Brothers Martin and Michael Stumpf opened Cleveland’s first known brewery on Hamilton Street between Muirson (East 12th) and Canfield, just south of Lakeside Avenue. The proximity to rail service and ice from the winter lake made the area an ideal site for a brewery to supply local saloons (before bottled beer, local commercial distribution was the standard method of the times). During the next 15 years, the brothers split as partners but each continued brewing independently in the same near-east Hamilton Street neighborhood.

In 1859, Michael Stumpf sold his operation to the newly-organized Lyon Brewery, formed by Paul Kindsvater, a popular local saloonkeeper, and brewmaster Jacob Mall. By this time, Cleveland’s brewing industry was thriving. Like most breweries in the city, Lyon was operated by a German brewmaster. They produced the lagers preferred by Cleveland’s large Eastern European ethnic communities, replacing earlier common ales. The business and facility expanded rapidly and thrived into the 1890s as Mall’s leadership role was passed to his son-in-law. In 1896, in pursuit of greater production capacity, a new larger plant was built on Davenport Street.  In the mid-1800s, Davenport Street connected Canfield Street (East 14th) with Briggs Street (East 22nd) along the edge of the downtown bluff— about 70 feet above the rail tracks along the Lake Erie shore. While local competition was fierce, growing demand generally meant there was enough business to go around. However, a new challenge was emerging as consolidated national brewers threatened local brewers’ market shares.

Meanwhile, George F. Gund (b. 1855) grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he later worked as a banker and with his father in the John Gund Brewing Company. George Gund relocated to Seattle in 1890, bought a local brewery, and expanded it. In 1897, he moved to Cleveland and purchased and renamed Jacob Mall’s Lyon Brewery to The Gund Brewing Company. Amidst all the competition, Gund refocused his business model on the individual consumer and away from the traditional saloon distribution. He built a bottling plant, upgraded working conditions and methods, and packaged three-bottle cardboard cartons in lots of eight to distribute to homes near and far. Gund’s Crystal Lager satisfied thirsty Clevelanders. The brewery continued to thrive into the 20th century under George F. Gund’s leadership while he cultivated other business interests in beverages, banking, mining, insurance, and real estate. Gund died in 1916, leaving his chair to his son, George F. Gund II.

George F. Gund II arrived in Cleveland from Seattle having finished Harvard Business School and a banking position. He personalized his arrival with Gund’s "Clevelander" beer, which sold for the next few years. In early 1919, Ohio enacted statewide prohibition rules and Gund ceased brewing beer and transferred his reserve inventory to the Pilsner Brewing Company of Cleveland to exhaust the inventory of Gund beer. During Prohibition, the Gund family refocused business away from brewing towards real estate management, banking, and various other business endeavors including decaffeinated coffee, later sold to the Kellogg Corporation and re-branded as Sanka. In the process, George F. Gund II became one of Cleveland’s foremost bankers as Chairman of the Cleveland Trust Company. His sons maintained the family’s Cleveland presence with philanthropic efforts (The Gund Foundation) and professional sports interests for the next century.

Gund Realty continued to own the Davenport property throughout the Prohibition years. The pre- and post-Prohibition eras also saw constant tensions within the industry between large national brewing conglomerates and smaller local operations in cities throughout the country. With the repeal of Prohibition came a rebirth of the local brewing industry. Gund Realty leased the Davenport facility to the Sunset (later Sunrise) Brewing Company. The new managers renovated and resumed the reliance upon bottled and canned beer with emphasis as a shipping brewer. More federal legal challenges forced another ownership change and product evolution. Sunrise emerged with its premier brand Tip Top Beer by the end of the decade. In 1939, Sunrise Brewing, still operating at the Davenport facility, was renamed Tip Top Brewing Company. More controversy ensued into the first half of the 1940s with rumors of the company’s connection to organized crime. By utilizing wartime rationing regulation loopholes, Tip Top Brewery added hard liquor sales to their beer business to gain market advantages in Cleveland saloons.

In 1944, Tip Top Brewing was sold to the Brewing Corporation of America (Carling Beer) and brewing operations ceased on Davenport Avenue. The building continued to be utilized as a beer and beverage warehousing and distributing facility for the next few decades. From the mid-1970s to the 2010s, the City of Cleveland and the Pennsylvania Railroad, along with several local banking and mortgage agencies and developers carried out property transfers, demolitions, and rezoning initiatives of the Davenport and neighboring properties as urban planning and development transformed the district.

The Davenport Avenue roadway was removed between East 14th and 16th Streets. The area once defined by Stumpf, Lyon, Gund, Sunrise, and finally Tip Top brewing operations is now occupied by Cleveland’s WKYC television studios and the Cleveland FBI headquarters building. The location that played a part in more than a century of the brewing industry’s evolution from a local to a global scale also marked the long arc of Gund family's business and family fortunes, which still resonate in Cleveland today.

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In Benjamin S. Cogswell's 1908 obituary, the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted that, following his election in 1875 as Cuyahoga County Clerk of Courts, his wife "began one of the most vigorous liquor campaigns ever seen in this county. It resulted in the indictment of nearly 1,000 saloon keepers. Cogswell dropped out of politics at the end of his term." These few sentences say little about Benjamin Cogswell and more about his wife, Helen Marion Cogswell, the founder of Cogswell Hall and an early era activist in the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the national organization founded in Cleveland in 1874 to promote sobriety and to lobby for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States.

After her husband retired from politics in 1878, Helen Cogswell shifted her work at the WCTU into a different arena. She became a member of the Committee on Prison and Jail Visitation. She visited jails all over Cuyahoga County, speaking to incarcerated women, listening to their stories and providing them with moral encouragement. And she advocated that the WCTU establish a home for these "friendless" women so that, upon their release from jail, they could have a chance to become useful members of society. In 1892, acting on Cogswell's recommendations, the WCTU created the first "Training Home for Friendless Girls" in a rented space at Forest Avenue (East 37th Street) and Scovill Avenue (Community College Drive). While the home initially focused on the rehabilitation of young women already in jail, by 1897 it began engaging in more preventive action--providing a home and training that would keep young women without friends or family out of jail.

In 1899, the Training Home for Friendless Girls moved to the west side of Cleveland and into a large house at the corner of Duane Avenue (West 32nd Street) and Franklin Boulevard, after an anonymous donor purchased the house and donated it to the WCTU. The Training Home remained at this location until 1914 when the present larger house at 7200 Franklin Boulevard was built. It is three stories tall, has a brick facade and is English gothic style. The architect of the new house, which has 22 single rooms for residents, was Charles Hopkinson, who designed a number of buildings on Franklin Boulevard, including the Franklin Circle Masonic Temple. Helen Cogswell, who had founded the Home for Friendless Girls in 1892, lived long enough to see the home move into and thrive at its new location. She died four years later In 1918, at the age of 85.

Over the decades that followed, the names and residential policies of the Training Home changed as urban life in Cleveland threw different challenges at young women and others at risk in the community. In 1952, the house was renamed Cogswell Hall to honor its founder. In the same year, it became primarily a short-term residence for young women attending nearby trade or business schools, or working at low income jobs. Then, in the early 1970s, Cogswell Hall shifted its focus, and opened its doors to low-income elderly women, whom it determined were now the members of the community with the greatest need for affordable housing. In the 1990s, there was another change when Cogswell Hall began providing housing to single adult women of all ages. Two decades later, in 2009, when a new addition was added to the original house and separate men and women bathroom facilities installed, federal Fair Housing laws became applicable to Cogswell Hall and it began renting rooms to men for the first time in its history.

A Monument where Girls Cease to be Friendless. That's what the Plain Dealer called the Training Home for Friendless Girls in an article published on March 10, 1918, just a little over a month following the death of founder Helen Marion Cogswell. Nearly 100 years have now have passed since her death. Over those years, Cogswell Hall has evolved into a monument not only to the good work which she did, but also to the work which her successors have done and continue to do to this day, providing affordable housing to both men and women in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood.

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The address 14013 Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio, was the site of much debate in the early 1950s. A group of activists, including C.H. Webster from the Museum of History, Dr. Bruno Gebhard, the Director of the Cleveland Health Museum, and Margaret Manor Butler, local writer and historian, was attempting to save the address from becoming a grocery store. The home at the site was part of a farm known as Whippoorwill and was originally built of stone in 1839 for Dr. Jared Potter Kirtland and his family. Later, the Kirtland home was extensively remodeled and became a part of an estate and farm that Dr. Kirtland used for his botanical studies. In the 1950s, the Kirtland home belonged to Mrs. H.E. Williard. She intended to sell the property to the Kroger's Grocery chain, and if she succeeded the home and other farm buildings would be torn down. Many citizens of the area, with the support of the Cleveland Press, wanted to preserve the farm and create a museum to honor Dr. Kirtland.

Jared Potter Kirtland was a physician, naturalist, botanist, teacher and philanthropist. He moved from Poland, Ohio, to Rockport Township (which would later become part of Lakewood) later in life to become the Chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Cleveland Medical College. He published papers in medical journals and conducted the first geologic survey of Ohio. He was a staunch abolitionist who had been active in the cause of assisting escaped slaves in Poland. He also served as a doctor during the Civil War, performing physicals for the Ohio Volunteer Infantry for no pay. Kirtland was also a co-founder of Western Reserve University's Medical School and his personal collection became the foundation for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. At the 40th anniversary of the Natural History Museum a new hall was debuted in his honor.

Kirtland studied and taught medicine, keeping records of his observations in nature. He was a botanist and horticulturist whose eminence led to the naming of a bird - the Kirtland Warbler. His Rockport home, Whippoorwill, began to be constructed in 1839. The gardens he kept at Whippoorwill were legendary and many scientists, naturalists, and even celebrities traveled to view them. Dr. Kirtland developed twenty-six varieties of cherry trees and six varieties of pears. Lakewood became an area with many orchards, vineyards and other crops that could be sold at market. Kirtland assisted growers with his knowledge of vegetation and helped his neighbors with their plants.

One of Kirtland's many contributions to the Cleveland area was cleaner water. He pushed for the creation of better water treatment facilities to the city. During his studies of the Mahoning River contamination, the doctor became convinced that clean water was necessary for the sake of public health. He went on to serve on a committee that fought to secure safe drinking water for Cleveland. The discoveries he made regarding a type of freshwater mollusk during this time were published in a Science journal in 1834.

Despite all his contributions to Lakewood and Cleveland, the team seeking to preserve Whippoorwill did not succeed. Re-zoning was granted and the sale went through. Kroger built their store which became a Finast supermarket. When Finast became Giant Eagle the store moved across the street. The old supermarket building was eventually demolished, making way for a gas station. Although no physical remnant stands to remind Clevelanders of his accomplishments, Kirtland's contributions to the study of nature and science endure. Kirtland is remembered by some, and a few of his possessions have been saved by the Lakewood Historical Society.

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