The Jones Home and School for Friendless Children

On the opening day of the Jones Home and School for Friendless Children, the weather was “dark and stormy,” but even so, “a large number of interested visitors found the house at 1633 Pearl St.,” which was a “half day’s drive by carriage or wagon” from Cleveland. Since that day in 1887, the Home has endeavored to improve the lives of children and families while adapting to more than a century of change.

The Jones Home was founded on December 15, 1887, by Carlos and Mary B. Jones, who intended for it to provide mainly short-term housing for children who still had one or two parents, but who were currently unable to care for them. The Joneses began a policy of accepting only white, Protestant children for foster care that lasted for several decades. The farmhouse was situated on six acres and, in November 1889, housed about twenty children between four and ten years old. In 1890 the Home was reportedly “in a prosperous condition,” with extensions made to the main house and a new $1,300 building that enabled the Home to take in an additional thirty children.

Whenever possible, the Jones Home’s administrators wanted families to be reunited. Orphanages understood that they could never hope to replicate traditional home life but did their best. The First Annual Report noted: “One little fellow was readmitted after an absence of several weeks, and ran about wild with delight, poking his curly head into all his beloved play-places. 'Oh, is my little bed here yet?' was the first thing he said when the door opened to readmit him.”

If after staying at the Home for a time the children were unable to return to their parents, they would be apprenticed to a family when “age and acquirements justify” and given a Bible. The families were required to be “regular attendants of some Protestant church.” This preoccupation with religion was not unusual for the time.

During the annual harvest day festival in October 1895, Mr. Jones shared his vision to build a new three-story brick building near the original farmhouse, “at the corner of Pearl street and Daisy avenue.” The cornerstone of the new building, designed by Sidney R. Badgley, was laid in late November 1902. Dedicated in October 1903, the building was a “buff brick, with red stone trimmings” and cost $33,703.24. The first floor included an entrance hall, reception room, dining room, kitchen, girl’s cloakroom, reading room, library, and the matron’s private rooms. The second floor contained four dormitories, bedrooms for attendants, and bathrooms. The third floor held a meeting hall, sewing room, and five sleeping rooms with bathrooms that the executive director later lived in with his family. The basement had a receiving room and bathroom for newly admitted children, boy’s coat room, coal room, and storage space.

At the turn of the century, the Jones Home had a bright future ahead of it. In 1908, a two-story playhouse was built for $5,500, allowing the children to play in bad weather. In 1910, the third floor of the main building was converted into sick rooms and additional dormitories, creating space for twenty more children. In 1921, a vegetable garden was being “maintained bountifully.” Unfortunately, this prosperity would only continue for a few more years.

The Jones Home struggled during the Great Depression; while in the past it had usually received “hundreds of dollars a month” from donations, in 1933 “less than $50 a month comes in” because of extremely high unemployment in Cleveland. The closure of banks caused its endowment to become inaccessible. Despite these troubles, fifty-eight children were living at the Home – with space for ten more but but no means to support them – and was described as “old-fashioned but comfortable.” The Home scraped by, however, with what limited funding the community could provide, and in 1937 year it partnered with Community Chest – later renamed United Way Services – which brought in additional funding.

When the Home celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1962, the “long-ago stipulation” that the children be Protestant had been “abandoned.” In late 1966, the Jones Home merged with Children’s Services, allowing it to provide psychologists and case workers for the children for the first time. A $400,000 renovation in 1971 was largely funded by selling land to the state to build I-71. Despite the encroaching city, it was a “quiet oasis” for “neglected children of any race or religion,” surrounded by eighty-year-old sycamore trees planted by Mr. Jones. The goal of the Home was to house children for “a few months to a year or two” while they and their parents received counseling.

The Jones Home continued to adapt to the community’s needs by expanding its ability to help children with mental health–related issues. In 1990, the Home was kept running with a 10 percent allocation from United Way, an endowment and trust fund, government funds, and donations. By this time the Home had three programs for children according to their needs: “a residential treatment program for children who are victims of sexual, physical and psychological abuse” and who were wards of Cuyahoga County’s Department of Human Services; “two classrooms funded by the Cleveland Board of Education for severely, behaviorally handicapped children”; and “court-designated programs providing temporary shelter and short-term, intensive residential treatment.” In 1997, the Jones Home merged with Guidance Centers, a psychiatric clinic founded seventy years before, to form Applewood Centers.

The Cleveland City Planning Commission named the Home a Cleveland landmark in 1984, and it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012 as part of the Jones Home Historic District. Flats Construction completed a three-year long restoration in 2021, ensuring the Home will continue to serve the needs of Greater Cleveland's youth for many years to come.

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