LIBERTY ROW in CLEVELAND, OHIO 

A Memorial to Some of the Local Men Who Died in World War I

       "Time will not dim the glory of their deeds." General John J. Pershing

      People walking in the verdant neighborhoods of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, Ohio, are sometimes surprised to find themselves stepping on crumbling bronze medallions, their color aged to a mint-green patina and nearly buried amidst the roots of towering oak trees. The medallions here and there along the way have names on them, all male, and passersby wonder who the men are.  

     What literally lies underfoot along the shady, beaten footpaths is the easternmost segment of a continuous nine-mile-long tree memorial to the Cleveland-area soldiers who died in World War I. Designed to be a "living memorial" to honor the dead and comfort the bereaved, a tree was planted and a medallion was placed in memory of every local man who died.  

     In 1917, Mayor Harry L. Davis created an advisory war committee, and under the leadership of Cleveland City Councilman Jerry Zmunt, the Director of Parks and Public Property Floyd E. Waite, and City Forester Harry C. Hyatt, a path for the tree memorial was chosen. On July 15, 1918, city ordinance 47590 was passed, which named the route Liberty Row. 

     The dedication ceremony for Liberty Row was held on Memorial Day in 1919 to great fanfare, even as the city was in the heated aftermath of the communist May Day riots of May 1 of that year. Front page articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on May 30 and May 31 spoke of an "Altar of Sacrifice" that was constructed at University Circle as the centerpiece of a city-wide commemoration. 

     The mayor's war committee ultimately spent $8,000 for the altar and additional money, presumably, for the trees, medallions, and street signs that were placed at intersections along the "avenue of oaks." At the ceremony, a wreath filled with California poppies (poppies being the symbol for fallen soldiers) adorned the stage, as did wreaths of roses and vases of flowers. Flags were lowered to half-mast across the city, soldiers' graves were decorated with flowers, and veterans of the Civil War and the Spanish-American War joined in solidarity with the surviving World War I "men in khaki."

     At 11:45 that morning, Mayor Davis gave the dedication speech, which was followed by a band concert and flag raising. Near the altar, a bugler played taps, the sound of which was echoed by buglers standing all along Liberty Row's route as far away as Shaker Lakes. In the afternoon, there was a mass meeting at the Central Armory (demolished in 1965) on Lakeside Avenue, where it was said a chorus of 1,000 children sang patriotic songs, followed by a parade attended by veterans of the three wars and thousands of cheering spectators. Collective grief must have mingled with cheers that day, just as the Liberty Row memorial served as both a eulogy and a victory.  

     Thus began a 5-year campaign, from 1919-1924, in which the city of Cleveland planted a chain of approximately 850 oak saplings (alternately described since as pin oak, white oak, and red oak) along a nine-mile swath of streets and boulevards, forming a cortege-like procession of greenery.  At the base of each little tree, a bronze plaque was secured atop a concrete block that was embedded in the earth. Each plaque was cast in relief, showing the name of a fallen soldier, with the name nearly encircled by two graceful strands of olive branches, the olive branch a peace symbol since antiquity. The markers were set in the ground in near-alphabetical order all along the route.

     The bronze plaques were cast by Fischer & Jirouch, a nationally known Cleveland company established in 1902 at 4821 Superior Avenue and still in existence, skilled makers of handcrafted architectural ornaments for many prominent public buildings and private homes.  

     In the wake of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, Cleveland was mourning 1,023 young men who had died, of the nearly 41,000 in the Cleveland area who had been drafted. The long list of names of the dead included Whites, African Americans, and recent immigrants to the United States, or sons of recent immigrants, from a myriad of countries, many of whom had little education, barely spoke English, or could not read or write. No matter their backgrounds or occupations, they were afforded a cherished space on Liberty Row.  

     Most of the dead were buried overseas, from whence many of them had  emigrated in search of a better life. Their bodies were interred near the battlefields where they were killed or near the field hospitals where they had died of disease, especially the 1918-1920 influenza, or of their war wounds. Some men died before deployment at military cantonments. At least two died of suicide. Some were brought home in coffins years later for burial. Regardless of the circumstances of their deaths, there was a collective urge to honor the sacrifice that the soldiers had made with their lives. 

     It was only fifty years after the country had mourned the enormous carnage of the American Civil War and only 25 years since Cleveland had dedicated its Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in 1894 on Public Square, which honored the more than 9,000 individuals from Cuyahoga County who had served the Union. It was twenty years since the end of the Spanish-American War.  In 1919, Cleveland and other cities began taking stock of another inconceivable loss of life and began considering how to honor their dead. 

     With its Liberty Row memorial, Cleveland became a part of the Memorial Trees movement of the early 20th century that was taking hold in cities all over the country, including San Francisco, Cincinnati, Washington, DC, Kansas City, and Portland, Maine. The movement may have originated in Australia with tree plantings there along Avenues of Honor in 1917, or in England in 1918 when a pamphlet titled, "Roads of Remembrance as War Memorials" suggested transforming roadways into roads of remembrance adorned with trees.  

     A 1919 article in the U.S. magazine American Forestry also promoted a "trees for memorials" idea, stating, "A monument of trees in a well-ordered grove is human and humane...it is full of solace and hope to the bereaved...[and] as a living and a breathing thing it speaks of victory over death." 

     The Memorial Trees movement coincided with the City Beautiful movement of the 1890s to 1920s, an urban planning philosophy that promoted beautification of cities and improvements in quality of life, including lining streets with trees. Cleveland was a pioneer of the City Beautiful movement, having inaugurated such a plan as early as 1899, and its architecture and public realms were profoundly shaped by it.  

     The American Forestry article went on to say, "Everyone sees the coming of the city beautiful in plans for memorials...[as] in our trees lie a great strength...[and] trees in honor of our soldiers [are] a lasting and fitting memorial to those who fought against autocracy." 

     Liberty Row followed a majestic and solemn route through newly developed city parklands and past recently built cultural institutions, that to this day still form the backbone of the city. It stretched from Lake Erie along what was the just renamed Liberty Boulevard (formerly the Lower East Boulevard and, after 1981, part of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive), through Gordon Park (1897), alongside Doan Brook in Rockefeller Park (1896), and through Wade Park (1882). It skirted the Rockefeller Park Greenhouse (1905), the Cleveland Cultural Gardens (1916), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (1916). The route angled uphill via Ambler Drive to the crest of the Portage escarpment overlooking the city of Cleveland, finally wending its way through the streets and parklands of the newly platted villages of Cleveland Heights (1903) and Shaker Heights (1911). The little trees bordered at least two Shaker Lakes to reach the memorial's endpoint at Warrensville Center Road in Shaker Heights. Streets and cross streets along the nine miles were listed as: Lake, St. Clair, Superior, Wade Park, East 105th, Euclid, Cedar, Ambler, North Park, Coventry, Fairfax, Arlington, North Woodland, Wellington, Lee, South Fairmount, South Park, Eaton, Courtland, and Sherbrooke.    

     There was a certain synchronicity in that the oak trees and bronze markers in Shaker Heights were set on the former site of the North Union Shaker colony, a 19th century utopian sect whose members had been ardent pacifists and named their beloved farmlands "the valley of God's pleasure." In the twenty-first century, homeowners there find themselves sheltering the memory of some of the region's World War I dead in the form of huge oak trees with remnants of bronze markers in their front yards and along their residential streets.

     One can imagine mothers or other family members of the fallen soldiers walking along the dirt footpaths of the memorial in search of the small tree planted in their loved one's memory; maybe they wept or prayed or left a flower. It was said that some hung wreaths from the limbs. Perhaps they visited often, or only once. Walking the same footpaths today, the poignancy is still palpable.

     The Liberty Row oaks were intended to grow from saplings into lofty, mature trees and live on in perpetuity, as sacred as grave sites. However, today, the hundred-year-old trees are showing their age, with some nearing the end of their lifespans. Some have dropped limbs, or fallen, and been removed or replaced. Quite a few of the commemorative plaques are missing or damaged, such that the names are nearly illegible from the wear and tear of time and weather. There are even streets along the route that are entirely devoid of the trees that once stood there and provided such comforting canopy. 

     Despite the placing of  American flags by civic groups along Liberty Row on national holidays, the "living memorial" itself is in danger of fading away and dying. In time, the only remaining evidence of the memorial's existence may be the long list of names of the unfortunate Cleveland men who died in World War I. 

     This website, in addition to citing articles about World War I, and more specifically Ohio and Cleveland in World War I, contains brief biographical sketches of some of the fallen soldiers for whom a tree was planted and a bronze plaque placed in the cities of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights. This portion of the city-wide memorial is relatively intact, perhaps because the peaceful residential neighborhoods are less subject to car traffic, air pollution, snowplow and road salt damage, and theft than other more urban areas of the city. Yet, even in this part of the Liberty Row memorial, plaques are missing and trees are aging and dying. 

     In an attempt to preserve these last vestiges of Cleveland's tree memorial, some of the surviving plaques were photographed, and personal information about the soldiers was gleaned from library and online resources, although both the website and the biographical sketches remain incomplete. In the future, there may be interested individuals who will expand upon this digital record of Liberty Row. For one, additional biographies of soldiers could be researched, using the list of 850 names of Cleveland's World War I dead as a guide. Or, perhaps, family members will contribute important details or memories. 

     We can't know the personal qualities of each man who is profiled here, as there exist only a few official statistics based on often incomplete public and military records. Most of the soldiers died so young as to be unmarried, and thus there are few direct descendants. We'll never know what the men dreamed of for themselves or could have achieved, had they lived longer. 

     It seems unlikely that the physical "living memorial" itself will ever be restored completely, in spite of sporadic attempts to do so over the years. Recent initiatives have rekindled some interest. In 2016, the Holden Parks Trust began replacing lost trees within Cleveland's city limits. In 2018, an effort was made to draw attention to Liberty Row: Liberty Row was awarded Honorable Mention in the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), sponsored by the National Park Service, to recognize memorializations of the Great War. In 2019, the Sustainable Cleveland Forest City Working Group initiated a tree inventory. Also, a few historic markers have been erected along the route to draw attention to the memorial.     

     Long after the Liberty Row oaks, bronze plaques, and known descendants of Cleveland's World War I dead have vanished, the hope is that people will still wonder about the local young men who served and died in the Great War, and that the citizens of Cleveland will be proud of the city that strove to plant a sacred and lasting tribute. 

     In 1919, W. G. Rose penned a dedication poem in memory of the men whose names were cast on the Liberty Row medallions; it appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, as follows:

The little trees that line the way

Are trembling in the chilly air;

Beneath the Autumn winds they sway--

God give them life and tender care.

Each whispers of the nation's dead,

Of ghostly hosts, of battles won,

Of ravaged fields, of poppies red--

Each wails the requiem of a son.

A wreath has fallen from a limb--

A mother came and hung it there,

Then turned away with eyes grown dim

And softly breathed an anguished prayer.

The little trees that line the way,

Sad symbols of a nation's pride,

Are etched against the wintry grey--

Oh, let them live for those who died!