1840s

By the early 1840s, Cleveland’s population stood at about 7,000, and the beginnings of the city’s famous industrial activity were evident in William Otis’s establishment of the first iron works of any consequence. The iron works were complemented by a fledgling coal industry which saw Cleveland as an early market for its product. A newspaper article in 1840 noted of Cleveland’s business climate:

	Business is slowly but gradually improving in this section. We begin to feel somewhat the influence of the cross-cut canal from Beaver to Akron, by the arrival of many kinds of goods in the hardware line, that we used to be supplied with from New York and Boston, but which can now be procured from Pittsburgh at a saving of more than half in time and twenty-five per cent in cost.
Superior Avenue in 1846 Superior Avenue 1846 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection

Cleveland’s intellectual life also continued its development in the 1840s. Building on efforts that went as far back as 1811, the Cleveland Library Association was founded in 1848, and while its main purpose was the achievement of a library, it also concerned itself with maintaining a course of lectures. The 1843 establishment in Cleveland of the medical department of Hudson’s Western Reserve College on the corner of St. Clair and Erie streets is an additional indicator of Cleveland’s desire for educational facilities. By the late 1840s, medical students would have begun to note the development of what was to become Cleveland’s most flourishing highway and one of its most important symbols - Euclid Avenue. A city resident pictured the avenue in the following way:

The land rose from the lake to within a short distance from the street, then fell as far as a line of the street, and then rose gently to the southward. Somewhat singularly, both the ridge and the depression occupied by the street ran almost due east from the Public Square for two miles, and then, with a small variation, ran two mile further to Doan’s Corners. The wealthy residents of the city early found that they could make extremely pleasant home by taking ample ground on the ridge in question, and building their houses on its summit; leaving a space of from ten to twenty rods between them and the street. The fashion, once adopted by a few was speedily followed by others, and a residence on Euclid Street, with a front yard of from two to five acres, soon became one of the prominent objects of a Clevelander’s ambition.

The organization of the Cleveland Gas Light and Coke Company in 1846 not only symbolized the city’s industrial advance but also meant that the citizens living on Euclid and other streets could take advantage of a new technology. Gradually, this technology would appear in Cleveland houses of worship, but none of these built in the 1840s still exist; the 1850s do, however, provide us with two such structures.