In 1852, John Ball, a Lake Erie ship captain, his wife Harriet Blake Ball, and their eight children moved into a new, two-story brick house on the northwest corner of State (West 29th) Street and Franklin Avenue (Boulevard), in what was then the…

It’s 1956 and you’re a Clevelander looking for something to do. Maybe you should “make plans to come aboard the magnificent Aquarama for a memorable cruise,” as an early ad urges. Or perhaps it’s 1958 and “you are looking for an inexpensive vacation…

Long before John Patton, one of the victims in the 1916 waterworks tunnel disaster, had ever thought about coming to Cleveland, the city had been digging water intake tunnels under Lake Erie. In the post-Civil War era, pollution of the Cuyahoga…

The story of the failed Lake Erie International Jetport is one that generated a flurry of political interest but ultimately succumbed to the grandeur of its own ambition. Mayor Ralph Locher first introduced the idea of a new airport for Cleveland in…

Tens of thousands of people lining the shore of Lake Erie to watch a plane go by: while the idea seems ludicrous today, this is exactly what happened on August 31, 1910 when pioneering aviator Glenn Curtiss took off from Euclid Beach Park and headed…

On Whiskey Island, moored on Lake Erie behind a wide copse of bushes, is a giant cruise ship. Or perhaps it’s just an oddly shaped cement building with an extremely nautical visage? The second choice, not surprisingly, is correct. After all, how…

In an era of industrial expansion and technological advances, the Hulett Ore-Unloader helped Cleveland become one of the greatest steel manufacturing cities of the twentieth century. The invention, designed by George Hulett, was vital to the…

One of the major attractions during the first year of the Great Lakes Exposition was the Marine Theater, a performance which took place in Lake Erie and showcased swimming and diving acts. The following year, Broadway producer and showman Billy Rose…

When William J. Gordon died in 1892, he donated the land that became known as Gordon Park to the City of Cleveland under the condition that it would forever remain a free, public park. By the time of his death, Gordon, who made his fortune in the…

In 1901, Dudley S. Humphrey became the owner of Euclid Beach amusement park, vowing to make the park a respectable, family friendly place for recreation. He had previously run a popcorn stand at the park, though the prevalence of alcohol, freak…

During the summers of 1936 and 1937 Cleveland's civic and business leaders sponsored the Great Lakes Exposition. Held along the lakefront on a reclaimed refuse dump, the Expo was intended to foster civic and regional pride, attract visitors…

Back when Native Americans made camp along Lake Erie, Whiskey Island was a spit of high land rising out of the marshes surrounding the original mouth of the Cuyahoga River. Lorenzo Carter - Cleveland's first permanent white settler - chose this…

By the 1960s, Lake Erie had become extremely polluted, in part due to the heavy industry that lined its shores in Cleveland and other cities. Factories dumped pollutants into the lake and the waterways that flowed into it (like the Cuyahoga River)…