Hooray for Charles Frederick Schweinfurth!

Image courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project

This curious house was designed by noted Cleveland architect Charles Frederick Schweinfurth in 1896. I happened upon it about eighty years later, as a good friend at my high school actually lived in it. By then, the neighborhood on East 75th street was a good deal rougher around the edges, and the awnings were gone -- but inside, beyond the ornately carved front door, there will still many marvels, including a balcony window in my friend's room that overlooked the staircase. Schweinfurth designed many larger houses for the élites of his day, as well as a series of stone bridges over East Avenue, now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Every time we drove under one of these bridges, my friend would always say 'Hooray for Charles Frederick Schweinfurth!" -- and I still say so today.