Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers

2. The Ideal Suburb

The Ideal Suburb • 11 Two The Ideal Suburb As with almost everything they got into, the brothers began slowly in Shaker Heights, with little evidence of what might come. They made their first move in the spring of 1905, when they arranged a meeting with Harry Gratwick in Buffalo through O. C. Ringle, Gratwick’s Cleveland sales agent. Their proposal was simple and involved little or no outlay on their part: They asked for an option on a few lots which they would then sell, giving Gratwick’s group the proceeds. If they sold them within a certain length of time, Gratwick would give them options on another block twice the size for twice the length of time. A contract was drawn up in May, and they were on their way.1 The brothers got to work selling their still-nebulous scheme for a planned suburban village for the well-to-do and managed to dispose of the lots in the set time. They then came back for more. Their first serious development was along the northern border of the property on present Fairmount Boulevard east 12 • Invisible Giants of Coventry Road. Fairmount was one of the original Shaker roadways and led west toward the Euclid Heights car line; with the proper improvements—notably transportation—it was the most readily accessible. O. P. envisioned subdivisions for large homes, much like those then appearing in Euclid Heights and other nearby developments. Although the brothers had worked off their Lakewood debts and were respectable again, the experience did not cure them of the habit of working with thin capital, relying heavily on loans and other means of minimizing their own stake. This first major Heights venture was typical: The total price of the property was $3,000; they paid $1,000 down and borrowed most of that. “We sold lots,” said O. P., “and, as fast as we got money in our contracts, we acquired options on nearby land and continued selling.”2 To open the property for upper-income homes, the brothers had to provide transportation, and there remained the problem of enticing the street railway company to build into an expanse of unproductive trees and fields. A 1906 extension of the Euclid Heights line to Mayfield Road put the tracks somewhat closer to the area the Van Sweringens were interested in, but a lengthy branch was still needed. The original Euclid Heights line had been partially subsidized by Calhoun’s Euclid Heights Realty Company, and in 1906, O. P. approached the Cleveland Electric Railway’s president, Horace Andrews, with a similar offer. If Andrews built a branch out to their rebuilt Fairmount Boulevard, the brothers would give him the land and cover his interest costs on the construction for five years. Andrews begrudgingly acquiesced; a franchise was granted in August 1906, and the line was completed to Lee Road in 1907. The new line was designated the Shaker Lakes line, doubtless an attempt to enhance its traffic by also advertising the attractive city park developed around the old Shaker millponds.3 To the misfortune of Andrews, his predictions of meager trolley business proved accurate, but the Van Sweringens had their transportation. Their development along broad Fairmount Boulevard, with the car tracks set in a grassy median, was a solid success; a succession of impressively sumptuous homes arose which remained imposing in the year 2002. Andrews could take modest solace in telling his colleagues in the business that the line had the unusual distinction of twoway rush-hour traffic; commuters going into town were balanced by servants and gardeners for the mansions coming out to their jobs. This piecemeal approach was successful enough but did The Ideal Suburb • 13 not fit O. P.’s larger plan, vague as it may have been at the time. Within about a year, the brothers organized their efforts by arranging to acquire all of the remaining Shaker property as a single unit. In 1907, they and the Gratwick group set up the Sedgwick Land Company, presumably as a temporary means of financing the purchase and developing the land. How this short-lived company was financed and how it functioned is unknown now. But based on the records of its successors, it appears that the Buffalo investors—most notably financier John J. Albright—put additional funds into the Shaker project while the brothers rounded up local money. Whatever it was and did, the Sedgwick...