Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers (Ohio)

361 Pages·2003·7.47 MB·English

by  Herbert H.

Invisible
Giants
Introduction • i
The Van Sweringens’ triumph in Cleveland. For almost forty years, the 52-story Terminal Tower
was the tallest building outside New York City. From here, the brothers administered their huge
railroad, real estate, and transit enterprises. At the right is the Vans’ 1918 Hotel Cleveland, the
earliest element in the Terminal complex; at the left is their Higbee Company department store.
Frank A. Wrabel collection
ii • Introduction
Invisible
Giants
The Empires of Cleveland’s
Van Sweringen Brothers
Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.
Bloomington and Indianapolis
Introduction • iii
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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© 2003 by Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data
Harwood, Herbert H.
Invisible giants : the empires of
Cleveland’s Van Sweringen brothers /
Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and
index.
1. Van Sweringen, Oris Paxton, 1879–
1936. 2. Van Sweringen, Mantis
James, 1881–1935. 3. Businessmen—
Ohio—Biography. 4. Real estate
development—Ohio—Cleveland—
History. 5. Railroads—Ohio—History.
6. Cleveland (Ohio)—History. I. Title.
HC102.5.V36 H37 2003
385'.092'2771—dc21
2002004355
1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04 03
iv • Contents
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
1 • Oasis in a Gritty City 1
2 • The Ideal Suburb 11
3 • Mr. Smith Sells a Farm 27
4 • Mr. Smith Sells a Railroad 36
5 • Shaping Solid Forms 48
6 • A Difficult Birth at the Public Square 58
7 • The Beginnings of an Empire 71
8 • To the South, East, and North 85
9 • Taking Stock: 1924 100
10 • Some Shadows Fleet By 114
11 • Building, Rebuilding, and Juggling 125
12 • Consolidation Anarchy I: The Maverick and the General 141
13 • Consolidation Anarchy II: The Street Fighter 151
14 • The Summit I: An Appalachian Peak in the Rockies 161
15 • The Summit II: Filling Out the Railroad Map 174
Contents • v
16 • The Summit III: Consummation in Cleveland—and a Jolt 188
17 • Completions and Complications 200
18 • Taking Stock: 1930 217
19 • Sudden Darkness 234
20 • The Rails Roll Downgrade 246
21 • A New World 255
22 • The Cruelest Year 269
23 • The Last Train 281
24 • Epilogue I: New Empires from Old 292
25 • Epilogue II: The Ghosts 305
Notes 313
Sources and Acknowledgments 333
Index 337
vi • Contents
Introduction
It was the most important single event in the city’s history.
Actually, it was only a dedication ceremony for a railroad
passenger terminal, the sort of celebration cities constantly
stage to baptize some new edifice or other civic achievement.
But symbolically it commemorated much more.
On June 28, 1930, Cleveland, Ohio, dedicated the new
Cleveland Union Terminal. What the event really celebrated,
though, was Cleveland’s visible transformation from a nonde-
script midwestern industrial city to a showcase of visionary
urban and suburban planning and its ascension to national
economic power through its control of the country’s largest
transportation system. All of that had happened almost at
once, and all of it was done at the hands of two extraordinary
men—the brothers Van Sweringen.
All the usual civic dignitaries were there, of course, along
with railroad presidents and executives of Cleveland’s steel
and manufacturing industries—2,500 of them in all. Not
present were the Van Sweringen brothers. They were home
listening to the affair on the radio. Nobody who knew them
was at all surprised; it was simply their way. It was said that
they were afraid they would be called upon for speeches, and
there was probably truth in that. The fact was, though, that
they almost never appeared before large groups for any reason
and, besides, wanted no part of personal glorification.
They were enigmas in their own time and are more so
now—two shy, tightly bonded, almost reclusive bachelor
brothers who seemingly came out of nowhere and suddenly
were counted among the country’s economic rulers. In 1930,
they controlled 30,000 miles of railroads reaching from the
Atlantic to the Rockies and from Ontario to the Gulf of
Mexico, plus trucking companies, shipping companies, and
Contents • vii
warehouses—and they had planned and built two nationally
admired models of innovative urban and suburban develop-
ment. What was being dedicated on this day aptly demon-
strated that last variation of the Van Sweringen vision.
The new Cleveland Union Terminal was no ordinary big-
city railroad station. Commodious inside, it was virtually
invisible outside, and there lay the essence of the vision. Here
in Cleveland’s historic heart was an entire new city designed as
a single integrated, interconnected unit. From below the sta-
tion concourse, trains took Clevelanders to most places in the
East and Midwest and, through connections, to virtually any
place in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. And very
soon, it was anticipated, city dwellers would also board rapid
transit trains here for anywhere nearby. (Immediately outside
were local streetcars reaching all parts of the city. Soon these,
too, would be placed underground as part of the complex.)
Already, one rapid transit line delivered them directly to what
already had become one of the country’s best-known and
most exquisitely planned upper-class suburbs, Shaker Heights
—also a Van Sweringen creation. Perhaps it is superfluous to
say that the brothers had built the rapid transit line exclusively
to serve Shaker Heights.
Above the terminal was the tallest office building outside
New York City, which housed—among many other things—
the headquarters of the vast Van Sweringen transportation
and real estate empires. Also over the top of the terminal were
three other office buildings, a large hotel, and the city’s pre-
mier department store—along with restaurants, banks, small-
er stores, and indoor automobile parking—all of them inter-
connected and flowing into one another. The complex also
included generous provision for more office buildings, the
city’s central post office, a theater, and more large retail busi-
nesses.
In short, the Union Terminal development pulled together
intercity and urban transportation and all forms of city com-
merce into one huge structural unit. It was a radical and
unique conception which in one stroke reestablished the city’s
center and made it the new focus of the city’s life. Indeed, it
was unlike anything elsewhere at the time and was destined to
be so in the future; although imitated in part, nothing else
went so far in uniting all forms of urban life and transporta-
tion on this scale. Now, with travelers taking to the air and
roads, it could never again be exactly duplicated.
Sadly, the Union Terminal ceremony was symbolic in an-
other way: It was the turning point in the Van Sweringen story.
Remember the year: 1930. To put the best light on it, the times
viii • Introduction
were uncertain, although most people, including the brothers,
thought that the worst was pretty much over and that the
expansion could quickly resume. Instead, the story ended in a
shambles, with still grander visions unfulfilled.
In its essentials, it was a somewhat typical story of the
time: Oris Paxton Van Sweringen and Mantis James Van
Sweringen were born in rural Ohio in the late nineteenth
century to a footloose father who was more adept at produc-
ing children than income. Eventually the family drifted to
Cleveland, where the two boys went to work after the eighth
grade to help support the family and subsequently stumbled
through a succession of jobs and business ventures that went
nowhere. Then something took hold. Shortly after the turn of
the century they became suburban real estate promoters—
obscure, but with interesting ideas and methods. On the eve
of World War I, they added railroading to their ventures, tak-
ing in a cast-off regional line and breathing new life into it.
Fourteen breathtaking years later they not only controlled the
country’s largest single rail network but were poised to put
together the first truly coast-to-coast line. And at the same
time, of course, they had remade Cleveland’s physical face in
their image and to their lofty standards.
If their rise was fast, the fall was faster. The Great Depres-
sion tore apart the underpinnings of their empire—or rather
empires, since there were several. Still, they remained amaz-
ingly adept and creative and somehow managed to hold every-
thing together—until the struggle literally killed them. They
died prematurely and, as in life, close together; afterward they
quickly vanished from consciousness. But they had built well,
and afterward the corporate power structure they created
lived on in other hands, while many of their railroads and
physical works survived and prospered as strong entities on
their own.
So much for the simple outline. Inside it is a bewilderingly
complex maze of separate stories running in parallel: the
planning and building of Shaker Heights and its rapid transit
line, the vision of the Union Terminal complex and the battles
to build it, the acquisition of one railroad system after an-
other, the management and rebuilding of the railroads, the
legal and regulatory problems in putting them together, the
churning power politics in the railroad industry and their
often colorful manipulators, the financial sleight-of-hand which
was unequalled in convolution and outright daring.
And underrunning all that is the riddle of who these two
people actually were. Ohio historian Harlan Hatcher summed
up the judgment of many: “[They were] certainly as strange a
Introduction • ix