100 Years in 100 Days: Upper Shaker Heights
100 photos that define Shaker Heights
Photos
Shaker Heights Patch is celebrating the 100 years of Shaker Heights history by creating an online scrapbook. Each day for 100 days, we'll feature a photograph that helps tell the story of Shaker Heights.
Today's photo is an advertisement for Upper Shaker Heights, a development located in the Lomond neighborhood. Note the promise that this development is for those who want the best at "ordinary prices." Other pages in the brochure appeal to buyers who "always wished (they) could buy a real home in a properly restricted high class neighborhood..."
That phrase referred to the types of restrictive covenants that kept Blacks, Catholics and Jews from buying property in Shaker Heights. The clauses were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948.
Sources: Shakeronline.com, Clevelandmemory.org
You can join our celebration of Shaker Heights history. Share your memories in the comments. Or upload your photos and we'll feature them in this scrapbook. Follow #ShakerCentennial on Twitter.
Gail M. Hall
8:12 am on Tuesday, July 3, 2012
We were surprised and disappointed that we were asked to sign that restriction clause in 1973! We refused, saying that was illegal. I'm glad that restriction clause was outlawed! Shaker Heights is a better place to live because we have a really diverse group of people living here. In the 1960s and '70s great effort was made by the City to invite a balanced group of people to move into Shaker. We talked to a very nice lady in the Housing Office. She showed us some houses, and when we picked one, she referred us to the real estate company handling that property. The Housing Office no longer exists, apparently having outlived it need.
Afi-Odelia Scruggs
1:25 pm on Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Ms. Hall, thanks for your comment.
Brandon Baker
1:20 pm on Tuesday, July 3, 2012
As a younger person looking at this, I can't even imagine a world when anybody would have found such a clause acceptable. Thankfully, times have changed.