The son of Dewitt and Sarah Dimmick Drury, Francis Edson Drury was born on August 20, 1850, in Pittsfield, Michigan. After receiving a public-school education, he entered the hardware business where he invented the first internal gear lawnmower. Drury moved to Cleveland in 1870 and worked with the Taylor and Boggis Foundry Company to manufacture his mowers. In addition, and some years later, he partnered with H.P. (Henry Parsons) of Chicago to start the Cleveland Foundry Company, which built oil heating and cooking stoves.
Drury served as vice president, president, and general manager of the Taylor and Boggis Company, also known as T&B Foundry Company. On March 31, 1906, a fire destroyed not only the Taylor & Boggis Company but also the H.C. Tack Company, resulting in a $20,000 loss. The Tack Company suffered more damage because it was primarily a wood-frame building, unlike the mostly brick T&B building. Several months after the death of Robert H. Boggis, T&B's president, on June 10, 1911, from complications of pneumonia, the company purchased a large plot of land near East 55th Street and the old Erie tracks where it planned to build a new foundry and power plant. This land was previously owned by the Schofield-Schurmer-Teagle Company, which was (at the time) an oil plant. The buildings would be built of the most up-to-date machinery and in a modern style.
Because of the enormous success he had on his inventions, Drury built one of the last remaining homes on Euclid Avenue at East 87th Street. This mansion, composed of 34 rooms and 25,000 square feet, is located at 8615 Euclid Avenue. Drury, his wife Julia and their son lived at this location for twelve years. In 1924, however, Drury felt it was time to live in a more pastoral setting. As a result, in 1925 the Drurys decided to follow the route many of their neighbors took, relocating to an affluent eastern suburb. They bought the 155-acre Cedar Hill Farm in Gates Mills, Ohio, and built an almost exact duplicate of their home but nearly 1.5 times its size. They even transplanted the entirety of the Euclid Avenue home's gardens to the new estate. Today, the mansion, also known as the Tudor House, is on the campus of Gilmour Academy.
The new Drury home, situated near the corner of Cedar and S.O.M. Center Roads, has 41 rooms and 14 fireplaces (each made with marble from a different country), and each of its major rooms (i.e. master bathroom, kitchen, master bedroom) is finished with a different type of wood. When the Drurys lived there, the property also contained seventeen different buildings, including a creamery, vegetable-cleaning building, and toolshed. Almost five acres were greenhouses that grew not only vegetables but flowers as well. The surprising thing to note is that Drury and his wife lived on this property for only a year. Following a social snub as a result of getting the land before the Van Sweringens could do so to include in their Shaker Country Estates, the Drurys wrote off Cleveland, opting to spend the rest of their lives dividing their time between an apartment in New York City and estates on Georgian Bay in Ontario and in New Hampshire and Augusta, Georgia. Francis E. Drury passed away in Augusta on April 3, 1932, and his wife, Julia, died 11 years later on April 16, 1943.
After Drury and his wife left their original home on Euclid Avenue, it was closed off to the public until the Drury Club acquired it on June 11, 1939. The Cleveland Plain Dealer described the home as a fine example of 17th-century-style architecture. Up to this point in time, forty carefully chosen men and women spent most of their Saturday nights here enjoying dinner and a bit of dancing with their guests. The Drury Club later entered negotiations to sell the Drury mansion to the Florence Crittenton Home in 1946.
The Florence Crittenton Home officially inaugurated the Drury mansion as its new home in 1948. The mansion served as a maternity home of unmarried mothers and their children. Originally organized as a branch of the National Florence Crittenton Mission, the home was able to care for fifteen unwed mothers during pregnancy and for them and their infants for up to six months after delivery. The home had a part-time nursing staff and visiting physician to provide medical care as well as volunteers from Protestant and other women’s organizations to assist with activities and services.
The organization fought against social stigmas of the time. Many people viewed unwed mothers as ‘sinful’ or ‘undeserving’ because they believed these women's situations reflected a moral failure. Institutions such as the Crittenton Home guaranteed the mothers a sense of safety, mostly on the premise of spiritual reclamation. As public opinion in the latter decades of the twentieth century shifted, places such as the Crittenton Home became obsolete. These changing ideas, in conjunction with the loss of the organization's executive director, ultimately brought about the end of the Florence Crittenton Home in the mansion in 1971. Although the Florence Crittenton Organization continued to have a presence in Cleveland with a newfound focus on helping delinquent girls in a new treatment center, the branch at the Drury mansion had met its end.
The Florence Crittenton Home leased the building to AIM Jobs, and a Community Reintegration Center opened in the building in February 1973. The Center provided programs to treat parole and probation violators. It differentiated itself from traditional half-way houses in that it was designed to diagnose and treat the problems of parole violators. This provided a new opportunity as opposed to automatically sending them back to serve additional jail time.
The mansion continued to be used by the Reintegration Center until its sale in 1989 to the Cleveland Clinic. Renamed the Foundation House, the Clinic’s administration partly restored the mansion's first level to a condition similar to that in which the Drurys had left it in 1924. The work done by the Clinic was recognized in 1995 by the Cleveland Restoration Society. Overall, the mansion has been adaptively reused as a conference center and office space for the Clinic building where it hosts receptions, graduations for medical residents, and some Cleveland Clinic Foundation board meetings today.
]]>The story of Cleveland’s Global Center for Health Innovation is almost as multifaceted as the products, services, and solutions offered by its myriad members. Even the organization’s name has twists and turns: Readers are more likely to recognize its original moniker, the Medical Mart.
The Global Center’s tale began in 1982 when a taskforce looked into the possibility of creating the healthcare equivalent of Chicago’s Merchandise Mart in the Old Post Office Building adjacent to Tower City Center. Key participants in this early-stage effort included Dr. William Kiser, M.D., chairman of the Cleveland Clinic Board of Governors; Albert Ratner of Forest City Enterprises; and Thomas King, James Bidwell, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy representing the Merchandise Mart. The project was curtailed when market studies found that the current economic climate could not support a shopping mall concept for healthcare products.
The project’s next phase unfolded in 1995 when Dr. Toby Cosgrove, then chairman of Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, visited Saudi Arabia, where an influential sheik told him that a medical mart and hotel would be built in Dubai. Fast forward to 2005 when Dr. Cosgrove—by then Cleveland Clinic president and chief executive officer—concluded that the time was right to reprise the Medical Mart idea. Shortly thereafter, Cosgrove was introduced to Chris Kennedy, then president of MMPI, a company that manages industrial showrooms across the country, including Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. Cosgrove and Kennedy discussed the project with Mayor Jane Campbell and her Chief of Staff Chris Ronayne. With their backing, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners, led by Tim Hagan, took the reins.
By 2008 the commissioners approved two relevant tax measures: The first—a quarter-cent countywide sales tax—would raise $425 million to construct a Medical Mart and rebuild the Cleveland Convention Center. The second measure was a 1 percent increase in the County bed tax. Combined with tenants’ rent payments, the latter source could be expected to cover the Mart’s and the Convention Center’s operating costs.
Cuyahoga County and MMPI signed a development agreement in April 2009. At this time, several locations were still in play, including the Mall, University Circle, and a plot behind Tower City Center. The County chose a site on the western edge of the Mall along St. Clair Avenue.
In January 2010 the County signed a construction agreement with MMPI. The following month LMN Architects of Seattle was chosen to design the facility. By August the Cleveland Planning Commission also approved a massive revamping of the downtown convention center. Like the previous facility, the new structure would be underground. But instead of a below-grade driveway ingress on the building’s side, the new structure would feature a grand entrance along Lakeside Avenue, with Mall B raised significantly along a south-north slope from St. Clair Avenue to Lakeside.
In late 2010 Cuyahoga County purchased the Cleveland Convention Center from the City of Cleveland for $20 million and finalized negotiations with the owners of five buildings slated for demolition at St. Clair and Ontario. The path now was clear to begin construction of the Mart and the Convention Center, which officially began on January 3, 2011.
Construction crews removed more than 500,000 tons of debris and demolished six buildings, including the old Cleveland Convention Center, Justice Center parking garage, the 113 office building, Sportsman Restaurant, Chicago Title, and the old County Annex building. More than 12,200 tons of steel—the most for any project in downtown Cleveland history—was then used to create the complexes’ infrastructures.
In October 2012 GE Healthcare Systems and Cleveland Clinic signed on as the Medical Mart’s first tenants. Four months later, Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald announced that the facility would be formally named the Global Center for Health Innovation. MMPI then secured a lease from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), one of the largest medical organizations in America with more than 50,000 members. Like no other milestone, HIMSS’ commitment helped solidify the Center’s future—giving Cleveland a chance to become the epicenter of healthcare information technology.
Convention Center construction was completed in June 2013—just in time to host the highly successful National Senior Games. First Merit Bank purchased the naming rights to the Convention Center in 2015. In early 2016 Huntington Bank purchased First Merit and assumed the naming rights. The Global Center for Health Innovation opened in October 2013.
In late 2013 the county parted ways with MMPI and awarded a five-year management agreement to SMG, the nation's largest operator of convention centers. That same year, the Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Development Corporation (CCCFDC) was formed to promote convention business, enhance county-wide economic growth, expand employment opportunities and promote tourism. CCCFDC also oversees SMG’s operation of the Convention Center and the Global Center for Health Innovation. In June 2016 the final leg of the stool was completed: A 600-room, 32-story Hilton hotel was built on Lakeside Avenue on land formerly occupied by the Cuyahoga County Administration Building.
Since its 2013 opening, the Global Center for Health Innovation has become a national focal point for healthcare advancements, conventions and industry conferences. Its tenants include 45 of the world’s leading healthcare brands and it hosts more than 300 industry meetings annually. The Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland already has hosted more than 600 events, including its role as the media center for the 2016 Republican National Convention. In 2016 alone, the complex logged 237 events and attracted more than 440,000 visitors.
]]>"Antioch Church In Area Where Evictions Ordered: The Federal Court last Tuesday issued orders for the nearly 300 families living in the area bounded by E. 22nd St., Central and Cedar Ave. and E. 30th, to move by the 15th of October. While the judge said when to move, he didn't say where. The big problem therefore, facing the people, many of whom are on charity, is where they can move."
So reported the Cleveland Call and Post on September 15, 1934. Originally located at East 24th Street and Central Avenue, Antioch Baptist Church found itself in the same predicament as 300 nearby households--in the precarious position of needing to relocate in one month's time in order to make way for the Cedar Homes Public Housing Project. After finalizing the purchase of the property at East 89th Street and Cedar Avenue, Antioch moved to the area that would later come to known as the Fairfax neighborhood. As African Americans migrated to northern cities in the 1920s and 1930s in search of industrial jobs, they flooded into Cleveland's Cedar-Central neighborhood, adding to the congregational numbers of neighborhood churches including Antioch. Under the guidance of Rev. Wade Hampton McKinney, Antioch Baptist Church assumed a leadership role in Cedar-Central, establishing a credit union in 1947 to aid returning African American veterans as well as local residents in securing loans.
The Antioch Credit Union became wildly successful and this success along with growing congregational numbers created financial stability for the church, allowing Antioch to add a youth center to the church property as well as partner with the Cleveland Clinic to build the Antioch Towers for elderly residents in 1974. As more housing options opened up to African Americans on the periphery of the city in the 1970s, many black residents moved to the suburbs with neighborhood churches following their congregations out from the central city. Antioch remained committed to the Fairfax area, however, and chose to stay in Fairfax, buying up available property in an attempt to prevent undesirable businesses from exploiting the area.
With the ever-present threat of urban decay and possibility of the Cleveland Clinic expanding into the Fairfax area looming large over the neighborhood, Antioch continued to support cleanup efforts within the community as well as to once again partner with the Cleveland Clinic to establish the Antioch Development Corporation. The corporation began its Agape Program in 1999 to provide HIV testing, prevention education, case management, treatment referrals, as well as spiritual counseling to the community and continues to produce a positive impact on the Fairfax neighborhood.
While Antioch's decision to stay at its East 89th Street location demonstrated its commitment to the Fairfax neighborhood, more telling perhaps, is the decision of many of its congregational members who relocated to the suburbs to continue to return for services, illustrating Antioch's importance not only to the Fairfax neighborhood but to the entire Greater Cleveland African American community.
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]]>The Cleveland Clinic was founded on February 5, 1921. Frank E. Bunts, George W. Crile, and William E. Lower volunteered to serve their country as field surgeons and physicians in the Medical Corps of the United States Army during World War I. The military hospital experience impressed these men with the efficiency of an organization that included every branch or specialty of medicine and surgery. By the time that they returned home, Bunts, Crile and Lower had recognized the benefits that could be obtained from cooperation by a group of specialists. Along with John Phillips, they came together to found the Cleveland Clinic.
Many private practices and physicians were against the concept of opening a group practice. They believed that such a wealth of resources available to a group might give them an unfair competitive advantage. Fortunately, the founders of the Clinic were professors in one or more of the Cleveland medical schools and all had served as presidents of the Academy of Medicine. A core ideal emerged to create an institution in which medicine and surgery could be practiced, studied and taught by a group of specialists.
The Cleveland Clinic officially opened for business on Monday, February 28, 1921. The beautiful new building featured four stories, of which the upper three were built around a large central well extending from the second floor up to a glass skylight. The main waiting room was located at the bottom of the well on the second floor; while the office, examination rooms and treatment rooms opened onto the elegant second floor waiting area. The x-ray department, clinical laboratories and a pharmacy were located on the first floor. The fourth floor contained the art and photography department, editorial offices, offices for administrative personnel, a library and an executive boardroom.
The hospital quickly grew in popularity and Clevelanders accepted it so enthusiastically that plans for expansion were made within the first few years after it opened. By 1928, the Cleveland Clinic was a rapidly expanding, state-of-the-art hospital full of promise with potential to become one of the leading medical institutions in the nation.
]]>Wednesday, May 15, 1929 was just another busy day at the Cleveland Clinic. A steamfitter had arrived early that morning to repair a leaky steam pipe in the sub-basement, which had been converted into a storage room for the hospital's x-ray film. This routine repair morphed into a national tragedy as the exposed steam came into contact with approximately 3-4 tons of volatile nitrate x-ray film.
Nitrocellulose film was developed by the Eastman Kodak Company during the late 1880s for use in both the field of medicine, as well as the motion picture industry. The Eastman Kodak Company's nitrate film developed a penchant for being highly volatile, unstable and extraordinarily flammable. If nitrate film ignites, it becomes extremely difficult to extinguish. Immersing burning film in water may not extinguish it, and could actually increase the amount of deadly gas emitted.
The steam acted as the primary catalyst, which caused the highly unstable nitrate film to decompose and emit a poisonous cloud of gas. The gas soon ignited creating two violent explosions, which rocked the clinic, practically blowing the roof off of the building. The explosions forced deadly fumes at a high rate of pressure into the pipe tunnel system and up the pipe ducts into nearly every room of every floor of the hospital almost immediately. The yellowish-brown smoke also found its way up the major stairways between each floor, thus trapping most of the 225 occupants of the hospital in an inescapable, terrifying cloud of imminent death. The toxic vapors caught most of the victims by surprise, as several doctors and nurses collapsed at their desks, while others only managed a step or two in their escape before kneeling over and dying. One hundred and twenty three victims almost instantaneously perished that day.
A few of the victims were miraculously able to escape the hospital, rescued by firemen, policemen or volunteers. Unfortunately, anyone who had inadvertently inhaled any quantity of the fumes succumbed to and died from the toxic vapor, some soon after and others not for several days. It had been reported by dozens of witnesses that the bodies of the first victims turned yellow and later green after being brought out of the building. This ghastly, macabre scene left an indelible legacy that forced officials to reexamine safety procedures.
The historic disaster that occurred at the Cleveland Clinic was unprecedented in its time and it captured the attention of people on a national, and even worldwide scale. Several of the investigating commissions that were charged with finding the cause of the fumes and fire made amendments to policy that would profoundly alter fire-fighting practices, hospital procedures and the methodology behind the proper use and storage of hazardous chemicals and materials in the United States and throughout the world.
]]>In the early 1800s the present-day intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street (then Doan Street) was known as Doan's Corners. Named after Nathaniel Doan, who owned a tavern, a hotel, and other businesses there, Doan's Corners was a stagecoach stop on the road between Cleveland and Buffalo, New York. Until the turn of the twentieth century, Doan's Corners lay in the midst of farmlands and country estates just east of "Millionaires' Row." Within a generation, however, many Clevelanders came to view the area around East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue as Cleveland's second downtown. The grand Alhambra Theater opened at 10403 Euclid Avenue in the early 1900s, and other entertainment venues followed in its wake. The area became a premier destination for arts and entertainment, with music clubs, restaurants, theaters, and retail shopping. These catered to a population that was increasingly moving eastward into neighborhoods like Hough, Glenville, and Wade Park. Streetcars also brought East Side suburbanites to the 105th Street area.
In the 1950s, nearby Hough and Glenville began to transform from majority-white to majority-black neighborhoods. The Euclid-East 105th area continued to attract a mostly suburban white clientele to its many entertainment venues. Along with the Alhambra, there were a number of theaters. The Circle Theater hosted a number of musicians and Keith's 105th Street Theater showed motion pictures. The Circle Theater brought in big-time acts like Roy Acuff and his Grand Ole Opry. Keith's 105th Street Theater and the Circle Theater helped give rise to artists and producers. At midcentury the Euclid-East 105th area also began to attract a growing African American clientele. The change was not without problems. In the early 1950s a series of bombings rocked the Towne Casino, a music club that attracted interracial patronage. The venue finally closed amid fears of attacks possibly calculated to stave off integration. By the 1960s, nearby University Circle institutional leaders and municipal officials eyed the district for urban renewal, envisioning an extension of their collective campus to replace this dense urban core.
After the Hough uprising and Glenville shootout in the later 1960s, white flight and disinvestment threatened to spell the end of the East 105th Street entertainment district. Not long after the riots, however, African American real estate developer Winston E. Willis stepped in and purchased many of the commercial properties around East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue, opening a number of adult-oriented businesses. However, Willis also opened a number of mainstream ventures, including the Scrumpy Dump Cinema and Winston's Place Fine Dining. He managed the block of businesses through his University Circle Properties Development Inc., whose UCPD signage mimicked that of the University Circle Police Department. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Willis was locked in legal battles with the city. His use of the old Keith's 105th Theater as a billboard to rail against the nearby Cleveland Clinic's expansionist planning as an affront to African Americans surely added to the resolve of his opponents. Through a number of city investigations, Willis was imprisoned and his property confiscated. In the early 1980s, nearly all of Willis's properties were demolished to make way for the William O. Walker Center, sounding the death knell for the anchor of Cleveland's "Gold Coast."
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]]>Four Cleveland physicians founded the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in February 1921, creating an institution dedicated not only to medical care, but also to research, innovation, and physician education. Three of the four founders had served together in a U.S. Army medical unit in France during World War I. The Cleveland Clinic X-ray fire of 1929 – a basement fire caused by combustible nitrocellulose film that left 123 dead – was a tragedy that temporarily set back the hospital's progress. After World War II, however, the Cleveland Clinic rose to become one of the nation's leading medical centers.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Clinic researchers pioneered dialysis and kidney treatment and were the first to identify carpal tunnel syndrome and isolate the neurotransmitter serotonin. The Cleveland Clinic also emerged as a national leader in cardiac procedures. Clinic physicians performed the first coronary angiography in 1958 and continued to make significant advances in heart surgery techniques in the proceeding decades. The Clinic's main campus, located along Euclid Avenue in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood, has undergone tremendous growth since the 1970s. As adjacent land has been purchased and numerous new facilities constructed in a process of expansion, it is no great surprise that the Cleveland Clinic has become one of the city's largest private employers.
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