Population

64:1 POPULATION AND VITAL STATISTICS

HISTORY OF CLEVELAND, 1796-1890 -- KENNEDY Pg. 303 (Footnote)

The census of 1840 gives the population of Cuyahoga County as 25,542, divided as follows: Cleveland, 7,307; Mayfield, 852; Orange 1,114; Solon, 774; Euclid, 1,774; Warrensville, 1,085; Bedford, 2,021; Newburg, 1,342; Independence, 754; Brecksville, 1,124; Brooklyn, 1,409; Parma, 965; Royalton, 1,051; Rockport, 1,151; Middleburgh, 339; Strongsville, 1,151; Dover, 960; Olmstead, 659.

64:2 POPULATION AND VITAL STATISITICS 1885 -- 1933

STORY OF LAKEWOOD -- E.G. Lindstrom Pg. 49 - 52

The turn of the century brought an invention destined to entirely alter the complexion of American life. At about the time Lakewood had grown big enough to be a village (May 4, 1903), the horseless carriage was outgrowing its novelty.

There was a good deal of resentment toward those chugging, horse-scaring contraptions. When a man up in Detroit named Henry Ford predicted that some day the automobile would put old Dobbin off the road, there were many snickers.

No one dreamed that in less than twenty years one could speed silently, swiftly and more less safely, from Lakewood to Cleveland's Public Square in twenty minutes. That miracle depended not only upon the perfection of the first crude vehicle but upon the perfection of the equally crude roads.

The transformation for Lakewood was only a part of the transformation for the whole country. The automobile ushered in an industrial Renaissance which lured farm boys to the city, concentrated the population into great urban centers and at the same time spread those metropolitan areas beyond limits never thought possible before.

Cleveland jumped into the fascinating rich new business of putting America on wheels. Her bursting population overflowed into all the outlaying districts. Men found that they could work in the city and live in the country ten miles away.

The little town of Lakewood, stretching along the lake shore on the west, was particularly attractive. A stampede began. Land values soared. The orchards and vineyards which once upon a time flourished beneath the summer sun, now gradually disappeared.

Land became too valuable for farming. Real estate operators bought up whole farms, cut them up into lots and sold the lots for more than the farms used to bring. Land which had sold for $30 an acre in 1850 and $100 in 1890 leaped as high as $2,500 an acre.

The population almost quintupled between 1900 and 1910, rising from 3,355 to 14,181. But for the automobile no such development would have been possible. The horseless carriage, laughed at and sneered at less than ten years before, had changed men's lives whether they willed it or not. Lakewood, instead of becoming a sleepy little farm town, an entity in itself, became a suburb of great city.

In 1911 the village was incorporated as a city, and still the population bounded upwards. When one remembers that it took 65 years after the Nicholsons and Wagars came for the populations to reach 400, the district's growth is really astonishing. Here is the record.

1885 ---------- 400

1900 ---------- 3,355

1910 ----------15,181

1915 ----------25,000

1920 ----------41,732

1924 ----------60,000

1930 ----------70,509

*1933----------75,400

*July, 1933, last Federal Census Bureau estimate.

On Christmas day, 1917, Lakewood found in its stocking the Detroit-Superior High Level bridge.

Without it the population could scarcely have tripled, (almost), between 1915 and 1930. The bridge erased the chasm of the Cuyahoga which had before been a hindrance to Cleveland's expansion on the West Side.

It's opening ushered in another real estate boom. In 1920, three acres of lake front property sold for $15,000 an acre, or 100 times its value as orchard land. In 1922 the assessed valuation of the city had risen to $77,165,000.

After the bridge was opened suburbanites for the first time began moving out into Rocky River in considerable numbers.

64:3 POPULATION CHARACTERISTICS

HOWARD WHIPPLE GREEN POPULATION CHARACTERISTICS - 1931

The percentage of wage earners who live in Lakewood and are employed in Cleveland is given at 62 per cent.

In Lakewood more of the foreign born white population were born in Czechoslovakia than in any other country unless the various countries combined to form the British empire be considered together. The total foreign born white population is given as 9,647; of this number Czechoslovakia had 2,783, the Germans being next with 1,329. The whole British empire figure, however, is 3,403.

The negro population of Lakewood is very small, a total of 103, composed largely of house servants and chauffers living with their employers. (These are 1930 figures).

64:4 POPULATION AND VITAL STATISTICS

LIBRARY NOTES - 1933

The population of Lakewood for the past three year has remained practically stationary, while many communities have suffered tremendous population losses during the depression. It is estimated in 1933 that the population of Lakewood is 70,163 as compared with the 1930 Federal Census of 70,509. The estimated population was made on the basis of figures compiled in the Real Property Inventory of the Cleveland-Metropolitan District under the direction of Howard Whipple Green, noted Cleveland statistician.

The survey was inspired by the vision of the special committee headed by Raymond T. Cragin. The figures in this gigantic census were obtained by tremendous labor and detail. This is the only real estate survey made by any city. Approximately 1500 persons worked on it for many months. The inventory was made last October.

The inventory brings out in hold relief some of the illuminating facts that have been disclosed about the metropolitan area in recent years.

For instance, it is now known definitely that 65% of the dwellings in Lakewood are owned by the occupants. Stated in a different way, out of every 100 families, 47% own their own homes. The above figures regarding the percentage of owned homes was never known definitely until this year.

In Lakewood alone there were 19,544 families of which 690 were "doubled up", i.e. two families residing in a one-family unit.

There are 22 schools, 27 churches, 16 insititutions, 6 theaters, 64 gasoline stations, 54 commercial garages, 23 storehouses and warehouses and 30 industrial plants, etc.