The census statistics of 1920 Cleveland demonstrate a thriving city:
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Euclid Avenue looking west from above E. 22nd - Trinity Cathedral is on the left Euclid Avenue Photograph, 1930 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection |
| But while its population development continued throughout the decade (reaching a 1930 figure of 900,429), Cleveland’s geographical expansion was arrested by suburban reluctance to agree to annexation. Of course, the use of the automobile made the suburbs possible, and thus may also be partly blamed for Cleveland’s population loss. Eventually, the lack of geographical expansion hurt population growth. The opening of the Moreland rapid-transit line to Shaker Heights in 1920 was an early attempt to demonstrate that automobiles were not necessary even if one chose to live relatively far from the city’s commercial center. The 1920s also brought other now well-known institutions to the city. The Cleveland Clinic was founded in 1921, and the Public Auditorium opened in 1922. Thanks to banking reform legislation passed before World War I and in recognition of Cleveland’s importance in the nation’s business, the Federal Reserve Bank began its operations in 1923. In 1924 the Republican Party chose the city and its new Public Auditorium as the site for its national convention. The long-awaited new Cleveland Public Library building was dedicated in 1925 by no less an eminence than David Lloyd George, wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain. Clevelanders recognized the coming commercial importance of flight in 1925 when City Manager William R. Hopkins presented the City Council with plans for a municipal airfield, an item that was needed if the city was to hold onto its U.S. air mail service and secure a position on the east-to-west air mail route. By 1927, Clevelanders could see the beginnings of work on the city’s most famous structure, as building demolitions began to clear the site of the Terminal Tower. Cleveland’s still existent sacred structures from the 1920s are: the Mount Pleasant Catholic Elementary School property (originally the Holy Family parish, church, and school), Archwood United Church of Christ, Fifth Church of Christ Scientist, St. Emeric Roman Catholic Church, Trinity United Church of Christ, Temple Tifereth Israel, Epworth Euclid Methodist Church, St. Mary Seminary, Cory United Methodist Church (originally a synagogue), Greater Friendship Baptist Church (once an Evangelical and Reformed structure), Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church, St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church, St. Wendelin Roman Catholic Church, and St. John Kanty Roman Catholic Church. To complete our pilgrimage, we also need to note the following structures surviving from the year 1930: First Church of Christ Scientist, Our Lady of Good Counsel Roman Catholic Church, St. Rose Roman Catholic Church, and St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church. |
Euclid Avenue looking west from Ford Drive - large building on the right
is the Commodore Hotel, a structure still standing at the Ford Drive and Euclid Ave.
intersection. Euclid Avenue Photograph, 1930 Courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection |
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