As you explore St. Clair-Superior, you will see a traditional, turn of the century, working-class, immigrant neighborhood. Yet there is a small area, no larger than a city block, which feels out of place. Instead of the multistory frame houses that…

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…

April 21, 1909 started out like any other day in Cleveland but that was quickly to change. Around noon the sky over the city darkened and the temperature dropped rapidly. A few minutes later at 12:36, wind speeds increased rapidly, creating a deadly…

He was caught by chance. In early December 1945, Cleveland police officers had picked up and questioned two 14-year old girls on an unrelated matter. The girls mentioned a 12-year old boy in the neighborhood who had boasted about setting fires. …

Wednesday, May 15, 1929 was just another busy day at the Cleveland Clinic located on East 93rd and Euclid Avenue. A steamfitter had arrived early that morning to repair a leaky steam pipe in the sub-basement, which had been converted into a storage…

In 19th-century Cleveland, bridge-building was big. The Columbus Street Bridge—a 200-foot covered structure completed around 1836—was the city’s first major span. It supplanted a series of less-permanent crossings such as a chained platform of…

On 4 March 1908, a tragedy occurred that prompted changes in school safety across the United States. About nine o'clock in the morning on March 4, 1908, nine-year-old Niles Thompson jumped out of a window at Lakeview Elementary to escape a fire…