History

Separation from Glenville

By 1903, the Village of Glenville was in political and financial turmoil. A portion of Glenville, its former ward two, had already separated from the village and merged with the City of Cleveland.

Now, Glenville Mayor Fredrick Goff, and C. A. Judson, the president of the Glenville school board, were presented with petitions from all of Glenville’s wards, except from its fourth ward along Lake Erie, requesting annexation with Cleveland.  Goff and Judson became the principal negotiators with Cleveland regarding merger.

One major difficulty was the fourth ward’s disaffection with annexation to Cleveland. Glenville’s fourth ward, commonly referred to as "Glenville on the Lake," was bordered by Cleveland’s Gordon Park on the west, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway tracks on the south, Coit Road on the east and Lake Erie on the north.   Many of the fourth ward’s summer residents lived on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland and were aware of how rapidly large cities changed, particularly with escalating property valuations and taxes coupled with almost no land-use control. They had moved to Glenville on the Lake to escape Cleveland’s filth, noise, crime, government, and teeming immigrant masses. Their hostility toward Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson’s progressive policies and contentious personality was a motivating factor in avoiding annexation at all costs.

Mayor Goff, who lived in the fourth ward, enlisted the aid of his neighbor Liberty Holden to lead the drive to have Glenville on the Lake become a separate municipality. Holden and the other secession leaders allowed public debate over the wisdom of annexation to run its course in the rest of Glenville while maneuvering behind the scenes.

First, the secessionists had to determine whether their small number of taxpayers would be willing to go it alone as an independent community.

Second, they needed representation on the Glenville council. The May 1903 at-large election had eliminated Glenville on the Lakes’ assured seat. That November, Albert S. Ingalls was appointed to fill a vacant council seat, making up for the seat that had been lost.

Third, the legality of detachment of the fourth ward from Glenville had to be established. The Ohio General Assembly quickly passed a law eliminating any minimum size restriction for the creation of a township in Ohio.

The principal problem to be addressed was to settle on some agreed method of structuring the new community to prevent the intrusion of unwanted types of land use. Although businesses currently located in Glenville on the Lake such as the Marble & Shattuck Chair Company and Lucas Machine-Tool Company were quiet and created few disturbances for residents, the founders did not want any more businesses moving into the community.

One of the few models available to Holden was Tuxedo Park, a business-restricted community in New York founded by Pierre Lorillard. The difference being that Lorillard began his development with title to all eleven thousand acres of land.  He was able to place deed restrictions on the use of the property as he conveyed each parcel. Holden had find a way to convince dozens of property owners in the fourth ward to restrict the use of their individual parcels.

Holden, along with Goff, Charles Britton, Arthur Baldwin, and Abram Garfield, thrashed around for a solution. They also received pressure from Collinwood residents Samuel Mather and Charles Bingham to prevent the commercialization of their quiet community on the lake. Eventually, Judge Louis Grossman, John D. Rockefeller’s attorney, offered a resolution.

The proposed solution required that the deeds to every property in Glenville on the Lake be revised to restrict land use to single-family homes for fifty years. This proposal required an astonishing leap of faith from the property owners.

Over the next year, Holden and Goff visited every property owner from Gordon Park to Coit Road in Glenville on the Lake requesting that the property owners convey the deeds to their homes to Guardian Savings and Trust Company as trustee. The trustee would then convey the property back to the original owners with a deed containing a restriction limiting the use of the parcel to only residential use for a term of fifty years. Incredibly, the two men persuaded more than 150 of their neighbors to participate, demonstrating the trust and the high regard felt for the two men in the community.

The re-granted ownership forbade the construction of railroads, businesses, manufacturing enterprises, or any structure that would emit offensive odors, noise, or smoke. Apartment houses, resorts, hotels, saloons, stables, or even picnic grounds could not be built on the properties. The Country Club, James Patton’s fruit farm, the Schmitt-Gamble greenhouses, and the two manufacturing plants were grandfathered from having any such restrictions. The selling of wine or malt or spirituous liquors of any kind was also prohibited.

By the summer of 1904, the effort to annex Glenville to Cleveland reached a fever pitch.  At the same time, the fourth ward (Glenville on the Lake) was ready to roll out its escape plan.

On August 1, 1904, a petition signed by nearly 700 residents of Glenville was presented asking that the Glenville City Council submit to voters the question whether Glenville should be annexed to Cleveland. The annexation petition was nearly thirty feet long and signed by a number equal to half the registered voters in the community.  The petitioners argued that their municipal tax rate would be substantially reduced if Glenville merged with Cleveland and their municipal services would significantly improve.  Plus, many residents were supportive of the progressive leadership of Cleveland’s Mayor Tom L. Johnson.

Days later, a petition by anti-annexationists was being circulated in Glenville. These petitioners feared that the Cleveland annexation drive was being financed by the saloon interests in Glenville.  Glenville’s Mayor Goff was leading a successful campaign to severely regulate liquor establishments in the community.  Cleveland did not impose the same restrictions on the sale of alcohol.  Some residents feared that merger with Cleveland would remove all liquor regulations.

On August 15, 1904, a third petition was presented. The petition was drafted and circulated by Howard M. Hanna Jr., Robert L. Ireland, L. Dean Holden, Albert S. Ingalls, and Liberty E. Holden and asked that Glenville’s fourth ward be separated from the city to permit the ward to become a new township to be called Bratenahl.  It was said that more than 95 percent of the property owners in Glenville on the Lake signed the petition. (Only one resident of the ward had signed the thirty-foot Cleveland annexation petition.)

At the time, the Plain Dealer reported, “Never before was such interest shown in council’s proceedings.”

Opposition to this new detachment petition was immediate and vocal.  The residents of Glenville’s fourth ward paid a substantial portion of the city’s municipal taxes. It was claimed that if the separation petition was approved, Glenville’s municipal taxes would double.  Also, there was strong objection to fixing the southerly boundary line of the proposed township at immediately south of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway tracks. Recognizing that Glenville would never accept the loss of the railroad revenues, the description of the territory detached from Glenville was quickly changed, setting the southern boundary north of the railroad tracks.

Open threats of violence were made by residents opposed to separation.  When the community learned that the fourth ward’s separation petition would be heard at the Council meeting on September 5, 1904, over 400 residents, mostly opponents, squeezed into the Council chambers.  City leaders called for increased police protection. The Council meeting was described in the newspaper as “one of the most exciting sessions in the history of the body. . . No blows were struck in the melee with which the meeting was opened, but a number of epithets were flung about with reckless abandon, a number of chairs and desks were overturned, and several suits of clothes were disarranged.” The crowd demanded every council member vote against the separation petition except for Albert S. Ingalls who represented the fourth ward.  Instead, a Council majority voted to adjourn without taking any action. This “brought down a storm of cries and epithets.”

In succeeding days, the anti-separation leaders secured petitions containing over a thousand signatures by residents in the first, second and third wards opposing withdrawal of the fourth ward. At the Council meeting on September 19, 1904, the ordinance allowing separation of the fourth ward was defeated, though the vote was exceedingly close.  The Glenville Council consisted of seven members.  One member, M. W. Sprengle, was not present due to the illness of his mother.  The remaining Council members split their votes 3 in favor and 3 against.  Since the vote was tied, the vice mayor, who also served as president of Council, broke the deadlock by voting against separation.

The question of Glenville’s annexation to Cleveland remained to be decided and the resolution was scheduled for a vote at the Council meeting on October 3, 1904.  A large and unruly crowd attended the meeting. Again, extra law enforcement was present.  A group of ardent opponents to separation brought a bucket of tar and feathers in case the Council revisited the separation measure. The resolution submitting the question of Cleveland annexation to the voters was called and passed with no debate. There was little reaction from the crowd.  They were waiting to see what happened next.

Councilman Sprengle rose and moved reconsideration of the vote on the question of the fourth ward’s separation, taken two weeks before.  The meeting erupted in charges of bribery and undue influence.  Various parliamentary objections were raised and defeated.  At one point someone disconnected the gas lights, plunging the hall into darkness.  The public comment period lasted past midnight.  A vote on the question was finally called amidst the uproar.  When the final vote was taken and separation was approved by a vote of 4 to 3, the crowd was ominously silent.  The leaders of the opposition to separation made clear that they would now turn to the courts.

On October 7, 1904, Glenville’s Solicitor brought a lawsuit charging that the separation of the fourth ward was unconstitutional and seeking to have Councilmember Sprengle’s vote declared void. The case was assigned to Judge Philips who temporarily restrained city and county officials from taking any action regarding the fourth ward’s separation.  On October 14, 1904, Judge Phillips rendered a partial decision finding that the state law allowing separation was constitutional and that the Council proceedings that passed the resolution were legal and in conformance with the rules of the Council.

The judge felt the only question remaining to be decided was whether Councilman Sprengle was unduly influenced when voting in favor of separation.  Sprengle was a veterinary surgeon who, it was said, performed most of his business in the fourth ward.  On October 19, 1904, Judge Philips decided in favor of separation.  He exonerated Sprengle of any wrongdoing and concluded that his acts did not constitute corruption.

Liberty Holden and the other organizers in the fourth ward did not delay.  They immediately filed a petition with the Cuyahoga County Commissioners to detach the fourth ward from Glenville and to declare the territory to be a new township known as Bratenahl Township.  The name, Bratenahl, was taken from Bratenahl Avenue (later East 88th Street), which ran north from St. Clair to the Charles Bratenahl family home. Bratenahl Avenue was one of the entrances into the village and marked Cleveland’s northeastern boundary.

The county commissioners approved the petition on October 26, 1904. At the end of October, Mayor Goff and Councilman Ingalls resigned their Glenville offices.

 

The Founding of Bratenahl

On November 8, 1904, Bratenahl Township voters met at the former home of Arrison and Mary Shotwell, located at 411 Bratenahl Road, to unanimously elect Liberty Holden, Robert Ireland, and James Patton the new township trustees.

On the same day, the voters in Glenville approved annexation to Cleveland by a vote of 850 to 435.  Soon after, Glenville merged with the City of Cleveland.

On November 19, 1904, the appointed trustees of Bratenahl Township ordered a special election to be held on November 21, 1904, to determine whether Bratenahl should become a village. Had Bratenahl remained a township, an unincorporated community, it could have been annexed to a neighboring village or city without the township’s consent.  That election, held on November 21, 1904, approved incorporating Bratenahl as a village by unanimous consent of 68 voters.  Two days later, on November 23, 1904, Bratenahl Village was formally established.

On December 13, 1904, at a third election in five weeks, the voters of Bratenahl village unanimously elected Liberty E. Holden, Mayor, and Robert L. Ireland, Abram Garfield, James A. Patton, Norman E. Stanley, Christian Gottschalt and Charles W. Pratt as the first members of the Village Council.

 

The Annexation of a Portion of Collinwood to Bratenahl

In May 1906, a group of Collinwood residents prevailed upon a member of Cleveland City Council to introduce an ordinance to annex the Village of Collinwood to Cleveland.  Unfortunately for the petitioners, the members of the Collinwood Council were bitterly opposed to any annexation to Cleveland.

To forever bar any annexation, the Collinwood Council hastily passed an ordinance petitioning  the county to detach a strip of village land along Collinwood’s western border from St Clair Avenue to Lake Erie for the purpose of creating an unincorporated wedge between Cleveland and Collinwood, thereby making the two communities noncontiguous.  Under Ohio law, two communities could only merge if the two communities were contiguous.

Both petitions, one to annex Collinwood to Cleveland, the other to create a township between the two communities, were filed with the Cuyahoga County Commissioners, who proceeded to delay consideration of both petitions.  Eventually, the petitioners seeking the create a new township filed a mandamus action to compel the county to hear their petition.  On December 21, 1906, the circuit court dismissed the action. The county continued to delay consideration of both petitions.

Early in 1907, a group of residents along Lake Erie in the northwest corner of Collinwood, led by Alvah S. Chisholm, Horace A. Fuller, Joseph Parks, H. H. Griggs, William C. Rhodes and other freehold electors along Lakeshore Boulevard, petitioned Cuyahoga County to detach a strip of land between Lake Erie on the north and the Lake Shore railroad tracks on the south from Nine Mile creek to Adams Avenue from Collinwood and make it a township.  Like the wealthy residents of Glenville on the Lake, these conservative property owners viewed the annexation of Collinwood to Cleveland with suspicion, believing annexation would increase their taxes. The petitioners did not want to become part of Cleveland.

On June 16, 1907, the Cuyahoga County commissioners approved this new petition and the strip of territory, called Bratenahl Township, was broken off from Collinwood.  The petitioners stated publicly that if the attempt to annex Collinwood failed, they would consider rejoining Collinwood.

Meanwhile, both the Cleveland and Collinwood Councils put before their voters on the November 1907 ballot the question of whether Collinwood should be annexed to Cleveland.  The voters in both communities approved the merger.

Shortly after the election, the residents of Bratenahl Township announced that they would approach the Village of Bratenahl with the goal of annexing the township land to the village. On March 6, 1908, the Bratenahl Council adopted an ordinance to annex Bratenahl Township.    Overnight Bratenahl gained approximately 30 new families and grew to approximately 1.06 square miles.

The fight over the annexation of Collinwood to Cleveland continued.  Notwithstanding the results of the election in November 1907, lawsuits, legislative delays, and administrative maneuvering delayed a final resolution of the annexation debate. The annexation of Collinwood to Cleveland was not effected until January 25, 1910, almost four years after the effort began.