The Public Square, or Monumental Park, is in the business centre of the city, about ½ M. from the lake and the same distance east of the Cuyahoga River. From this park the principal thoroughfares radiate. Euclid Ave., once famous for its private residences, but now the chief retail street of the city, begins at the southeast corner of the square. Cleveland's newest residence district is on the heights in the eastern part of the city.
Cleveland sometimes has been called the "Sheffield of America." Its prosperity is founded chiefly on its accessibility to oil, coal and iron. It is the largest ore market in the world. Forty million tons of iron ore valued at $125,000,000 are received annually in the Cleveland district, and the ore docks where much of this ore is handled, are of great interest. Cleveland also has extensive docking facilities,* said to be the finest in the country, for handling its immense trade in coal and grain. Cleveland's oil refineries, among the largest in the world, receive enormous quantities of crude oil by pipe line, rail and water.
The city has 2,500 manufacturing plants with 125,000 workers, producing annually goods worth about $375,000,000, of which $100,000,000 represents the products of its foundries and machine shops. Cleveland is the first city in America in the making of wire products and automobile parts, second in the manufacture of clothing and sewing machines and one of the leading cities in the production of complete automobiles. Shipbuilding (there are five large shipyards* here) is likewise an important industry, and Cleveland controls the larger share of the tonnage on the Great Lakes.
673 M. ELYRIA, Pop. 20,474.
(Train 3 passes 12:52; No. 41, 5:27; No. 25, 4:07; No. 19, 9:12. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 6:22; No. 26, 7:57; No. 16, 10:34; No. 22, 2:04.)
Elyria was founded about 1819 by Herman Ely in whose honour it was named. Ely came from West Springfield, Mass., built a cabin on the site of the present town, and later erected the first frame house in the township. The city lies at the junction of the two forks of the Black River, each of which falls about 50 feet here, furnishing considerable water-power. There are sandstone quarries about the town. The chief manufactures of the city are automobile supplies, telephones, electric apparatus, flour, feed, canned goods, machine parts and iron pipe; the annual output is valued at about $10,000,000. Eight miles to the southwest is Oberlin (Pop. 5,000), the seat of Oberlin College.
Slab Hall, Oberlin College (1832)
Oberlin College was founded in 1832 "to give equal advantages to whites and blacks, and to give education to women as well as to men." Other objects were "to establish universal liberty by the abolition of every form of sin" and "to avoid the debasing association of the heathen classics and make the Bible a text book in all departments of education." The traditions of Oberlin are strongly religious, and from Charles Grandison Finney, revivalist and president of the college from 1851 to 1866, sprang what is called the "Oberlin Theology," a compound of free-will and Calvinism. Before the Civil War the village was a station on the "underground railway," and the influence of the college made it a centre of extreme abolitionist sentiment.