When I was in Cleveland this spring, I cruised up and down Euclid and Carnegie and Prospect, existing in the “now” while in my mind’s eye trying to conjure “then.”
One “then” that’s gone entirely is “Millionaire’s Row,” so named for all the enormous mansions that used to line Euclid Avenue, inhabited by the likes of Rockefeller (Standard Oil), Brush (inventor of the Arc Light), Payne and Hanna (U.S. Senators), Wade (founder Western Union Telegraph) and so on. (Don’t get me wrong–greater metropolitan Cleveland still has its mansions. If you don’t believe me, take a spin down South Park.)
Cleveland grew, and by the early 1900’s the millionaires had moved on. At the Cleveland Public Library, in the maps collection, I was taking a picture of the poster of Millionaire’s Row when a fellow library visitor came over to chat. “It’s all gone now, but you can tell where it used to be on the early maps,” he told me. “The owners along Millionaire’s Row didn’t want all kinds of folks riding the street car past their houses, so when the City put in the street car, they laid the track on Euclid until right where the mansions began, took a detour over to Prospect, then back to Euclid later.”
Harlan Hatcher, in his book The Western Reserve, notes the Samuel Andrews mansion at the corner of Euclid and 30th had 33 rooms. Men servants wore eighteenth century style knee breeches, velvet jackets, and silver buckles on their shoes.
After the family abandoned the mansion, it was torn down, and people used the foundation to play miniature golf. Only one house, the Beckwith mansion, still stands, home of today’s University Club.
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