THE PLAIN DEALER . SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 1999 5-D OURCENTURY 1958 ATA GLANCE Right-to-work measure voted down; Bricker loses Building up, moving out The “right to work” con- stitutional amendment would mean Ohio workers couldn’t be forced to join or pay dues to a union. The Ohio Chamber of Com- Freeways help suburbs explode; merce and Ohio Manufac- turers Association hoped destroy older neighborhoods outlawing the union shop routes of other freeways — the North- would weaken labor. In- By Fred McGunagle west, Airport, Medina, Willow, Outer stead, the vote almost de- Belt South, Outer Belt East, Clark, Bricker stroyed the Ohio Republi- “Oh, God, all my stuff!I worked so Lee, Bedford, Central and Heights — can Party. hard for it,” Hazel Deubel sobbed as radiating in all directions. All told, Voters overwhelmingly she watched her belongings carted metropolitan Cleveland would get defeated the amendment and Republicans from the ramshackle house in the $500 million worth of freeways. who backed it. Michael DiSalle — who had rain. “Can’t you do something about won the Democratic primary over, among oth- it?” The Regional Planning Commis- ers, Mayor Anthony Celebrezze and County sion had asked suburbs and the de- The bailiff sympathized with the velopers who were gobbling up sub- 61-year-old widow on relief, but there urban acreage, notably Forest City Engineer Al- was nothing he could do. The state Materials Co., to reserve vacant land PLAIN DEALER FILE PHOTOS bert S. Porter had bought the old house on E. 27th along the routes. But in older areas, — replaced St. near Payne Ave. from her landlord A workman pours the last of the concrete for Ohio 1 between Painesville William J. the bulldozers went through old, and Conneaut in 1960. and she had resisted pleas to move densely built neighborhoods. O’Neill as gov- herself and her 11 dogs even after ernor. In the utilities were shut off. Now the bull- The Inner Belt destroyed ethnic biggest upset of dozers were on her block tearing neighborhoods on the edge of down- all, Cleve- down houses, and hers was next. town. The Medina Freeway (I-71) put lander Steven a barrier down the middle of Trem- Clevelanders who read about her Young ousted ont. The Lakeland (I-90) went 12-year Sen. eviction felt sympathy, too, but what was there to do? She couldn’t stand in through Collinwood and Euclid, the John W. PD FILE Willow (I-77) through old Newburgh. Bricker. the way of progress. Ohio’s new senator, All reduced the city’s population and • Stephen Young, being Construction of the Inner Belt tax duplicate. And though owners interviewed by Dorothy meant the interstate highway system, were paid for their property, they Longwood the greatest improvement Americans couldn’t find comparable homes for had been Fuldheim after his mobility since paved roads, was be- the same price. hailed as a na- election victory. coming a reality. New York City tional model of would be a day away, Cincinnati a The suburbs were flourishing, es- “slum clear- morning’s drive. Unspoiled villages pecially the outer-ring suburbs that ance.” The city had torn down the crowded like Mentor in Lake County and were becoming closer to downtown in tenements between E. 30th and E. 40th Sts. Brunswick in Medina County would travel time. The sound of hammering Developers replaced them with garden apart- be just a half-hour distant. and power tools echoed across what ments. But now, the 283 families in the apart- had been farmland. Young families ments were protesting loudly about leaking The apostle of freeways, Cuyahoga filled rows of look-alike houses. Tri- A highway official inspects a washout along the Lakeland Freeway, or pipes, roaches and rats. County Engineer Albert S. Porter, cycles lined sidewalks on rows of new Interstate 90, in April 1962. Officials of Longwood Community Homes told the Citizens League that the In- streets. Quiet communities suddenly said they couldn’t stop rats from crossing Sco- ner Belt was the first step toward had to provide the city services and ers were the downtown stores — Hig- to locate where there was plenty of vill and Woodland avenues, or keep foul- swift transportation to Parma. He schools the newcomers demanded. bee’s, Halle’s, May Co., Taylor’s, Bai- cheap land away from city problems. mouthed youths from taking over the play- said the Lakeland Freeway, extend- ley’s, Sterling Lindner and such The freeways would speed their prod- ground. They had trouble keeping the apart- ing the Shoreway east of E. 140th St., Retailers quickly followed their smaller outlets as Bond’s, Bakers and ucts to distant states. They soon real- ments filled; people didn’t want to live in gar- would ease traffic jams to Euclid customers. By 1972, the Real Prop- Rosenblum’s. ized they could move the plants them- den apartments surrounded by slums. Beach and Euclid. Hearings would be erty Inventory counted 43 shopping selves to distant states, where the The old owners had been paid for their tene- scheduled around the county on centers in Cuyahoga County. The los- Manufacturers saw an opportunity costs of doing business were lower, ments, but nobody helped their tenants find and send their products back to new housing or even kept track of what hap- Cleveland. pened to them. Instead, officials wondered at the influx of poor blacks into the once middle- None of that was clear in 1958. “I class Hough area. don’t think anybody thought there was going to be a downside,” says • Thomas Bier, Cleveland State Uni- As general manager of the Indians, Frank versity housing and population re- “Trader” Lane was living up to his nickname. searcher. “It was just simply pro- He picked up second baseman Milt Bolling gress. We Americans move, we move from Washington in February and traded him up. What the freeways did was enable to Detroit in March. a lot more choices spread out farther. Gone were such old favorites as Jim Hegan, How could anyone foresee the effect Early Wynn, Al Smith and Gene Woodling, but on the core of the county, the city of Orestes Minoso and Larry Doby were back Cleveland?” with the Tribe. Early in the season, Roger The first freeway completed, the Maris went to Kansas City in a deal that Lakeland in 1960, “opened the door to brought Woodie Held and Vic Power. Mentor,” Bier says. I-77 and I-271 in Herb Score, his eye injury healed, appeared 1968 and the western section of I-90 to be as fast as ever, then hurt his arm and ap- in 1976 opened more doors. A shift peared in only 12 games. In June, with the In- came in the 1970s when Shaker dians in sixth place, Lane fired Manager Heights residents rose up to block the Bobby Bragan and replaced him with Joe Gor- Clark Freeway, which would have cut don. The team finished fourth, a half-game through their exclusive suburb and over .500. Cal McLish won 16 games and erased the Shaker Lakes (“a two-bit young Rocky Colavito batted .303 with 41 duck pond,” in Porter’s view). home runs, one short of the Tribe record. Attendance fell again. President William “By that time,” Bier says, “it was Daley announced that, despite persistent ru- more apparent what the destruction mors, the team would stay in Cleveland out of would be. People could see the swath civic loyalty. Lane traded Bobby Avila, Vic that was cut out of Euclid. When Wertz, Don Mossi and Ray Narleski for, Shaker Heights stopped I-490, that among others, Billy Martin and Jim Piersall. also killed the Lee Freeway and the Heights Freeway. The East Side and • the east suburbs would have been End over end, the football floated through crosshatched with freeways if the the snowstorm and, against all odds, through Clark Freeway had gone ahead.” the uprights. Pat Summerall’s 49-yard field As it was, Cleveland was wounded. goal gave the New York Giants a 13-10 victory Bier cites a CSU study showing that, and forced a playoff for the Eastern Division adjusted for inflation, city real estate title. The Browns had been victimized by a lost 25 percent of its value between couple of halfback passes from Frank Gifford, 1948 and 1996. The inner suburbs, who, like Summerall, would be more familiar meanwhile, gained 91 percent and the to later generations as a television announcer. outer suburbs gained 744 percent. The kick undid Jim Brown’s 148 yards of rushing, including a 65-yard run for his 18th Much of that was inevitable. “In- touchdown to tie the NFL season record. The dustry had to spread out,” he says. following week, the Giants shut out the And even if there had been no I-71, Browns, 10-0. It was a sad ending to a year in old neighborhoods like Tremont were which the Browns were 9-1 against the rest of declining. “Younger people were the league but 0-3 against the Giants. moving to Parma. Tremont was tee- tering in the 1950s, and when the • freeway came, it was the stake in the The city had one champion in 1958: The heart.” East Tech High School basketball team was Bier says of the freeways: “They greeted by city and school officials and 1,000 made possible the kind of economy cheering fans as it returned from Columbus we have today. But if while we were with the state trophy, the first for a Cleveland building the freeways we had been high school.