Tue 12/6 @ 7PM
It’s tantalizing now to look back and imagine how certain Cleveland neighborhoods looked backed before they were gashed by freeways, split into parts that shattered their sense of community. Tremont was severed from Ohio City and downtown and turned into an isolated stub of a neighborhood; North Collinwood was cut off from the railyards that once provided much of its employment, when workers strolled with their lunch pails to work down north-south streets that now dead-end at the Route 2 freeway.
Other more affluent and politically savvy communities fought back, and their beauty and integrity are more than mere memory. So it was in Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. They fought back in the ’60s against a network of “done deal” freeways that would have torn up the Shaker Lakes, wiped out what’s now the Cedar-Lee business district, and cut a high-speed swath down Cedar Road. One contemplates with a shudder the disunity such partitioning would have created, and makes one realize that “fixing” the oft-complained about trek to the freeway from these communities would have come at high cost.
Want to hear more about how the destruction of the Heights was staved off? Come to “Paving Paradise: The History of the Clark Freeway Fight” at the Shaker Heights Library. Lauren Pacini, author of Preserving the Shaker Parklands: The Story of the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, and Shaker Lakes historian John Barber, will talk about how the Shaker Lakes were used as a wedge to derail the project and protect the natural beauty of the area. Pacini will have her books available for purchase and signing after the talk. It’s free.
Shaker Heights, OH 44120