Railroads

Review: Invisible Giants

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Cover image of Invisible Giants by Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.

Invisible Giants, Herbert H. Harwood, Jr. Indiana University Press (ISBN: 9780253341631) 2003.

Summary: The story of two brothers from Cleveland who built a rail and real estate empire centered on Cleveland’s Terminal Tower.

Terminal Tower. The main Higbee’s store. Tower City. The Rapid and its Shaker Heights line. Shaker Heights and Shaker Square. Railroads. All of these are part of my memories of the years we lived in the Cleveland area. But until I read this book I knew little of the two retiring but visionary brothers responsible, at least in part, for all of these.

Oris Paxton and Mantis James Van Sweringen grew up in poverty and failed at a number of businesses until they began to build a real estate and rail empire based in Cleveland. It began with a vision of a suburban community in east of Cleveland, a former Shaker settlement. They started slowly, acquiring options on a few lots. Then they realized that for buyers to be attracted to the suburbs, commute times to downtown Cleveland needed to be as short as possible. So they acquired right of way and started building tracks and stations for a rapid transit.

Over time, this meant connecting to railroad right of ways, and through East Coast ties led to acquisition of a railroad, the Nickel Plate Railroad, running from Buffalo to Chicago. Railroads, transit and a hub centered in downtown Cleveland led to development of the Cleveland Union Terminal Complex. This included a rail terminal, traction terminal, an office tower, hotel, bank, department store, and the city’s main post office. In an era of rail consolidation, this led to a fierce competition to buy up other railroads. In the end, this resulted in a railroad empire that nearly extended coast to coast.

This biography traces the complex financial and organizational operations, including the creation of holding companies, that gave the brothers control while having a relatively small personal stake, using various stocks, bonds, and loans, all of it premised on an increasingly profitable business. Holding companies also enabled them to operate free of Interstate Commerce Commission scrutiny. And throughout the 1920’s, it worked, culminating in the grand opening of the Cleveland Union Terminal complex in 1930.

By that time, the stock market had crashed, and with it, both rail traffic and real estate investment. These were the two pillars of their empire. Because their holdings were so highly leveraged in a collapsing market, it was a herculean feat to keep it afloat. Thus the latter part of the book is an account of how that effort broke their health. First Mantis, then Oris died. Ironically for Oris, it was during a train ride to New York to meet with bankers.

It seemed to me an incredibly sad story. Neither brother ever married, sharing a bedroom in a mansion. They had few outside interests. The hubris that drove them to build a transcontinental rail network may have been the overreach that brought them down. Specifically, the Missouri-Pacific offset profits in other parts. Likewise, the location on sloping terrain of the Cleveland Union Terminal, and the number of buildings added to their expenses. Even so, they might have made it were it not for the Depression. But in retrospect, the financing of their empire seemed like a house of cards. But in the 1920’s, everyone thought them geniuses.

Then or now, many Clevelanders knew little of them. Yet they left Cleveland some gems, including Terminal Tower, Shaker Square, one of the early shopping centers, and Shaker Heights with it wide boulevards, attractive homes, and transit lines. This biography is a valuable account for those interested both in Cleveland history and railroad history. On the latter count, it includes numerous photos of rail stock. The brothers may have been invisible giants but they left visible works of enduring value.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Center Street Crossing

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Center Street Bridge and Crossing with the B & O Train Director’s shed. Photo from Bridgehunter licensed under CC BY-SA

Did you know that at one time the crossing pictured above was the busiest manually operated crossing in the United States? As you can see, there are a number of tracks that cross each other. At one time there were eleven different tracks serving five different railroads that squeezed together and crossed each other on the north bank of the Mahoning River just west of the Center Street Bridge, with Republic Steel’s mills in the backdrop. All told, 500 trains pulling 10,000 cars a day passed through this crossing, serving the mills and the other industries of the Mahoning Valley as well as passenger trains.

Four of the railroads used the north bank of the Mahoning as they approached this point. The fifth, the B & O started out on the south bank of the Mahoning and a few hundred yards west of the Center Street Bridge crosses the river and the other lines to the far side of the north bank, furthest from the river. As you can see, that literally is a trainwreck waiting to happen, were it not for the train director.

The train director stayed in the little bungalow-like one story shed in the center of the above picture. It was warmed by a caboose stove. He worked for the B & O, the ones responsible for the crossing, and his job was to manually signal trains when it was safe to proceed. In railroad vernacular, this was a color-coded “highball.” Here are the railroads and their signal color:

  • Baltimore & Ohio (B & O): green
  • Erie: red
  • Pennsylvania: yellow
  • New York Central and P&LE (which shared the same tracks): white

They used flag signals by day and lanterns by night.

The mills are all gone now. The old Center Street Bridge, a truss bridge connecting Poland Avenue on the south and Wilson Avenue on the north, has been replaced with a new bridge. There are fewer tracks. The crossing, now with electric signals still exists as is evident from this Google Earth Image, looking west from the bridge. The old train director’s shack is gone. But the vestiges remain and remind us that there was a day when this was the busiest crossing in the country, all manually operated.

[The idea and some of the information for this post came from former Youngstown resident, William Duffy. Bill was a former B & O yard director, later working at the B & O freight office at Front and Market Streets. I also found helpful information in The Sentinal Volume 37, Number 4, published by The Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad Historical Society.]

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Erie Terminal

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I wrote recently about student safety patrols.  One of the fun “perks” of being a patrol boy was the annual trip to Cleveland to see an Indians game. We took the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad out of the Erie Terminal in downtown Youngstown, located at 112 Commerce Street, where Phelps intersects with it. After those trips as a boy, I never gave the building a thought, even though its six stories were a dominant feature in the Youngstown skyline seen from Youngstown State. I’m sure I passed by it when I was working at McKelvey’s. Passenger rail service continued until January 14, 1977, though it had been dwindling to a few passengers a day for some time.

At one point, it was a very different story. The Erie Railroad had passenger service between New York and Chicago.  Youngstown was exploding, growing from 133,000 in 1920 to just over 170,000 in 1930. Until after World War 2, the quickest way one traveled between these cities was rail. Four major railroad trunk lines converged in Youngstown. So in 1922, the Erie Railroad commissioned Youngstown architect Paul Boucherle as architect for a six story building that would serve as terminal for the Erie Railroad’s passenger traffic and offices for the railroad. After completing this rectangular Classical Revival building in 1923, Boucherle moved his own architectural offices into the building.

The building sat vacant after rail traffic ended and the Erie Lackawana consolidated into Conrail. In 1986, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Downtown Youngstown Multiple Resource Area. There are a number of historical buildings that are included in this listing for downtown Youngstown and the significance of listing is to deem the building worth historic preservation, which may qualify those preserving the building for tax breaks.

In the early 2010’s Dominic Marchionda, a native Youngstowner joined with a New York property group to form NYO Property Group. The renovation of the Erie Terminal (now Erie Terminal Place) was one of his first projects, which also include the Wick Tower and the conversion of the Stambaugh Building to a DoubleTree Hotel. In 2012 the renovated building was opened with a cookie shop, brew pub and art gallery on the ground floor and 40 modern apartments on the upper floors. The original wood doors were refurbished, windows were replaced to match the originals, and masonry cleaned and re-pointed. The picture above was taken before work began, and the before and after are stunning.

The property is a popular off-campus alternative for Youngstown State students, located near the Business College and just down the hill from campus. In 2017, the university actually leased five rooms to provide residences for seventeen international students. The building is managed by LY Property Management, which handles rentals. You can get a great glimpse of the apartments and other amenities at the website.

There are questions about the future of the property. In July of 2019 it, along with The Flats at Wick, by YSU, were listed for sale with Platz Realty. The university is in negotiation for The Flats at Wick. No buyer is mentioned for Erie Terminal Place, which is listed at $6.35 million. There are financial issues with the Flats, which is in foreclosure proceedings for default on a $5.5 million loan. Also, Dominic Marchionda, along with former Mayor Sammarone, and Finance Director Bozanich are facing 101 corruption charges for which they were scheduled to go on trial in June of 2020. All three had entered not guilty pleas to the charges. Recently, Judge Maureen Sweeney ruled to separate Dominic Marchionda’s trial from the others and subsequently former Mayor Sammarone plead guilty to two charges. Due to the pandemic, trial dates have not been set.

With college enrollments up in the air as is the nation’s economy, it’s hard to say what will happen next with this almost 100 year old building. It’s a survivor, and one hopes for many good years ahead as the university and downtown continue to grow together.