In the depths of the Great Depression when urban housing conditions were desperate, Ernest J. Bohn, then in his early thirties, emerged as a champion of housing reform. Bohn, who had come to Cleveland from Hungary with his parents in 1911, was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives just as the stock market collapsed. Dismayed by the effects of poverty and substandard housing on urban social problems and impelled by his deep Catholic faith, Bohn resolved to bring change. By 1933, as a city councilman, he had written and shepherded to passage the first state public housing enabling legislation in the United States, resulting in the formation of the Cleveland (later Cuyahoga) Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA). He drew attention to the plight of the poor by supporting Father Robert B. Navin’s study of Cleveland’s Cedar-Central neighborhood, “The Analysis of a Slum Area in Cleveland,” which exposed the cost to the city of allowing such conditions and became influential in shaping national public housing policy. One of the fruits of his labor was Cedar-Central Apartments, one of the three earliest public housing projects in Cleveland to garner federal funding, and among the first nationwide.
The conditions that led to Cedar-Central Apartments as a first step toward remediating the conditions that Fr. Navins’s study exposed were a product of rampant urban growth and social inequality. Cleveland’s population had doubled to nearly 800,000 in the first twenty years of the 20th century. This increased the housing inequities in the city, with many people being forced to take residence in substandard housing that was technically unfit for human habitation. Nowhere were conditions worse than in Cedar-Central. Cleveland’s answer was to launch a landmark project. As Bohn put it, Cleveland would serve as the U.S.'s “housing laboratory.”
In 1933, the New Deal set aside $150 million for government subsidized housing. Thanks to Bohn’s efforts, the CMHA built the Cedar-Central Apartments on eighteen acres between East 22nd to East 30th streets over a two-year period. The new Cedar-Central apartments would be built after some 200 slum dwellings were razed for the new project. The complex was completed in 1937 at a cost of $10 million, and the apartments reflected that investment. The project opened up some 650 apartments for occupants to vie for. Each unit had a refrigerator, a gas range and steam heat. The complex also housed two playgrounds for children, and featured manicured lawns. The apartments themselves had ceramic tile and chrome fixtures, and they boasted the possibility of a cross breeze.
The reception for what became a massive and decades-long project was mixed and the outcome was much the same. While offering temporary relief to Clevelanders, the Cedar-Central Apartments housing project ultimately cemented a divide in access to and perception of public housing depending on race. Not yet a year into the public housing project, citizen action groups and newspapers were demanding justice for the racial segregation at the coveted Cedar-Central Apartments. Only eight Black families were selected for Cedar-Central versus 650 white families. Many Black families waited months without hearing of their selection or rejection, and when they went to make inquiries about status, it was either said the decision was still in process or that they should consider another of Cleveland’s housing projects, Outhwaite.
At the start, Cleveland offered a lifeline to some low-income families that most needed it in the form of affordable and comfortable housing. But by the start of the 1970s, the slum conditions that public housing was supposed to be ridding America of were now plaguing it, thereby worsening or perpetuating cycles of poverty and poor standards of living. Amid the drying up of federal funding in the Nixon years, new proposed housing projects were put on hold in 1973 and the government instead transitioned to using rent vouchers for low-income families. Those rent vouchers are commonly known today by the name of “Section 8.” Many of those buildings, seen as positive living opportunities in 1973, are still in use today in urban centers and suburbs, including in the City of Cleveland and the Cedar-Central Apartments.
Litigation over the Cedar-Central apartments continued. In 1972, a ruling originally brought forward by the NAACP and the ACLU and Legal Aid Society on behalf of “Negro and non-white tenants” that were denied equal opportunity for public housing in newer and integrated sites within and around Cleveland showcased the gap within Cleveland itself—the east side being predominantly Black and having limited job opportunity and the west side, which was largely white, having easier access to suburbs and jobs. Litigation over where the CMHA was allowed to have buildings continued. In 1982 a landmark ruling over where the CMHA was allowed to put public housing made integrating public housing into the community nearly impossible. Due to the conservative government at the time, funding for HUD and public housing was cut at the federal level, and little was done toward promoting integration of old and new housing, or of the ethnic/racial divide of its tenants.
The future of public housing is a far cry from its first iterations. The social and political climate today is inconducive for creating public housing projects as the carefully and thoughtfully designed spaces they were in the 1930s. When Cleveland built its first housing projects, they were located in neighborhoods that afforded people the opportunity to go easily to work and near opportunity-rich areas. This phenomenon is one possible explanation for the fallen glory for the Cedar-Central apartments and other housing projects in Cleveland. With limited economic opportunities in the city, it can be difficult to position the housing in places that foster economic prosperity for its residents, and ergo, economic growth for Cleveland.
]]>Urban renewal in Cleveland functioned as a tool to improve neighborhoods, thus invigorating the city. In tandem with the goal of strengthening neighborhoods, industrial renewal projects were also a focus for Cleveland officials. Among the most prominent urban renewal projects in Cleveland that focused on revitalizing a space for industrial growth was Gladstone (Area O), which was often called "the worst slum" in Cleveland.
Influenced by early projects in Pittsburgh that were funded through local public-private cooperation, Gladstone was originally intended to be done entirely through private investment with participation with local business and industry. In accordance with the General Plan for Cleveland of 1949, the area was to be redeveloped for full industrial use, particularly for food distribution. Among the biggest food distributors in Gladstone was the Northern Ohio Food Terminal, which accounted for nearly $200 million annually in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The project was intended to provide space for industrial relocation to keep industries from moving outside of Cleveland by making land available and cheap in the central core of the city.
Gladstone covered about 97.4 acres and had an irregular border that was situated between Woodland Avenue to the north and the Nickel Plate and New York Central railroad tracks to the south. Its borders on the west and east extended from East 37th Street to East 55th Street. The area was approved as an urban renewal project in April of 1957. At the onset of the project, around 20 percent of the land served residential uses, while the other 80 percent was occupied for industrial purposes. The two largest industries in the area were food packing and distribution, and scrap metal businesses were scattered along the edges of the project.
The City Planning Commission found that about 79 percent of residential and about 26 percent of industrial structures were dilapidated and unfit for use. They also found that virtually no public recreation space existed in the project area.
Gladstone, however, quickly encountered problems as the project developed. Among the biggest problems was the cost. Gladstone was more expensive than originally anticipated, which made it difficult to find businesses that were willing to pay the extra cost for land. The city of Cleveland was selling land in Gladstone at about $3.00 per square foot to cover the cost of obtaining and clearing the land. Industry at this time, the 1950s and 1960s, usually did not spend more than $1.75 per square foot of land.
There were also claims that the City Planning Commission intentionally condemned properties and labeled them as dilapidated and unsafe in order to drive down property values. This, in theory, would have allowed the city to buy the condemned land at a cheaper cost in which they could then sell back to industries interested in building or expanding in Gladstone. A more accurate survey by Housing Commissioner Robert Greenhalgh in 1960 found that only about 10 percent of the structures were in such a dilapidated condition that they had to be torn down.
The cost of land in Gladstone brought private investment to a standstill. Because industry was not willing to pay the prices the city needed in order to not lose money on the project, Urban Renewal Director James M. Lister and Mayor Celebrezze had to seek federal aid in 1963 to ensure the project would move forward.
Even with federal aid for urban renewal, the project took a long time to get underway. By 1966, the Plain Dealer noted that only about three acres of land were sold by the city. By 1968, ten parcels of land in the area still needed to be acquired by the city. The lack of industrial interest in Gladstone demonstrates that, even with federal price reductions through urban renewal aid money, land in the suburbs was cheaper.
The City of Cleveland was also required to help relocate families for the duration of the urban renewal project. The Plain Dealer also noted in 1966 that of the 700 families that were living in Gladstone at the beginning of the project, roughly 300 were still living in the area. To make matters worse, about 70 percent of the families that were relocated were either unaccounted for or moved to substandard housing somewhere else in the city.
As the project stagnated into the late 1960s, the area became little more than a dumping ground for other urban renewal projects in the city of Cleveland. The large trash heaps that accumulated in Gladstone were often burned, which in a few cases spread to nearby abandoned buildings. Some businesses in the area even noted that the trash fires caused their insurance rates to increase, which unfortunately only further deterred new investment in Gladstone.
Although the Northern Ohio Food Terminal did retain its facilities in Gladstone, other companies and industries were not attracted to the area with the fervor that was anticipated. Stouffer Foods Corp., a new postal service office, and a new terminal for the Railway Express Agency all chose to move or build outside of Gladstone for the same reasons; it was cheaper to buy land and build in the suburbs, and the city of Cleveland was taking too long to actually have land ready for sale.
Some businesses and industries did build in Gladstone, though too many years after the start of the project to justify all the problems it created. The federal government put a freeze on funding for Cleveland urban renewal projects because of concerns of mismanagement. It was not until Mayor Carl Stokes took office in 1967 that projects, including Gladstone, started showing improvement. Gladstone, however, never quite realized its full potential and became little more than an example of what could go wrong with urban renewal.
In 1990, a local non-profit called Maingate Business Development Corporation was created to work at reversing the negative impact the Gladstone project had on the area. Maingate actively works at regaining the confidence of corporations and businesses in the area and forty new companies have chosen to have a location in the Maingate area. Although the effects of Gladstone are being reversed by Maingate, work is still being done to fully realize the potential city officials believed the area had in the 1950s and 1960s.
]]>The Ludlow neighborhood straddles the Cleveland/Shaker Heights boundary and, through an arrangement with the Cleveland School Board in 1912, became part of Shaker Heights School District. Although Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen's garden suburb of Shaker Heights used restrictive covenants to practice social exclusion, soon after the mid-20th century a number of African Americans began to move into Ludlow by purchasing delinquent Van Sweringen lots. John and Dorothy Pegg were not the first to purchase lots, but their property did become the focus of an attack by white neighbors on January 3, 1956, when a bomb destroyed their garage and blew a hole in their dining room wall. The Peggs banked at the Cleveland Trust, which refused to give them a mortgage at a time when African Americans found it incredibly difficult to secure the means to afford home ownership, but the Peggs were able to secure a mortgage from the black-owned Dunbar Life Insurance Company.
The roots of Dunbar Life Insurance lay in the business success of Herbert S. Chauncey, a prominent African American lawyer who attracted many of his friends to his idea of creating a savings and loan company. With the help of his friends, Chauncey was able to secure a state charter and opened the Empire Savings and Loan Company in 1919. Empire SLC was first located in the offices of 2316 East 55th Street and became the first banking venture in the black community. Before World War I, many black-owned businesses found it difficult to acquire a strong economic base among their own race, but the modest success allowed Chauncey to open another branch.
Empire began operating at a time when the ghetto in Cleveland was forming and a large migration of blacks from the southern states were pouring into the city. The 1910 African American population of 8,448 soared to 34,451 ten years later. By 1930, the population nearly doubled to 72,000. The Depression hit Empire SLC hard, and in January 1935 the firm had to file for bankruptcy. All of the money loaned out by Empire was on black homes. During the Depression, African Americans were hit the hardest, but many black homeowners were able to keep up payments in whole or in part to keep from defaulting.
Chauncey was one of the first who began helping blacks gain homes with mortgages and loans, but ultimately it was Melchisedech Clarence (M.C.) Clarke who further helped blacks in insurance matters. As the state insurance examiner in 1935, Clarke was assigned to investigate the fraternal insurance societies in Cleveland, including two that were founded by Chauncey. While investigating four Cleveland insurance companies, Clarke realized that these companies should be consolidated to reduce expenses and protect policy holders. This merger became known as the Dunbar Mutual Insurance Society, which combined the assets of those fraternal societies and reinsured their policy holders. Clarke became operating head of the organization and resigned from his position as state examiner.
Dunbar Mutual expanded in 1943 after Clarke convinced his associates at the company that providing home loans would give stockholders a larger profit on their investments as opposed to investing in government and municipal bonds. Dunbar Life Insurance Company became licensed as insurance company on April 11, 1945. Clarke had anticipated that the Midwest would continue to see industrial and economic growth after World War II and that this was the “most opportune time” to launch the company.
Clarke expressed a desire to help the housing crisis for blacks by “relieving much of the congestion in our urban cities.” During World War II, another migration brought Cleveland’s black population to 147,847 by 1950, and many of the original migrants who occupied the area west of East 55th Street began to move eastward from the original settlement, primarily into an area bounded on the east by East 105th Street, on the north by Euclid Avenue and Woodward Avenue on the south. A growing number also gravitated toward Glenville, which had been a largely Jewish neighborhood for a generation. In 1940 the African American population in Glenville was just 899, but by the end of the decade, the population increased to 22,060, or 24 percent of the total population. In the same years, the Jewish population decreased from 27,000 to 15,000 as many Jews moved to Cleveland Heights and other eastern suburbs. Black population influx was located almost entirely in western Glenville on the streets off East 105th Street just south of St. Clair Avenue, and by 1960 this area of Glenville was 90 percent black.
In 1948 Dunbar Life had invested more than $300,000 in first mortgage loans to more than 100 black families. By the end of 1950, Dunbar Life had over $7 million in total insurance force and a capital surplus of $198,760. This success had allowed Dunbar Life to open a new branch office in the Glenville area on January 3, 1952, where hundreds of the company’s policyholders resided. Dunbar Life passed the $1 million mark in total assets in 1952 and held over half their assets invested in first mortgage loans on black property valued at $578,195.24.
The year 1952 also saw Clarke and his Dunbar investors purchase the outstanding stock of Quincy Savings and Loan Company. Quincy became approved for FHA mortgage loans under provisions of the National Housing Act in 1954. Before this approval, Dunbar Life was the only black-operated financial institution making FHA insured loans to the African American community. With the approval of Quincy, this increased the capital available to blacks in Cleveland to purchase homes.
In 1956, at the age of 66, M. C. Clarke died at the Cleveland Clinic. Clarke would not live to see Dunbar Life merge with the third largest black insurance company in the country, Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company of Chicago, in 1958. The combined life insurance in force would total more than $140 million and combined assets exceeding $22 million. Quincy Savings and Loan would see incredible financial success as well. The company’s assets grew to more than $11 million by 1979. That year two Cleveland businessmen bought controlling interest of Quincy Savings and Loan and renamed it Cleveland Community Savings Company. By 1982, the company had liabilities that exceeded their assets, and in the following year Cleveland Community Savings was closed by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation.
]]>Beginning in 1955, Longwood (Area B) was the first urban renewal project in accordance with the General Plan for Cleveland of 1949. The small, yet densely populated, neighborhood of about 56 acres was bordered by Scovill and Woodland Avenues to the north and south; and by East 33rd and East 40th Streets to the west and east. The project served as a model for subsequent urban renewal projects in Cleveland, though not always a positive one. Opposition and criticism to the project was visible since the beginning and would continue through the following years. Roadell Hickman stated in a Plain Dealer editorial in 1987, “Longwood became Cleveland’s Cabrini-Green, the notorious Chicago public-housing project. Both began with a vision to save a neighborhood but became a symbol of what was destroying it.” Longwood and Cabrini-Green did have some differences, however. The Cabrini-Green project in Chicago was intended to be public housing, whereas Longwood was not intended to be public housing, but rather low-cost housing.
The General Plan for Cleveland was formed as a flexible blueprint for city growth up until the 1980s. Longwood (Area B), among the other urban renewal projects in Cleveland, was a response to growing blight and decay in inner city neighborhoods. The city government of Cleveland was proactive about maintaining and developing its inner city since the beginning of the 20th century. A city planning commission was established in 1915, and in 1933 Cleveland established the Metropolitan Housing Authority. Local businesses and corporations also took action and formed the Cleveland Development Foundation in 1954 with a revolving fund of $2 million to invest in urban renewal. Businesses and corporations in Cleveland believed that by creating a better inner city in close proximity to jobs, they could attract middle class workers that relocated to the suburbs.
In 1955, the Longwood neighborhood had a total of 295 dilapidated buildings that housed around 1,500 families. The project called for the total clearance of the area, with the exception of a few churches and city buildings. The area consisted of five privately owned developers and called for the construction of 836 new dwellings throughout the neighborhood, as well as shopping centers and an improved street plan. Various city agencies touted the project as an almost immediate success story through multiple newspaper articles and city publications. The land was acquired, leveled, and rebuilt relatively quickly and new residents were moving in as early as 1958. Any small success of the project was covered in the local newspapers to paint a clear picture that Longwood was right on track to become the model that the city government hoped it would be.
Despite the proclaimed success of the project by city publications, problems and critics were prevalent and visible from the beginning. Critics claimed that the project was far too expensive and was taking too much time to fully complete with the quality that was initially envisioned. The project, as well as most urban renewal projects, also disproportionally affected African Americans, which caused many residents to speak out against it. According to Renewing Inequality, of the 1,100 people displaced by the project by 1961, 99% of them were people of color. Tenants also consistently made claims of mismanagement, pest problems, and poorly built structures. According to Residents also had to be relocated for the duration of the construction of the project and some found themselves in a worse situation than they were before having to move out of Longwood. Tenants also picketed and protested their grievances several times, with the first tenant strike occurring in 1958. Tenants in a small section of Longwood (Area B) called Longwood Village organized a strike with grievances that included high rents and rent increases, racial discrimination, rats, and property mismanagement. The primary cause for the strike, being rent prices, was never resolved on account of rents being set and controlled by the Federal Housing Administration. Everyone involved, however, did agree that the rents were too high to be considered low cost housing. The rent strikes reveal a major concern with urban renewal that civic and business leaders did not foresee. Longwood was still surrounded by other slums and dilapidated neighborhoods and the new housing was not affordable. Middle-class suburbanites did not want to move into the inner city and the inner-city community could not afford the new housing. Eugene Segal, a reporter for the Plain Dealer, stated, “If one group can’t afford the new housing and the other won’t have it, whom are we building for?”
The housing developments in Longwood (Area B) changed ownership multiple times over the decades following the project. Excessive vacancies in the housing developments caused the owners to default on their mortgage payments in 1963. To stop them from foreclosing, the Cleveland Development Foundation set up a subsidiary called the Longwood Housing Association to take advantage of a new Federal Housing Administration amendment and get a loan. The loan paid off banks and money lenders first, then a portion of it was used to pay developers to help recoup their losses, and what was left was paid to the city of Cleveland which was only about half of what the Cleveland Development Foundation initially paid in advance to the builders of the project.
The grand ambitions of the Longwood (Area B) project were unfortunately never realized. Financial, management, and vacancy problems continued to plague the neighborhood into the 1990s. A new type of subsidized housing was built in the early 2000s, which replaced Longwood Apartments. The new housing development was named Arbor Park Village and was intended to include educational classes, recreational activities, and resources to help people find better jobs. Though flaws persisted in Longwood (Area B) in the decades following the project, perhaps Arbor Park Village can fulfill some the original promises that were made.
]]>Shiny windows, clean floors and new furniture. All are part of a new office and a new opportunity. This is what African American entrepreneur Isaac Haggins imagined for his realty business. Haggins, whose new office in Cleveland Heights in 1968 became the first black-owned realty office in any Cleveland suburb, sold homes in the Cleveland area to both African Americans and whites at a time when Realtors refused to do so. By 1960 and through the 1970s, Cleveland Heights endured a tumultuous housing and real estate environment. African Americans were moving into suburbs where the population was overwhelmingly white. This movement unreasonably scared some whites into committing criminal acts against them.
Haggins began his real estate business in 1961 in order to fulfill his dream of selling good homes to any person no matter what race. He had two offices located at 10215 St. Clair Avenue and 12534 Union Avenue on Cleveland's east side. After having many successful years in both locations, Haggins opened his third office in December 1968 in Cleveland Heights at 2221 North Taylor Road. The office space was sold to him by an Italian man who warned that he could not guarantee his safety. While violence was not an everyday occurrence in Cleveland Heights, it was a possibility. Haggins did not think much about the warning and opened the office with much fanfare. He hosted an open house in December 1968 to celebrate the opening of the office. The party was attended by many city officials, local citizens and community leaders.
Unfortunately, the celebration was short lived. In February 1969, Haggins office in Cleveland Heights was bombed as an act of racial violence. The bomb damaged the interior of the office and cost $10,000-$12,000 to repair. A positive message that resulted from the disaster was that the community banded together. Haggins received many sympathy calls and letters stating support for him and his company and hope for justice. The Cleveland Real Estate Brokers Association even posted a $500 reward for any information that could produce a suspect. The bombing served as another wake-up call to politicians and citizens that a real problem was on their doorstep.
The culprits were never captured but Haggins Realty bounced back. Only four months later, Haggins hired seven new staffers out of the 165 who applied. According to the Call & Post, the new employees were attracted to Haggins Realty due to the amount of sympathy around the entire city after the Taylor Road office bombing. However, the rest of Haggins's career was not always full of praise and support. He was accused of using blockbusting techniques in his realty practice, a charge he steadfastly denied. Despite the devastation of the bombing and through the outpouring of support and the accusations of blockbusting, the Haggins Realty firm continued to be successful. By October 1971, Haggins Realty reached over $1 million in sales just for that month alone. Haggins Realty continued its success for many more years to come.
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