Erie Street Cemetery

1921 the archway is black from soot

2011 some years ago, the stone was cleaned

preventive landscaping ignored here too

They removed most of the aggregated grime from Erie Street's arch, but maintenance, as in Monroe Street's arch is not current. Little trees will grow in the chinks between the stones, and each advance of the roots weakens the structure. Construction is work, so is maintenance. Labor has its value. Meteorology and biology erode geology, certainly man made structures are not immune.

central arch had two metal plaques, they have been scrapped

This is the oldest surviving burial grounds in Cleveland. An earlier city graveyard, Ontario Street (and Prospect) was a block from Public Square. Some of those burials were moved to Erie Street. The former graveyard was used for building.

Erie Street opened up in 1826/7 while the Ohio Canal was reaching toward Lake Erie. The first boat left Akron 3 July 1827, and reached Cleveland the next day. The entire canal was completed in 1832. Cleveland was still a village, and far from being a town. The census needs 5,000 to become a town. In 1840 that was achieved with 6,000.

Some of Cleveland's first residents are there now, or had been. Two Indian chiefs, and a newsboy suicide were burials of note. The grand arch came in 1870. Erie Street was one of the many streets to have its name changed in 1905. It is now East Ninth Street. The stone archway was not going to be changed, but would it have stayed?

Into the twentieth century Cleveland became a very large city. Money was not being made in a mostly sold out cemetery. Several designs were made on Erie Street Cemetery. Public opinion stopped this on each occasion, in the mean time many burials were removed elsewhere (some prominent internments went to Lake View; many to the new and 200 blocks distant Highland which has some 18x the acreage of Erie Street). The once full cemetery was being vacated. From 1937 to 1940 ceremonies, and a stone wall building project raised favorable attention towards the cemetery. In time between then, and now, a lot of vandalism and neglect has hit the cemetery (could one expect it to have been immune to the rest of the city's and country's situation).

a century of polluted weather has washed away the print of the paper boy's legend

Alfred Williams, He was a newsboy without father mother or home who was buried by his newsboy comrades. So read his stone before acid rain began melting the stone. He was eleven years old in 1900, when he took poison to end his life.

The unionists and progressives, in those years, were trying to pass child labor restrictions, later a constitutional amendment was proposed in 1924. Twenty-eight states have passed it. Ohio with 13 other states passed it in 1933 at the beginning of the New Deal, no state has passed it since 1937. The first state to pass it was Arkansas in 1924. No other former confederate state ever passed it, the tradition in the right to work remains strong, even a century and more after they lost the war.

view inside the cemetery looking west and seeing the light stanchions of the new base ball park