The Shaker Historical Society and Museum has a rich history marked by its successful establishment and resilience in overcoming challenges to secure a permanent location. The Museum presents historical artifacts and educational programs that extend beyond the North Union Shaker community, engaging Shaker Heights residents in public history. The legacy of the Van Sweringen brothers, who influenced the design of city streets and community values, is deeply embedded in the area’s physical layout and reflected in the Museum's role within the community.
Building on this foundation of historical interest, the story of the North Union Shaker community itself is central to understanding the origins of Shaker Heights. Founded by Ralph Russell in 1822, the Shaker community occupied the lands now known as Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights. Although the community disbanded in 1889, its utopian ideals left a lasting legacy that helped shape the vision of the master-planned suburb. Interest in the Shakers within the community began to grow in the mid-1920s, when the Shaker Heights School District started incorporating local history into its educational programs. Teachers Edythe Turner and Pearl Lee Stark played a pivotal role in this effort, collecting Shaker artifacts and embedding them into the third-grade curriculum, ensuring that future generations would engage with this important chapter of the area’s past.
The Shaker community attracted interest from several institutions in the Cleveland area, with Wallace H. Cathcart, former director of the Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), initiating the Shaker collection in 1911. Today, the WRHS holds approximately 900 Shaker photographs from 1860 to 1920, which were vital in shaping a coherent public understanding of the North Union Shaker community’s legacy. Caroline B. Piercy, a Shaker Heights resident, extensively studied the Cathcart collection and published The Valley of God’s Pleasure: A Saga of the North Union Shaker Community in 1951. Her research led to connections with other local residents, including Rev. John M. Schott, Cary Alburn, Benjamin Jenks, and Councilman John A. Hecker, who took a major step in preserving this history by founding the Shaker Historical Society and Museum (SHS). Elizabeth B. Nord, the Museum's volunteer curator for twenty years until her death in 1972, was also instrumental in this effort. The Society began gathering Shaker artifacts and donations, hosting its first garden party on June 11, 1948, in the Shaker Room of the WRHS.
Over the next twenty-two years, the Shaker Historical Society relocated seven times before settling into a storefront at 3488 Lee Road in 1968. However, this location proved unsustainable due to high costs, prompting the board to seek a more permanent home for the Society and Museum. In 1966, a special board meeting was held in the basement of Boulevard School to discuss the donation of the Myers mansion. Designed by architect Daniel Reamer in 1910 for Louis Myers of the Van Sweringen Company, the mansion was being negotiated by his son, Frank Myers, as a potential permanent home for the SHS. The Myers mansion was historically significant, situated on the original site of the Shaker settlers’ farm and near Horseshoe Lake, created by the settlers’ dam. Despite this, local residents and neighbors at the time strongly opposed the Museum’s move into the area. Their concerns about relocating the Museum to a residential neighborhood reflected the nineteenth-century ideals behind the Van Sweringen brothers’ vision of an ideal “utopia.” In response, Mayor Paul K. Jones decided to allow neighborhood residents to voice their opinions based on issues of zoning policies.
The Van Sweringen brothers sought to control property values in Shaker Heights through deed restrictions, a common practice in American suburban development. By promoting homeownership, they aimed to stabilize property values and prevent “undesirable” neighbors, enforcing both aesthetic standards and racial covenants. In 1925, they introduced Restriction No. 5, which encouraged residents to return old property deeds for approval before selling. Zoning regulations were also implemented, designating certain areas for single-family homes while allowing commercial use in other zones. The northern areas of South Park Boulevard and Lee Road were reserved for single-family residences, while the neighborhoods south of South Woodland Road and Van Aken Boulevard were subject to a mix of zoning types. Together, Restriction No. 5 and the expanded zoning regulations reinforced the Van Sweringen brothers' vision of a white, upper-to-middle-class "utopia."
Although Shaker was well on its way to becoming a community that embraced social diversity, the Van Sweringen vision of exclusivity and zoning control was echoed decades later when the Shaker Historical Society's proposal to relocate to the South Park Boulevard neighborhood faced resistance. Much like the earlier concerns over "social invasion" and zoning laws, opponents feared the impact of the Society's move on the residential character of the area. To bypass these objections, trustee Frank Myers donated the property to the state with vice president William R. Van Aken handling the legal complexities of the transfer, enabling the Society to contract with the State Department of Public Works and avoid city zoning regulations.
This effort to overcome zoning resistance marked a pivotal moment in the Shaker Historical Society's development and expansion. Drawing on this achievement, the Society began to shift its focus toward broader public engagement. The president of the SHS at the time, William Van Aken, discussed opening the Museum to all residents of northeastern Ohio, and the public was first invited into the space during a tour conducted around the Shaker Lakes in 1970. Building on this momentum, the Women's Committee of the SHS was established in June 1971 to increase interest, funding, and volunteer support for the museum. In 1972, Elizabeth Nord made a significant contribution by donating her personal library to the SHS and receiving the Golden Deeds Award from the Exchange Club of the Heights. Tragically, she passed away from a heart attack just four months later. The 1980s marked a period of expansion for the Society, which showcased four major exhibits and elected its first female president in 1988, further solidifying its commitment to inclusive public history.
The success of these early efforts laid the groundwork for the Shaker Historical Society’s continued growth and evolution. As the Society expanded its reach and strengthened its community ties, it also began to reflect the values and identity of Shaker Heights itself. The suburb, deeply intertwined with the concept of "home," influenced the Society’s transition into a single-family residence, further aligning its mission with the broader emphasis on home and place that defines the area. By broadening its focus from solely representing the Shakers to engaging more deeply with the diverse local community, the Shaker Historical Society and Museum is forging a new identity for public history in Shaker Heights—one that reflects the suburb's contemporary values while enriching its historical narrative.
Today, the Shaker Historical Society and Museum, along with the Elizabeth B. Nord Memorial Library and Archives, operates in its permanent location at 16740 South Park Boulevard. Despite past resistance, the museum now stands as a hub for public history, education, and community development, honoring the legacy of the North Union Shakers on the very land they once inhabited.
]]>In the late 1950s, the Shaker Historical Society undertook the daunting task of creating a memorial marker to tell the story of a small unmarked burial ground commonly referred to as the "Lee Road Cemetery" or the "Old Manx Cemetery." This graveyard, located at 3451 Lee Road, was the second oldest burial ground in Cuyahoga County, and the oldest designated landmark in Shaker Heights. Records for the cemetery, however, had long been lost, and only a few burials had taken place in the previous half-century. The Shaker Historical Society would need to interpret a story for the space through a study of grave inscriptions, newspaper articles, county histories, maps, and accounts provided by descendants of those buried. The narrative of the recovered history was framed to tell the tale of Shaker Heights's common heritage and be a celebration of the region's pioneer past.
The memorial marker was to inscribe new meaning into the public burial grounds. The Shaker Historical Society intended to transform the unmarked and deserted graveyard into a shrine, and a space where residents of Shaker Heights could pay tribute to the region's founders. Concise and inclusive, trustees of the historical society decided on what they hoped would be a perfect tribute:
"First Burial 1811 / Final Resting Place Of / Pioneer Families / Manx Settlers / Veterans Of Five Wars / North Union Shakers"
Dedicated on Memorial Day, 1959, the plaque captured the stories of patriotic veterans, brave pioneers, industrious immigrants and pious Shakers. Its placement among the weathered gravestones offered a point of departure for discovering and memorializing the colorful, unique history of both Warrensville Township and Shaker Heights.
]]>The house at 18829 Fairmount Boulevard is not only one of the oldest in Shaker Heights. It is also a house which has been associated over the years with a number of Shaker Heights most famous families.
The Jacob Strong home is believed to have been built sometime during the years 1839-1847 by Jacob Strong, a Pennsylvania native who migrated to northeastern Ohio around 1830. In 1835, Strong purchased 160 acres of land in Lot No. 14 of Warrensville Township. Several years later, he built on that land the house which today bears the above address.
Strong farmed 100 of the 160 acres he purchased, selling the other 60 acres to a neighbor in 1838. On this land, Strong and his wife Clarissa raised their eight children--Lucina, Hannah, John, Ely, Spencer, Albert, Jacob and Myron. In 1853, perhaps hearing of more fertile lands in the west, Strong sold his farm to John Hecker and moved with his family to Indiana.
It is an understatement to simply write that the Hecker family lasted longer in this area of northeastern Ohio than the Strong family. John Hecker, and later his son Jacob, operated a dairy farm on the 100 acres purchased from Jacob Strong from the 1850s until the second decade of the twentieth century. Shortly after Shaker Heights incorporated in 1912, the Hecker Family sold their farm to Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen. Even after the Hecker Farm had been sold to this pair of famed Shaker Heights developers, the Hecker family remained active and involved in the community. John A. Hecker, a grandson of John Hecker, was a life long resident of Shaker Heights, served as a Councilman for thirty years during the first half of the twentieth century, and was one of the founding members of the Shaker Historical Society.
In 1919, the Jacob Strong home was sold to William W. Bustard. Bustard was a fiery and controversial Baptist minister who served as pastor of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland from 1909 to 1925. Upon purchasing the Jacob Strong home, Bustard commissioned the well-known Cleveland architectural firm of Walker and Weeks to make additions and changes to the house to convert it from Western Reserve Greek Revival style to Colonial Revival style. In 1921, shortly after Walker and Weeks completed their work, the house was the site of an attempted attack upon Reverend Bustard. In the evening hours of November 28, 1921, five armed gunmen cut the telephone wires to the house and assaulted an employee of the Church who lived with the Bustard family. Rev. Bustard was not at home at the time. While no one was ever arrested or charged in connection with this attack, which also involved a gun battle between the armed gunmen and Shaker Heights police in the middle of the night, many at the time suspected that the attack was in response to Bustard's fiery condemnation of former Cleveland Police Chief Fred Kohler who had recently been elected Mayor of Cleveland.
It has also been noted that during these years the Jacob Strong home was visited by John D. Rockefeller, the most famous parishioner of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. During the period 1909-1925, Bustard was not only Rockefeller's spiritual adviser when the latter was in Cleveland, but, as a former college athlete, Bustard quickly became one of Rockefeller's favorite golfing partners.
While perhaps the house at 18829 Fairmount has not seen in recent years the sort of political and social excitement which circulated about it during the years of its ownership by Rev. William W. Bustard or the Hecker family, it has remained a house which always seems to attract owners who become actively involved in the community and in politics. Thus, it should have come as no surprise that, in the last several decades of the twentieth century, the Jacob Strong home was owned by Margaret Anne Cannon, the long time and well-respected Law Director of Shaker Heights.
The Jacob Strong Home was designated a Shaker Heights landmark on May 14, 1966.
]]>The Asa Upson home built in 1836 is one of only six houses in Shaker Heights constructed prior to the year 1850. It is one of the less than 400 houses from this era still remaining in Cuyahoga County. The story of its survival at 19027 Chagrin Boulevard for 175 years is one that begins with a Yankee family moving from Connecticut to the Western Reserve in the early nineteenth century and concludes with several government and non-government agencies acting in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to preserve this symbol of Shaker Heights' early history.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, thousands of Connecticut Yankees migrated to Northeast Ohio to what was then called the Connecticut Reserve, to farm the fertile soils here. Newlyweds Asa and Chloe Upson were two of those Connecticut Yankees who came to Northeast Ohio during that era. In around 1820 they settled in Portage County, but later they moved to Cuyahoga County. In 1834, they purchased more than 200 acres of land in what was then Warrensville Township and what is today the City of Shaker Heights.
The land purchased by Asa and Chloe Upson was located on the north and south sides of Kinsman Road (now Chagrin Boulevard) and less than one-half mile west of the township center (today the intersection of Warrensville Center Road and Chagrin Boulevard). During the years 1834-1852, the Upsons sold about one-half of this land and farmed the other half. There they raised their large family of four boys and five girls. In these years, Asa and Chloe Upson were community organizers and activists. Asa served several terms as township treasurer and one term as a township trustee. In 1837, Chloe became one of the founding members of the Warrensville Methodist Episcopal Church, while husband Asa served on the building committee that was responsible for erecting the congregation's first church in 1845.
In 1836, Asa and Chloe Upson built the original part of house that now stands at 19027 Chagrin Boulevard. The original house was built in an architectural style then popular in America known as Colonial or Greek Revival. Houses built in this style typically had a gabled main block with an attached wing known as an ell. Viewed from the street today, the part of the Upson House built by the Upsons consists of the left two of the three front sections of the house.
After living for almost two decades in Warrensville Township, Asa and Chloe sold their farm and moved to Illinois in 1854. In the late nineteenth century, the property housed a blacksmith shop. The house the Upson family left on Chagrin Boulevard one and three-quarter centuries ago has undergone several major alterations over the years and has survived--almost miraculously, into the twenty-first century thanks in large part to the care its subsequent owners gave it. But it survived the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twentieth first century mostly due to the efforts of three organizations--the Shaker Historical Society, the Cleveland Restoration Society and the Shaker Heights Landmarks Commission.
In the early 1960s, the Shaker Historical Society began to tout the Asa Upson home as one of the oldest in Shaker Heights and featured it on its scheduled tours of the City. Decades later in 2010, when the house was in need of major repairs, the Cleveland Restoration Society stepped in and funded repairs that preserved the house from the wrecking ball. Finally, in early 2011, the Shaker Heights Landmarks Commission designated the Asa Upson home a City of Shaker Heights landmark, thereby imposing preservation obligations upon all future owners of the house and assuring the Shaker Heights community that this historic home will remain in the city for many years to come.
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]]>On September 21, 1948, the Shaker Historical Society commemorated its one-year anniversary with the unveiling of a bronze plaque on the southwest corner of Lee Road and Shaker Boulevard to mark the location of the Center Family of the North Union colony of Shakers. Five years later, a Shaker gate that had been added to the northeast corner was dedicated. The land adjoining this commemorative site, a 200-square-foot lot recently purchased by Shaker Historical Society, had previously been the location of the religious community's Meeting House, carpenter shop, blacksmith shop, dining room, and dormitories. A replica of the original gate that led onto the Shaker property was fashioned by members of the society, and large square cut stones that had once belonged to the Shakers were used as gate posts.
In retrospect, the Shakers seem an unlikely symbol of commemoration. The Cold War was in its infancy, and Shaker Heights was now one of America's wealthiest communities. A communal society had become an object of celebration in an era characterized by general disdain for all things that hinted of communism. Somehow, middle- and upper-class Shaker Heights residents came to identify with the values held by and projected upon this anti-materialist, apocalyptic religious society.
As the name Shaker Heights suggests, local interest in the Shaker community was partially rooted in the connection between the religious group and the history of the area. Development of the Shaker community coincided with early pioneer life in Warrensville, and spoke to the history of the region. The North Union Shaker colony was founded in 1822 and lasted until 1889. While segregated within their own communities, the lives of the Shakers were both influenced by and shaped the surrounding world. From the visits of Shaker men who consigned their garden seeds for local sale to the tale of a young Shaker women running off and marrying a local college student printed in the local paper, the lives of Shakers and Warrensville residents intersected. These interactions were most commonly a result of the commercial relationships that developed among Shakers and their neighbors. Although the religious order strived for self-sufficiency, the realities of providing for the needs of its members - reaching nearly 200 persons at the communities height - demanded the purchase and sale of goods. Products offered by the artisans, craftsmen, farmers, and millers were commonly acquired by Cleveland and Warrensville residents. While the contemporary accounts of encounters with North Union Shakers by the outside world regularly focused on the peculiarities of their social and religious customs, they were also portrayed as honest, hard working, and pious in nature. This reputation became intertwined in the popular perception of Shakers, and would remain even after the community had long since moved from the area. Tied to notions of peace, virtue, and rural life, the Shaker name would be memorialized in the region's development at the turn of the 20th century.
This fascination with Shaker life and culture was not unique to Shaker Heights. The reclusive Shaker religious community had always captured the imagination of the American public, and had increasingly been the subject of academic study since the 1920s. In addition, antique collectors had long been fixated with the many high quality products that were created for and sold by Shaker communities. Initially viewed as a fanatic religious group in both Europe and America, popular perception of the millenarian society had changed dramatically. Underlying this change was the relative extinction of the religious community, with its practitioners having been relegated to history and nostalgia. By mid-century, all but three Shaker communities in the New England area had closed their doors. The population of Shakers within these remaining colonies had greatly dwindled in numbers. To the outside world, the communities had became living museums – relics of a fascinating pioneer past.
The memory and perception of Shakers was defined greatly by both progressive interpretations of their faith and the material culture that was left behind. Shakers had long been known for their pacifist views, support of abolitionism, and the institution of gender and racial equality within their communities. Admiration for the egalitarian philosophy of the Shakers would find new resonance with historians and Shaker enthusiasts as both the civil rights and women's rights movement received increased popular support following World War II. Complementing the perception of Shakers being forward-thinking and pious, the physical artifacts left behind by the religious order spoke to a history of innovation and industriousness. The Shakers were renowned for their craftsmanship in woodwork and basket making. They had also received credit for many inventions, including the flat broom, circular saw, and revolving oven.
The commemoration of Shakers was a celebration of mainstream values. The values that the Shaker name had come to embody by the mid-twentieth century, however, were divorced from many of the teachings and beliefs of the religious community. Practices such as celibacy or removing oneself from the influence of material goods were generally dismissed as peculiar. Competing interpretations of Christianity, such as the belief in the second coming of Christ and the rejection of the Trinity, were similarly swept aside. Even though the social and religious beliefs of the Shakers diverged from mainstream thought, the near-extinct religious group offered little threat to the status quo. With attention focused on their many admirable qualities, the Shakers could be safely admired and commemorated. The society envisioned and created by Shaker communities during the 18th and 19th century had effectively been culled for representations of utopian idealism, a virtuous rural America, and pioneer ingenuity. The grounds were designated a Shaker Heights Landmark in 1976.
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