In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Technology and Culture 45.2 (2004) 444-446



[Access article in PDF]
Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers. By Herbert H. Harwood Jr. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xii+342. $49.95.

Invisible Giants is a detailed account of the lifework of two enigmatic and powerful businessmen, Oris Paxton Van Sweringen (1879-1936) and Mantis James Van Sweringen (1881-1935) of Cleveland, Ohio. If the Van Sweringen name does not ring a bell, perhaps it is due to the nature of these intensely private, reclusive bachelor brothers, who shunned Cleveland society and considered their public relations man to be doing his job when their names did not make the papers. Working in adjoining offices (they also lived together), they assembled railroad and real estate empires that transformed Cleveland into a showcase of visionary urban and suburban planning and a national economic power.

Herbert H. Harwood Jr., a veteran railroad man who has written widely on railroad and electric railway history, charts the trajectory of the brothers' careers beginning with their astute decision, in 1907, to assemble large tracts of land on high ground east of Cleveland once inhabited by the Shaker religious [End Page 444] sect. They set about planning what would become Shaker Heights, a model residential suburb of romantic period houses, broad boulevards fed by curvilinear streets, and high-speed rail transit to Public Square in downtown Cleveland, terminus of the city's extensive street railway system.

As their model suburb took form, the Van Sweringens hatched the first of several favorable deals with Alfred H. Smith of the New York Central Railroad. When antitrust pressure forced the Central to shed its Nickel Plate Railroad, the brothers stepped in and acquired control of the 523-mile line between Buffalo and Chicago, keeping it out of the hands of the Central's competitors and completing the last link in their Shaker transit line. Later, as chief operating officer of the United States Railroad Administration, Smith proposed that the railroads serving Cleveland use the Van Sweringens' Public Square property as the site for a desperately needed new passenger station. In a deal that heavily favored the Van Sweringens, the railroads (principally the New York Central) agreed to build and operate a costly belowground terminal integrating the Van Sweringen traction lines and providing the foundation for the brothers' ambitious commercial development using the air rights above. Besides the rail stations, the Cleveland Union Terminal complex would house office buildings (including the fifty-two-story Terminal Tower, an instant landmark), a hotel, a large department store, central post office, stores, and restaurants. This "city within a city" was a concept unique in its time, and its physical and psychological import for Cleveland was profound.

Harwood details the brothers' labyrinthine deal making, which relied on loans, the underwriting of projects by others, and (especially) leveraged holding companies. This arsenal, together with their ability to finesse Interstate Commerce Commission oversight, allowed them, during the heady 1920s, to take control of several other railroads: the Chesapeake and Ohio, the Erie, the Pere Marquette, and the Wheeling and Lake Erie. Then, in March 1930, the Van Sweringens doubled their rail empire at a single stroke, achieving majority control of the 12,000-mile Missouri Pacific; they now controlled 30,000 miles of rail line, 11 percent of total U.S. mileage. Three months later, when the new Cleveland Union Terminal was dedicated at a luncheon attended by twenty-five hundred notables, the ever reticent Van Sweringens skipped the ceremonies, instead listening by radio from their fifty-four-room country home.

The Cleveland Union Terminal complex was conceived in a confident world and launched in an uncertain one. By the time of its dedication, railroad and real estate income had begun to erode and, with it, the Van Sweringens' tenuous empires. "Now," writes Harwood, "the venturing and building stopped and manipulations for survival became everything" (p. 235). He describes their clever and complex attempts to stay afloat and preserve the illusion of control, and their ultimate unraveling by bankruptcy and death. [End Page...

pdf

Share