In January 1925, the Van Sweringen Company conveyed 113 acres of land to the University Realty Company. The land conveyed was located in in the villages of Shaker Heights and Idlewood--in the vicinity of the intersection of Fairmount Boulevard and Warrensville Center Road. This transfer of land completed a complex real estate deal that created the Fairmount Circle neighborhood. The Van Sweringens believed that this new neighborhood would one day become the Cleveland area's second "University Circle."

The official plat of the Fairmount Circle neighborhood, prepared by Harry Gallimore of the F.A. Pease Engineering Company, featured a prominent traffic circle at the intersection of four roads--Fairmount Boulevard, Warrensville Center Road, North Park Boulevard, and Meadowbrook Boulevard. The traffic circle was designed to have a 900 foot circumference. It was to provide, according to a January 18, 1925 article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "eight imposing corner sites" for "artistic buildings."

Fairmount Circle arguably never evolved into the second University Circle that the Van Sweringens believed it would. However, its development did induce several excellent educational institutions to relocate to the Circle neighborhood during the period 1925-1927.

In 1925, John Carroll University (formerly St. Ignatius College) moved from West 30th Street on the near west side of Cleveland to the northeast quadrant of Fairmount Circle located in Idlewood Village. The Village subsequently changed its name to "University Heights" in honor of John Carroll University's new campus. In addition to John Carroll, two old and well-established Cleveland private academies moved to sites on other quadrants of Fairmount Circle that were located in the City of Shaker Heights.

University School, one of the two prestigious academies that moved to Shaker Heights, was founded in 1876 and had been located on Hough Avenue in Cleveland for 50 years. In 1926, University School moved to a new site on a southeast quadrant of Fairmount circle. One year later, in 1927, Hathaway Brown moved to a location on a southwest quadrant of the circle. Hathaway Brown, like University School, was founded in 1876. Before moving to its new Shaker Heights campus, it had been located in Cleveland on East 97th Street near Euclid Avenue.

Today, nearly 90 years later, these three educational institutions still call Fairmount Circle their home. Fairmount Circle remains a pleasant residential neighborhood on the north side of Shaker Heights.

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Cleveland's Catholic schoolchildren began attending parochial schools in their neighborhoods during the 1850s, opting to avoid the public school system which many saw as being anti-Catholic. These first Catholic schools were merely grammar schools, however, and did not offer advanced education. Cleveland's Catholic population continued to grow in the last quarter of the 19th-century with an influx of Catholic immigrants from southern and eastern Europe joining the Irish and Germans already in town. Recognizing the growing need for better and more extensive Catholic education in the city, Bishop Richard Gilmour invited a group of Jesuits priests from Buffalo to start a Catholic college on the city's near west side.

St. Ignatius College opened with 76 students in 1886 in a wood-framed building at West 30th Street and Carroll Avenue. Its five-story brick main building (which remains standing today) did not open until 1890. Initially, St. Ignatius offered a seven year course of study which ended with the granting of a Bachelor of Arts degree. A 1905 book on education in Cleveland explained that a student at the college could expect to take courses on "Christian doctrine, the Latin, Greek, and English languages; rhetoric, poetry, elocution, and English literature; mathematics, physics, and chemistry; history and geography; bookkeeping and penmanship." The seventh year of instruction was dedicated exclusively to the study of philosophy.

In 1902, the high school and college became separate entities, resulting in a more modern arrangement. In 1935 the college, which switched its name to John Carroll University in 1923, moved to its own campus in suburban University Heights. St. Ignatius High School remained in Ohio City and has since expanded outward from its original building, with its campus now clustered along both sides of Lorain Avenue between West 28th and West 32nd Streets. It is known for its excellent academics, championship-winning sports teams, and community service within Ohio City.

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