Euclid Avenue

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For the street in Ontario, California, see California State Route 83.

Advertising postcard (pre-1906) for the R&L Electric Car taken in front of the Leonard Hanna mansion on Euclid Avenue, Cleveland Ohio.

Euclid Avenue is a commonly found name applied to streets in American cities; however Cleveland, Ohio’s Euclid Avenue set the standard for the nation from the 1860s to the 1920s for beauty and sheer wealth. Today, the road is in the midst of a large reconstruction project that will include a bus rapid transit system.

Euclid Avenue runs from Cleveland to the suburb of Willoughby. It passes through the cities of East Cleveland, Euclid and Wickliffe and forms part of the border between Wickliffe and Willowick. The Cleveland portion of the street begins at Public Square and extends to University Circle. The street passes Playhouse Square, Cleveland State University, the Cleveland Clinic, Severance Hall, and Case Western Reserve University.

At the turn of the century, Euclid Avenue’s reputation was internationally known; Baedeker’s Travel Guides called the elm-lined avenue “The Showplace of America”, and designated it as a must see for travelers from Europe. The concentration of wealth was unparalleled; the tax valuation of the mansions along “the Avenue” far exceeded the valuation of New York’s famed Fifth Avenue in the late 19th Century.

Homes on Euclid Avenue's "Millionaire's Row", (south side of Euclid Avenue) circa 1870.

Families living along "Millionaire's Row" included those of John D. Rockefeller, Sylvester T. Everett, arc light inventor Charles F. Brush, George Worthington, Horace Weddell, Marcus Hanna, Ambrose Swasey and Amasa Stone. John Hay, personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State under William McKinley also resided on the Avenue until his death. Jeptha Wade, Cleveland benefactor and founder of Western Union Telegraph, lived on the Avenue, as did his son Randall.

The Avenue's most infamous resident was con artist Cassie Chadwick, the wife of Dr. Leroy Chadwick, a mild mannered doctor who had no idea that his wife was passing herself off to bankers as the illegitimate daughter of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.

As the city of Cleveland’s commercial district began to push eastward along the Avenue, families moved eastward along the Avenue towards University Circle. However east, southeast of University Circle, the topography of the area rises sharply into what is referred to as “The Heights”. The development of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, along with more efficient means of travel, was more attractive than the increasingly commercial nature of the Avenue.

For their 1949 musical "South Pacific", Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II indirectly acknowledged the street's fame at the time. In the script, Captain Brackett sends a grass skirt to one "Amelia Fortuna, 325 Euclid Avenue, Shaker Heights, Cleveland, Ohio."

By the 1920s, Millionaire’s Row was in decline. The arrival of Great Depression provided an opportunity for the owners of the mansions to turn many of them into rooming houses, which also accelerated the decline of the Avenue as well.

In the 1950s, Cleveland's innerbelt cut the Avenue in half between Downtown and the rail crossing at East 55th Street.

By the 1960s, the street that once rivaled Fifth Avenue as the most expensive address in America was a two mile long slum of commercial buildings and substandard housing. In the late 1960s, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Nick Mileti announced plans to move the basketball club from the Euclid Avenue Cleveland Arena to Richfield Township where he built a new arena.

Today, eight houses from the era remain on Euclid, including the Samuel Mather and Howe Mansions owned and used by Cleveland State University. The most recent to fall under the wrecker's ball was the Lyman Treadway Mansion, which served as part of the Cleveland Museum of Health from the 1930s until it was razed in 2002 for a new museum building.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority is currently undertaking a complete refurbishment of Euclid Avenue as part of the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project. A bus rapid transit line will run from Public Square to the Stokes Rapid Transit station in East Cleveland, which is the eastern terminus of the Red Line rapid transit route.

Parts of U.S. routes 6, 20 and 322 follow Euclid Avenue.