Derrell Max Ellis (later known simply as Max Ellis) was born on March 10, 1914, in Wellington, Kansas. The youngest of four children, Max grew up in Iowa and studied theater at the University of Iowa, performing in plays in the 1930s written by fellow Iowa student Thomas Williams, later more famously known as Tennessee Williams. After graduating in 1939, and serving a short stint as assistant director of the Erie Playhouse in Erie, Pennsylvania, Ellis came to Cleveland in 1942 and became an actor at the Cleveland Play House. Founded in 1915, the Cleveland Play House is America's oldest professional regional theater. Ellis landed his first role the following year in the theater's production of "Arsenic and Old Lace." Described by one reporter as "portly, rotund and mustached," he soon became one of the most sought after and popular local actors at the Play House, performing in more than 200 roles over the course of the next two decades.

In 1956, Ellis was asked to take on a new role on a Cleveland local television show. An advertising agency had come up with a new idea for promoting Christmas shopping at the Halle Brothers department store downtown. It had created a story about a fictional elf, Mr. Jingeling, who had manufactured new keys for Santa Claus's toy treasure house after Santa had misplaced them. Jingeling was rewarded for his ingenuity by being named Santa's chief elf and keeper of the keys. The character of Mr. Jingeling had initially been performed by Tom Moviel, a Cleveland police officer, but once the decision to produce the television show was made, it was decided that a professional actor was needed for the role. The show began airing twice every afternoon every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cleveland children soon learned that one of the best ways to get Santa's ear for that special holiday toy was to visit Mr. Jingeling on Halle's seventh floor.

In the year following the introduction of the television show, Max Ellis and his wife Myra, also an actor, moved from their apartment on East 86th Street, just down the street from where the Play House had then been located. They chose a home in the Moreland neighborhood of Shaker Heights. The house at 3427 Ashby Road was a modest Cape Cod-style house which had been built in 1942, during the decade in which many new houses were built on Ashby and surrounding streets in the northern part of the Moreland neighborhood. This neighborhood, located in the southwest section of the suburb and often called the Gateway to Shaker Heights, is notable--and distinguishable from much of the northern and eastern neighborhoods of Shaker--for its grid streets and moderately priced houses. In the mid-twentieth century, many people of moderate means moved into the neighborhood in order to have access to Shaker's exceptional educational system, the Shaker Rapid Transit, and nearby Chagrin-Lee-Avalon Shopping Center.

It is not known which, if any, of these traditional attractions drew the Ellises to Moreland. It may have simply been that they learned that the house had become available when its prior owners, John and Frances Ryan, also members of the Cleveland area acting community, suffered tragic deaths within 15 days of each other in September 1956. The Ellises purchased the house from the Ryans' estate in January of the following year. Max Ellis only lived at 3427 Ashby for seven years, but from an article appearing in the Cleveland Press in March 1964, it was obvious that the house was a source of pride for him. He described its interior in detail to the reporter who interviewed him and boasted of the addition to the rear of the house that he and his wife had added. Sadly, Max Ellis, just 50 years old, died suddenly in June 1964, just several months after this interview.

The Mr. Jingeling role that Max Ellis had performed for almost a decade was taken over by Earl Keyes, who had been the director of the Christmas season television show. Keyes, today perhaps the better known Mr. Jingeling, continued to play the role of the jolly elf for the next thirty years. Myra Ellis, Max's widow, continued to live in their home on Ashby Road in Shaker's Moreland neighborhood until 1969, when, after remarrying, she moved from the area. Today, the well-maintained house at 3427 Ashby Road still looks much like it did more than a half century ago when it was the home of the original Mr. Jingeling.

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The film takes place in a fictional town called Hohman, Indiana. Most exteriors were shot in Toronto. Interior scenes were done on a stage set. But in every sense, Ohio’s Tremont neighborhood is where Ralphie Parker and his family experienced A Christmas Story.

3159 West 11th Street, just south of Clark Avenue, is A Christmas Story House. Across the road is A Christmas Story Museum and a gift shop. All three locations are open 365 days a year for tours, along with a chance to buy everything from leg lamp nightlights and pink bunny suits to Lifebuoy Soap and faux Red Ryder carbine-action, two-hundred-shot, range-model air rifles. Be careful not to shoot your eye out!

The house was built in 1895: a colonial-style home in an area comprised largely of families whose men worked in the nearby Flats. The Mittal Steel plant (formerly J&L and Republic Steel) can be seen from the house’s back yard. The neighborhood’s arc mirrored that of Tremont—clinging to working-class status for much of the 20th century and floundering in the 1960s and 1970s when suburban flight and freeway construction desecrated the area. Spurred by artists and urban pioneers, Tremont began its upswing several decades later, but Ralphie’s neighborhood—well outside the borders of “hip Tremont”—has remained solidly blue collar. According to staff at the Christmas Story House, 3159’s basement used to host many an illegal cockfight.

The fortunes of the house, and eventually the immediately surrounding area, began to change in the early 1980s when director Bob Clark began scouting for a location in which to set A Christmas Story. Clark visited more than 20 cities looking for the perfect house. Since a vintage department store was needed for the parade and Santa-line scenes, Clark also sent letters to about 100 department stores around the country. Only Higbee’s in downtown Cleveland responded, but that was okay because both the department store and 3159 West 11th were ideal. Clark also liked the way the Tremont neighborhood had looked in 1978’s The Deer Hunter. Local auto club members lent Clark their antique cars. To thank the city, the producers named the house’s fictional thoroughfare Cleveland Street.

A mild sort of cinematic history was made in 1983 when A Christmas Story was released. The film was marginally successful at the outset, but its accolades and popularity increased over time. Leonard Maltin gave the film four stars, calling it “delightful” and “truly funny.” AOL, IGN, E! Entertainment, and at least one viewer poll have cited A Christmas Story as the top holiday film of all time. The movie earned Bob Clark two Genie Awards and in 2012, A Christmas Story was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Every year, TBS runs A Christmas Story for 24 consecutive hours beginning on Christmas Eve.

Twenty-one years after the film was released, entrepreneur Brian M. Jones, a native of San Diego, bought the house on eBay for $150,000. He used revenue from his business, The Red Rider Leg Lamp Company, for the down payment. It was, in the words of Old Man Parker, a “major award,” an opportunity to create a new kind of museum in Cleveland. Watching the movie frame by frame, Jones drew interior plans and spent $240,000 to reconfigure the structure as a single-family dwelling and a near-perfect replica of the movie set. Jones then stocked the interior with movie props. Entering the house, visitors now are greeted by the infamous leg lamp, the Parker’s decorated tree, a kitchen stocked with Ovaltine, and the sink where Randy hid. Upstairs, they can see the bathroom where Ralphie’s decoder ring and a bar of Lifebuoy soap reside. The back yard, where several scenes were filmed, looks just like the movie. Near the front entrance is a memorial bench dedicated to Clark. It sits on the exact spot where he had a cameo as a nosy neighbor.

The house and museum opened to the public on November 25, 2006, with original cast members attending the grand opening. The site drew 4,300 visitors during its opening weekend, and tens of thousands of faithful fans have made the pilgrimage since. Most went because they, like many pundits and critics, believe that A Christmas Story is one of Hollywood’s best. A few, however, may have been “double-dog dared” to attend.

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As the clock neared midnight on Halloween in 1897, a band of boys armed with hatchets and axes descended on the intersection of Scranton and Clark Avenue. In the spirit of the holiday, the weapon-toting youths began their vicious attack on the neighborhood's most peculiar structure--a 23 foot-high fence. The eyesore had been constructed three weeks prior as part of a dispute between neighbors D. Z. Herr and M. Moon. Following Moon's raising of a barn, Herr stacked boards to build the absurdly tall wall in an effort to block the view. Herr, convinced that his neighbor was attempting to strong-arm him into purchasing his property, refused to remove the barrier until the barn was removed. Moon declared that the fence did not bother him. As the vandals chopped away at the "spite fence," Herr emerged from his home and tried to intervene. Quickly restrained by the hoodlums, Herr watched as the structure was torn down and transported to a nearby vacant lot. The noise generated by the disturbance had attracted a crowd of hundreds from surrounding blocks, who idly looked on as the boards were doused with coal oil and set on fire. By the time the police arrived, the neighborhood had joined the boys in singing and dancing wildly around the flames. The police sat by and watched, but strangely were unable to identify any of the boys despite their best efforts. No arrests were made. When the fire finally died down, a sign was erected on the site: "Here lies the remains of the fence that Herr built."

At the turn of the 20th century, Halloween in Cleveland offered a night of excess and structured chaos for the city's children and young adults. Similar throughout the United States, this ancient holiday that symbolically transgressed the boundary between life and death provided communities a moment of release from social norms. Mischievous acts that would generally be deemed as impermissible by community standards were overlooked, and even encouraged. Adults openly reminisced on their past exploits, and children were expected to aid fairies, witches and imps in a night of delinquency. Reflective of the festivities that occurred at the intersection of Scranton and Clark avenues, a perceived shift in communal roles underpinned the holiday tradition. Most often, though, Halloween night offered an outlet of revenge and sense of retribution for the city's powerless youth. It would have been no surprise to any adult that had crossed local children to experience the wrath of vengeful spirits come Halloween night.

Every November 1st, Cleveland newspapers provided a familiar list of pranks and acts of vandalism that had occurred during the prior evening. A description of a "quiet" Halloween by the Cleveland Police in 1905 recounts what was fairly standard fare for the night of celebration. Iron and wood gates were torn from their hinges, doors were tied to verandah posts, windows in grocery stores were broken for some light looting, a wagon was rolled down an embankment and set ablaze, an occupied chicken coop was relocated to the roof of a home, a six-foot tall barricade was placed in a major intersection, bonfires were set in residential streets, and Wade Park pond became a receptacle for stolen items of all sorts. Other Halloween traditions included chalking doors, ringing house-bells, pelting homes and policemen with produce, leading livestock into church steeples, and throwing dummies in front of automobiles and streetcars. Arrests were uncommon, and generally reserved for the most disruptive offenders.

While hooliganism would remain a public expectation through the mid century, a tradition of "handouts" became commonplace in Cleveland by the late 1930s. Masked children began to show up on doorsteps, chiming "we want a handout." While this tradition of blackmail can be traced to Old-World roots of the holiday, it first found favor in some Cleveland neighborhoods at about the time of the first World War. The costumed beggars were treated with cookies, popcorn balls, candy, doughnuts and cider. This precursor to "trick-or-treat," however, was just one aspect of a much larger change in how the holiday was celebrated. Largely due to the effects of Halloween's commercialization following the turn of the century, the holiday was gradually co-opted by adults; the popularity of costume parties and festive public events grew, and traditional festivities were increasingly sanitized. By the end of the 1950s, Halloween had ceased to be a night for hell-raising throughout the city. The holiday tradition of flipping social roles did not completely disappear, however, as the pranks and vandalism of yesteryear provided credence to the empty threats of masked marauders extorting payment from their community.

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The National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) formed in 1901 under Franklin Terry and Burton Tremaine. Much of NELA's light-bulb innovation stemmed from, and competed with, both Charles F. Brush's arc light technology, and Thomas Edison's incandescent lamp technology. GE became a major stockholder in NELA as soon as 1902, and provided the former facilities of the Brush Electric Co. as a new home for NELA. GE's stake in the company become so substantial, 75%, federal courts ordered GE to dissolve the company in 1911. GE quickly absorbed NELA and successively gained ownership of NELA's new industrial complex in the suburbs, Nela Park.

The location for Nela Park was known as Panorama Heights, a place where German immigrants held vineyards prior to the parks development. Nela Park was designed by New York landscape architect Frank E. Wallis in a Georgian style. The finished product was the first ever industrial park, costing roughly $400,000 in 1913. The actual move from the old Brush Electric Co. factory on East 45th Street to Nela Park on Noble Road took nineteen hours to complete on April 18, 1913.

The "park" was developed with the acquisition of 44 land parcels between 1911 and 1925, as well as a few more in the 1930s and ’50s. Ultimately, its 71-acre campus stretched between Noble and Belvoir Roads in East Cleveland and reached into Cleveland Heights to the east for a few blocks. Construction of eleven buildings by 1915 provided facilities for engineering, manufacturing, administration, maintenance, utilities, operations, and lamp laboratories. Eight more facilities were added by 1930, and four more in the 1950s brought Nela’s campus to its present status as a comprehensive lighting development center. Throughout this period, the Nela “camp” was developed on the campus grounds to house recreational, assembly, event, and dining facilities. Its annual holiday light display started in 1924.

The business park also contained several features to appease employees including a decent cafeteria, general library, a dispensary that provided dental, nursing, and medical care, a barber shop, transportation office, ample garage parking, and a local bank branch. Nela Park also provided a range of recreational facilities such as tennis courts, baseball fields, an in-ground swimming pool, bowling alleys, and even an auditorium. Due to its reputation as a leading innovator in electrical lighting research and development, and university campus environment, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that Nela Park developed a reputation as a "University of Light."

A century after Nela Park was built, a centenarian time capsule was unearthed. Originally sealed and buried on March 25, 1912 in front of a crowd of high-ranking employees, the capsule was concealed within a cornerstone of Marketing Building #307 for 100 years to the day before its exhumation in 2012. The capsule contained a newspaper, photos, and most notably several incandescent light bulbs, which in 1912 were a state of the art development. To the delight of the hundreds of current and former employees who witnessed the opening of the time capsule, one of the bulbs was placed on display and successfully produced light despite being stowed away for an entire century. The President and CEO of GE Lighting took the opportunity to point out how appropriate it was that such a lamp still functioned, citing that GE's Nela Park was responsible for the development of quality, energy-efficient lighting products that benefited countless individuals and organizations. Another time capsule was ceremonially buried in 2013 at Nela Park. Among its contents was a GE Energy Smart 60-watt replacement LED bulb with a 22-year service life when operated three hours a day.

By the latter half of the 2010s, General Electric Corporation was undergoing reorganization of its business model and priorities to include the divestiture of the lighting business. In 2020, Savant Systems Inc., of Massachusetts, acquired GE Lighting from General Electric, preserving its name and keeping maintaining its century-long lighting operations intact. Two years later, GE Lighting sold Nela Park to Milwaukee-based Phoenix Investors, with plans to consolidate its operations in one building and attract other tenants to the remainder of the Georgian-style campus.

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Clevelanders of a certain age remember Euclid Avenue as a home for Cleveland’s department stores, but these stores were not always on Euclid Avenue. In the 1830s, most dry goods merchants conducted business east of the Flats on River Road in their warehouses, which functioned as storage spaces, showrooms, and offices. In the 1840s, the warehouse district expanded pushing retailers out to Superior along Ontario, Water (W. 9th), Seneca (W. 3rd), and Bank (W. 6th). Along Superior and its side streets, merchants constructed a commercial block specifically for retailers. Retailers were looking for inexpensive quarters to rent either in new office building’s ground floors or basements.

By the 1860s and 1870s, industrial enterprises displaced businesses that operated warehouses, pushing the wholesale district into areas that were currently retailer occupied. Rising rents and a lack of room to expand induced many retailers to seek new locations, leading to the emergence of new retail outlets on Euclid Avenue by the late 1870s. When the streetcar lines were built around Public Square in the 1880s, Euclid Avenue stores became even more popular. Massive, multi-level stores (consisting of various "departments") began to appear on lower Euclid Avenue around the turn of the twentieth century.

At the peak of Cleveland department stores’ popularity, Euclid Avenue was ranked among the largest retail districts in the United States and was compared to New York's stylish Fifth Avenue. Many popular downtown department stores lined Euclid Avenue and the south side of Public Square in the early to mid-1900s: Higbee’s, May Company, William Taylor Son & Company (later Taylor’s Department Store), Sterling-Lindner-Davis, and Halle’s. Heralded for their fanciful window displays and holiday traditions like Halle's "Mr. Jingeling" and Sterling-Lindner-Davis's magnificent 50-foot-high Christmas tree, the stores drew thousands of shoppers downtown. The development of Playhouse Square in the 1920s added to the crowds and excitement along that stretch of Euclid Avenue. A trip on the streetcar down to Cleveland’s department stores was for many Clevelanders an occasion that called for dressing up.

After World War II, however, the growth of suburbs and shopping malls started to draw business away from downtown and Euclid Avenue. Clevelanders who moved to the suburbs could now patronize stores near their homes without the need to travel downtown and customer loyalty to stores became a thing of the past. By the 1960s, the downtown department stores started closing, first Taylor’s in 1961 and then Sterling-Lindner-Davis in 1968. Downtown department stores tried to hold on by opening their own suburban branches, but by the turn of the twenty-first century most of these local companies had been bought out by national chains, with their flagship downtown locations converted to other uses. The last of the giants, Higbee's, was purchased in 1992 by Arkansas-based Dillard's and closed its Tower City store in 2002.

Although many downtown department stores are gone, they are certainly not forgotten. One notable department store, Higbee's, gained national recognition when it appeared in a scene of the classic holiday film A Christmas Story. Many building also still bear architectural fixtures that act as a nod to their department store pasts. If you look closely, you can still glimpse reminders of Cleveland's grand department stores in the soaring terra-cotta facade of the Halle Building, the clock on top of the May Company, or the bronze deco Higbee's plaques that adorn its old home on Public Square. Better yet, ask almost any Clevelander past a certain age about shopping on Euclid Avenue, and listen closely while they fondly recall childhood trips downtown.

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