Places
Homes Past
12023 Lake Shore Boulevard "Shoreby"
Plat No. 631-07-001
Samuel and Flora Stone Mather purchased a 7.69-acre parcel at the easternmost reaches of the Coit holdings. One of the parcel’s attractions was that it lay between Shaw Brook and Nine Mile Creek. The Mathers built their summer home in Glenville on the Lake.
The 20,000 square-foot home designed for summer fun was completed in 1890 and used only three months per year. It was designed for the Mathers by Charles Schweinfurth, who also designed their 2605 Euclid Avenue in-town home. It was significant because it represented a stage in the development of Schweinfurth’s increasingly personal style.
Charles Frederick Schweinfurth was born on September 3, 1856, in Auburn, New York. After graduating from Auburn High School in 1872, he worked at architectural offices in New York City for two years and at the office of the supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury in Washington, D.C. from 1874 until 1880.
His first architectural assignment in Cleveland was a grand stone mansion on Euclid Avenue for Sylvester Everett. By 1910, Schweinfurth had completed at least 15 residential designs for prominent and wealthy Clevelanders on Euclid Avenue’s “Millionaires’ Row” between East 12th and East 40th streets.
Significant church commissions included the remodeled interiors of the Old Stone Church on Public Square in1884, Calvary Presbyterian Church at East 79th Street and Euclid Avenue in 1890, and Trinity Cathedral & Parish House at East 22nd Street and Euclid Avenue in 1907, which many critics and historians deem his most exceptional work.
Schweinfurth had a long and productive relationship with Samuel and Flora Stone Mather, which led to designs for the Union Club of Cleveland in 1905, as well as several buildings on the early Adelbert and Mather college grounds.
Schweinfurth designed three other Bratenah residences: the Salisbury home at 489 East 88th Street, the Liberty Holden home at 8907 Lake Shore Boulevard, and the Fuller home at 12817 Lake Shore Boulevard.
The mansion featured exterior stone identical to that used in the Schweinfurth designed four landmark bridges spanning Lower East Boulevard (Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard).
The Shoreby architectural style might be classified as Romanesque with some Tudor details confined to a band of half-timbering above the arcaded entrance loggia and a small porch at the east end. Overall, the façade showed a subtle play between symmetry and asymmetry. It is basically symmetrical, framed by a tall gabled mass at each end. The window arrangement, however, was asymmetrical, articulating the surface of the front in a calculated abstract pattern.
Shoreby had twenty-five rooms, ten of which were sleeping quarters. In one of the bedrooms intended for the Mathers’ four children, the fireplace bore a favorite religious lesson done in Minton tiles from Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England: “Sleepe not til u hath considered how thou hast spent ye day past / If thou have well done thank God / If otherwise repent ye.”
Outside there was a gazebo, private docks, and a yacht basin. A boathouse at the mouth of Nine Mile Creek was big enough to hold a naphtha launch and the Mather yacht, “Bedouin.”
Samuel Livingston Mather III acquired the property from the estate on May 26, 1939.
Cleveland Trust acquired the property on November 18, 1939.
Jeanette Kocin acquired the property on December 31, 1947. The police chief reported in 1950 that the property was operated as a rooming house.
Joseph Kocinski acquired the property on March 16, 1950. Joseph Kocinski unwittingly rented the guest house to Irwin “Red” Mason, a gambler with a long rap sheet. Mason’s criminal enterprise came to light when a man called police to register a complaint that his mother had lost money in illicit poker games that Mr. Mason hosted every weekend.
Stephanie Kocinski acquired the property on August 16, 1958.
John and Jane Kuta acquired the property on March 18, 1965.
William and Patricia Goffman acquired the property on December 8, 1972.
Newport North Shore Development acquired the property on January 2, 1990, and became part of the 75-acre Newport Harbor development. In 1991, Shoreby was renovated and became Shoreby Club.
Shoreby Club Inc. acquired the property on February 26, 1992. The address was changed to 40 Shoreby Club Drive.