Deming’s Forest Hill neighborhood listed on National Register of Historic Places

District Boundaries

On April 23, the National Park Service listed Grant Deming’s Forest Hill Allotment Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places.

The effort to designate the Forest Hill Allotment as a historic district, headed by Cleveland State University history professor Mark Souther, began in spring 2008.

The district lies generally in an area bounded by Euclid Heights Boulevard, Washington Boulevard, Lee Road and Coventry Road.

With 654 major structures, the district is the largest in Cleveland Heights to achieve National Register status. It is the seventh such district in the city and follows the Inglewood Historic District, which was listed in 2009.

Grant Deming, brother of Euclid Golf Allotment developer Barton Deming, conceived the idea for Forest Hill shortly after the turn of the 20th century and named it for John D. Rockefeller’s estate three decades before Rockefeller developed his own Forest Hill subdivision on the Cleveland Heights–East Cleveland border.

Deming’s Forest Hill, now 101 years old, features a curvilinear street plan designed by Fred A. Pease, who also laid out the Van Sweringens’ Shaker Village. Its architectural eclecticism—melding Arts and Crafts, Tudor, Colonial, Prairie, Neoclassical, and other influences—typifies the period designs found in Cleveland Heights and across the nation in the 1910s and 1920s.

The district’s oldest house, completed in 1909, is the original Grant Deming homestead on Redwood Road behind Zagara’s Marketplace. The Deming house and Coventry library, also in the district, are Cleveland Heights landmarks.

Kara Hamley O'Donnell is the historic preservation planner for the City of Cleveland Heights.

Kara Hamley O'Donnell

Kara Hamley O'Donnell works in the Cleveland Heights Department of Planning & Development as the City's Historic Preservation Planner.

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Volume 3, Issue 5, Posted 2:15 PM, 04.27.2010