Euclid Avenue (Cleveland) - Millionaire's Row

Millionaire's Row

Advertising postcard (pre-1906) for the R&L Electric Car taken in front of the Leonard Hanna mansion on Euclid Avenue

In the second half of the 19th century and early in the 20th century, Euclid Avenue was internationally known. Baedeker's Travel Guides called the elm-lined avenue "The Showplace of America", and designated it as a must see for travelers from Europe. The concentration of wealth was unparalleled; the tax valuation of the mansions along "the Avenue" far exceeded the valuation of New York's Fifth Avenue in the late 19th century. Accounts at the time compared it to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris and the Unter den Linden in Berlin.

Euclid Avenue was an elegant showcase for Cleveland's wealthy citizens, who built their high, grand mansions high on a ridge overlooking Lake Erie. Set two to five acres back from the avenue, which was paved with Medina sandstone, the mansions seemed to float amid spacious, landscaped grounds.

Families living along "Millionaire's Row" included those of John D. Rockefeller (during the period, 1868-84), Sylvester T. Everett, arc light inventor Charles F. Brush, George Worthington, Horace Weddell, Marcus Hanna, Ambrose Swasey, Amasa Stone, John Hay (personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State under William McKinley), Jeptha Wade (Cleveland benefactor and founder of Western Union Telegraph), Alfred Atmore Pope (iron industrialist and art collector), Worthy S. Streator (railroad baron, coal mine developer, and founder of the city of Streator, Illinois), and Charles Lathrop Pack. Euclid Avenue's most infamous resident was con artist Cassie Chadwick, the wife of Leroy Chadwick, who was unaware that his wife was passing herself off to bankers as the illegitimate daughter of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.

Architect Charles Schweinfurth designed at least 15 mansions on the street. Samuel Mather's mansion, built around 1910, "was among the last" to be built on Euclid Avenue. The Mather Mansion remains as part of Cleveland State University, but most of the homes were later demolished.