By Terry K Woods
As the Ohio Canal neared completion from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, many in the small village of Cleveland, Ohio began to believe that their village was strategically placed on the shore of the Great Lake between the junction of the Erie and Ohio Canals that it was destined to become an important world trade center. One man who had that belief, and attempted to make it a reality, was James S. Clarke, a former Sheriff of Cuyahoga County and, in the decade of the 1830s, one of the biggest real estate speculators in the area. In 1831, James Clarke, Richard Hilliard (a wealthy dry goods merchant), and Edmond Clark (a prominent banker) formed a partnership and purchased 50 acres of land just south of Cleveland’s village limits.
The acreage constituted the southern portion of a peninsula bordered on three sides by the Cuyahoga River and located just south of the river’s first great bend. This land was then known as Case’s Point, but is currently that part of the Cleveland Flats known as Ox Bow Bend. The three-man-partnership platted a development on their acreage and called it CLEVELAND CENTRE.i This paper village featured streets named after foreign countries – Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia, all radiating from a hub called Gravity Place. This, the promoters decided, was an appropriate name for a future center of world trade and business. Cleveland Centre was ideally located just south of the new Ohio Canal basin (Merwin’s) where canal boats and lake vessels interchanged cargo.
Land lots in the new development initially sold well, and soon a small village had sprouted there. Commission houses, warehouses, and docks were built along the western side of the village primarily on Merwin Street. A residential neighborhood formed on the eastern side of the village along Columbus Street (now Columbus Avenue), the main thoroughfare running north and south through the Centre. Clark gave the area a boost in 1835 when he financed the construction of the first bridge across the Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland area – the Columbus Street Bridge
In 1836 the area received another boost. Clarke and others sponsored an additional new development named Wileyville. This new village was on land directly across the river from Cleveland Centre. The two villages were connected by the new Columbus Street bridge. The initial prosperity of the area was so great that it attracted Cleveland’s attention and that city annexed Cleveland Centre in 1835.
Then the nationwide Financial Panic of 1837 struck and all early chances of the Cleveland Centre district becoming a center of world trade collapsed along with the nation’s economy.
During the nation’s economic doldrums that lasted for more than seven years, many working class immigrants moved from building the canals to being out of work from Cleveland’s industry. Also during this period (1838) the first Roman Catholic Church in the Cleveland area, St. Marys, was constructed in the Centre to cater to the many them Irish-Catholic local residents. Incidentally, it was also during this period that James S. Clarke found himself financially ruined.
The nation’s economy finally righted itself in the mid-to-late 1840s and the canal trade began booming again, however, severe flooding of the Cuyahoga in 1847 slowed the Centre’s rebirth. Then with the beginning of the 1850s another specter loomed over the horizon of Cleveland Centre.
Attracted to this area of Cleveland by the industry and commercial district built near the canal/lake interconnection, railroads began entering the area in a big way during the mid-1850s.
The Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad entered the Centre first. In 1851 the railroad purchased 12 acres on the south side of the Centre – taking up almost one quarter of the original development. The C. C. & C. RR constructed an engine roundhouse and other service and yard facilities on that land.
In the immediate years that followed, many of the area’s new industries and manufacturing facilities were constructed to be near the railroad. Often the construction of these industrial complexes necessitated that portions of the streets that radiated from Gravity Place be vacated. Over the years much of the beauty and symmetry of the Centre was lost. The residential neighborhood on the east side of the development also suffered disruption from the invasion of the railroads and industry.
The canal’s terminus, including the commodious Merwin’s Basin was transferred from state to city control and leased to the Connoton Valley Railroad during the mid 1870s. A new canal terminus, weigh lock, and outlet lock into the Cuyahoga River were built some three miles south. Those facilities were operational by the beginning of the 1878 boating season and the original terminus closed.
The old Cleveland Centre drifted toward no longer being a desirable place for a residential area and many moved away. With the loss of the majority of its parishioners, the Catholic Church, now known locally as St. Mary’s of the Flats, closed its doors in 1880. Even the name of Cleveland Centre faded from the memory of Clevelanders and by the late nineteenth Century, the area was known, city wide, only as The Flats.
When Cleveland and the entire area of northeastern Ohio experienced a devastating loss of industry in the mid-Twentieth Century, that Cleveland area known as The Flats and the remains of Cleveland Centre languished, too. That entire area became known nationally only for its closed factories, and businesses and empty warehouses.
That area of Cleveland experienced a brief rebirth as an entertainment and recreational center during the late 1970s and through the ‘80s, but most of the portion that once contained the Centre was too far south to reap much of the economic benefit. And even that small upbeat in the local economy soon faded.
Recently however, with the dawning of the twenty-first century, a number of acres in the southern part of The Flats, that area that contained the Centre, and was formerly owned by the C., C. & C . RR and its successors, was obtained by the City and re-purposed for recreational purposes. Parts of the old Cleveland Centre development are now home to facilities as the Commodore’s Club Marina, and the Cleveland Rowing Foundation. Then Cleveland Metro-Parks initiated their Rivergate Park which featured a riverside restaurant called Merwin’s.
With the Cleveland Centre area becoming a trendy destination once again, proposals (we hesitate to call them plans) have been made to have historical markers placed in the area commemorating the historical existence of Cleveland Centre, and that the original radial streets and hub at Gravity Place be marked and lighted so that people, both on the ground and in the air could see, remember, and commemorate this early attempt to build an international trade center on Ohio’s north shore. Along with James C. Clarke’s spirit, we can do little more than hope.
(Note that this article was first written a few years back and as the links show, much development has taken place in this area.)
iA portion of the information for this column came from Cleveland Historical.