Cuyahoga Sustainability Network

The Bourgeois Suburbs

                    Courtesy: Western Reserve Historical Society

Suburban development is commonly associated with "suburban sprawl" and frequently considered to be a post World War II Phenomenon.  Yet the suburbanization of America has a long history, growing out of the Garden City movement and manifested prior to the First World War with the retreat from metropolitan manufacturing centers of industrial America by the economic elite.  These so-called Bourgeois suburbs (Hanlon 2007) persisted and manifested today in Cleveland's west side communities of  Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, or Baltimore's Roland Park neighborhood.

The dissolution of northeast Ohio's xxx Shaker community at the end of the 19th century spawned the subdivision of the Shaker farm for country homes.  This promotional brochure by the Van Seringen Bros. extols the "purer air, larger lots, greater privacy" of these elite suburbs that sought to serve its refined cultured residents.  The Van Sweringens were highly influential in the development of Cleveland and its elite suburbs.  Although their  Terminal Tower project spelled their financial undoing during the stock market crash of 1929 the grand vision for Cleveland's Public Square is a fixture in downtown Cleveland.