PHOTO BY CHUCK HOVEN

Friday, February 16, 2024; 4200 Pearl Road, Pearl Road United Methodist Church: The lawn of this church provides a rare green space on this stretch of Pearl Road.

by Lynette Filips

     (Plain Press March 2024)  This month we continue to look at the history of the northwest corner of Pearl Rd. and Memphis Ave. which the Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation (OBCDC) is seeking to “revitalize” with a $31 million new construction project. It is the most historic section of Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2005. A picture of St. Luke’s United Church of Christ, one of the numerous historic commercial and institutional buildings on Pearl Rd. (and on Broadview Rd.) included in the Historic District designation, accompanies the online listing of the “South Brooklyn Commercial District”.

     While OBCDC pursues funding for a plan to tear down the major portion of this corner to erect a four-story building with commercial space on the first floor, residential space on the upper floors, and a brewery in the church proper portion of the former St. Luke’s, another group of people in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood is still hoping to “Save Our Historic District”.

     This third in a series of articles will shed additional light on the history of downtown Old Brooklyn in the hope that someone in authority will realize that historic adaptive reuse of the existing buildings is superior to tearing down most of them and replacing the demo-ed area with new construction. Historic adaptive reuse would accomplish the same goals of adding new residential space, updated commercial space and new socialization space to downtown Old Brooklyn, but it would do so by using the existing historic structures. It is the method which has been employed in downtown Cleveland to put new residential, hotel, retail and restaurant space in buildings which formerly housed department stores, banks and other businesses.

     In my last two articles I wrote about (1) the legacy of three generations of the Gates family of millers in Old Brooklyn; and (2) the precursor of Pearl Road United Methodist Church which was located on the north side of the Big Creek valley.  

     Jeremiah, the patriarch of the Brooklyn Township Gates family, arrived in Brooklyn Township in 1816. He built the original portion of his brick home at 3506 Memphis Ave. in 1820; it is the oldest home in Old Brooklyn and is a City of Cleveland Landmark.  His son Charles’ home has been demolished but his grandson Howard‘s home at 4248 W. 35th St. is still standing.  Since they are residential rather than commercial buildings, they aren’t included in the National Register’s Commercial District, but they are important components of the area’s historical nature.

     At approximately the same time, many other settlers with the surnames Fish and Brainard (and other names) had been settling north of the Big Creek Valley.   In 1814, a group began meeting in each other’s homes for classes in Methodism and in 1818 they organized as Brooklyn Methodist Episcopal Church. It was the first official congregation in Brooklyn Township and the first Methodist congregation in the entire Cleveland area. 

     My article last month ended with the Methodist settlers south of Big Creek who wanted to have a church on their side of the Valley.  And so, in 1844, Brighton Methodist Episcopal Church was founded as an offshoot of Brooklyn Methodist Episcopal Church. It was the precursor of Pearl Road United Methodist Church (4200 Pearl Rd.), one of the important historic structures near the corner of Pearl Rd. and Memphis Ave.  And, so to continue with this saga…

     Needing a place to meet for worship and classes, the Methodist Episcopals found a two-story structure in Brighton which had been erected in 1839. For one term it had housed Brighton Academy on the second floor, and the first floor was the meeting place of the Brighton Village Council.  The west end housed a wagon and paint shop.  The Methodist Episcopals purchased the building in 1844 and thus began Brighton Methodist Episcopal Church.  Until 1875, the same pastors served both the Brooklyn Centre and the Brighton congregations.

     In addition to the Brainard and Fish families, members of the Methodist Episcopal Church included the Gates, Hinckley and Chester (as in Landchester Rd.) families.  For many years the men sat on one side of the church and the women on the other.  (Presumably the children were at Sunday School.)

     The Brighton name was short-lived. When the name of the village became South Brooklyn, the name of the church became South Brooklyn Methodist Episcopal Church.  When the thoroughfare in front of the church became Pearl Street the name of the church became Pearl Street Methodist Episcopal Church.

     A new church building was dedicated in August of 1897.  It rose from the grassy area in front of today’s Pearl Road United Methodist Church.  There were 90 members in the congregation at that time.  The following year the congregation built a parsonage on Muriel Ave. 

     In 1905 the downtown portion of South Brooklyn Village was annexed to Cleveland.  When World War I broke out, church membership had grown to about 900 and the congregation was debt-free.

     Pearl Road Methodist Episcopal Church then decided to erect a new building to house a Department of Religious Education on the lot behind the church; it opened in April of 1924. Next the worship space was remodeled, and the entire building was dedicated over the course of a week in November of 1924.  But their happiness was short-lived as, in February of 1925, the new church was destroyed by fire. The building was not insured, and although the congregation wanted to rebuild it, that never happened.

     In addition to a promise to continue with the Pearl Road Methodist Church story, at the end of both my January and February articles, I mentioned a very early cemetery called both “The Burying Ground” and “The Old Burying Ground” which was also located in the vicinity of Pearl Rd. and Memphis Ave. I asked Constance (Connie) Ewazen, the president of the Historical Society of Old Brooklyn (HSOB,) what she could tell me about it, and here is what she wrote:   

     The Historical Society of Old Brooklyn’s research on this site began when I re-read Kathryn Gasior Wilmer’s book, “Old Brooklyn New, Book II”, that was written in the early 1980s for the Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation.  The Burying Ground was located to the vicinity of today’s St. Luke’s United Church of Christ; Kathryn Wilmer actually referred to it as an Indian Burial Ground.

     A few months after I read this, a gentleman came to visit the Historical Society of Old Brooklyn’s Museum and mentioned that his great-grandfather told stories of a cemetery being on the corner of Pearl Rd. and Memphis Ave.

     Shortly thereafter, I found a legal document in the HSOB files in which an agreement was made with the trustees of the German Congregational Church that they were responsible for disinterring and reinterring the bodies in the graves in The Burying Ground.

     Brookmere Cemetery was established in 1835, which is just before this agreement was made, but poor record keeping at the time does not make it clear whose remains, if any, were moved there.

     I then contacted William G. Krejci, author of “Buried beneath Cleveland; Lost Cemeteries of Cuyahoga County”, who then conducted his own research.  He not only verified that there was a cemetery on that corner, but also discovered its exact dimensions.

     During this process, the HSOB learned that we would have to borrow or rent a “ground penetrating radar machine” to determine if any bodies were left behind.

     In the meantime, the house which still stands behind St. Luke’s United Church of Christ – which HSOB believes was built for Phebe Gates, widow of Jeremiah Gates — was experiencing paranormal activity. This caused the person residing there to hire local paranormal investigator Mary Ann Winkowski to help the earthbound spirits there to “crossover” to the next life.  In addition, Mary Ann verified that there was a cemetery on the corner.

     The HSOB also contacted the Archangel Paranormal Society in North Royalton to determine if the paranormal activity was gone. They found none.

     There is still more to share about the Old Burying Ground, so next month, before moving on to the congregation which was the precursor of St. Luke’s United Church of Christ, I will write about the rest of the information regarding the Burying Ground.