The Observation Deck

There's a strange question I've always had...perhaps someone here on the deck can lend insight.

Ferndale Avenue (between Madison and Athens) has an odd layout.
It has houses on the eastern side of the street, but not on the western side.
Homes on Ferndale look across the street to the backyards of the houses on Baxterly Avenue.

I can't think of another street in Lakewood (or the greater Cleveland area) that is quite like it.

To the layman, it seems that either:
*Ferndale was placed too far west. If it were further east, homes could have fit on both sides of the street. However, both Ferndale and Brown would have smaller lots.

or

*Ferndale was "wedged in" between Baxterly and Brown after both other streets had been built.

I'm curious to learn if there is some tale behind this quirk in Lakewood's civic planning.
I would guess that such a tale might involve the Wagar family land.

Mike

Not sure why, but Clifton Place has the same layout. Front porches look into the back yards of Clifton.

Also people on Clifton have been buying homes on Oswego, tearing them down for larger yards, so now some on Oswego look at the backyards of people on Clifton.

There are also 3 streets in Lakewood with no addresses on them. hmmmmmm

FWIW


.

Three streets with no addresses on them? OK, I'll bite.

Hi Michael,

Very interesting post. I've lived just around the corner for almost 20 year and NEVER noticed this little anomaly in street design!

As an amateur historian, I don't have a precise answer for you, but I can provide some additional insight...

Lakewood lots were built based on historical tract ownership and it seems like the tracts north and south of Madison didn't quite line up for whatever reason - all of the streets South of Madison have a bit of irregularity in them.

I also see that the houses on Ferndale were built quite a bit later than the surrounding housing.

Looking at a historic map from 1914, this entire area was completely undeveloped and owned by 3 different landowners. See included attachment. Based on the original layout, I can't see any outstanding reason this block ended up any different than any other block.

If I had to theorize, I'd say that the developer decided to give the lots on Baxterly good sized lots instead of subdividing the street into two super small lots like you'd find on Olivewood, just North of here.

Thanks for bringing this unique block to my attention!

Unrelated to your original post - in the olden days, there was a creek that originated near the Northern end of Ferndale and Madison and curved to head North along the West side of Marlowe and eventually into Lakewood Park and Lake Erie.

You can see the creek indicated on the map I posted previously.

This creek is still there, buried under ground in culverts. My neighbors on Marlowe have reported mysterious holes in the ground and rushing water noises. It is there. right in our back yards....

Great info, Greg!

Your Ferndale findings fall in line with what I expected.

However, I was surprised to learn about the creek.
I wonder if there were any other waterways in Lakewood back in the day?

Looking at the map above and comparing it to a modern map I have come to a couple reasonable solutions. First the Facts: Ferndale falls on the property line between the Smith and Boesger's properties. The back yard property lines for the houses on both sides of Baxterly fall along the property lines for the Smith property. In a related side note, the back yard property lines on both sides of Lincoln match the property lines of the Gammel property. When that street was developed I imagine they just curved the street to match Lincoln on the north side, which left more room for St. Clements to come in later, although they later had to buy additional parcels to the west that were not originally part of the Gammel lot. And to finish out the map, Bayes makes up the west side of Marlowe and the western Wagar lot makes up the eastern side. Notice, when looking at a current map the lots on the west are much smaller then the east, matching the size difference between the lots. The road was put down along the property line.

Ok, now that we know were things are, this is my guess as to why it is the way it is. So in 1914, when I understand the above map is from, there was already a Brown road while the others (Ferndal, Baxterly, Lincoln) are yet to be put in. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that the Boesgar and eastern most Wagar lots, which are on either side of Brown, were broken up first for smaller parcels and homes built on them. It is my guess that Smith then did the same, creating Baxterly with houses on both sides. Now there are a few possibilities explaining Ferndale and both are explained by greed, or good financial strategy, you decide. The first is that Boesgar built up his side of brown and cut the lots short with the intent of building a street on his other property line where he assumed Smith would line the other side with houses, which never came to fruition, and after Smith built Baxterly, Boesgar decided to go a head and build his own street anyways. The second possibility is perhaps Boesgar was holding on to his property and keeping it in tact while Wagar and Smith built up and by the time he got around to it (more likely in this scenario it would be his descendants) he was stuck with too much land to do only one side of Brown and not enough to do that and a full other street. Not wanting to lose money by cutting down the number of lots that could be sold he decided to build a one sided Ferndale.

Frankly I don't think the second possibility is as likely, since the age of the homes doesn't match. Many of the homes on Ferndale are noticeably newer then those on the west side of Brown, and those on the west side of Brown match closer to those on the east side, which is more consistent with the first theory. This could all, of course, be terribly wrong, but it seems like a reasonable possibility. In addition, we have to keep in mind that by 1921 Lincoln and Athens were established, since Roosevelt opened on the that corner that year. That might not see relevant, but its part of the whole neighborhood story, and if I am reading the map correctly, Athens, once built (it is only shortly on the west end of the map) will cut through these properties.

**I want to make it clear that any time in this post I referred to a property owner (Boesgar, Smith, Wagar) I was mainly doing it for ease and to refer back to the 1914 map. In reality, most of the time the families would sell the whole parcel to a land development company which would then break it up in to parcels, build roads, and then the houses. Therefore, the men mentioned on the map most likely did not themselves make any of the surmised decisions themselves.

Michael,

In regards to the creeks in Lakewood, I know that at one time there were at least 3 substantial ones. There is the famous one mentioned here which travels down between Belle and Marlowe and empties out at Lakewood Park. In fact if you go down past the no trespassing sign to the rock beach you will see a large water out let about 4' square which is where it empties into Lake Erie. There was also one that flowed down around Lewis/Parkway/Chesterland/Waterbury area which accounts for the winding roads and Valleyness of that street. That creek then runs down across Nicholson and then curves back to enter the Lake around Kirtland. I always assumed that the reason the Nicholson's settled where they did is because this creek ran right along their property, not far from the house. The third I am less familiar with but know it was somewhere on the more western side of Lakewood. These were probably just some of the many that existed throughout the city, though most were probably too small to note on maps. However none of them were probably ever big enough to float more than a toy boat on.

P.S. Sorry for the length of this post.

Awesome info, Chris!

Thanks for the responses...I love the fact that we have some amateur local historians here in The Wood!