1892 Atlas of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, Ohio

This facsimile reproduces the Atlas of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, Ohio, compiled from official maps and records together with information from private sources and actual surveys by Geo. F. Cram, J.H. Beers, and J.Q.A. Bennett, and published in Chicago in 1892 by Geo. F. Cram & Co., Publishers. According to David Rumsey, "This atlas gives a detailed cartographic record of the City of Cleveland, Ohio, and the surrounding areas in Cuyahoga County in 1892. 52 maps show Cleveland. Cram was known mostly for his world atlases and occasional regional atlases. This city and county atlas may be one of the few that he published." The atlas captures Cleveland at a pivotal moment in its transformation into one of the great industrial centers of America, anchored by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil refineries along the Cuyahoga River, the steel mills and shipbuilding yards of the lakefront, and a rapidly expanding network of streetcar suburbs that were absorbing the surrounding townships into Greater Cleveland.

Note that some of the text is extremely fine print and hard to read in this edition.

Summary of Contents

The atlas opens with general maps of the United States and Ohio, followed by an outline map of Cuyahoga County. The principal cartographic content is devoted to the City of Cleveland, with a general map, an index map, and a street paving map, followed by 52 detailed ward maps covering all forty wards of the city across multiple plates each. The ward maps show street grids, individual property lots, parks, public buildings, railroads, and named landowners and institutions in remarkable detail.

Outside the city, the atlas presents detailed maps covering Bedford, Brecksville, Brooklyn, Chagrin Falls, Collinwood, East Cleveland, Euclid, Glenville, Independence, Middleburgh, Newburgh, Olmsted, Orange, Parma, Rockport, Royalton, Solon, Strongsville, and Warrensville townships, along with individual maps of village and suburb communities including Albion, Bedford (North and South Parts), Berea, Brecksville, Brooklyn, Chagrin Falls, Collinwood, Dover Centre, East Cleveland, Euclid Heights, Gates Mills, Glenville, Lakewood, Linndale, Mayfield, Newburgh, Nottingham, Oakland Park, Olmsted Falls, Parma, River Bank, Solon, Sorrento Park, South Brooklyn, Strongsville Center, Warrensville, West Cleveland, and West View. Detailed maps of named allotments and additions — Cottage Home, Dover Bay Park, Dover Township Allotment, Eagle Cliff Park, East View Addition, Fairlawn, Newburgh Township Allotments, and others — document the real estate subdivision activity reshaping the metropolitan area in the 1890s.

A section of portraits and biographies profiles fifteen prominent Cleveland citizens, including Stevenson Burke, William Chisholm, John H. Devereux, William J. Gordon, Truman P. Handy, Philander L. Johnson, Levi Johnson, Henry B. Payne, Joseph Perkins, Nathan Perry, Daniel P. Rhodes, Joel Scranton, and J.H. Van Dorn, alongside biographical sketches running from pages 121 to 125.

A miscellaneous section includes a historical sketch of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, a Business References directory, a Gas Directory, a list of Cleveland Letter Boxes, the locations of public buildings, post offices, fire and police departments, a Recorder's Index to Maps, Plats and Allotments, a Table of Distances, and a view of Dover Bay Park.

An essential reference for genealogists researching Cleveland and Cuyahoga County families, historians of late nineteenth-century American industrial urbanism, architectural and real-estate historians documenting the rapid suburbanization of Greater Cleveland in the 1890s, and collectors of antiquarian American cartography.