Hattler House

I recently visited a home on Marvin Avenue off of West 25th Street that was built in 1895 by German immigrants, known as the Hattler House. The current occupants, Bud and Robert, purchased the home in 2000 and are working hard each year to restore it, as well as make it their own. They extensively researched the history of the home and offered to share the information they gathered with me, and I would like to share it with you.



The property sits on what was once a 57-acre site in Brooklyn Township. In approximately 1887, brothers Oscar and Alfred Herold (of the Herold Bros. Barber supply company) subdivided Tract A of the property into nine lots. Alfred built this home in 1895 and lived there with his family until they built a home on Lake Avenue. Their son Armin lived in the home until 1914, at which time it was sold to the Hattler family.



Simon Hattler was a German immigrant who purchased the home with his wife Genevieve. Simon owned a tailor shop on Lorain Avenue, and he and his wife had five children together named John Paul, Martin L., [both brothers pictured] Wilhelmina (Minnie), Mathew (Mat) F., and Rose.

Mathew was the only child to marry and he and his wife Rose moved to East 43rd Street. The rest of the family remained in the home on Marvin Avenue until their deaths. In fact, this home was in the Hattler family for 65 years, which is why it is known today as the Hattler House.

The home has many beautiful features that attracted the current owners to purchase it, first of which is the intricately detailed wood flooring. These floors had been covered in soot because Rose, the final Hattler family member to live in the home, had been burning trash to keep warm after the furnace stopped working. The next owner, Benny Bonanno, uncovered these floors as he was preparing to lay down carpet.







There were several stained glass windows decorating the home, however, they were stolen in the 1980's, recovered, and then sold at a yard sale by a later owner! Both the fruit bowl window and the blue ribbon window in the front room were recreated to try to match the originals, using old photographs of the home.





Robert and Bud could tell that there once had been a spandrel between the entry and dining room, so they had this piece created to fit the space.



On the first floor there are two fireplaces; the one in the entry had been replaced at some point, however the fireplace in the dining is original (although missing its original mirror and shelves) and features a fantastic wood detailing as well as delicate floral tile work.




I noticed several other hidden gems both on Marvin Avenue and in the surrounding area as I drove around after my visit. Cleveland is lucky to have residents such as Bud and Robert who take great care to preserve their historic homes that are treasures from our past. I hope that someday I can uncover a hidden gem and restore it to its original beauty as well.

Garrett Morgan, Cleveland Inventor

A historical marker on East 55th Street, just south of Harlem Avenue, commemorates the life of African American inventor Garrett Morgan. The text reads:

Garrett Augustus Morgan was an African American businessman and prolific inventor of devices that made people's lives safer and more convenient. Born on March 4, 1877 in Claysville, the Black segregated section of Paris, Kentucky, Morgan migrated north first to Cincinnati and then Cleveland in 1895. He lived and worked in this house at 5204 Harlem Avenue. In 1906, Morgan started the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Company to market the hair straightener he had invented. The following year he opened a sewing machine repair shop. In 1908, he and his wife Mary opened Morgan's Cut Rate Ladies Clothing Store.

In 1910, Garrett Morgan invented the curve-toothed hair-straightening comb, and four years later patented the safety hood, the forerunner of the gas mask used in the 1916 Lake Erie Crib disaster and further developed and used in World War I. He also invented the traffic signal and sold his patented rights to General Electric Company. He was a founding member of the Cleveland Association of Colored Men and served as treasurer. He continued to invent tools, gadgets, and devices well into his 70s. He died in 1963 while preparing an exhibition of his life's work for an exposition in Chicago.

The marker refers to his home, at 5204 Harlem Avenue. He is shown in it in this 1960 photograph, used courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project. The house was demolished in the 1980s or 1990s.

Cleveland's Identity

Last week we challenged you to sum up Cleveland's identity in 200 words or less. Before we post your responses, here is my own contribution:

Cleveland’s identity begins with the Western Reserve -- and may end with it, given recent talk of regionalism and “Cleveland+”. Without the Connecticut Land Company surveyor Moses Cleaveland, we wouldn’t have a name. Without that link to New England, we wouldn’t have a Public Square.

Cleveland’s identity is inextricably connected to the Cuyahoga River, which made us ideally suited to be the main port linking the Great Lakes to the Ohio River via the Ohio and Erie Canal. Like the East, we experienced an influx of European immigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like the rest of the North, we experienced the Great Migration of African Americans from the South during the years 1910-1940.

We prospered and grew and developed world-class cultural institutions.

We built a lot of things here, and now, not so many. Like it or not, Cleveland is part of the Rust Belt, but it’s important to remember that unlike many of the small towns that popped up as a direct result of the American manufacturing boom, we were already sitting on nearly 200 years of history when things started to fall apart. If we have to fall, we’ve got good cultural bones to fall back on.

Still want to submit your own 200-word interpretation of Cleveland's historic identity? Email us at clevelandareahistory [at] gmail [dot] com.

Lost: Hathaway Brown School and Laurel School

Image courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project

Yesterday, the Cleveland Clinic demolished one of the last vestiges of the once great Euclid Avenue, an impressive dark sandstone building at 1945 East 97th Street, designed by architects Hubbell and Benes for Hathaway Brown School in 1905. The school used this building as its home until 1927, when it moved to Shaker Heights. Some of the firm's other notable commissions include the West Side Market, the YMCA, and the Ohio Bell Building.



The Clinic will soon, probably today or tomorrow, demolish another building in the complex, the home of Laurel School from 1909-1928.



This is all that remained yesterday of the Hathaway Brown building. It is shameful that the Cleveland Clinic was unable to find an adaptive reuse for this historic structure. They've done an excellent job of repurposing the 1901 Henry P. White house, at 8937 Euclid Avenue. Surely they could have found a use for this structure of similar character.

It has become clear that the Cleveland Clinic has little regard for the history of the area that has supported it and helped it grow. The last major building the Clinic demolished, the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine, is now surface parking. While the need for parking is clear, I, for one, would be in favor of zoning variances allowing larger parking garages if it would guarantee the Clinic would save some of these buildings.

Take another look at the Cleveland Play House. Is there any doubt that the Cleveland Clinic will demolish the structure as soon as they take ownership of it?

I encourage you to contact the president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, Delos Cosgrove, M.D., to let him know your feelings on this subject. He can be reached by phone at 216-444-2300 or by mail at:

Delos Cosgrove
Cleveland Clinic Main Campus
Mail Code H18
9500 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44195

The First of Cleveland's Follies?

It’s true. Throughout our history, Cleveland has made some mistakes. Maybe a few more than our fair share. So could this elaborate mansion built by Samuel Andrews and vacated by his family after having been lived in for only three years, have started it all?

In 1874, during Cleveland’s most prosperous time, John D. Rockefeller bought his partner Samuel Andrews out of the Standard Oil Company for $1 million due to their irreconcilable differences. Andrews had been hailed as an extremely capable mechanic and chemist. He developed the method to extract kerosene from crude oil, which is how he came to be in business with Rockefeller and subsequently assist in the formation of the Standard Oil Company.

Andrews rose from near poverty into his newfound stature of wealth. Apparently he took the wealth and ran with it, living a rather grandiose lifestyle. He and his family lived on Euclid Avenue at East 28th Street when he made a deal to switch properties with William Bingham Sr. and planned the construction of his massive 18,000 square foot English Gothic mansion at the northeast corner of Euclid Avenue and East 30th Street. Today this is the site of the WEWS property.

Each of Samuel Andrew’s seven children had their own room, and the home was apparently the first in Cleveland to have an elevator, which ran from the basement to the third floor. The home took three years to build, was lived in for three years, and then left vacant but fully furnished for 30 years. Apparently the logistics, layout, and maintenance costs of the home were not properly planned for and became quite a burden on both the family and staff of the home. Andrew’s dream of entertaining Queen Victoria (England was his country of origin) never came to be. This photo on the Cleveland Memory website shows the home up for sale in 1917.



The city’s Landmarks Commission website notes Walter Blythe as the architect for the structure, which coincides with Jan Cigliano’s Showplace of America: Cleveland’s Euclid Avenue, 1850-1910. This book is a must read if you enjoy learning about Millionaire’s Row. However in one sentence of this book, George H. Smith is noted as the architect, which matches the notation in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. I plan to research this further to find the correct information.

Overall it appears that this structure and its fate was a result of the desire for maximum opulence. Form and function, however, must work hand-in-hand.