Welcome to the Ohio City-Franklin Boulevard Tour. During this audio tour–roughly one and one-half hours–you will take a 2-mile walk on one of the most historic streets on Cleveland’s West Side: Franklin Boulevard, from Franklin Circle to West 50th Street, and back. The tour has 27 stops and, along the way after visiting these stops, you will learn why in the late nineteenth century when Euclid Avenue was one of the grandest residential avenues in the world, Franklin Boulevard was called the West Side’s “Euclid Avenue.” Your starting point is the Franklin Circle Christian Church, built in 1878 and located on the south side of the Circle near Fulton Road. There is ample nearby parking. Stand in front of the Church and face Franklin Circle. To begin the tour, press the “play” button. At any time during the tour, you may stop by pausing the audio narration. Then just hit the “play” button again to continue. We hope you enjoy this tour of Ohio City’s Franklin Boulevard.

The Franklin Circle Christian Church has had a presence on Franklin Circle since 1848 when its congregation built “God’s Barn”–as its first church on the Circle was known–just a few hundred feet to the west of the present church. The church which stands today on Franklin Circle near Fulton Road was built in 1878. It was designed by the well-known nineteenth century Cleveland architectural firm of Cudell and Richardson. One of the pastors, who served the church’s congregation in 1857, was James A. Garfield, future twentieth president of the United States.

The Nelson Sanford House (left) 2843 Franklin and the Robert Russell Rhodes House (right) at 2905 Franklin, both recently restored, are two of the grandest nineteenth century mansion still standing on Franklin Boulevard near Franklin Circle. The Nelson Sanford House was built in 1861 for Nelson Sanford, a Cleveland lumber merchant. The Robert Russell Rhodes House was built in 1874 for Robert Russell Rhodes, a coal and iron merchant and bank president. Rhodes was a great-grandson of Ohio City pioneer developer Richard Lord, as well as the older brother of James Ford Rhodes, the Pulitzer winning American historian for whom Cleveland James Ford Rhodes High School is named.

The house at 3105 Franklin, standing on the southeast corner of West 32nd and Franklin, looks different today than when the above photo of it was taken in circa 1875. This is largely because its bricks were later painted a darker color. Built in 1853 by lumber dealer Hiram Cook, it was remodeled in the 1870s–including replacement of its original roof with the mansard roof you now see–by John Bousfield, whose family lived in it for 17 years before losing it in bankruptcy. It served institutional uses in the twentieth century and has recently been restored and remodeled as part of a new apartment complex development.

The Kentucky Street Reservoir was part of the City of Cleveland’s first waterworks system, which was built between 1854 and 1856. For 30 years it stood on the south side of Franklin Boulevard between West 32nd and West 38th Streets. Not only did it supply all of the city’s drinking water during this period, but it also was a west side landmark, with it promenade walk atop the Reservoir where Franklin Boulevard neighbors met and shared incredible views of Cleveland and its surroundings. The Reservoir was abandoned in 1886 and torn down in 1897.

This grand Italianate House at 3805 Franklin with its imposing tower was built in 1874 for Belden Seymour. He was one of the most prominent real estate dealers and developers in Cleveland in the second half of the nineteenth century. His wasn’t the first house to stand on this corner. The smaller, Greek Revival style house to its right at 3811 Franklin Boulevard was. That house was built in 1853 for Irvine Masters, a Lake Erie shipbuilder who later served as mayor of Cleveland during the Civil War. After Masters died, Seymour bought the house and arranged in 1874 to have it moved to where it stands today so that he could make room for the grander house that he desired to build on that corner.

This three-suite terrace apartment building at 4009-4013 Franklin was designed by Cleveland architect Ernest Huberty and built in 1909. Its original owners were Samuel and Etta Bernstein. Samuel was a Jewish immigrant from what is today Poland. For years, he owned a clothing store on West 25th Street. Terrace apartment buildings were quite popular on Franklin Boulevard in the early twentieth century. This is the first of several you will walk by on this tour. All were built in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The William H. Ford House in 2022 – Photo by Jim Dubelko

The house at 4201 Franklin was built in 1891 for William H. Ford and his wife Ella. It could just as easily be called the Ella Day Ford House, for it was built on property that had been owned by Ella’s parents, James and Samantha Day, for more than two decades. The house was restored by Robert and Celine Shenk, with guidance from the Cleveland Restoration Society, from 2014-2017. Today, it is one of the finest examples of a nineteenth century Queen Anne style house on Franklin Boulevard.

The Maria Barstow House aka Moses Dickey House in 2022 – Photo by Jim Dubelko

The Second Empire style house at 4211 Franklin was built by German immigrant Ferdinand Dreier in 1868. Dreier rented the house to Maria Barstow, a widow and former First Lady of Wisconsin. While living there, Maria’s oldest son Frank met Cleveland mayor Stephen Buhrer, who lived just up the street. Frank needed a job and so Buhrer introduced him to a good friend who had just started an oil refinery business in Cleveland. It made all the difference for Frank’s future. That friend’s name? John D. Rockefeller.

This contemporary style church was erected in 1961 on the southeast corner of Franklin Boulevard and West 45th Street. St. Paul’s Community parish was formed in 1954 as part of the Inner City Protestant Parish project, designed and funded to provide religious and other services to residents of Cleveland’s east and near west sides. This was not the first church to have been built on this corner. In 1883, a large stone church was built on the corner for the First Congregational Church of Cleveland. In the 1950s, the parish abandoned the church which was razed several years later after it was severely damaged in a rain and wind storm.

The house at 4513 Franklin Boulevard has seen its share of sorrow. It was built in 1867 for Elizabeth Sheldon Burdick, the young widow of Civil War soldier John Burdick, who died in 1864 after being mortally wounded at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Elizabeth, who was the daughter of former Ohio City mayor Dr. Benjamin Sheldon, moved into this house with her two young children and her father, and likely hoped for a better future. Unfortunately, she contracted tuberculosis and died in 1877 at the age of 42.

This Queen Anne style house at 4721 Franklin Boulevard is named both for the Brooks family that built it in 1882 and the Figueroa family that restored it in 1996. A number of members of the extended Brooks family lived on Franklin Boulevard in the nineteenth century. One member was a builder who is believed to have built a number of the Brooks’ family and other houses on Franklin. Maria Figueroa, who was born in Puerto Rico, migrated to Cleveland with her parents in the 1950s when she was just five years old. She fell in love with the West Side’s Victorian era houses and, when she grew up, she restored a number of them, including this house.

The stone church on the southwest corner of Franklin Boulevard and West 48th Street was built in the years 1890 to 1892 for St. Mark’s Episcopal parish, which was originally a mission of Cleveland’s historic St. John’s Episcopal Church. The building was designed by Cleveland architect H. B. Smith. The St. Mark’s parish worshiped in this sacred building from 1892 until 1940, when the parish moved to a new building in Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood. The stone church then became home to a number of different denomination parishes before the arrival of the Iglesia del Salvador parish in 1992.

The grand Italianate style house at 5005 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1874 by prominent West Side developer Dudley Baldwin. First owned and occupied by Harvey and Alice Murray, the house was sold in 1882 to William J. and Teresa Roberts. William was a principal in a lead manufacturing business and later a bank president. The Roberts fell in love with the house and would live in it for almost 40 years. In recent years, the house was just as lovingly restored by it current owners, Russell Cendrowski and Roger Scheve.

The two-family house at 4906 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1880. It was designed in the Queen Anne style by the notable Cleveland architectural firm of Coburn and Barnum. That architectural firm designed several other houses on Franklin which are still standing, including the Sarah Bousfield House at 3804-3806 Franklin and the Spitzer-Dempsey House at 2830 Franklin. George Warmington, for whom this rental property was built, lived in a mansion on Franklin Boulevard next door to legendary presidential kingmaker, Marcus Hanna.

The great stone house at 4724 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1883 for prominent Cleveland shipbuilder, Robert Wallace. Designed in the Queen Anne style, we do not know who the architect was, but we suspect it may have been the firm of Coburn and Barnum, who, as mentioned above, designed a number of houses on Franklin in this era. Moreover, Wallace and Coburn worshiped together at, and were lay leaders of, the Congregationalist Church (designed by Coburn and Barnum) that once stood on the southeast corner of Franklin and West 45th Street. The house was restored by David Castro during the years 1997-2014 and today holds both apartment suites and Airbnb rental units.

The Second Empire style house at 4606 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1869 and designed by the Cleveland architectural firm of Griese and Weile. The firm also notably designed the Trinity Evangelical Church which still stands today near the corner of Lorain Avenue and West 30th Street. The house was built for Stephen Buhrer, who served as Mayor of the City of Cleveland from 1867-1870. Buhrer was a close friend of Standard Oil Company founder John D. Rockefeller. The house was restored in the 1980s by Charles and Alice Gould Butts.

The beautiful Queen Anne style brick house at 4514 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1887 for Abraham Teachout, owner of a lumber company in Cleveland. The A. Teachout Co., located in downtown Cleveland, was headed by members of the Teachout family for three generations before it was purchased by The Weyerhaeuser Group in 1941. Abraham Teachout was a member of the Franklin Circle Christian Church, worshiping there as well as teaching Sunday School. He was also an avowed Prohibitionist, even running for Congress on the Prohibition Party’s ticket in 1884. The house, like the Buhrer House at 4606 Franklin, was restored by Charles and Alice Gould Butts.

George and Frances Louise Sherman House in 2022 – Photo by Jim Dubelko

The house at 4500 Franklin Boulevard is one of only two Gothic Revival style houses we will visit on this tour. This one was built in 1880 for George Scheuermann (later, Sherman), Jr., the son of Bavarian German immigrants and a machinist who worked for decades at the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company and then its successor, the American Shipbuilding Company. Members of the extended Sherman family lived in houses on this corner from 1856 until the last descendant sold this house in 1992.

The house at 4414 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1882 for Mortimer J. Lawrence, a newspaper publisher and editor who, in the late nineteenth century, built a network of agricultural newspapers, headquartered here in Cleveland, that stretched from the Midwest to the East Coast. Four years after the house was built, Lawrence hastily sold it and moved from Cleveland after it was disclosed in local newspapers that his wife had sued him for divorce claiming that he had for years physically abused her. The house was also later notably owned by Herman Baehr, who resided in it while serving as mayor of Cleveland from 1910-1912. Damaged decades later in the historic 1953 tornado, the exterior and interior of the house were extensively renovated and remodeled by Duane and Michaella Drotar during the years 1989-2003.

The great stone house at 4308 Franklin Boulevard is popularly known as “Franklin Castle.” Designed by the architectural firm of Cudell and Richardson in the High Victorian Eclectic style, it was built during the years 1881-1883 for Hannes Tiedemann, a German immigrant, who became wealthy in Cleveland as a whole sale grocer and banker. The Tiedemann family lived in the house from 1883 to 1896. Decades later, in the 1960s when the house was owned by James and Dolores Romano, rumors began to swirl about town that the house was haunted by the ghosts of Hannes’ wife and one of his daughters, both of whom he allegedly murdered. Franklin Castle was damaged in the 1953 tornado, and also suffered damage in a fire years after that. In recent years, it was renovated by an Italian tapestry artist and now is occupied by tenants.

This Second Empire style house at 4206 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1866. It is named for Thomas Axworthy, a coal merchant and, for a time, Cleveland’s city treasurer. In 1888, Thomas Axworthy became notorious when it was discovered that he had embezzled money from the city treasury and then fled city. In the twentieth century, the house was owned for many years by Clement and Katherine Folkman, immigrants from Eastern Europe. Their son, Clement Jr., operated a popular gym on the property for many years.

The house at 3910 Franklin Boulevard is named after its first owner, Henry Coffinberry, a prominent Lake Erie shipbuilder and the son of legendary Common Pleas Court judge James Coffinberry. It is designed in the Gothic Revival style and was built in 1875. The Coffinberry family, which consisted of Henry, his wife Harriet and their two daughters, Nadine and Maria, lived in the house until 1891. After moving to a house in Lakewood’s prestigious Clifton Park, the Coffinberry family added an east wing onto the house and converted it into a two-family house. In the late twentieth century, the house was renovated by its current owner Mark Pokrandt.

Like several other grand houses on Franklin Boulevard, the Queen Anne style house at 3804-3806 Franklin was designed by the architectural firm of Coburn and Barnum. It was designed to be a two-family house and was built in the years 1883 and 1884. The Bousfields earlier lived in the Cook-Bousfield House on the southeast corner of Franklin and West 32nd Street before losing that house in bankruptcy in 1880. John and Sarah Bousfield lived in this house on the northwest corner of West 38th and Franklin until they died, he in 1888 and she in 1893. After being operated as a rooming house for many years in the twentieth century, the house was acquired in 1994 by Dr. James Hauer and Richard Turnbull, who restored it.

The Franklin Lofts Condominium Building at 3200 Franklin Boulevard was built in 1909 and originally was the West Side YMCA. It was designed by Cleveland architect Albert Skeel. When built, it had a very different roof and roofline which was gabled and sloped toward Franklin. In 1953, the historic tornado of that year tore the roof off of the building and it was thereafter replaced with a simpler flat roof. The building served as the West Side YMCA until 2004. In 2010, it was sold to a developer who converted into the condominium building it is today.

Where a deteriorated parking lot, partially hidden by trees, now stands, there once stood one of the most historic and impressive buildings on Franklin Boulevard–the Franklin Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1867, the parish began construction of a church on this corner on Franklin. Completed in 1870, it was called by the Plain Dealer “one of the finest church edifices in [the] city.” It fronted on Franklin and had a spire overlooking the street that was almost 200 feet high. The parish worshiped in the building until March 1947 when a terrible fire destroyed the entire building. The lot upon which the church stood was later sold to the West Side YMCA which used it for patron parking.

The house at 2902 Franklin is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, still standing on the street. It was built in 1852 in the Greek Revival style for John Ball, a Lake Erie captain. The Ball family lived in the house until the early 1860s when they moved. In 1862, the house was rented to the family of Gilbert and Susan Grant, who lived in the house for five years. Their daughter Ella, who sold flowers in the neighborhood from her garden at the house, grew up to be Ella Grant Wilson, a pioneer Cleveland feminist. The house was renovated and restored in the 1970s by Ohio City neighborhood pioneers Thomas and Claire Farnsworth.

The house at 2830 Franklin was built in 1879-1880 for Cleveland banker Ceilan Milo Spitzer. It was designed by the architectural firm of Coburn and Barnum. Before the Spitzer family could even move into the house, Ceilan’s bank failed and the house was sold in 1880 at a sheriff’s sale to pay bank debt. It was purchased at that sale by John Dempsey, father of James Dempsey, a co-founder of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey (today, Squire Patton Bogg), one of Cleveland’s most historic law firms. Members of the Dempsey family lived in the house from 1880-1929. The house was restored in the mid-1990s by two Cleveland lawyers.

End of Tour.