On July 3, 1916, Cleveland city councilmen convened for their weekly meeting. But this was no ordinary get-together. Instead, it was the legislators’ inaugural gathering in Cleveland’s glamorous new city hall at 601 Lakeside Avenue—the very first Cleveland building constructed specifically to function as council chambers. Previously, Cleveland's council chambers had shared roofs with retailers and private and commercial offices. The first place local government business was conducted was in a log cabin.
On April 5, 1802, the first Cleveland Township elections took place at the home of James Kingsbury, one of Cleveland's most important pioneers. After that spring, the Kingsbury home (now the site of the Federal Building at East 9th Street and Lakeside Avenue) became the site of township elections and government meetings, and remained so until 1815. In November, 1836, Cleveland finally had a city council, and the newly elected councilmen chose the two upper floors of the Jones Building, located southwest of Public Square, as their city hall.
In the summer of 1875, Cleveland's city hall headquarters moved to the Case Block: a commercial building on Superior Street where the Cleveland Public Library's main building now stands. For thirty years, Cleveland City Hall shared this building with everything from a ladies clothing store and hotel to artist studios. Not until 1906, when it purchased the Case Block building, was Cleveland able to claim that it had an entire building for its city hall.
Around the time the Case Block building was purchased, plans to build a new city hall were presented to Mayor Tom Johnson. The design was finalized by 1907 and construction began in 1912. Four years later the $3 million building was completed. It was architected by Clevelander J. Milton Dyer, who also designed the Cleveland Athletic Club, the First Methodist Church at 3000 Euclid Avenue, the Coast Guard Station at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, and myriad residences along Euclid Avenue and in Wade Park (University Circle).
The new City Hall is one of many structures conforming to Daniel Burnham's 1903 Group Plan. Thus its styling is similar to other Group Plan buildings such as the Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1911), Public Auditorium/Music Hall (1922), the Cleveland Board of Education Building (1931, now the Drury Hotel), and the Cleveland Public Library (1925). What may be most striking is the building’s similarity to its neighbor to the west, the Cuyahoga County Courthouse. Both buildings feature bays on each end, balustraded roof lines, and a central pavilion with three entrance bays. City Hall has been designated a historic landmark by the Cleveland Landmarks Commission.
On July 4, 1916, Cleveland welcomed its new government building with a citywide celebration. City Hall's bronze doors were opened at noon and Clevelanders flooded in to see the council chambers and mayor's suite. Concerts of orchestra music and singing filled the building with music. The day ended with the largest fireworks display the city had ever seen.
Since 1916, Cleveland City Hall has undergone several restorations to keep it a functioning location for city affairs. Council Chambers underwent major renovations in 1951 and 1977. However, the façade remains largely unchanged. Today, in addition to the mayor's office, many departments—including City Planning, Finance, Public Health and Public Safety—are housed inside City Hall.
]]>Kingsbury Run refers to an area along the east side of Cleveland near Shaker Heights that stretched westward through Kinsman Avenue and down to the Cuyahoga River. It also included a natural watershed that runs through East 79th Street in Cleveland where natural creeks drain storm water into the Cuyahoga River from areas that are now known as Warrensville Heights and Maple Heights. The name Kingsbury Run comes from James Kingsbury, the first inhabitant of Newburgh (1797) and one of the earliest settlers of the Western Reserve area. In the late 1800s, the city commissioned a new sewer tunnel system project. This was constructed to pass through the Kingsbury Run area under Kinsman Avenue.
The Kingsbury Run stretch of land separated Cleveland from Newburgh and became an area for railroad traffic. Industry boomed in this area, including the crude oil refinery belonging to John D, Rockefeller and the oil and naphtha works of William Halsey Doan. The boom years, however, were followed by a wave of poverty. During the Great Depression, the industry began to collapse and Cleveland's workforce suffered. Minorities and immigrants were among the hardest hit. The groups that were affected the worst included African Americans, particularly those from the Cedar-Central area; a Hungarian community in Kinsman to the east of Cedar-Central; Czech and Slovak neighborhoods east of downtown along the lakefront; and Polish, Czech and Irish neighborhoods along the banks of the Cuyahoga River. Many of these displaced and out of work people took up residence in abandoned plots of land and formed communities of their own that became known as shantytowns. One of these types of settlement formed in Kingsbury Run.
The impoverished population of the area continued to grow into the late 1930s. A large wave of new residents moved in from other lakefront shantytowns as these were being removed by the city. It was during this time that Kingsbury Run grew to notoriety by being thrust into the spotlight as a crime scene. Many of the victims of the still unidentified Kingsbury Run Butcher were discovered in the shantytown. Hinting at the gruesome nature of the killings, the case soon became known as the Cleveland Torso Murders.
Beginning with the discovery of the first victim in September of 1934 thirteen people were brutally murdered over the course of four years. All of them were decapitated, some while they were still alive. The first victim was a woman determined to be in her mid-30s was never identified and was referred to as “The Lady of the Lake.” Though this killing was not first attributed to the serial killer at the time, it would be considered as the killer's first victim later in the investigation. In 1936 the recently appointed Cleveland Safety Director Eliot Ness was placed on the case.
In 1938, Cleveland safety director Eliot Ness ordered and conducted a raid of the area that resulted in the eviction of 300 squatters as well as the burning of at least 100 shanty homes. The murders continued until the last victim was discovered in August 1938, after which the murders simply ceased. The Torso Murders case remains unsolved. Two decades later, the city set out to redevelop Kingsbury Run into a low-income housing area as part of the Garden Valley federal urban renewal project. Constructed on a slag dump donated by Republic Steel, Garden Valley was emblematic of a national tendency in the 1950s to relegate renewal housing to marginal inner-city lands.
Kingsbury Run is still remembered today, mostly for a violent period of time in Cleveland history. When city government makes reference to this area, it is mostly to note the vast sewer system that runs through it.
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