The concept of moving unimpeded traffic through and around urban areas evolved in concert with federal initiatives that predated the U.S.’s entry into World War II. In April 1941, President Roosevelt created the Interregional Highway Committee, which went on to propose a 32,000-mile highway network. Wartime industrial mobilization brought increased demands upon existing roads as men and materiel had to be moved quickly and efficiently throughout the country. The Committee worked through the war, calibrating its efforts to use highways to provide jobs, improve urban areas, and encourage the transition to peacetime economic growth. The Committee issued a final report in January 1944 which recommended development of efficient roads to support urban revitalization. That December, the Federal Highway Act endorsed the plan with the financial support of a tax base to underwrite the project. With federal support, state and local agencies and transportation industry associations began planning their contributions to the transportation program.

The recently reorganized Cleveland City Planning Commission was one such entity in step with the plan. In 1943, while the Interregional Highway Committee was still formulating its national plan, the City Planning Commission proposed a three and a quarter mile “innerbelt” of uninterrupted traffic that would narrowly skirt downtown Cleveland. That route was later described using a series of names from its east approach or terminus to the west terminus. Motorists traveling west on the Shoreway (along Lake Erie near East 30th Street) would make a ninety-degree turn to the south at what was referred to as the Inner Belt Curve, later to be popularly dubbed “Dead Man’s Curve.” The southbound mile stretching to Carnegie Avenue was called “The Trench” as it passed beneath railroad tracks and Lakeside, Hamilton, Saint Clair, Superior, Payne, Chester, Euclid, and Prospect Avenues. Next the freeway sliced under Carnegie Avenue at the “Carnegie Curve” before turning to the west to the “Central Interchange.” The Inner Belt then mounted the “Central Viaduct” (which took its name from an earlier bridge in the same location) to span Cleveland’s Flats and the Cuyahoga River, finally joining the Jennings and Airport Freeways. A look at the city’s pre- and early postwar street maps illustrates a congested patchwork of industrial, commercial, and residential properties with railroads and thoroughfares stretching radially from downtown. Some 1,250 property parcels lay in the proposed Inner Belt path, requiring legal acquisition for the right-of-way.

The 1943 Commission report introduces the urban revitalization orientation of the plan: “The Commission sees planning to facilitate long term post-war full employment as even more important than planning for temporary employment on public works. A very promising way to accomplish this objective is to prepare to rebuild our city completely reconstructing the blighted central areas, rehabilitating and remodeling the obsolescent districts through the cooperative effort of private initiative and public enterprise… and to extend and improve Chester Avenue and to engage with other agencies—County, Regional, and State highway engineers to provide for a network over Greater Cleveland of seven radial and two belt freeways.”

By 1945, the plan, now called the Thorofare Plan, was modified and expanded to cover the whole city including surface roadways in addition to the freeways. Specifications for improvements to the Newburgh Freeway and the Shoreway (soon to be renamed the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway) were approved and specified. Momentum however was slowed when President Truman’s administration prioritized wider economic development initiatives and, by 1950, the Korean conflict over transportation. Nonetheless, Cleveland planners continued to support the Thorofare Plan during this period. By 1948, “real evidence … began to show” with work underway on the Chester Avenue extension, the Willow Freeway development, the Memorial Shoreway interchanges, the Lakeland Freeway interchanges, and the creation of the Inner Belt Planning Office. To complete the planning, the proposals needed to be detailed, agreed, and approved. How did a freeway pierce through the heart of a large city? Highway development gained momentum in the mid 1950s with federal policy promoting interstate links to the nation’s urban centers. Those policies also addressed the deteriorating conditions of many central cities with aging and emptied residences left behind in the suburban exodus. Also left behind were the economically deprived class without the resources to maintain or upgrade their properties. Policy makers sought to address these issues with plans to route freeways through the blighted urban areas and revitalize surrounding neighborhoods with public housing and redeveloped neighborhoods. The strategies had disadvantages as well. Long standing neighborhoods were lost or split by roadways and the dislocated residents were primarily low income, low resource individuals and families. The Cleveland Inner Belt provides a prime example.

Land acquisition for the Inner Belt followed the general plan and pathway identified earlier to connect the Memorial Shoreway with the Medina/Airport Freeway. With terminus points near East 30th Street and the Memorial Shoreway and West 14th Street in Tremont, the route would wind south and west around the southeast quadrant of downtown. The right-of-way acquisition involved the mixed strategies of negotiating ‘fair’ property value with the landowner and relying on court ‘seizure’ via the process of eminent domain. The vicinity of the northern terminus was an area of abandoned industrial sites. During the war, Otis Steel/Jones and Laughlin had gradually expanded and modernized its facilities in the Flats to empty its Lakeside facility. In 1948, the city negotiated the purchase of land and rights between East 26th and East 30th Streets, Lakeside Avenue parcels, and space between the Shoreway and the North Central Railroad tracks to facilitate the development of the planned Inner Belt. The closure of the J&L facility and surrounding affiliated businesses further depleted residential population in the area just south of Saint Clair, in turn impacting businesses and churches. Further south, Saint Columbkille Church and School occupied the northeast and southeast corners of Superior and East 26th Street. In 1956 the Diocese of Cleveland and Bishop Schrembs announced plans to build a new parish in suburban Seven Hills and sell the downtown properties to the state for the Inner Belt right-of-way. The final mass was celebrated on September 26, 1957. Moving along the pathway to Euclid Avenue, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History had occupied two houses of the Leonard Hanna estate since 1922. The combined need of more space and the impending eviction for Inner Belt construction led CMNH to build a facility at University Circle where it remains today. A block south, the Lutheran High School campus at 2648 Prospect was also in the roadway’s path. When notified of the state’s plan to acquire the property by eminent domain, the Cleveland Lutheran High School Association immediately began planning for east and west campuses for new Lutheran High Schools. These were among more than a thousand commercial and residential properties that needed to be acquired by the State of Ohio to make way for the road and its access points. The pathway through the “blighted central areas, rehabilitating and remodeling the obsolescent districts” was well under way by 1956-57.

Following the land settlements for the right-of-way, contracts were extensioned for demolition, clearing, and construction of the roadway, infrastructure, 16 bridges, and 31 entrance and exit access ramps between the Shoreway and the west end of the Central Viaduct bridge. Construction was launched and completed in phases between 1955 and 1962. The first phase construction was initiated in December, 1954 with the Central Viaduct Bridge later to be known as the Inner Belt Bridge. This segment connected West 14th/Abbey Avenue in the Tremont neighborhood over the Flats and Cuyahoga River with East 9th Street and East 22nd Street/Central areas downtown. Following construction that required 27 million pounds of structural steel, the competed bridge opened to traffic on August 18, 1959, as the world’s second eight-lane bridge. Meanwhile, phase two of the construction involved the ‘Trench’ roadway between the Memorial Shoreway and Chester Avenue. Construction began in April 1957, and the road was opened on December 16, 1959, after some pauses to settle land acquisition disputes with some residents. The east and west ends of the belt were complete by 1959. The third phase, the Central Interchange, began construction in early 1960 and opened to through traffic, completing travel east to west on December 5, 1961. Work yet remained to connect the Willow Freeway at the Central Interchange ramps and connectors by mid-1962.

Sixty years later, Inner Belt interchanges with intersecting interstate highways have been in service while other improvements remain in progress. The westbound Memorial Shoreway, including the Inner Belt, continues west at West 25th street and is known as Interstate 90 crossing the northern tier of the nation. The northbound Airport/Medina Freeway is now the northern end of Interstate 71, ending where it intercepts I-90. A recent adjacent connection also sends traffic due south to Parma on Route 176 (Jennings Freeway). To the east, the north/south Willow Freeway is now Interstate 77, terminating at the Central Interchange with I-90. The Central Viaduct (Inner Belt Bridge) was evaluated for replacement in 2008. Two bridges were designed to replace the structure with added lane capacity and staged construction commenced in 2011. In 2016 the final phase of the eastbound George V. Voinovich Bridge completed the $287 million dollar project doubling its capacity. Work continues on Interstate 490 to connect east and west neighborhoods from the Inner Belt across the industrial flats via the new Opportunity Corridor eastward to the Cleveland Clinic and University Circle. The spiderweb growth of the 1956 downtown highway plan has supported millions of vehicles passing into, through, and out of the central urban area to carry Cleveland’s notably efficient auto traffic and supporting the city’s commercial and industrial economy.

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On June 11, 1928, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a front page article criticizing the decision of Cleveland City Council to abandon the proposed extension of Chester Avenue to University Circle just months after recent construction had made it a continuous street from East Ninth to East 55th. The article's lengthy headline reflected both the paper's opposition to and its frustration with the decision: "$1,000,000 Spent On Chester--Why? Proposed Traffic Artery Now May Sink to Status of "White Elephant." After Two Years of Work, Councilmen Call City Project Dead." When you examine the long construction history of Cleveland's Chester Avenue, you can't help but at least empathize with the Plain Dealer. City Council's decision, however, turned out to be just another bump in the road of that long history.

The construction history of Chester Avenue dates back to the early nineteenth century when several residential streets named after trees were constructed off Erie (East Ninth) Street north of Euclid Street (Avenue). By the time legendary surveyor Ahaz Merchant drew his now famous map of Cleveland and its Environs in 1835, Chestnut Street, as Chester Avenue was originally called, already existed from Erie Street to Cleveland's eastern boundary (East 13th Street today). In 1859, several years after Cleveland had expanded that boundary by annexing the ten-acre lots to the east, the heirs of Samuel Dodge, a Cleveland pioneer and early Euclid Avenue resident, extended Chestnut Street to Dodge Street (East 17th Street) in order to provide access to a new residential subdivision they were developing on the northern section of their father's land, near Superior Street (Avenue). Later in the second half of the nineteenth century, two more streets were laid out east of the terminus of Chestnut Street that would one day become parts of Chester Avenue. In 1874, Windsor Street was constructed from Willson Avenue (East 55th Street) to Case Avenue (East 40th Street) and, in 1890, East Chestnut Street—it was so named at the insistence of Cleveland Mayor George Gardner to distinguish it from Chestnut Street—was constructed from North Perry (East 21st) Street to Sterling Avenue (East 30th Street). Thus, by 1890, segments of future Chester Avenue existed from today's East Ninth to East 17th, from East 21st to East 30th, and from East 40th to East 55th.

In the 1890s, during the era of the City Beautiful movement, Cleveland 's Park Commission and a number of civic leaders, including John D. Rockefeller, began actively planning for the development of an extensive east side park system, one that would eventually include, among others, Gordon, Rockefeller and Wade Parks, all part of the City of Cleveland as the result of the annexation of East Cleveland Village in 1872. The plan, as originally envisioned, included transforming grand residential Euclid Avenue into a park boulevard that would lead directly into that east side park system. In order to create that boulevard, the Commission proposed to remove streetcar tracks and other traffic fixtures from Euclid Avenue (from Case Avenue (East 40th Street) eastward), and relocate them to two east-west thoroughfares to be built to the north and south of Euclid Avenue. Members of the Commission believed that building these new thoroughfares to the City's "east end," as the area was then known, was necessary to insure that ordinary Clevelanders—not just the city's elite—would have direct and easy access to the new park system whether they took a streetcar, drove a carriage or rode there on the latest craze, the "safety" bicycle. From the start, an extension of Chestnut Street was considered by many to be the most viable route for all or at least part of the northern thoroughfare, but there were other streets in contention too, including Hough, Payne, Perkins and Wade Park Avenues. Discussions of whether and how far Chestnut Street (later, Chester Avenue) should be extended would continue on and off during this decade and the next four, but, prior to 1919, no extensions were constructed. Before 1912, this was largely because city officials were not able to secure state approval for financing such a project. After 1912, following the enactment of the Home Rule Amendment to the Ohio Constitution and the passage of Cleveland's first city charter, the project ran into a different type of financial roadblock when Cleveland voters rejected several road construction bond issues, many considering such projects to only benefit people who lived in the suburbs. During the years 1910 to 1915, while the fate of its extension lay in planning limbo, Chester Avenue from East 21st to East 28th Street, lying directly north of Millionaires' Row, was used by Cleveland's elite during the winter months as a race track for competitive sleigh rides. It became known during this period, somewhat ironically, as the Chester Speedway.

Planning for the Chester Avenue extension and other Cleveland road projects took a more professional turn when the City Plan Commission was established in 1915 and a platting engineer hired three years later in 1918. By this time, Cleveland was fast on its way to becoming the fifth most populous city in the United States, and its streets were just as fast becoming crowded with streetcars and automobiles. In 1919, the Plan Commission began a study of the City's streets and traffic, which resulted in the Commission's Thoroughfare Plan of 1921. It proposed to address the City's traffic problems by widening 180 miles of streets and opening or extending another 30 miles of streets. While the study was still underway, the City undertook to construct a first extension of Chester Avenue, from East 17th Street to East 21st Street, to divert automobile traffic off Euclid Avenue and onto Chestnut/Chester Avenue. It had an eighty-six foot wide right-of-way (ROW) with four lanes for traffic, and, when completed in 1921, it provided Cleveland motorists with a continuous roadway out of downtown from East Ninth to East 30th Street. Businessmen recognizing that Chester Avenue would soon become a popular route for motorists, began locating gas stations, tire stores, and other automotive service shops on Chester between East 21st and East 30th Street, even before the new extension was completed. Soon, the former Chester Speedway acquired a new nickname: Automobile Row.

In 1927, a second extension of Chester Avenue, from East 30th to East 40th Street was completed, connecting it to the soon to be formerly named Windsor Avenue and making Chester Avenue a continuous roadway from East Ninth Street to East 55th Street. In early 1928, when a third extension, from Euclid Avenue across East Boulevard to East 107th Street, was underway, the expectation of many in the city, including the editors of the Plain Dealer, was that Chester Avenue at East 55 Street would soon be extended to University Circle, but instead, as noted above, in June of that year Cleveland City Council announced that it was abandoning the rest of the project. While the Plain Dealer jeered the announcement, City Council's decision in retrospect was understandable. In that decade all road projects in Cleveland were funded entirely by the City and throughout the decade of the 1920s it had been a struggle for the City to find sufficient funding for both land acquisition and the road construction itself. The land acquisition and construction delays which routinely followed as the City placed bond issues on the ballot or attempted to find funding elsewhere often resulted in the City ultimately paying prohibitively high costs to complete its road projects, especially in a time when Cleveland land values were on the rise. One notable example of this arose in 1928. The City was without sufficient funds to purchase a vacant lot on East 97th Street that lay in the path of a proposed extension of Chester Avenue extension west from East 107th Street. Electing to stall for time, it issued an order denying the property owner a building permit to build on the land. The owner went to court, won, and then erected on the lot the four-story, 58-suite Traybird apartment building. Three years later, in 1931, when the city had funding available to purchase the land for the extension, it had to pay the owner four times what it would have paid him in 1928. Moreover, even after the owner was paid, he delayed three additional years moving the mammoth building--believed to be the largest building moved to date in Cleveland--to what would soon be the southeast corner of East 97th and Chester Avenue, costing the City more time and dollars.

The City's challenge of financing road improvements improved markedly in the 1930s when Cuyahoga County agreed to partner with the City in the funding of a number of the more important projects in the Thoroughfare Plan, including the Chester Avenue (now US Route 322) extension to University Circle. With the City responsible for land acquisition and the County for construction costs, three additional sections of the Chester Avenue extension were constructed during the 1930s, some with the help of Works Progress Administration (WPA) labor. In addition, several older sections of the Chester Avenue ROW were widened during this period from 60 and 70 feet to 86 feet to match newer sections constructed since the inception of the Thoroughfare Plan. The first joint project between the County and the City was the completion of the extension from Euclid Avenue west to East 107th in 1930. The financial impact of the Great Depression on the City and County delayed the next extension, from East 107th Street to East 97th Street, which was not completed until 1935. A third and smaller extension from East 97th to East 93 Street, which had been urged by local merchants and sponsored by then Ward 10 Councilman Ernest J. Bohn, was completed in 1939. With the completion of these three new sections of roadway, Chester Avenue was now a continuous roadway east from East Ninth Street to East 55th Street and west from Euclid Avenue, across East Boulevard, to East 93rd Street. All that remained to be done to complete the long envisioned northern thoroughfare from downtown to University Circle was to construct a final section from East 55th Street to East 93rd Street. Even though a bond issue that would have provided for land acquisition for the final section was passed in 1941, America's entry into World War II later that year, and then a postwar housing shortage that followed, put a halt to that land acquisition.

Planning for the roadway, however, continued and was expanded to include a new financing partner in the project, the State of Ohio, as well as two new planning bodies. Agreements between the State and Cuyahoga County provided for the County to pay land acquisition costs and the State to pay road construction costs with state and federal funds. Much of the planning for the extension during this period was conducted by Cleveland's new Planning Commission, which came into existence in 1942 following the voters' approval of a new City Charter. The State, County and City also received planning assistance during this period, and earlier, from the Regional Association of Cleveland (RA), a private nonprofit organization incorporated in 1937 by Cleveland Councilman Ernest J. Bohn. According to a January 14, 1967, Plain Dealer article, the RA was established "to study, thoroughly and scientifically, the means by which property values may be maintained and enhanced in Greater Cleveland." The new organization was headed by Abram Garfield, an architect, son of the former United States president and former Chair of the City's Plan Commission. Among the planning recommendations that the RA made to the City in the late 1930s was one to create a system of freeways in and out of, and around, Cleveland that would improve the flow of automobile traffic. The freeways proposed in, and eventually built from, this plan included the Willow Freeway, the Lakeland Freeway, the Innerbelt, and the Chester Avenue Extension, which was sometimes referred to as the "Chester Freeway," but more often as a "semi-freeway." Bohn himself, who had decided not to run for re-election to City Council in 1940 in order to devote more time to his work in public housing, became involved in the planning of this freeway system when he was appointed the first chair of the new City Planning Commission in 1942. There, he made an effort to ensure that the proposed new Chester Freeway, routed through the Hough neighborhood which he once represented as a councilman, was designed as a divided highway with plantings and other buffers sufficient to protect residents living near it.

In 1948, after the postwar housing shortages in Cleveland had abated, the State authorized Cuyahoga County to proceed with the Chester Freeway. Land acquisition was completed that same year and construction of the roadway—with a 150-foot-wide ROW and six lanes for traffic—was completed in 1949. On October 23, 1949, the new Chester Avenue extension was opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Governor Frank Lausche and Cleveland Mayor Thomas Burke, and a large parade that marched up and down the City's new "freeway." Chester Avenue had now been extended all the way from East Ninth Street to University Circle, as envisioned by city officials in the nineteenth century. However, because it was six lanes only from East 55th to East 93rd Street, severe traffic bottlenecks soon developed on the road to the east and west this section of the road during rush hour. Resolving this traffic problem would require widening those other sections of Chester Avenue, primarily between East 13th and East 55th Streets, which included rebuilding the Conrail Bridge just west of East 55th, and from East 93rd Street to Euclid Avenue, which included building two one-way streets from East 107th Street to Euclid Avenue. Consistent with the long construction history of this road, it took the City another three decades to complete these widenings. The last of them—from East 30th to East 55th Streets—was not completed until 1979. It was only then that one could finally say that the City, with assistance from Cuyahoga County and the State of Ohio, had finally completed the northern thoroughfare from Downtown to University Circle that had been first imagined during the City Beautiful Movement nearly nine decades earlier.

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Republican Justice Harold Hitz Burton served as Cleveland's 45th mayor from 1936 to 1940, U.S. Senator from Ohio from 1941 to 1945, and U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice from 1945 until his retirement in 1958 due to failing health. Burton was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1888, and graduated from Bowdoin College and Harvard Law School. Law was Harold Burton's calling, and in his various practices he sought to uphold it as dispassionately as possible. Upon the United States' entry into World War I, he sought commission as an officer in the 361st Infantry of the 91st Division and achieved the rank of Captain by fall 1918. In his service he fought in Verdun during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, was  awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre "for extraordinary heroism and gallantry in action," and was recognized by General John J. Pershing "for exceptionally meritorious and conspicuous services during the Argonne Offensive."

Following the resigning of his commission in 1919, Burton moved to Cleveland with his wife to practice corporate law in a local firm before forming his own firms: Cull, Burton & Laughlin and Andrews, Hadden & Burton. After a brief stint as Cuyahoga County Commander of the American Legion he was persuaded to join the world of politics by local Republican Party leader Maurice Maschke. In 1921, Cleveland constituents voted to create the position of City Manager, an individual to work closely with the city government to oversee city development and governance with the  goal of  eliminating party politics in the interest of the city's progress. Burton initially served under City Manager William R. Hopkins as City Law Director from 1930 to 1931, though some of his time in office was as interim City Director following the removal of Hopkins by the city council. The position of City Manager was  eliminated in November 1931, thereby restoring the mayoralty. Burton later ran for the recreated position of Mayor in 1935 as an independent Republican seeking to oust the corrupt Harry L. Davis. By 1936 Cleveland had become rife with corruption in the form of gambling, racketeering, and protection rackets. Burton's desire to eliminate corruption led him to hire Eliot Ness as City Safety Director, tasking Ness with cleaning up the city.

As a mayor during the Great Depression, Burton benefited from a number of New Deal programs designed to put people back to work and rebuild the aging infrastructure of the city. One of the most successful and influential of these was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal program that provided economic aid to workers and cities through construction projects and infrastructure renovations that often could not be afforded by the cities themselves. Cleveland's Memorial Shoreway, now a segment of Ohio State Route 2, was originally constructed to provide transit to the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936. This roadway was expanded using WPA funding to provide access to downtown Cleveland from the West Side as one of the nation's first limited-access expressways, with the majority of it completed in 1939. Mayor Burton worked closely with the WPA and its administrators to increase the funding given to Cleveland for its development. Under Burton and with federal assistance, Cleveland's unemployment declined from 125,000 persons to 75,000 using the almost $1.5 million that the WPA provided in relief funding to the city government each month. Following Burton's death, the Main Avenue Bridge, a segment of Memorial Shoreway, was later renamed the Harold H. Burton Memorial Bridge in his memory.

Harold Burton served as Mayor of Cleveland for only four years before pursuing election to the U.S. Senate, and he was ultimately appointed into the Supreme Court by Harry S. Truman in 1945. As an Associate Justice he later voted in favor of and helped produce unanimity in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, which can be considered the highlight of his career on the court.

Harold Burton served as a model soldier, Republican Mayor, and Associate Justice throughout his life, seeking only to do what he considered to be righteous and just. It is because of this that he left a very noncontroversial legacy, and as such has been somewhat ignored by history which remembers great and controversial figures alike.

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When William J. Gordon died in 1892, he donated the land that became known as Gordon Park to the City of Cleveland under the condition that it would forever remain a free, public park. By the time of his death, Gordon, who made his fortune in the wholesale grocery and iron ore businesses, had accumulated some 122 acres of land along the shoreline near the spot where the Doan Brook enters Lake Erie. Gordon Park opened to the public in 1893 and quickly became a recreational destination for Clevelanders living on the east side. A grand bathhouse catered to the multitudes who crowded onto the park's beach, and the city also provided facilities for boaters, fishermen, and picnickers. Meanwhile, further inland, south of the beach, wooded areas and formal gardens provided quiet retreats for those seeking a more relaxed atmosphere.

In the decades after World War II, however, Gordon Park began to decline. Water pollution affected all of the city's lakefront parks and Gordon Park was no exception. Swimming in particular became increasingly unsafe. Moreover, the late-1960s construction of a straighter route for I-90 (an upgrade of the Memorial Shoreway that the Works Progress Administration had built from East 9th Street to Gordon Park in the late 1930s) literally split the park in two, separating its lakefront areas from those further inland. Meanwhile, Doan Brook was culverted, and the area directly to the east of the park (Dike 14) became a dredge disposal site.

Lake Erie may not have gone anywhere, but it is hard to imagine that William J. Gordon would recognize his 122-acre gift to Cleveland if he could see it today.

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Topography—both natural and man-made—is an integral part of Tremont’s history. The neighborhood’s most notable feature, for example, is its location at the top of a bluff. Before construction of the Central Viaduct in 1887, Tremont residents could not walk north or east without navigating the precarious and confusing Flats. Ironically, this terrestrial peculiarity contributed simultaneously to the area’s isolation (hard to reach) and to its residential popularity (close proximity to the many steel mills, factories, warehouses and river-shipping interests that populated the Flats). Earlier in the 19th Century, moreover, it was Tremont’s elevation—sweeping views of the Cuyahoga River and cool breezes from Lake Erie—that attracted wealthy settlers. This began to change, however, as the Cuyahoga River Valley grew more and more industrialized. Soon, the air in Tremont no longer seemed so fresh and the views became more smoky than scenic.

But as wealthy citizens moved out of the neighborhood, families whose men worked in the valley increasingly took their place. Accessibility also increased when the Central Viaduct was constructed. Initially, the Viaduct consisted of two bridges: The first structure connected what is now West 14th Street to what is now Carnegie Avenue. Deemed unsafe, the bridge was torn down in the early 1940s. The Viaduct’s path is more or less replicated by Interstate 90. The second structure, known today as the Abbey Avenue Bridge continues to link Tremont with Ohio City.

In 1912, Tremont residents received another ingress/egress opportunity when the Clark Avenue Bridge was constructed. This span (totaling 6,687 feet) consisted of three sections: The first comprised a series of trusses over the B&O railroad tracks adjacent to Quigley Road. The bridge’s west end connected to West 3rd Street and provided safe access to the Jones & Laughlin Steel plant. A third (east) section, which included the river span, extended from Pershing Avenue to West Third Street. The Clark Avenue Bridge was demolished in 1980. Its giant supports can still be seen at the base of Clark Avenue where it meets Quigley Road.

A third topographic change occurred during construction of the Cleveland Union Terminal complex (completed in 1927). Before that time, the Duck Island (west Tremont) area was tied into the street grid to Ohio City. Freeman and Willey Avenues (which now terminate on the west at Columbus Road) continued all the way to West 25th Street, as did a no-longer-extant street called Eureka Court. To create a rail path (now the RTA Red Line), all structures between the west side of Columbus Road and the east side of Gehring Street were razed. The area then was excavated downward some 30 feet to create the channel where the tracks run today. The only bridge subsequently erected to cross this divide was on Abbey Avenue, so the new excavation effectively increased Tremont’s isolation.

In the decades following World War II, many Tremont residents left the neighborhood for the suburbs. Multiple factories in the valley closed and many of the descendants of Tremont's original working-class residents grew prosperous enough to leave. A freeway construction boom exacerbated that exodus by making it easier to reach the suburbs. Interstate 71 (the Medina Freeway) created a wedge between West 14th Street and Scranton Road, while Interstate 490 (the Clark Freeway) subdivided Clark Fields on Tremont’s eastern border. A roundabout at the south end of West 14th Street—where it now meets Interstate 71 and the Jennings Freeway (Route 176) also truncated the south end of Tremont. Prior to the construction of these highways, drivers had easier street-based access to Cleveland City Hospital (now Metro Health) via Jennings Avenue and to Scranton Road via now-truncated streets such as Clover, Corning and Brainard Avenues.

Tremont’s revitalization began in the late 1970s with the organization of Tremont West Development Corporation. Urban pioneers, restaurants and art galleries arrived in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. That transformation continues to this day, although Tremont’s strange geography and asymmetric street grid still confound thousands of visitors. Moreover, the myriad freeway under- and overpasses give Tremont an oddly segmented feel: diverse neighborhoods with widely varying financial, industrial and terrestrial personalities. It’s all part of the strange charm that (literally and figuratively) sets Tremont apart.

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The Shaker Lakes are man-made bodies of water created by the North Union Shaker Community in the mid-nineteenth century to power a series of mills. When the Shakers left and their lands became part of the suburb of Shaker Heights, the lakes remained, becoming the focal point of a series of parks. In the 1960s, however, the parks surrounding the Shaker Lakes were threatened by a proposal that sought to construct freeways through both Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights.

One of the most important developments in Cleveland (and big cities as a whole) after World War II has been the emergence of vast freeway systems, spurring the growth of suburbs and sparking an exodus of residents from within central cities themselves. The fact that Shaker and Cleveland Heights have remained free of such roads is no accident. In 1963, a plan by Cuyahoga County Engineer and Democratic Party leader Albert Porter to run the Clark, Lee, and Heights Freeways through the two suburbs sparked outrage among its residents. Porter, a powerful politician whose leadership at the County Engineer's Office from 1943 onward had contributed to the success of the postwar freeway construction boom, soon emerged as the prime villain in the affair, brashly demanding for construction to commence despite a number of protests.

Women played a large role in the successful effort to block the Heights freeways from being built. Women's organizations were fundamental in the 1966 creation of the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, which highlighted the educational and environmental significance of the threatened Doan Brook watershed. The fight against the freeways also benefited from the fact that Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights were very prosperous suburbs filled with wealthy residents, some of whose homes faced destruction. Activists in the Heights pressured state and local leaders to reroute the freeways. In February 1970, Ohio Governor James Rhodes, who was running for the U.S. Senate that fall, finally scrapped the project. Porter's career ended in disgrace when he plead guilty to several counts of theft in office in 1979. The Nature Center remains open and has since taught generations of young people about the importance of the environment.

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