*Click on all the photos to enlarge them*
I have automatic posts on Tuesdays that go out on social media called Tidbit Tuesdays. They give a small bit of information that you may or may not know. This past Tuesday I got a few messages and emails requesting more information. So I’m doing a post to expand April 21st, 2015’s ‘Tidbit Tuesday’.
When the Broad Street Park was laid out, the idea was to plan it after the mall in Washington, D.C., which ran from the White House to the Capitol. The Henry Newberry home was the extreme eastern end of the park strip, and the Edward Duncan home on the western end. The original trees in the parkway were elms brought from Connecticut on covered wagons by the early settlers.
Henry Newberry laid out Broad Street to resemble Washington DC with his proposed home site on the hill at the east end where he could overlook the entire street. He built a covered bridge over the Cuyahoga River and brought elm trees by covered wagon from Connecticut to line Broad Street. His house was a 17 room mansion that was built from 1834 until 1840. He died in 1854 but his family continued to live there until the 1890s when it then became a school, an alcohol ‘rehab’, a sanitarium and a few other things that will take another two or three posts to share. The house was torn down in 1956.
On the western end of this ‘National Mall’ of sorts, was the Duncan Property. This included forest, farm, a house and out buildings. To give you a placement idea, Mr. Duncan’s property generally was located from about where 5th street is now on back to State Road and from Sackett to Portage Trail. His home sat on the opposite end of Newberry’s on Broad Street. As years went on, land was sold and the Duncan lot was between what is today Falls Avenue and Broad Boulevard and 5th and 12th Streets. I have yet to encounter a photograph of the Duncan home but I have come across memories of playing baseball and playing in the woods on the property.
The trees that were brought in from Connecticut eventually taken down because of size. I believe there was another set of elms planted but I’m only going by memory. Later maples were planted and were removed when the street was widened in the 1970s. Today we have smaller trees that line the strip in the center of the street.
