The Personality of American CitiesHungerford, Edward
History
The Personality of American Cities
Hungerford, Edward
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
If we have given some attention in this Cleveland chapter to the traffic
of the Great Lakes, it is, as we have already intimated, because the
traffic of the Great Lakes has made her the Sixth City. It has also made
the most important of her industries, the very greatest of her fortunes.
Your Cleveland man will tell you of one of these--before you leave the
pier-edge. It was the fortune that an old Lake captain left at his death
a little time ago--the fortune a mere matter of some twenty-eight
millions of dollars. The old captain knew the Lakes and he had studied
their traffic--all his life. But his will directed that his money should
not be expended in the building of ships. It provided that at least a
quarter of a million of the income should annually go to the purchase of
Cleveland real estate. And Cleveland was quick to explain that it was
not that the old man loved shipping less, but that he loved Cleveland
real estate more. He had the gift of foresight.
If you would see that foresight in his own eyes drive out Euclid
avenue--that broad thoroughfare that leads from the old-fashioned Public
Square in the heart of the city straight toward the southeast. Euclid
avenue gained its fame in other days. Travelers used to come back from
Cleveland and tell of the glories of that highway. Alas, today those
glories are largely those of memory. The old houses still sit in their
great lawns, but the grime of the city's industry has made them seem
doubly old and decadent, while Commerce has pushed her smart new shops
out among them to the very sidewalk line. Many of these shops are given
over to the automobile business--a business which does not hesitate in
any of our towns to transform resident streets into commercial. But in
Cleveland one may partly forgive the audacity of this particular trade
in recognition of its perspicacity. For Euclid avenue, rapidly growing
now from an entirely residential street into an entirely business
highway, is the great automobile thoroughfare of the East Side of the
city. And when you consider that one out of every ten Cleveland families
has a motor car, you can begin to estimate the traffic through Euclid
avenue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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