury items, are now standard fare in most hotels. 

These luxuries extended well beyond the confines of the Statler guest rooms. Statler had installed fire and burglar-proof vaults and safes. The locks were considered non-pickable, and were similar to safety deposit boxes in banks, requiring two keys to open. This gave Statler guests peace of mind for their valuables while traveling in Cleveland. Statler also had purchased two thousand books for the use of guests, stocked in the library, but guests could request volumes brought to their rooms for their personal use and to help pass the time if they were caught waiting for the next train. 

E. M. Statler’s high standards that brandished both quality and opulence throughout his hotels, and combined with his Service Code for employees, ensured that the newly constructed Hotel Statler was the place to be and be seen. For decades after the doors were opened, the Statler took its rightful place in the hotel industry and rapidly became a regular in the society columns of Cleveland, boasting charity events and society weddings. The Statler had all of the glitz and glamour from these spectacular events, and they had the ability to host large social events with banquet room capacity seating between 1,200 and 1,300 diners. This space could easily be converted to a grandiose ballroom that could accommodate even the largest of society events.   

The Statler seemed destined to be great from the moment that the first shovel hit the ground. Every detail was carefully considered, from its style and design to its exceptional customer service. Statler wanted all of his guests to feel welcome and want to return. While many of the Statler features were similar to other hotels, the total experience was not easily matched. Statler and his chain of hotels are still the standard for service today. After expanding to 1,000 rooms in 1930 and becoming part of the Hilton chain from 1954 to 1971, the Statler underwent four overhauls – twice as an office building and twice as apartments – but in spite of the changes, the architecture and opulence of this building and its rich history still shine through.

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On a chilly evening in November 1923, hundreds of Clevelanders gathered for a tour of Fenway Hall, “Cleveland’s New Exclusive Apartment Hotel.” The delegation “inspected everything from the Florentine furniture in the lobby to the nutmeg grater in the kitchen of an eleventh-floor suite” and “chatted in Peacock Alley,” a corridor offering interior access to a row of shops and services. Along with nearby Park Lane Villa and Wade Park Manor, Fenway Hall was one of three residential hotels that opened that year on the border between the Doan’s Corners business and entertainment district and the University Circle educational and cultural district. 

Doan’s Corners had long been a focal point for development in what was East Cleveland Township. In 1799, Nathaniel Doan built a cabin with a pond for watering horses along the stage road between Cleveland and Buffalo, later named Euclid Avenue, just east of its intersection with Doan (later East 105th) Street. In 1817, Doan’s son Job replaced the structure with a larger tavern, later known as Jim Wright’s Tavern. In 1876, Liberty E. Holden and other investors erected the four-story, mansard-roofed Fairmount Court Hotel on the old tavern site. The hotel stood on the northwest corner of Euclid Avenue and the newly cut Fairmount (later East 107th) Street.

After World War I, dozens of storefronts, theaters, and apartment buildings sprouted along Euclid Avenue, turning Doan’s Corners into a veritable “second downtown.” In 1922 the Euclid-Fairmount Co. purchased the former Holden property (by that time owned by the nearby Case School of Applied Science) and commissioned George B. Post and Sons to design a new residential hotel. The New York-based firm had designed the Hotel Statler in downtown a decade before and was also designing Wade Park Manor just to the north. Post’s Georgian Revival design, prepared in collaboration with Reynold H. Hinsdale of Cleveland, guided construction of the thirteen-story, brick and limestone faced, steel-framed, “fireproof” Fenway Hall.

Like other residential hotels, Fenway Hall promised an elegant, convenient lifestyle, free of the burdens of housekeeping. Early ads contrasted its advantages with the headaches of owning a suburban home. “When you pay your rent at Fenway Hall,” one ad observed, “you have also paid the coal man, the ice man, the gas and electric light men, the plumber, the repair man and the electrician, as well as the maid, the flat laundry, etc.” Indeed, Fenway Hall offered all the services that defined hotel living. On its ground floor were a dining room, delicatessen, coffee shop, beauty and barber shops, haberdashery, and, by 1924, Fenway Hall Golf School, staffed by Canterbury Golf Club instructor Jack Way. What’s more, each of its 192 one- to three-bedroom “Bachelor and Light Housekeeping Suites” was amply furnished—right down to linen, silver, china, glassware, and kitchen utensils—by Albert Pick and Co. of Chicago, which did the same for Wade Park Manor.

More than an address for Clevelanders seeking an alternative to a home in suburban Shaker Heights, Fenway Hall was a part-time residence for some wealthy locals who summered in lakefront estates or wintered in Florida, as well as a fashionable destination for out-of-town guests. One hotel ad noted, “transient guests over the holidays are accepted,” adding, “their nearness to your home, while at Fenway, and the completeness of our facilities make this service of real value to those entertaining friends from out-of-town.” Hotel residents shared Fenway Hall’s dining spots with those from across Cleveland and afar. For its part, the dining room advertised Sunday dinners for $1.50 and, in one very detailed ad, highlighted its commitment to locally sourced foods: milk and cream from Maple Leaf Dairy, seafoods from Edward J. Metzger and fruits and vegetables from De Gaetano & Parrino (both in the nearby Euclid-East 105th Street Market), and meats and poultry from Brandt Co. in the Sheriff Street Market.

Within a few years, the dining room was remodeled as the Jade Room. Billed as a “metropolitan supper club,” the Jade Room, with its green walls, yellow tables and chairs, and blend of “Georgian style” and “Chinese ornament,” featured nightly dance band concerts broadcast on radio station WTAM. The Jade Room, later restyled the Coral Room and then the Conga Room, was a popular stop before or after vaudeville shows and movies at the nearby Alhambra, Keith’s 105th, and Circle Theaters. In addition, Fenway Hall welcomed conventions and numerous local club meetings and weddings, and it housed some of the players on the Cleveland Falcons hockey team, which played in the Elysium, a giant indoor ice rink across East 107th Street from the hotel.

In the hotel’s early years, ads had promised jobs for white bellboys, maids, and other staff positions, with the first apparent job open to African Americans—dishwasher—only appearing after three years. Although references to racial qualifications for hotel jobs disappeared by the 1930s, Fenway Hall continued to target the patronage of well-heeled whites. In 1942 the hotel manager grudgingly accepted eleven Black physicians and their wives from Philadelphia as guests while they were in town for a medical convention. But the hotel’s days of exclusivity and exclusionary practices were drawing to a close. The former Doan’s Corners, more commonly called the Euclid–East 105th area, stood on the northeastern fringe of Cedar-Central (later Fairfax), Cleveland’s largest African American neighborhood, and by the 1950s the business district was simultaneously becoming a rare nexus for interracial nightlife and facing the leading edge of disinvestment.

These changes added to the growing challenges residential hotels faced. Affluent Clevelanders’ preference for suburban homes meant that University Circle would not see its Wade Park become Cleveland’s answer to Central Park West. After having been operated by the same company for its first quarter century, Fenway Hall changed hands repeatedly in the two decades after World War II. Despite the modernizations made by each new operator, the hotel was no longer a fashionable address but it remained an anchor for an evolving district. In 1960, E. L. Koenemann, president of Carnegie College at 4707 Euclid Avenue (a training school for medical technologists, assistants, and secretaries), bought the Fenway with the vision of relocating the college to University Circle and housing its students in the old hotel. Instead, under the name Fenway Motor Inn, the property became an economy accommodation for overnight and transient residents.

In November 1966, Marjorie Winbigler, a Cleveland Orchestra chorister who lived in Shaker Heights, disembarked at the bus stop outside Fenway Hall. Before she could reach Severance Hall on foot, she was assaulted and murdered in Wade Park. Combining with white racial fears elevated by the Hough rebellion earlier that year, the crime alarmed University Circle leaders. Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University purchased Fenway Hall and the nearby Tudor Arms Hotel months before the schools merged in 1967. They sought these buildings to provide graduate student housing but also to remake the western fringe of University Circle. However, following a subsequent decision to build new dormitories on Cedar Hill, Case Western Reserve University divested itself of Fenway Hall in 1975. The City of Cleveland paid CWRU $840,000 for the hotel and then resold it to University Circle Inc. (UCI), for $710,000, thereby letting the university avoid a loss. UCI hired the Orlean Co. to turn the building into a federally subsidized elderly housing development named Fenway Manor, which reopened in 1978.

Today Fenway Hall sits in a very different context. The Euclid–East 105th district yielded to the transformation wrought by the Cleveland Clinic’s relentless expansion, leaving the old hotel as the lone survivor from the district’s heyday, although recent and planned high-rise apartment developments promise to create the apartment row that never fully materialized along Cleveland’s Doan Brook park belt a century before.

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The southeast anchor of Cleveland’s most prominent downtown intersection is a work of art that began, in the true spirit of capitalism, with a competition. In 1903, the Cleveland Trust Company (established in 1894 with $500,000 in capital) merged with the Western Reserve Trust Company. The combined entity could not function effectively in rented office spaces, so it launched a contest to decide who would design a new headquarters. The winner was George Browne Post, a renowned architect who had previously designed the home of the New York Stock Exchange. Post may have been the 19th century’s king of “architectural firsts.” The Equitable Life Assurance Society in New York, which he designed in 1868, was the first office building to use elevators. Post’s Western Union Telegraph Building (1872) was the first office building to reach ten stories. And upon its completion in 1890, Post’s 20-story New York World Building (also known as the Pulitzer Building) was the city’s tallest structure.

Post’s winning design became the Cleveland Trust Company headquarters. Completed in 1908, it remained a banking cornerstone for 88 years. In 1919 the bank unveiled a plan to add an 11-story tower atop Post's original building, but it took another half century before a major expansion occurred–this time in the form of an adjacent 29-story tower designed by Brutalist architect Marcel Breuer. The late 1960s plan actually called for twin towers framing the old rotunda, but the second tower was never built. By 1977, Cleveland Trust had 120 branches and $5 billion in assets. By 1987, the entity now known as AmeriTrust was the eighteenth largest bank in America. However, the collapse of the real estate market in the late 1980s hurt the institution badly and, in 1991, AmeriTrust accepted a buyout bid from Society Corporation (now Key Bank). The complex, including the adjacent tower, thus became superfluous and closed in 1996. It remained shuttered for almost two decades, emblematic of fading, neglected cities everywhere and a victim of poor management decisions by its overseers: the commissioners of Cuyahoga County.

Through all its changes, the building’s glorious exterior (three stories of white granite facing) and marble interior rotunda survived largely intact. According to The Guide to Cleveland Architecture, “The central pediment displays sculptures by Karl Bitter, which depict, allegorically, the primary sources of wealth in the United States (land and water) with their concomitant occupations: industrial labor, agriculture, mining, commerce, navigation and fishery. The interior of the rotunda features a dome, 85 feet high, with stained glass panels 61 feet in diameter. (In 2016, through the efforts of local graduate student Karl Brunjes, it was learned that these glass panels were not designed, as earlier believed, by Louis Comfort Tiffany, but instead by Italian immigrant Nicolas D'Ascenzo.) The fluted columns, Corinthian pilasters, bronze doorways and grilles, marble floors and walls are reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance.” High above the main floor are a series of 13 murals created by Francis Davis Millet, an American painter, sculptor and writer. Entitled “Pioneer and Discovery,” the panels chronicle America’s colonization, cultivation and development. Each panel measures 5 x 16 feet.

The building’s business accoutrements may not be works of art, but they are nonetheless impressive. The safe deposit vault was built of 200 tons of metal encased in eighteen inches of concrete. The vault’s door weighed seventeen tons. The facility also had a “telautograph,” which could copy a message in one part of the building at the same time the original message was being written.

The Cleveland Trust Company’s current incarnation began in 2013, when Geis Companies purchased the structure, along with the adjacent tower, which they converted into a hotel and apartments. Cleveland-based grocery store chain owners Tom and Jeff Heinen then invested $10 million to transform the bank rotunda, and an adjoining building at 1010 Euclid Avenue, into a 27,000-square-foot supermarket, which opened its doors on February 25, 2015. The first floor of the rotunda houses the deli, bakery, meat and seafood, and prepared foods departments, and includes a seating area where patrons can enjoy their food. The second floor houses beer and wine departments where patrons can try samples. Seats throughout this level provide excellent views of Millet’s masterpieces. The 1010 Euclid Avenue portion of the store contains produce and packaged and frozen foods.

The Heinen’s remake of the Cleveland Trust Company catalyzed a resumption of the importance of Euclid–East 9th intersection. However, rather than being the heart of the financial district with banks on three of four corners, the intersection now has three of its four corners directed toward lifestyles: in addition to Heinen’s transformation of Cleveland Trust into a flagship supermarket, a hotel occupies the old Scofield Building, and apartments are planned in the old Union Commerce Bank Building.

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