It's 1840 and you're traveling from Detroit to Buffalo on business. The fastest route would be by boat, straight across Lake Erie from west to east, but it's November and this shallowest of the Great Lakes is notoriously treacherous this time of the year. So you've wisely elected to take the post road that runs through the city of Cleveland, that fast-growing little commercial center about halfway along your route. You had planned to spend the night just east of Cleveland at Dunham Tavern, on the Buffalo Road, but an early winter snowstorm has kicked up and you need to find shelter quickly. Just a mile or so west of Ohio City, the other fast-growing city on the Cuyahoga River, you spot an Inn on the Detroit Road that looks inviting. The proprietor, Samuel White, welcomes you in out of the cold into a large room with a roaring fire. His son Roderick takes care of your tired and cold horse, shivering outside in the cold.

Today, most Clevelanders could identify most of the places mentioned in this imagined 1840 trip. They would know, of course, the cities of Detroit and Buffalo, if for no other reason, because they are NFL rivals of the Browns. And they would recognize Ohio City, now a trendy neighborhood on Cleveland's near west side. And many would have even heard of Dunham Tavern, said to be the oldest standing building in Cleveland and now a museum which teaches adults and children what early nineteenth-century travel was like in the Midwest.

But few, if any, in Cleveland could tell you anything about Samuel White's Roadside Inn. It is not a landmark; it is not on the National Register of Historic Places; and, yet, just like Dunham Tavern it was an important stop for travelers in the early nineteenth century. And, more importantly, it is still standing, at 9400 Detroit Avenue, in the west side's Cudell/Edgewater neighborhood. And the number of Clevelanders that could tell you that is a very small number indeed.

White, a native of Vermont who came to Cleveland as a young boy in 1804, built his Roadside Inn on Detroit Road in about 1828, when the area was part of Brooklyn Township. The Inn operated for the next two decades until 1845 when, as a result of accumulating debt, White was forced to sell it. In 1866, the Inn, which had likely closed by this time, was purchased by Samuel Ware. A farmer who had emigrated to the Cleveland area from Philadelphia, Ware used the Inn as his personal residence, but it soon became better known as the home of his son Liberty H. Ware, a lawyer and yachtsman, who during the last three decades of the nineteenth century held a variety of public offices in the Village of West Cleveland, including two terms as its mayor and several years as its justice of the peace.

During this period, the Roadside Inn-turned-residence also served as Liberty Ware's law office and, when he became justice of the peace in 1892, he used that office as his courtroom. Liberty was by all accounts one of the most colorful figures in this era of Cleveland's history and, when he was holding court, newspaper reporters flocked to his home to hear and report on the witticisms uttered by "Squire Ware." Liberty, not to be confused with his son Liberty B., died in 1910, but the house remained in the Ware family for another 50-plus years. The house underwent a substantial renovation in the period 1913-1915, which included removal of the east wing, moving the house to a new location on the lot, and adding a layer of dark brick veneer to the exterior walls. In 1969, the house was sold to the Islamic Center of Cleveland, which uses the historic building today as a house of worship and a cultural and educational center.

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This historic tavern was far more than a resting place for weary travelers. It held the title as the first tavern in Ohio. Additionally, it was the heart of antebellum and Civil War era merriment and suspicion. Originally built as two separate log cabins in 1798 long before Ohio was admitted as a state, it served as an inn first known as the Webster House, then New England House, before becoming known simply as the "Old Tavern." It is now named after the community wherein it resides, Unionville, though many locals know it as the "Old Tavern."

Strategically located along the County Line Road and the Cleveland-Buffalo Road, today's Route 84, Unionville Tavern benefited from frequent traffic. By 1818, as the Cleveland-Buffalo Road became a major thoroughfare and the tavern was designated as a stagecoach and mailstop on the Warren-Cleveland mail route, the log cabins were expanded into the two-story saltbox style inn. A covered carriage entrance and ballroom were added as well. The tavern enjoyed a steady stream of patrons that included travelers, revelers, and runaway slaves. Many travelers would stop here to rest as they made their way down the Cleveland-Buffalo Road or County Line Road in their covered wagons.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Unionville Tavern was an active Underground Railroad Station. While lavish dances dominated the scene in the second floor parlor, the first floor was a hideout for fugitive slaves on their way to freedom. After leaving the safe house at the tavern, the slaves would be taken to the Ellensburgh docks to cross Lake Erie into Canada. It was rumored that a series of tunnels used by escaped slaves led from the tavern's basement under the Cleveland-Buffalo Road to the local Unionville cemetery. In August of 1843, the tavern witnessed a spectacle, infamously known as the "County Line Road Incident." When Lewis and Milton Clarke, two fugitive slave brothers, spoke at an antislavery rally, Milton was captured and beaten. Local abolitionists and anti-slavery proponents fought successfully to free him. They then vowed that no runaway slave would ever be captured and returned to captivity in Lake County. Years later, when Harriet Beecher Stowe lodged at the Unionville Tavern on her way to Buffalo, she heard the Clarke brothers' story of the "County Line Road Incident." Many believe that the character George Harris in her famous novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was based on Milton Clarke.

Unionville Tavern remained a functioning inn until the early-twentieth century. After a decade-long close, the tavern was restored and reopened in 1926. Sixty years later a pub was added, and the tavern functioned primarily as a restaurant and bar. Another landmark occurred in 1973 when the tavern was included in the National Register of Historic Places. Yet by 2003, the tavern was auctioned for $280,000, and in 2006 Unionville Tavern closed to the public. In 2011 after years of disrepair, the Madison Historical Society began a "Save the Tavern Campaign" to protect and preserve the historic building. The campaign evolved into the Unionville Tavern Preservation Society, which now cares for the former inn and keeps its reputation alive. The tavern is no longer open to the public, but those interested can still see the building and its historical markers.

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Founded in 1919, Hotz Café, located at the corner of Starkweather Avenue and West 10th Street in the Tremont neighborhood, is believed to be Cleveland's oldest tavern. The current owner, John Hotz, is the grandson of the founder, John Hotz, Sr., a Rusyn immigrant who came to the United States in 1905. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tremont became home to many Rusyns, a Slavic ethnic group that lived in a region of Eastern Europe that is today parts of Poland, Slovakia and the Ukraine. John Hotz, Sr., according to his family, founded the tavern to create a place of comfort, leisure and fraternity for fellow countrymen and local laborers. The tavern quickly became a “home-away-from-home” for its blue-collar patrons. In the early era, amenities at the tavern included a “shoe-shine boy,” Blind Robbins herring, and such fine cigar brands as White Owl and R.G. Dun. Regulars also gathered at the tavern to play popular card games like “66.”

Hotz Café was only in business for about a year when Prohibition began. The café survived that era (1920-1933) as a speakeasy, attracting such high-profile characters as Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. During the Great Depression, John Hotz, Sr., showed concern for his patrons by keeping prices low and providing food to struggling neighborhood families. Around the same time, Hotz Café also became known as a place where politicians, judges and even police detectives could meet to anonymously carry on private conversations. Elliot Ness, Cleveland's safety director from 1935 to 1940, was known to patronize Hotz Café. Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the tavern prior to his election as President in 1932.

After World War II, two of John Hotz, Sr.'s sons, Andrew and Mike, joined the family business, which expanded to a storefront next door where Andrew's wife operated a beauty salon. In the post-war era, the café continued to serve as a haven for steel mill workers and laborers stopping in after a shift, or before a shift just to pass the time. Regulars also included police officers and war veterans affiliated with local posts . The tavern featured in these years two Myna birds named Billy and Gabby Girl, who would talk to customers, and a spotted Dalmatian named Tony donated by the Cleveland Fire Department. When Tony was let outside to lounge near the front steps, customers knew that the café was open for business.

In the later decades of the twentieth century, the closing of area steel mills and a declining population brought transition to Tremont. The tavern, however, continues to be a hub of activity and social life for many locals. Today, a fourth generation of Hotzes is active in the family's tavern business. While the faces in the tavern have changed, the physical elements—the original bar and soda-pop-style barstools, the 24-foot-long shuffle-board game, the nostalgic photos and vintage décor—remain intact, as has the tavern's atmosphere and service.

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Established in 1824, Dunham Tavern was originally the home of the Massachusetts-born couple Rufus and Jane Pratt Dunham. The Dunhams came to the Cleveland area in 1819 after acquiring farmland. They lived in a log cabin until the main home was built in 1824. The house was solid and well built, but not ostentatious. It consisted of two rooms downstairs and upstairs around a central hall with a one-story wing at the rear. The exterior of the house was clad with clapboard and decorated with delicate details. Simple moldings highlighted the clean lines. It was designed in a modest, American style, but built well enough to last nearly 200 years. A separate structure housed the tenants. Since its completion the house has undergone many updates and renovations. According to the Plain Dealer "by the 1840s when the Dunhams added a tap room and sleeping quarters for stagecoach drivers along the Buffalo-Cleveland Road, bold columns, large dentils and heavier Greek Revival moldings were preferred to the more refined federal detailing of the original house."

In these early days the tavern became a political center and place where young people would go to enjoy themselves. Whig-party political meetings were often held in the tavern as well as turkey shoots and other leisure-time activities. As the city grew up around the small country house in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Dunhams struggled to keep up with the rapid changes occurring. In 1857 the tavern ceased accepting travelers and was sold. It became a single-family home. A string of owners took care of the property during this half of the century.

After the Great Depression hit the city in 1929 the city's priorities changed. Most of the beautiful homes on Euclid Avenue were torn down. The modest Dunham Tavern remained. This was mostly likely because of one man, the Cleveland landscape architect Donald Gray who purchased the home in 1932. Gray was very well known as a designer as well as a Cleveland activist. He restored much of the original architecture from the nineteenth century and replanted the Tavern's orchard. For a time in the 1930s the tavern served as a studio for WPA artists and printmakers. When Gray felt he could no longer maintain the century-old home he established a non-profit that could, the Society of Collectors. Dunham Tavern escaped the wrecking ball that was mid-century Cleveland because of their effort and mission that was to maintain the building and collect period furniture and home items to complement the house.

The organization opened Dunham Tavern to the public as a museum in 1941. They held a semi-annual "Trinkets and Treasures" antique fair that supported the mounting bills for the historic home. At this time there was a rise of popularity in restoring older American buildings. Looking to national examples like Colonial Williamsburg, older homes (the closer to Revolutionary era the better) became treasures and valuable structures. Today Dunham Tavern remains amidst factories and warehouses on one of the busiest streets in Cleveland. In recent years the museum tore down a 1920s textile factory which stood next to the tavern as part of an effort to return green space to the area, much like it was when the tavern was first built.

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