— Jay B. Goodman, Treasurer of the S. H. Kleinman Realty Company (Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 31, 1926).

S.H. Kleinman Realty Treasurer Jay B. Goodman was not engaging in mere hyperbole when he stated that Carnegie Avenue was fast becoming Cleveland’s Fifth Avenue. In the decade of the 1920s, Carnegie Avenue was the place to be. Stretching eastward for more than three miles from East 22nd Street to Stearns Road in University Circle, it was, according to a 1928 article in the Plain Dealer, where 120 new commercial buildings had been erected in the previous four years and to where more than 129 companies had moved. Walker and Weeks, Cleveland’s premier architectural firm in the first half of the twentieth century, was one of them. In 1926, it moved its offices to a five-story building that it had designed at 2341-2351 Carnegie. In that same year, Howell and Thomas, the architects who built many glamorous Shaker Heights homes, designed and erected an office building for their firm at 3868 Carnegie. When Chicago-based Sears-Roebuck decided to expand to Cleveland in 1928, it selected a location at 8501 Carnegie Avenue for its regional offices and first store here. Dealerships for many of America’s most luxurious automobiles located on the Avenue during the decade, including Lincoln, Hudson, Pierce-Arrow, and Packard. And in 1923, the plush eight-story Bolton Square Apartment Hotel opened on the southeast corner of East 89th Street and Carnegie. And this is literally to name just a few of the many businesses that sought and found an upscale address on prestigious Carnegie Avenue in that decade.

The story of Carnegie Avenue begins in the 1890s during the City Beautiful movement. In the second half of that decade, when Chestnut Street (the original name of Chester Avenue) was first being considered as the northern thoroughfare to Cleveland’s new east side parks, planners eyed two residential streets located south of Euclid Avenue that were worthy candidates to form a future southern thoroughfare to those parks. Sibley Street had been opened between Perry (East 22nd) Street and Willson Avenue (East 55th Street) in the 1850s. East Prospect Street followed two decades later and, by 1874, stretched eastward from Willson Avenue to Bolton Avenue (East 89th Street). East Prospect’s western terminus at Willson Avenue was located only thirty feet south of Sibley’s eastern terminus, causing many Clevelanders to consider it little more than an extension of Sibley.

Before the two streets were reimagined by early planners as a thoroughfare, however, each was the center of a vibrant east side residential neighborhood. More than 300 single-family houses, many of Queen Anne architectural design, were located on the two streets. East Prospect Street, which was located just one block south of Euclid Avenue’s millionaire estates, was home to many prominent Clevelanders, including Lillian Towslee, one of Cleveland’s first woman physicians, who served as the second president of Women’s Hospital. From 1895 until her death in 1918, she lived in a large house at 8118 Carnegie Avenue designed by Cleveland architect Riley Austin Bissell. Three public elementary schools—Sterling, Sibley, and Bolton—were located on the streets, as were a number of other notable institutions. The Convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, which ministered and provided shelter to women and girls in need, was located on the southeast corner of Sibley and Sterling (East 30th) Streets. The Gatling Gun Armory was on the north side of Sibley near Kennard (East 46th) Street. Next door to it was the Young Hebrew Men’s Association, operating in the former home of Brooks Military Academy. Maternity Hospital was located up the street in a single- family house at 134 East Prospect (6216 Carnegie). The First United Presbyterian Church (today, St. Timothy Missionary Baptist Church) sat on the northeast corner of East Prospect and Giddings Road (East 71st Street). Sibley even sported a baseball field near Kennard (East 46th) Street, called the Kennard Street Ball Park, where the Cleveland Blues of the National League played baseball from 1879 to 1884. From a late nineteenth century city planning perspective, however, what was most important about these two streets was that together they constituted almost two-thirds of the roadway needed for the proposed southern thoroughfare to the city’s east end. Newspaper accounts from that era suggest that residents of the two streets were also enthusiastic about the proposed thoroughfare, thinking that it would lead to the transformation of their streets into a leafy park boulevard with direct access to Cleveland’s new east side park system. On that score, they would soon learn that they were sadly mistaken.

It took the City of Cleveland nearly two decades to obtain voter-approved financing before it could begin acquiring land for the road extensions to create the southern thoroughfare. While the plans languished on the drawing table, several events contributed to the eventual transformation of Sibley and East Prospect Streets not into the anticipated leafy park boulevard but instead into a commercialized traffic corridor. First, in 1905, controversy erupted over what to name the new thoroughfare. When East Prospect residents learned that the City was planning to call it Sibley Avenue, they protested and petitioned the City to instead name it “Lincoln Avenue.” The City referred the matter to the Chamber of Commerce which recommended “Carnegie Avenue” as a nod to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie who earlier that year had traveled to Cleveland to testify at the criminal trial of Cassie Chadwick, a Euclid Avenue resident accused of having swindled several Cleveland banks by claiming to be Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter. Moreover, two years earlier, Carnegie had donated a large sum of money to the Cleveland Public Library to build seven new branch libraries in the City. East Prospect residents were not happy with the Chamber’s recommendation, but the City accepted it, and, in 1906, Sibley and East Prospect Streets officially became Carnegie Avenue. The second event occurred later that year when the Cleveland Board of Public Service director Daniel Leslie came out in opposition to making the two streets a park boulevard, persuasively arguing that the boulevard to the east side park system should be located closer to the Lake. And finally, within a few short years, the need to address growing traffic congestion from a proliferation of streetcars and automobiles became the City’s primary reason for building thoroughfares to and from downtown. All of the foregoing had an impact on Cleveland investors and the city’s business community. Before any road work was even started on the southern thoroughfare, commercial businesses began relocating to Carnegie Avenue in ever increasing numbers. Many were automobile-related businesses expecting to benefit from a location on the future southern thoroughfare.

By 1917, the City’s street funding problems had been sufficiently resolved to allow it to begin acquiring land for the first extension of the southern thoroughfare--from the eastern terminus of Carnegie Avenue at East 89th Street to East 100th Street. Over the course of the next two years, land was acquired and cleared, new roadway was built and paved, and, in 1919, the extension was opened to the public. The successful construction of this first extension was not without neighborhood cost. A total of 13 single family homes on cross streets were either moved or razed in the process. In addition to those houses, Hart Hall, a four-story, eight-suite apartment building on East 93rd Street, also in the way, was moved (with its tenants still in it) to a new site on Carnegie Avenue near East 89th Street, where it later became an annex to the Bolton Square Hotel. Four years after the first extension was completed, a second from East 100th Street to East 107th Street was constructed, which removed another dozen or so houses that stood in the way. This second extension connected Carnegie Avenue to Fairchild Road, the latter road soon being renamed Carnegie Avenue from East 107th Street to Stearns Road. While Carnegie Avenue’s eastward extensions to the city’s east end were thus completed by 1923, necessary westward extensions to connect the southern thoroughfare to downtown, as well as to the west side by a proposed new high level bridge at Lorain Avenue, stalled for nearly another decade as city officials deliberated both where to locate the eastern terminus of the new bridge and how best to connect the southern thoroughfare to it. While these deliberations were continuing, the City, in 1924-1925, widened Carnegie Avenue from East 22nd to East 55th to accommodate more automobile traffic and to better align it with the roadway east of East 55th Street. In 1930, after it had determined that the location of the eastern terminus of the new bridge should be at Central Avenue near Ontario Street, the City constructed a westward extension of the southern thoroughfare from East 22nd Street in 1930-31. At East 21st Street, the extension was angled in a southwest direction in order to connect it to Central Avenue at East 14th Street. Central Avenue from East 14th Street to the new Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, which was completed and opened In 1932, was then renamed Carnegie Avenue.

As noted above, the 1920s witnessed a dramatic transformation of Carnegie Avenue into a commercial corridor. In the next three decades, businesses continued to locate on the southern thoroughfare, further reducing the number of houses, and residents, on the Avenue. The 1930s witnessed the completion of the construction of the 12-story Gothic Revival style Cleveland Club (later the Tudor Arms Hotel) at 10600 Carnegie, as well as that of the eight-story art deco style Carnegie Medical Building at 10515 Carnegie. The 1940s saw, among other new arrivals, Central Cadillac, and the 1950s, Pratt-Webb Bakery, Reynold Machinery Co., and the General Electric X-Ray Department. The 1950s also saw the new Innerbelt Freeway cut a swath through Carnegie Avenue between East 22nd and East 28th Streets, resulting in the removal of seven houses and reducing the number of houses still standing on Carnegie Avenue to less than thirty. During these three decades, Carnegie Avenue became the busiest street in Cleveland, especially during evening rush hour, with tens of thousands of vehicles traversing it daily. It also became a motorist’s nightmare with its narrow traffic lanes, plentiful chuckholes, and distracting billboard signs. Some Clevelanders began to refer to it as “Billboard Alley,” others as “Agony Alley.” In the 1940s, Cleveland Safety Director Elliot Ness installed a new signalization system and prohibited left turns off Carnegie Avenue during rush hour, but neither solved the congestion problem. In 1953, the City began an “experiment,” making Carnegie one-way, eastbound only, during evening rush hour. The experiment worked and, for the next 50 years, motorists, during evening rush hour, could only travel east on Carnegie from Prospect Road (a diagonal roadway at East 46th Street constructed in 1931 to relieve traffic on Prospect Avenue). That half century long restriction was modified in 2003 to also permit traffic to travel westward on Carnegie during evening rush hour.

While Carnegie Avenue continued to be one of the busiest streets in Cleveland in the second half of the twentieth century, white flight and de-industrialization caused many of the commercial businesses, which had made it Cleveland's Fifth Avenue in the first half of the century, decamp to the suburbs and elsewhere, contributing to blight and urban decay on Carnegie, especially east of East 55th Street. Cleveland’s University-Euclid Urban Renewal Project No. 2 of the early 1960s targeted this area for renewal, but this designation produced no substantive changes. In the 1980s, the departure of businesses slowed, and blight and urban decay began to be addressed by joint efforts of the City of Cleveland and a number of profit and non-profit organizations, including Midtown Cleveland, Inc., which engaged in efforts to clean up Carnegie Avenue and recruit new businesses to locate on it between East 30th and East 79th Streets; the Cleveland Clinic, which dramatically increased the size of its campus lining Carnegie Avenue from East 85th Street to East 107th Street with medical buildings and parking lots; Cleveland State University which expanded its campus south to Carnegie, between East 18th and East 24th Streets; and the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex, which built a baseball stadium on Carnegie Avenue between Ontario and East Ninth Streets.

In 2019, the City, Midtown Cleveland, and NOACA (Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency) produced a new Master Plan for Carnegie Avenue. Nicknamed "Reincarnegie," the Plan calls for, among other things, the construction of street and other infrastructure improvements, which would better connect Carnegie Avenue to neighborhoods to the north and south of it; new residential housing and retail stores; and other improvements that would make the southern thoroughfare a safer place for residents, pedestrians and cyclists. While it obviously comes too late for them, the early twentieth century residents of Sibley and East Prospect Streets would undoubtedly be pleased with--perhaps even enthusiastic about--the new plan.

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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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Visitors to University Circle are often struck by the area’s grandeur. Magnificent museums. Huge hospital systems. A sprawling college campus interspersed with innovative new structures, iconic old buildings and well-preserved mansions.

Yet University Circle is still home to a few intriguing pockets of modest living and relatable scale. One example is the southern section of East 115th Street. Bordered on Mayfield Road (where the 160-year old Cozad-Bates House stands) and Cornell Road (sentried by a well-preserved 100-year old apartment house), East 115th Street is an amiable elbow of a street filled with smaller, tightly clustered homes that mainly house university students and hospital employees. East 115th comprises homes largely owned by University Hospitals. It is a micro neighborhood under constant threat of redevelopment.

Even more intriguing—festooned with history, greenery and more than a little anachronism—are brick-paved Hessler Road and wood-paved Hessler Court. At 300 feet, the latter is the shortest street in Cleveland. Bordered by Ford Drive to the west and Bellflower Road to the north, the two Hesslers constitute a wrinkle in time: a vibrant 1920s enclave enveloped in a sleepy 1960s miasma.

Several things make the two Hesslers unique. The sudden quiet. The surprising road surfaces. The tunnel-like flora. Tightly clustered, endearingly decadent homes, apartments and row houses. And for those familiar with their history, the streets can project a strange, retro vibe. Occasionally referred to as a Midwestern Haight Ashbury, the Hesslers are a spiritual home to ghosts with long stringy hair, muumuus, protest signs, and perhaps a doobie clutched between a happy resident’s thumb and forefinger.

Originally part of the Wade Park development (as is most of University Circle), Hessler Road and Court were cut through around the turn of the 20th Century. At the time, the Norfolk pine streets with which Hessler Court is paved were fairly common. Seasoned, infused with creosote, and mounted on end, the wood was durable, affordable, somewhat quiet, and easy to maintain. Still comprised largely of wood a hundred years later, Hessler Court is quite a contrast to the bumpy, albeit charming, brick paving along the much longer and more densely populated Hessler Road.

Cleveland city records reveal that, in the late 19th Century, the two streets were part of a large tract owned by Emery M. Hessler, a medical supplies salesman. It was he who installed the distinctive wood paving on what was originally a private drive before being deeded to the city as a public street in 1908. By 1914, Hessler owned land bounded by Bellflower Road on the north, Euclid Avenue on the south, Ford Drive on the west, and East 115th Street on the east. In 1911, he sold land along Hessler Road to a developer. Most of the rambling Neoclassical and Tudor Revival structures, virtually all of which are on Hessler Road—there is only one actual address on Hessler Court—thus date to the late 1910s and 1920s, although a few were built as early as 1900.

By the 1940s, Hessler Road had become less exclusive and more prone to offer affordable housing to hospital personnel and employees and students at Western Reserve University and the Cleveland School of Art. (The latter was renamed Cleveland Institute of Art in 1948.) Apartment buildings and a now-sadly-dilapidated rowhouse were particularly well-suited to folks of modest means.

Less than two decades later, the Hessler community began to hone its distinctive counter-culture aura. A key driver was the formation of the Hessler Neighborhood Association (HNA) in 1969, whose primary mission was to stop a recently federated Case Western Reserve University from replacing several homes with dormitories and parking lots. By this time many Hessler homes were owned by CWRU and University Circle Development Foundation (soon to be renamed University Circle Inc., or UCI), both of which were arguably focused more on land banking and future development than maintaining quality housing stock for current residents. In 1976, Hessler residents participated in rent strikes that forced UCI to make needed repairs on the homes it owned on the street. The Hessler Housing Cooperative was subsequently formed when UCI sold five of its properties to the Hessler Neighborhood Association. A similar strike was held against an absentee landlord in 1980.

The Hessler Street Fair further cemented the streets’ counter-culture reputation. Organized as a fundraising event for the newly formed Hessler Neighborhood Association, the first festival was launched in 1969. The festival was held annually through 1984. After a ten-year break, it resumed in 1995 and continues to this day. Arts and crafts, vegetarian food, buskers, poetry readings, capoeira, and folk and reggae music, and, of course, tie-dyed T-shirts are annual mainstays. An estimated 10,000 people attend each year.

Hessler Road and the Hessler Court Historic District were dedicated by Cleveland's Landmarks Commission on November 1, 1975. Hessler Court—believed to be the only remaining Cleveland street with wood block paving—was listed on the National Register of Historic Places seven months earlier. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, it is “altogether fitting” that such designations were bestowed on this unique area. “But in a larger sense,” no historical designation can fully capture the colorful and independent spirit that, for more than a century, has given the two Hesslers an altogether special personality.

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