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A Century of Bumbling

Cleveland's civic ineptitude isn't new. It goes all the way back to Rockefeller.

By Michael D. Roberts 

The Little Bar, around the corner from West Sixth Street on Frankfort Avenue, attracts a mixed throng of exotic dancers, lawyers, advertising types, aspiring executives, off-duty restaurant folk, and techno nerds.

The place has an ambiance that goes back to better times, when the city smelled of soot and machine oil, and the bars of Lucky Strikes and Erin Brew.

Stock certificates of failed companies adorn the wall, as does the last edition of The Cleveland Press, along with photos of the implosion of a perfectly good building and the construction of the Terminal Tower. The Little Bar is a place mindful of the past.

This evening, three men in their 20s talk of women and the prospects of careers in Cleveland. They mistake my age for wisdom. One asks whether I think the city has a future.

I recite past glories of commerce, mentioning those captains of industry who amassed great fortunes, whose charitable endeavors wrought the museum, orchestra, and university. I say its factories played no small role in the winning of two world wars and the cold one.

One man shakes his head, raises his glass, and tips it toward me. "Then tell me, man, what the fuck happened here?"

He says it the way a homicide cop would upon arrival at a particularly grisly axe murder.

I pause.

I want to explain the Rust Belt, the global economy, the evolution of high tech in a low-tech place, the highways to the suburbs, our conservative bankers, stifling politics, recalcitrant unions, the difference between the thinking in blue-collar bars and East Side country clubs, the failure of urban renewal, the disaster of school busing, and the rest of the conventional thought on the dimming of a city's light.

But in the gloom of my reflection, something else lurks, something elusive and haunting. That something is not what happened, but what did not.

Over the past 100 years, Cleveland has wasted more opportunities than most cities get. It wasted them because things came easy and city leaders never thought much further than the weekend.

A hundred years ago, the city had money, power, and a future. It did so well that it ceased to care. It became arrogant.

Then, incompetent people began to do stupid things until, finally, it dawned on us that prosperity had moved to a new zip code.

The panic has promoted endless newspaper articles, civic meetings, solemn pronouncements, and the discovery of poor people among us. But the truth is that Cleveland has been increasingly dysfunctional for decades. It is a town divided in thought, geography, and fortune.

Partially because of this, Cleveland was built more on whim than consensus, more by crapshoot than consideration, a place that grew and flourished on nothing more than its location. Its populist character focused on the status quo, never heeding warnings or embracing benefactors.

Take one of those benefactors, a man whose legendary departure still haunts the town and so overshadows Art Modell's exodus that it should be memorialized somewhere -- so that, as with other cataclysmic events, we remember our folly.

When politicians finally settle upon a new Cuyahoga County Office Building, they would do well to erect a plaque, so that future generations might see a message. It would carry a quote from John D. Rockefeller, the world's first billionaire, who made his fortune in the Flats, where they once refined oil and we now drink beer.

The plaque would say: "Cleveland ought to be ashamed to look herself in the face." -- John D. Rockefeller, 1914

The memorial should be dedicated to two county officials of the time, John Flackner and William Agnew, public servants not much different from those we have today.

In the 1880s, Rockefeller, who grew up in Parma and founded his oil business here, was living in New York City, but spending summers at his Forest Hills mansion in East Cleveland. His wife, Cettie, loved the family estate and insisted upon returning each year.

Then, in 1913, Cettie became ill and was unable to return to New York. Rockefeller stayed with her beyond February 8, 1914, the date that determined legal residence and the levy of a personal-property tax.

Rockefeller had already paid his tax in New York. But Flackner and Agnew, the county tax commissioners, nonetheless sent a tax bill of $1.5 million to his Forest Hills address. (Today's county commissioners would not only give Rockefeller a tax break, but would eagerly arrange Port Authority bonds to help him reclaim as much of the suburb as he needed for a golf course.)

Flackner, who lived in East Cleveland, bragged that when this tax was paid, residents would enjoy a 20 percent cut in their taxes. He and Agnew further warned that if the tax were not paid immediately, there would be a 50 percent penalty. It was a political move, designed to appear as if a blow had been struck for the poor against the rich.

The only problem was that Rockefeller, refusing to become hostage to this demand, took it to federal court and won.

The decision was not rendered until after Cettie's death. Rockefeller, fearing further legal action from the county, waited five months before returning to bury her at Lake View Cemetery. His ire toward the city became as hardened as her tombstone.

At the time, the Cleveland Museum of Art was being constructed, and Rockefeller was courted for a contribution. Appalled by the city's capacity for extortion, he refused. "The way Cleveland dealt with him had long been a sore point with Rockefeller, who believed that no other town so regularly abused him," writes Ron Chernow, author of Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. "He thought the city ungrateful for Standard Oil's economic contribution and railed against low politicians."

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