| Cleveland in 1850, said one commentator, had "earned the right to be called a city in fact, as in name." For its 17,034 inhabitants, prosperity made the present agreeable and the future appealing. The city’s shipbuilding industry took hold by 1853, and this important activity and its continued success along with other industrial and commercial ventures kept Cleveland a thriving community. Other aspects of city life paralleled these developments. The Academy of Music on Bank Street (now West 6th) brought famous actors and actresses to the city. Benevolent associations such as Charity Hospital, St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum, the YMCA, and the Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum were formed. The Water Works began operating in 1856 to the considerable relief of Cleveland’s citizenry: |
Kentucky Street water reservoir 12 years after its opening Water Works Photograph, 1868 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection |
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From henceforth, the wells of hard and milky mineral waters were abandoned, pumps were no longer jerked, cisterns of black and stagnant rain water were closed, and even the pure little spring down on the bottom of some far off deep ravine soon became forgotten even by children. |
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Superior Avenue in 1850 Superior Avenue Photograph, 1850 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection |
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The erection of a Central Market in 1856, a new courthouse in 1857, and the organization of a streetcar company in 1859 provided additional proof to Clevelanders that present conditions and future prospects never looked better. Cleveland conditions could not however, escape the looming sense of crisis caused by the existence of slavery. The denunciation of slavery by Old Stone Church’s pastor, Samual Aiken, before the 1857 Presbyterian General Assembly meeting in Cleveland, helped the church on a national level understand that accommodation of slavery was no longer possible and symbolized the final position of no compromise reached by moderate opinion makers as they grappled with this issue. The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Cases tried in Cleveland in 1859 further increased local opposition to slavery. Many Cleveland congregations were engulfed by the slave issue in the 1850s, and two of them, Old Stone Church and the Cathedral ofSt. John the Evangelist, continue in structures built during that decade. |
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