In education the city has made an innovation known as the "Cleveland plan" which seeks to minimize school routine, red tape and frequent examinations. Great stress is put on domestic and manual training courses, and promotion in the grammar schools is made dependent on the general knowledge and development of the pupil as estimated by a teacher who is supposed to make a careful study of the individual. There are in Cleveland 120 public schools and 44 public libraries. The principal institutions of higher education are the Western Reserve University with 2,800 students, St. Ignatius College (Roman Catholic), and the Case School of Applied Science.
With its 12 M. of shore line on Lake Erie, a fine park system (1,500 acres), and wide residential streets, well shaded by maples and elms, Cleveland possesses many aspects of unusual beauty. The city is situated on bluffs rising from 74 to 200 ft. above the water and commands pleasant views of Lake Erie, while the surface of the plateau upon which the town is built is deeply cut by the Cuyahoga River, which here pursues a meandering course through a valley half a mile wide. Other streams, notably Dean Brook on the east border, add to the picturesque character of the municipal setting. A chain of parks* connected by driveways follows the valley of the Dean Brook, at the mouth of which, on the lake front, is the beautiful Gordon Park, formerly the private estate of William J. Gordon, but given by him to the city in 1893; from this extends up the Dean Valley the large Rockefeller Park, given to the city in 1896 by John D. Rockefeller and others. It adjoins Wade Park, where are a zoological garden and a lake.
The First Automobile (1798)
"By means of wheels," says the Third Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1798), from which this illustration was taken, "some people have contrived carriages to go without horses. One of these [the vehicle to the left] is moved by the footman behind it; and the forewheels, which act as a rudder, are guided by the person who sits in the carriage. Between the hind-wheels is placed a box, in which is concealed the machinery that moves the carriage. A machine of this kind will afford a salutary recreation in a garden or park, or on any plain ground; but in a rough or deep road must be attended with more pain than pleasure.... Another contrivance for being carried without draught, is by means of a sailing chariot or boat fixed on four wheels, as A/B [the figure to the right], which is driven before the wind by the sails C/D and guided by the rudder E. Its velocity with a strong wind is said to be so great that it would carry eight or ten persons from Scheveling to Putten, which is 42 English miles distant, in two hours." The figure in the centre represents a modified sailing vehicle designed to sail against the wind as well as with it.
Of the several cemeteries in Cleveland, Lake View (300 acres), on an elevated site on the east border of the city is the most noteworthy; here are buried President Garfield (the Garfield memorial is a sandstone tower 165 ft. high with a chapel and crypt at its base), Mark Hanna and John Hay.
John Hay (1838-1905) was a native of Salem, Ind., and a graduate of Brown University. He studied law in the office of Abraham Lincoln, and, after being admitted to the bar at Springfield, Ill., became one of Lincoln's private secretaries, serving until the president's death. He then acted as secretary to various U.S. Legations abroad—Paris, Vienna, Madrid—and on returning to America became assistant secretary of State under W. M. Evarts. President McKinley appointed him ambassador to Great Britain in 1897, and the following year Secretary of State. Hay was prominent in many important international negotiations, such as the treaty with Spain (1898), the "open door" in China, and the Russo-Japanese peace settlement. He negotiated the Hay-Pauncefote treaty concerning the Panama Canal; also settled difficulties with Germany over the Samoan question and with Great Britain over the Alaskan boundary. As an author, Hay is best known for his Pike County Ballads, in which Little Breeches first appeared, and for the monumental life of Lincoln written by Nicolay and himself.
Other notable monuments in Cleveland are a statue of Senator Hanna by Saint Gaudens (in University Circle), a marble statue of Commodore Perry in commemoration of the battle of Lake Erie (in Wade Park), a soldiers' and sailors' monument—a granite shaft rising from a memorial room to a height of 125 ft. (in the Public Square), and a bronze statue of Moses Cleaveland, the founder of the city (likewise in the Public Square). This latter monument is said to stand on the very spot selected by Cleaveland for the centre of his new settlement.