St. Paul's Episcopal Church emerged in 1846, beginning in rented space until its first dedicated building opened in 1848 at the corner of Sheriff Street (now East 4th) and Euclid Avenue on the site of the present-day House of Blues. Following a devastating fire, the church rebuilt a brick Gothic edifice that opened three years later. As commercial expansion accompanied the emergence of downtown Cleveland in what had formerly been a compact walking city, St. Paul's moved in 1876 to a newly built Gothic church at the corner of Case Street (now East 40th) and Euclid, squarely within Cleveland's famed "Millionaires' Row." This church was designed by Gordon W. Lloyd, an English-born Detroit architect who also designed many other Episcopal churches in the Midwest. At its new location, St. Paul's expanded impressively and even spawned several other new congregations as it grew.

By the 1920s many St. Paul's parishioners had moved eastward into the nearby suburbs of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. In 1928 the church followed suit, choosing a site on the eastern edge of Barton Deming's Euclid Golf allotment at the corner of prestigious Fairmount Boulevard, the "Euclid Avenue of the Heights," and Coventry Road. The new building, designed by J. Byers Hays of Walker and Weeks in the English Gothic style, was erected of Indiana limestone. On its departure, its previous building was sold to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland and reopened in 1931 as St. Paul's Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament. In more recent years the building has served as home to multiple Catholic orders rather than as a diocesan church.

In Cleveland Heights, St. Paul's continued to grow, but its building remained unfinished, a casualty of the onset of the Great Depression. Originally to include a large nave for worship services, St. Paul's made do until 1951 with holding services in its parish hall. By the time the church raised sufficient funds to build the Gothic nave it had envisioned back in the 1920s, its leaders opted instead to follow an emerging trend toward fashioning naves in the manner of the early Christian church, in which ornamentation was spare and the altar was moved closer to the congregation.

By the early 1960s St. Paul's flourished under the energetic leadership of Dr. Chave McCracken. During McCracken's tenure as rector, St. Paul's became more consciously inclusive. In spring 1963 it hosted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who gave one of the speeches leading up to his famed Lincoln Memorial address later that year. Church membership reached its peak in the 1960s, with the main Sunday service splitting into two services to handle the growing parish. Years later, following a downward trend in the Heights population and in membership in mainline Protestant denominations, St. Paul's returned for a time to a single service. More recently, it restored the separate services as part of a determined effort to attract young families.

Today St. Paul's remains a vibrant part of Cleveland Heights and, with some 1,400 parishioners, is the largest Episcopal congregation in the Diocese of Ohio.

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2675 Fairmount was the site of the Barton R. Deming Company's Euclid Golf Allotment sales office. John D. Rockefeller owned the 141-acre former timber farm in 1901 when neighboring property owner, Patrick Calhoun, asked if he could lease the property. Calhoun had built the Euclid Club, a first-class country club, to attract elite families to his Euclid Heights development. He wanted to create Cleveland's first professionally designed golf course at the club, but didn't have enough land for a full 18-hole course. He planned to use Rockefeller's land for the upper nine holes. A golf enthusiast, Rockefeller agreed to lease the property, rent free, with the stipulation that the upper nine not be used on the Sabbath.

The golf era was short-lived. In 1906, Rockefeller permitted the Cleveland Street Railroad Company to run a line through his property to connect the Cedar Road line to Coventry Road. With the increasing availability of transportation, many housing developments sprang up in the Heights and soon surrounded the Euclid Club, which disbanded in 1912. Rockefeller entertained several proposals for development, but ultimately chose the plan of Barton R. Deming for the Euclid Golf Allotment.

Deming planned to develop a high-quality residential neighborhood. He specified large lots, along Fairmount Boulevard, and smaller lots, on the side streets, for the middle class. Clarence C. Terrill, manager of Rockefeller's Abeyton Realty, believed Deming's design -- and its deed restrictions -- would both ensure the profitability of the venture and the neighborhood's design quality.

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In ninety years, three prominent Cleveland families have called 2540 Fairmount Boulevard home. The story of this house mirrors that of Euclid Golf, an early planned suburban development that benefited from the eastward spread of Cleveland's wealthy off of Euclid Avenue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and continued to serve as a favored address for professionals and industrialists.

The first owner of 2540 Fairmount was Alwin C. Ernst, founder of the public accounting firm Ernst & Ernst, the forerunner of Ernst & Young. Ernst is credited with pioneering the idea that accounting information could be used to make business decisions and with inventing management consulting. Born in Cleveland in 1881, he attended West High School and a business college, and then worked as a bookkeeper for the Audit Company. In 1903, he founded Ernst & Ernst with his older brother Theodore, who left the company three years later. Alwin Ernst went on to build the business to more than 50 offices in the United States and two in Canada. When Ernst died suddenly after collapsing in the Union Club on May 13, 1948, Cleveland Mayor Thomas A. Burke said, "No matter what occasion in Cleveland called for a civic group to help out, you could count on Mr. Ernst to be in the group."

The second owners of 2540 Fairmount were John and Susanna Carlin. John Carlin was a lawyer who had grown up on Millionaires' Row. His father, Anthony, had been a pioneer in the steel rivet business and was one of the last millionaires to build on Euclid Avenue. Susanna came from humble circumstances. Her mother was widowed and raised ten children on her own. They met at the Guardian Building. He was working as a lawyer at the firm Henderson, Quail, Barkley and Schneider. She was one of the building's elevator operators. Their fairytale wedding in St. John's Cathedral in downtown Cleveland was one of the most significant social events of 1941. The Carlin's moved from 3233 Euclid to their Euclid Golf home in 1950. When John Carlin died in December 1973, 2540 Fairmount was valued at $95,000 and his estate was valued in excess of $7 million.

Patrick Parker of Parker Hannifin Corporation, and his wife Madeline, were the third owners. They purchased the house in 1985 for $330,000.

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Canadian-born Cleveland real estate developer Barton Roy Deming was smitten with the verdant beauty of a craggy knoll just south of the recently closed Euclid Golf Club, which stood near the intersection of what are now Norfolk and Derbyshire Roads. In 1914, having decided to create a large suburban residential allotment nearby, Deming set out to build his own home on this sliver of land where Fairmount Boulevard branches off of Cedar Road. The home would serve as a unique marquee advertisement and gateway to Deming's Euclid Golf Allotment. Deming contracted with architects Howell and Thomas to design 2485 Fairmount, nestled into a narrow, steep, and rocky site with a deep gorge running through it. Howell and Thomas relished the challenge of building in such a location, and Deming was proud of the resulting four-story French Eclectic mansion, which embodied his aspirations for Euclid Golf.

Deming lived in the house until the death of his wife, Helen, in March 1934 and the marriage of his only daughter, Elaine Allen, to Weston Schmitt the same year. His nephew, Grant Deming, Jr., helped the elder Deming auction off his furnishings and lived with him in the Heights Rockefeller Building apartments at Mayfield Road and Lee Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. Deming then worked for John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to develop Rockefeller Sr.'s Forest Hill estate into the residential village that straddles the East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights border today. When Cleveland Heights established a Zoning Commission in 1920, Deming was one of its first appointed members.

Towards the end of his life, Deming lived with his sister, Millie, on Stoer Road in Shaker Heights. He served for many years as a trustee of the Cleveland Real Estate Board, and later established the Deming Ironing Company, which manufactured gas electric ironing machines. He died at Overlook House, a Christian Science Home, in Cleveland Heights, on Sept. 15, 1956, at the age of 81.

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Many Cleveland-area residents are familiar with Fairmount Boulevard, the beautiful, winding thoroughfare that treks east from near the top of Cedar Hill in Cleveland Heights. The turreted, half-timbered French Eclectic mansion that sits on an irregular triangle of rockbound land at the intersection of Cedar Road and Fairmount Boulevard forms the de facto gateway to a beautiful Cleveland Heights neighborhood known as Euclid Golf. The house also was the home of Euclid Golf's developer, Barton Roy Deming. It sits halfway between what were, at one time, the 9th and 11th holes of an 18-hole golf course that Patrick Calhoun built as an amenity for his Euclid Heights allotment. 

For barely a decade, the property that became the Euclid Golf allotment was an actual golf course sitting on land that quickly became too valuable and attractive to developers to remain in its present form. Thus, in 1912, the prestigious Euclid Golf Club, located partially on land owned by John D. Rockefeller, was disbanded. At that time, Barton Deming convinced Rockefeller that the upper nine holes of JDR's portion south of Cedar could be transformed into one of finest residential neighborhoods in the country. Deming's plan called for a grand boulevard on either side of the streetcar right-of-way that would connect with the Van Sweringen brothers' Shaker Village to the east. Deming relied on Rockefeller's influence and prestige, as well as his bankroll, to develop Euclid Golf.

Traveling up Fairmount Boulevard, it is easy to marvel at the beauty and majesty of the homes, as well as the grace of Fairmount's curvilinear path, the majestic oak tress that line the sidewalks, and the row of flowering trees on the median. Harder to imagine is that this area was once largely treeless and, from 1902 to 1912, was the heart of a golf course. Try to envision the Club's formal entrance-way at the site where the Alcazar Hotel now stands at Derbyshire and Surrey Roads. From there, a winding driveway meandered southeast to roughly the corner of Derbyshire and Norfolk roads. This is where the clubhouse stood. From there, duffers would tee off and play an 18-hole course that ran more or less counter-clockwise nearly to Euclid Heights Boulevard on the north and (what are now) South Overlook Road on the west, West St. James Drive on the south and Demington Drive on the east. In addition to crossing Cedar Road, golfers would have to play around Grandview and Bellfield roads, (built in the 1890s) which composed Cedar Heights, the area's first residential neighborhood.

Perhaps the greater challenge was trying to play 18 holes on Sunday. When Rockefeller assented to the golf links' creation, he stipulated that no one could play the portion of the course on his land on a Sunday. Thus, Sunday golfers played the other nine holes twice!

Today, part of the land upon which the Euclid Clubhouse sat is a municipal parking lot on the northeast corner of Cedar and Norfolk roads, used by apartment dwellers just down the hill. The only reminder of the area's onetime use is the adoption of Deming's appellation Euclid Golf when the National Register of Historic Places listed the neighborhood in 2002.

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