In 2013 the Lillian and Betty Ratner Montessori School celebrated the semicentennial of its founding in 1963. Melding its Jewish roots with the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, the Ratner School is both a story of innovative education and of suburbanization. Ratner developed at Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights, where it was housed for most of its first two decades before moving to Lyndhurst and, later, Pepper Pike.

For a generation, Cleveland Heights represented upward mobility for Cleveland Jews, just as the Glenville neighborhood had for the previous generation. The Temple on the Heights (B'nai Jeshurun), which opened on Mayfield Road in 1926, signaled that decades of eastward movement of the city's Jewish population might continue into the suburbs, but in the meantime East 105th Street in Glenville was still on the build as a hub of Jewish life. Another congregation, Anshe Emeth, had recently moved from the Central neighborhood to a new facility on East 105th. Known as the Cleveland Jewish Center, the synagogue housed a religious school and recreational facilities that included the Council Educational Alliance, a forerunner of the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland.

Meanwhile, a group of Vassar-educated women founded the Park School in 1918 to provide a setting for "learning by living." Originally holding classes in the Heights Masonic Temple at Mayfield and Lee roads, the Park School grew to serve preschool through high school. The school leased a tract between Euclid Heights Boulevard and Mayfield Road in 1929 from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who tore up the lease three years later. The school's president, Harold T. Clark, predicted that the Park School would complement Rockefeller's nearby Forest Hill residential allotment.

By the early 1940s, it was already apparent that the Jewish community was forsaking Glenville for Cleveland Heights. Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo purchased the Park School grounds with the idea of building a new synagogue there. In the meantime Lillian Ratner, whose husband Leonard B. Ratner headed Forest City Materials (which progressed from lumber sales to suburban real estate development after World War II), worked with Rabbi Armond E. Cohen and Anne Cohen to reorganize the Park Nursery School under congregational control in 1943. Instruction focused on "character training, handicrafts and Jewish customs." After World War II, Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo commissioned renowned architect Eric Mendelsohn to design Park Synagogue. The congregation sold the Cleveland Jewish Center to Cory Methodist Church in 1946 and moved into Mendolsohn's new copper-domed synagogue four years later.

Twenty years after leading the transition of the Park School, Lillian Ratner acted upon her interest in the Montessori method and founded the Lillian Ratner Montessori School in 1963. The nursery school operated for the next nineteen years at Park Synagogue, during which time it attracted a diverse student body that was eventually primarily non-Jewish. In 1969 the school expanded to the third grade and was renamed the Lillian Ratner Montessori Day School. Over the next dozen years the school gradually expanded to serve through the eighth grade. The growth necessitated a move, and Ratner left Park Synagogue's grounds to occupy a repurposed school building in Lyndhurst in 1982. Finally, in 2006, it moved to its present location in Pepper Pike.

Ratner's current facility began as the Brith Emeth Temple. From its inception in 1959, the Brith Emeth Congregation had met in the First Unitarian Church in Shaker Heights. Under Rabbi Philip Horowitz's guidance, Brith Emeth grew to nearly 400 families in its first few years, making it the tenth largest Reform congregation in Ohio. Brith Emeth acquired land for its own temple in Pepper Pike in 1962. In doing so, it overcame the legacy of exclusion embodied in the Van Sweringen Company deed restrictions since 1926, when the railroad barons' Shaker Heights venture grew to include Shaker Country Estates, a vast, wooded expanse earmarked for large home sites. Later absorbed by Beachwood, Pepper Pike, Orange, Hunting Valley, and Gates Mills, the properties continued to carry their original Van Sweringen restrictive covenants. Brith Emeth's success in building on former Van Sweringen land contrasted with a fight that pitted another Jewish congregation against a hastily formed Pepper Pike Homeowners Association that purportedly opposed the temple on grounds of endangering the community's residential character.

Like Park Synagogue, Brith Emeth sought a highly regarded architect for its building. Edward Durell Stone, who had designed Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, and the U.S. Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels world's fair, built a modernistic temple on the north side of Shaker Boulevard. Brith Emeth worshipped at the temple from 1967 until its membership shrank to the point that it merged with Park Synagogue in the 1980s, by which time the latter was reacting to the large-scale departure of Jewish residents from Cleveland Heights into more easterly suburbs. From 1986 to 2006, when it built its current facility across Brainard Circle, Park Synagogue East progressed from a branch of the main temple in Cleveland Heights to become the location of its main offices and many of its activities. The congregation sold the onetime Brith Emeth Temple to the Ratner School, which benefited from the fact that the original temple design provided for a 500-student religious school. Indeed, in 1970 the Samuel Y. Agnon School, an ecumenical Jewish day school, opened in the temple before moving several years later. Ratner's history, like that of Park Synagogue, reflects the eastward migration of Jewish Cleveland and a legacy of strong congregational support of Judaic education aimed toward a broad cross-section of society.

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Grant Wilson Deming, born in Sarnia, Ontario, at the southern tip of Lake Huron, moved to Cleveland with his brothers in the 1890s and became swept up in real-estate development. The Demings built upper-middle-class residential districts in Cleveland's Glenville area to the north of University Circle in the 1900s. Grant's brother Barton set out on his own to redevelop Rockefeller's old Euclid Golf Club in the "Heights" to the east as a fashionable destination for Millionaires Row families seeking a more sylvan setting away from the city. Sensing the eastward push into the Heights, Grant Deming also shifted his focus to suburban speculation. In the early 1900s, he acquired almost 200 acres of land owned mainly by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the heirs of James B. Haycox, a dairy farmer. There Deming imagined Forest Hill, "America's Richest Suburb."

Deming thought big. His promotional literature attempted to situate Forest Hill in the company of Boston's Brookline, New York's Llewellyn Park, and Washington's Chevy Chase. Like these other garden suburbs, Forest Hill would have gently curving streets, setback sidewalks, and a pastoral air. Deming characterized the streets, laid out by the same company that platted Shaker Heights, as "natural openings through the giants of the forest," but the landscape was more accurately a mosaic of woods and meadows. An exception was the western side of the tract, where two branches of the Dugway Brook meandered through thickly forested ravines on their descent to Lake Erie.

Almost completely built out by the time the Great Depression hit, Forest Hill gradually lost its identity as residents came to identify more with the Coventry or Cedar-Lee business districts that flanked it to the northwest and southeast. Some also turned inward. The Lincoln Boulevard Club, formed by women on the street to sew bandages for the Red Cross during World War I, is reputedly the oldest surviving block club in Greater Cleveland. Far from the well-to-do allotment promised by Deming, Forest Hill became a mishmash of varying sizes of homes and even a number of two-family houses. To some extent the neighborhood also looked to nearby religious institutions for identity. Forest Hill lay wholly within the St. Ann's Roman Catholic parish, and many Jews who moved to the Heights from Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood lived in Forest Hill and worshipped a half-mile to the northeast at the Temple on the Heights. The arrival of the first African American family in the early 1930s in a house at Washington Boulevard and Cottage Grove Avenue prompted a bombing before cooler heads prevailed. It would take another four decades for racial integration to make real progress.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010, Forest Hill is beginning to reclaim its long-obscure name recognition apart from the places it is near. Like Cleveland Heights itself, Forest Hill today melds historic sense of place with a socially diverse population.

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On February 15, 1861, the streets surrounding the Weddell House, as well as the windows, porches and even rooftops that looked upon the hotel, were dense with faces eager to see the newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln. Once inside his overnight lodgings on the corner of Superior Avenue and Bank (now W. 6th) Street, Lincoln walked onto the second floor balcony to greet the crowd of Clevelanders: "To all of you, then, who have done me the honor to participate in this cordial welcome, I return most sincerely, my thanks, not for myself, but for Liberty, the Constitution and Union." In 1931, the room in which Lincoln stayed during his visit was turned into a shrine to the late president. The public was welcome to visit, and fifteen presidents were among the many who visited the room. Other notable people who stepped through the Weddell House doors include the General Philip H. Sheridan, General George A. Custer, Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, and many others.

The famous Weddell House opened in 1847. Its 200 rooms were used for offices, stores, parlors, dining, a tavern, and overnight lodgings. Important and historical events took place in the five-story, brick and sandstone structure. In August 1851, the Weddell House exhibited the first sewing machine, an invention that would soon help expedite Cleveland's industrialization. Another example of the hotel's historic significance occurred on November 13, 1869. An organization for teachers that promoted educational and professional improvements — the North Eastern Ohio Teachers Association (NEOTA) — was formed and still operates today. By 1853 the popularity of the Weddell House was so great that a four-story addition was built on Bank Street to accommodate for the high demand for rooms.

In 1903, John D. Rockefeller became owner of the Superior Avenue portion of the Weddell House. After two years of construction, the original section of the historic hotel had been replaced by the Rockefeller Building, a design by Knox & Elliott, a local firm whose partners got their start working for Daniel Burnham in Chicago. The design emulated the celebrated Chicago School skyscrapers of Louis H. Sullivan. In 1910, four more sections were added in the same "Sullivanesque" architectural style. Offices in the new seventeen-story building were dedicated to iron, coal, and lake shipping. John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought the million-dollar Rockefeller Building from his father for one dollar. It was later passed into the hands of Josiah Kirby in 1920 who renamed the building after himself. The Kirby Building did not keep its new name for long. Rockefeller repurchased the property simply to change it back to its original name.

In recent years, the vacant Rockefeller Building has suffered from repeated vandalism and break-ins. The forlorn skyscraper is in desperate need of investors who see its historic value and adaptive reuse potential.

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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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