Euclid Avenue at E. 105th showing traffic congestion Euclid Avenue Photograph, 1915 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection |
When 150,000 people watched Glenn H Curtiss make the longest flight to date over water in 1910 - Euclid Beach Park to Cedar Point and back - they might have also been celebrating Cleveland’s soaring population. By 1910, this population reached 560,663, and Cleveland’s "sixth city" status was achieved, Clevelanders were proud of their city and post cards of this era carefully noted the city’s population attainment with a "sixth city" slogan. Having experienced commercial, industrial, and civic growth, Cleveland stood poised in the second decade of the twentieth century for a cultural flowering. In 1913, the Library moved to a larger space and a two-million dollar bond issue was approved for a new library building on Superior Avenue at the site of the old City Hall. Thanks to the generosity of John Huntington, Horace Kelley, and Hinman B. Hurlbut, the Cleveland Museum of Art was able to celebrate its dedication in 1916. The Cleveland Orchestra gave its first concert in 1918 in Gray’s Armory under the baton of Nicholai Sokoloff. A 1917 Chamber of Commerce publication gives an idea of how Clevelanders viewed themselves at this time: |
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Sixth in population, fifth in manufacturing, fourth in financial importance, and first in civic attainment, is the proud record that Cleveland holds up to view. By its recent achievements Cleveland had gained the title of ‘First City in American Spirit.’ It stands first in the country, in proportion to its population, in donations to the Red Cross and in enlistments, while it oversubscribed its quota of the (first) Liberty Loan by nearly 100 per cent. Cleveland is the largest city between New York and Chicago. It had in 1917 a population, within its corporate limits, estimated at more than 800,000 and within a five-cent car-zone more than 1,000,000. |
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Shoppers and stores on Euclid Avenue April 1, 1912 opposite Public Square Euclid Avenue Photograph, 1912 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection |
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| As indicated, Clevelanders did support the nation during World War I. That support was ironically dramatized right after the war’s end when on November 16, 1918 the Allied War Exposition arrived in Cleveland. For nine days a total of 650,000 people watched soldiers, sailors, and marines pretend that the Lake Erie beach between East 9th and West 9th was a section of the Western Front as men and material engaged in a mock battle requiring the digging of three miles of trenches along the lakefront. The end of the war brought a chance for Cleveland to return to its prewar concerns including among other things: education and Water Department improvements, which the Sixth City planned to tackle in the 1920s. Churches still standing from the teens are: Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church, the Cleveland Baptist Temple, Saints Peter and Paul Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Pentecostal Church of Christ (once a Christian Science building), St. Colman Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, Brooklyn Memorial United Methodist Church, True Holiness Temple (also once a Christian Science structure), Liberty Hill Baptist Church (originally a Jewish synagogue), the Amasa Stone chapel, Fidelity Baptist Church, St. Casimir Roman Catholic Church, St. Mark Presbyterian Church (originally the Boulevard Presbyterian Church), St. Andrew Episcopal Church, St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church, St. Elizabeth Roman Catholic Church, the Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church, the Korean American United Methodist Church (originally Broadway Methodist), St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, St. Catherine Roman Catholic Church, St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church, and Shaffer Memorial Methodist Church. |
A crowded Euclid Avenue on April 1, 1912, looking east from Public Square Euclid Avenue Photograph, 1912 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection |
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