Real Estate and Shaker Heights
Prior to the establishment of Shaker Heights, Ohio, the brothers were land and building speculators in Cleveland, Ohio. After being employed by others, and after suffering several early business failures, the brothers entered the real estate business. In 1909, the Van Sweringen brothers began exercising options on 1,399 acres (5.7 km²) of land formerly owned by the North Union Community of the Society of Believers, better known as the Shakers. Conceived and planned as a garden community similar to Baltimore's Roland Park, Shaker Village soon became Cleveland's most sought-after address. This was achieved through a combination of planning, design review, and convenience - all of which fell under the strict supervision of the Vans.
Street planning for the new community used curved roads instead of the more usual grid pattern of streets found in many American communities. Three tree-lined boulevards extended eastward into the country. Moreland and Shaker boulevards' center isles would be used for track bed for a planned interurban streetcar line. Both lines would share a common route from Cleveland through Shaker Square (recognized as the second modern planned shopping center in the United States) where they would divide onto their own routes. The Vans designated Shaker Boulevard as a grand boulevard of mansions, fronted by generous setbacks from the interurban tracks. Higher-density luxury apartments were planned for Moreland Boulevard, which was renamed Van Aken Boulevard in honor of the city's first mayor.
Building in Shaker was controlled by a set of restrictive covenants and building guidelines established by the Vans and known as Shaker Standards. Shaker Standards prevented the community from being developed in any way contrary to how the Vans intended. Standards limited commercial development, rental property development, and residence style and size. Standards set roof slope angles, materials, finishes, and garage placement. All residences were required to be unique and designed by an architect. Duplex residences in the community were restricted to designated areas and were required to follow guidelines designed to give the impression that a structure was a single-family home. By 1920, the Vans controlled more than 4,000 acres (16 km²) in the community, which reached city status in 1931. Since lots sold slowly, the brothers concluded that Shaker Heights needed a transportation system between the suburb and downtown.
Read more about this topic: Van Sweringen Brothers
Famous quotes containing the words real, estate, shaker and/or heights:
“There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I should probably take that disturbance into account.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to market.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)