The Shaker Historical Society and Museum has a rich history marked by its successful establishment and resilience in overcoming challenges to secure a permanent location. The Museum presents historical artifacts and educational programs that extend beyond the North Union Shaker community, engaging Shaker Heights residents in public history. The legacy of the Van Sweringen brothers, who influenced the design of city streets and community values, is deeply embedded in the area’s physical layout and reflected in the Museum's role within the community.

Building on this foundation of historical interest, the story of the North Union Shaker community itself is central to understanding the origins of Shaker Heights. Founded by Ralph Russell in 1822, the Shaker community occupied the lands now known as Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights. Although the community disbanded in 1889, its utopian ideals left a lasting legacy that helped shape the vision of the master-planned suburb. Interest in the Shakers within the community began to grow in the mid-1920s, when the Shaker Heights School District started incorporating local history into its educational programs. Teachers Edythe Turner and Pearl Lee Stark played a pivotal role in this effort, collecting Shaker artifacts and embedding them into the third-grade curriculum, ensuring that future generations would engage with this important chapter of the area’s past.

The Shaker community attracted interest from several institutions in the Cleveland area, with Wallace H. Cathcart, former director of the Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), initiating the Shaker collection in 1911. Today, the WRHS holds approximately 900 Shaker photographs from 1860 to 1920, which were vital in shaping a coherent public understanding of the North Union Shaker community’s legacy. Caroline B. Piercy, a Shaker Heights resident, extensively studied the Cathcart collection and published The Valley of God’s Pleasure: A Saga of the North Union Shaker Community in 1951. Her research led to connections with other local residents, including Rev. John M. Schott, Cary Alburn, Benjamin Jenks, and Councilman John A. Hecker, who took a major step in preserving this history by founding the Shaker Historical Society and Museum (SHS). Elizabeth B. Nord, the Museum's volunteer curator for twenty years until her death in 1972, was also instrumental in this effort. The Society began gathering Shaker artifacts and donations, hosting its first garden party on June 11, 1948, in the Shaker Room of the WRHS.

Over the next twenty-two years, the Shaker Historical Society relocated seven times before settling into a storefront at 3488 Lee Road in 1968. However, this location proved unsustainable due to high costs, prompting the board to seek a more permanent home for the Society and Museum. In 1966, a special board meeting was held in the basement of Boulevard School to discuss the donation of the Myers mansion. Designed by architect Daniel Reamer in 1910 for Louis Myers of the Van Sweringen Company, the mansion was being negotiated by his son, Frank Myers, as a potential permanent home for the SHS. The Myers mansion was historically significant, situated on the original site of the Shaker settlers’ farm and near Horseshoe Lake, created by the settlers’ dam. Despite this, local residents and neighbors at the time strongly opposed the Museum’s move into the area. Their concerns about relocating the Museum to a residential neighborhood reflected the nineteenth-century ideals behind the Van Sweringen brothers’ vision of an ideal “utopia.” In response, Mayor Paul K. Jones decided to allow neighborhood residents to voice their opinions based on issues of zoning policies.

The Van Sweringen brothers sought to control property values in Shaker Heights through deed restrictions, a common practice in American suburban development. By promoting homeownership, they aimed to stabilize property values and prevent “undesirable” neighbors, enforcing both aesthetic standards and racial covenants. In 1925, they introduced Restriction No. 5, which encouraged residents to return old property deeds for approval before selling. Zoning regulations were also implemented, designating certain areas for single-family homes while allowing commercial use in other zones. The northern areas of South Park Boulevard and Lee Road were reserved for single-family residences, while the neighborhoods south of South Woodland Road and Van Aken Boulevard were subject to a mix of zoning types. Together, Restriction No. 5 and the expanded zoning regulations reinforced the Van Sweringen brothers' vision of a white, upper-to-middle-class "utopia."

Although Shaker was well on its way to becoming a community that embraced social diversity, the Van Sweringen vision of exclusivity and zoning control was echoed decades later when the Shaker Historical Society's proposal to relocate to the South Park Boulevard neighborhood faced resistance. Much like the earlier concerns over "social invasion" and zoning laws, opponents feared the impact of the Society's move on the residential character of the area. To bypass these objections, trustee Frank Myers donated the property to the state with vice president William R. Van Aken handling the legal complexities of the transfer, enabling the Society to contract with the State Department of Public Works and avoid city zoning regulations.

This effort to overcome zoning resistance marked a pivotal moment in the Shaker Historical Society's development and expansion. Drawing on this achievement, the Society began to shift its focus toward broader public engagement. The president of the SHS at the time, William Van Aken, discussed opening the Museum to all residents of northeastern Ohio, and the public was first invited into the space during a tour conducted around the Shaker Lakes in 1970. Building on this momentum, the Women's Committee of the SHS was established in June 1971 to increase interest, funding, and volunteer support for the museum. In 1972, Elizabeth Nord made a significant contribution by donating her personal library to the SHS and receiving the Golden Deeds Award from the Exchange Club of the Heights. Tragically, she passed away from a heart attack just four months later. The 1980s marked a period of expansion for the Society, which showcased four major exhibits and elected its first female president in 1988, further solidifying its commitment to inclusive public history.

The success of these early efforts laid the groundwork for the Shaker Historical Society’s continued growth and evolution. As the Society expanded its reach and strengthened its community ties, it also began to reflect the values and identity of Shaker Heights itself. The suburb, deeply intertwined with the concept of "home," influenced the Society’s transition into a single-family residence, further aligning its mission with the broader emphasis on home and place that defines the area. By broadening its focus from solely representing the Shakers to engaging more deeply with the diverse local community, the Shaker Historical Society and Museum is forging a new identity for public history in Shaker Heights—one that reflects the suburb's contemporary values while enriching its historical narrative.

Today, the Shaker Historical Society and Museum, along with the Elizabeth B. Nord Memorial Library and Archives, operates in its permanent location at 16740 South Park Boulevard. Despite past resistance, the museum now stands as a hub for public history, education, and community development, honoring the legacy of the North Union Shakers on the very land they once inhabited.

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The Ludlow neighborhood straddles the Cleveland/Shaker Heights boundary and, through an arrangement with the Cleveland School Board in 1912, became part of Shaker Heights School District. Although Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen's garden suburb of Shaker Heights used restrictive covenants to practice social exclusion, soon after the mid-20th century a number of African Americans began to move into Ludlow by purchasing delinquent Van Sweringen lots. John and Dorothy Pegg were not the first to purchase lots, but their property did become the focus of an attack by white neighbors on January 3, 1956, when a bomb destroyed their garage and blew a hole in their dining room wall. The Peggs banked at the Cleveland Trust, which refused to give them a mortgage at a time when African Americans found it incredibly difficult to secure the means to afford home ownership, but the Peggs were able to secure a mortgage from the black-owned Dunbar Life Insurance Company.

The roots of Dunbar Life Insurance lay in the business success of Herbert S. Chauncey, a prominent African American lawyer who attracted many of his friends to his idea of creating a savings and loan company. With the help of his friends, Chauncey was able to secure a state charter and opened the Empire Savings and Loan Company in 1919. Empire SLC was first located in the offices of 2316 East 55th Street and became the first banking venture in the black community. Before World War I, many black-owned businesses found it difficult to acquire a strong economic base among their own race, but the modest success allowed Chauncey to open another branch.

Empire began operating at a time when the ghetto in Cleveland was forming and a large migration of blacks from the southern states were pouring into the city. The 1910 African American population of 8,448 soared to 34,451 ten years later. By 1930, the population nearly doubled to 72,000. The Depression hit Empire SLC hard, and in January 1935 the firm had to file for bankruptcy. All of the money loaned out by Empire was on black homes. During the Depression, African Americans were hit the hardest, but many black homeowners were able to keep up payments in whole or in part to keep from defaulting.

Chauncey was one of the first who began helping blacks gain homes with mortgages and loans, but ultimately it was Melchisedech Clarence (M.C.) Clarke who further helped blacks in insurance matters. As the state insurance examiner in 1935, Clarke was assigned to investigate the fraternal insurance societies in Cleveland, including two that were founded by Chauncey. While investigating four Cleveland insurance companies, Clarke realized that these companies should be consolidated to reduce expenses and protect policy holders. This merger became known as the Dunbar Mutual Insurance Society, which combined the assets of those fraternal societies and reinsured their policy holders. Clarke became operating head of the organization and resigned from his position as state examiner.

Dunbar Mutual expanded in 1943 after Clarke convinced his associates at the company that providing home loans would give stockholders a larger profit on their investments as opposed to investing in government and municipal bonds. Dunbar Life Insurance Company became licensed as insurance company on April 11, 1945. Clarke had anticipated that the Midwest would continue to see industrial and economic growth after World War II and that this was the “most opportune time” to launch the company.

Clarke expressed a desire to help the housing crisis for blacks by “relieving much of the congestion in our urban cities.” During World War II, another migration brought Cleveland’s black population to 147,847 by 1950, and many of the original migrants who occupied the area west of East 55th Street began to move eastward from the original settlement, primarily into an area bounded on the east by East 105th Street, on the north by Euclid Avenue and Woodward Avenue on the south. A growing number also gravitated toward Glenville, which had been a largely Jewish neighborhood for a generation. In 1940 the African American population in Glenville was just 899, but by the end of the decade, the population increased to 22,060, or 24 percent of the total population. In the same years, the Jewish population decreased from 27,000 to 15,000 as many Jews moved to Cleveland Heights and other eastern suburbs. Black population influx was located almost entirely in western Glenville on the streets off East 105th Street just south of St. Clair Avenue, and by 1960 this area of Glenville was 90 percent black.

In 1948 Dunbar Life had invested more than $300,000 in first mortgage loans to more than 100 black families. By the end of 1950, Dunbar Life had over $7 million in total insurance force and a capital surplus of $198,760. This success had allowed Dunbar Life to open a new branch office in the Glenville area on January 3, 1952, where hundreds of the company’s policyholders resided. Dunbar Life passed the $1 million mark in total assets in 1952 and held over half their assets invested in first mortgage loans on black property valued at $578,195.24.

The year 1952 also saw Clarke and his Dunbar investors purchase the outstanding stock of Quincy Savings and Loan Company. Quincy became approved for FHA mortgage loans under provisions of the National Housing Act in 1954. Before this approval, Dunbar Life was the only black-operated financial institution making FHA insured loans to the African American community. With the approval of Quincy, this increased the capital available to blacks in Cleveland to purchase homes.

In 1956, at the age of 66, M. C. Clarke died at the Cleveland Clinic. Clarke would not live to see Dunbar Life merge with the third largest black insurance company in the country, Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company of Chicago, in 1958. The combined life insurance in force would total more than $140 million and combined assets exceeding $22 million. Quincy Savings and Loan would see incredible financial success as well. The company’s assets grew to more than $11 million by 1979. That year two Cleveland businessmen bought controlling interest of Quincy Savings and Loan and renamed it Cleveland Community Savings Company. By 1982, the company had liabilities that exceeded their assets, and in the following year Cleveland Community Savings was closed by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation.

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On July 29, 1951, more than 500 guests of Temple Beth-El convened at the Hotel Hollenden ballroom in downtown Cleveland to witness the dedication of the congregation’s Sefer Torah. Speakers at the ceremony included Rabbi David L. Genuth of Temple Beth-El, Ohio Governor Frank Lausche, and Mayor John W. Barkley of Shaker Heights. Rabbi Genuth, spiritual leader and founding member of the congregation, addressed the crowd with his vision for Temple Beth-El. “Our doors shall be open to all seeking a refuge and a haven from the troubles of the world, regardless of race, color or creed. Our temple shall be a sanctuary to the poor and the rich, the weak and the strong.”  Governor Lausche followed, observing the long and enduring history of Jewish persecution.  Mayor Barkley then welcomed Temple Beth-El to Shaker Heights, remarking “It is a people that make a city great. Your organization will make a valuable addition to our fair city.”  While Rabbi Genuth founded Beth-El to cultivate traditions of Jewish Orthodoxy within Shaker Heights, it was fitting for the public ceremony to be held in the neighboring City of Cleveland.  Efforts to institutionalize Jewish life in Shaker Heights had only recently begun to be realized.  The physical development of Jewish civic associations in the suburb was noticeably overdue, as was the newfound municipal support for their creation.  



Although not reflected in physical structures, Shaker Heights had long been home to an active Jewish community. As early as the 1920s, Cleveland’s many Jewish newspapers announced the births, deaths, bar mitzvahs, confirmations, business ventures, real estate purchases, and general comings-and-goings of the Shaker Heights community.  Increasingly throughout the 1930s, Jewish clubs and organizations regularly met in Shaker Heights homes for a variety of events that included garden parties, tea socials, sewing circles, and discussion groups. While hosting events in homes was common during the era, official meetings and charity events of Jewish clubs such as Kinsman-Shaker B'nai B'rith, Shaker Heights Masada, and Hadassah branches were typically held outside the suburb’s boundaries.



As evidenced by these activities, a 1937 population study estimated that fifteen percent of the Shaker Heights population was Jewish. This accounted for over 3,600 individuals in 837 families. Fifty-seven percent of these Jewish families were members of congregations.  Despite the presence of a substantial Jewish population, there were no dedicated houses of worship in Shaker Heights. This lack of grounded religious organizations was partly due to the community’s ties to synagogues in both Cleveland and, increasingly, Cleveland Heights. Although shrinking in size and influence, large Jewish communities centered in Glenville and along Kinsman in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood remained the hubs of religious and cultural life through the 1930s.   



The dearth of Jewish institutions within Shaker Heights, however, can also be attributed to exclusionary real estate policies implemented by The Van Sweringen Company during the 1920s.  Restrictive covenants in deeds issued following 1925 deterred property sales to Jews, African Americans and Catholics, and strict building standards discouraged types of religious architecture. While the deed restrictions did not explicitly deny home-ownership on the basis of religion or race, the covenants required the re-sale of a home be approved by the majority of neighboring property owners.  Masked under the guise of community standards, the process discouraged both real estate agents and homeowners from entering into negotiations with non-white and Jewish prospective buyers.  Despite a Supreme Court decision declaring restrictive covenants unenforceable in 1948,  the practices were commonly employed and actively hindered access to housing in many Shaker Heights neighborhoods well into the 1950s.




Because many properties in the southeast region of Shaker Heights were developed outside the Van Sweringens’ control, restrictive covenants were less likely to impede Jewish home ownership in the Moreland and Lomond neighborhoods.  A substantial Jewish community emerged near the intersection of Kinsman and Lee Roads during the 1940s, providing increased urgency for the development of religious institutions.



Three new Jewish congregations in Shaker Heights were chartered during this period of Jewish settlement. Established in 1947, the Temple of Shaker Heights was led by Rabbi Albert L. Raab of the N’Vai Zedek Congregation in Mount Pleasant. The congregation initiated fundraising for a $250,000 religious complex to be located in the Kinsman-Lee neighborhood, but the project was never realized.  Temple Emanu El was founded that same year, holding both services and religious school at Moreland School. The Reform Jewish congregation moved their services to Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights within the year. Congregants continued to hold religious services and classes in Shaker Heights until 1954, when land was acquired to construct a synagogue in University Heights.  The Suburban Temple, a splinter of Emanu El, was established in 1948. The congregation held services in the Lomond School Auditorium until securing land in Beachwood to construct a temple in 1954. At midcentury, the Emanu El and Suburban Temple congregations were in the process of raising funds to construct synagogues.  While the city of Shaker Heights remained devoid of any permanent Jewish religious edifices, efforts were underway to ground religious life in the Kinsman-Lee neighborhood. 



In the fall of 1950, four families gathered at the home of Rabbi David L. Genuth on Hildana Road for the purpose of establishing the “First Hebrew Sanctuary in Shaker Heights.”   Aspiring to fill the “long apparent need” for Orthodox services in the suburb, the small group founded Beth-El.  Aided by the Shaker Heights School Board, Orthodox services were quickly scheduled to be held at the Moreland School Auditorium on Saturday mornings.  Within four weeks, the congregation was granted a charter by the State of Ohio.



Reputed for his philanthropic, civic and cultural endeavors, Rabbi Genuth quickly grew the Beth-El congregation.  The Rabbi had long been an active and influential member of Cleveland’s Orthodox Jewish community.  Between 1933 and 1950, he acted as spiritual leader of the Kinsman Jewish Center in Mount Pleasant.  Modern Orthodox services were implemented under his guidance in 1937, and the congregation grew to over 400 families by 1940.  The Rabbi had also been instrumental in the development of the Cleveland Zionist Society, and helped found both the Jewish Community Council and the Shaker-Kinsman B’nai B’rith.  Like many congregants of the Kinsman Jewish Center, Rabbi Genuth relocated from Mount Pleasant to a home in Shaker Heights’ Kinsman-Lee district by the early 1940s.  With the announcement of the new congregation in Shaker Heights, both loyalties to the Rabbi and a desire to worship within the emerging Kinsman-Lee community aided in its rapid growth. 



In February, 1951, Beth-El celebrated its new charter at the Heights Jewish Center in Cleveland Heights.  That August, the sacred Sefer Torah was presented to the congregation and blessed at the Hollenden Hotel celebration.  Efforts were well underway to create a permanent space where Jewish religious life could be observed within the boundaries of Shaker Heights.   A frame dwelling, rumored to be the oldest standing farmhouse in Shaker Heights, was acquired by the Beth-El congregation in July of 1951 at 15808 Kinsman Road.   The grounds of the new property were consecrated, and the temple dedicated in August.  Before a capacity crowd, a procession led the congregation’s Torah scrolls into the building.   While the modest structure was only envisioned as a temporary home, Temple Beth-El was now equipped to provide for the educational, cultural and religious needs of the community.  



Due to limited facilities at the farmhouse, High Holy Day Services were held in the Moreland School Auditorium in 1951. Beth-El histories recount these ceremonies as the first time in the history of Cleveland that “a modern Orthodox congregation held services where men and women sat side by side and worshipped together.”  The years that followed witnessed a flurry of organizational and fundraising activities.  A Sisterhood was organized, a Sunday School established, cemetery lands purchased in Mt. Zion Memorial Park, existing grounds renovated to meet city codes, and plans prepared for the construction of a new synagogue. Doors remained open to the surrounding community daily throughout these years, with Rabbi David Genuth offering counsel to all that entered the Temple in Shaker Heights. 



On August 22, 1954, Rabbi Genuth stood before his congregation to perform groundbreaking rituals and initiate construction of Beth-El’s new synagogue. Below an open tent fronting the farmhouse, Mayor Barkley delivered the principal address to commemorate the establishment of the city’s first permanent Jewish temple.  The Mayor was presented with a bound Hebrew and English copy of the Song of Solomon, which had been printed in the recently formed state of Israel.  The turning of the soil symbolized the institutionalization of Jewish religious life in the community of Shaker Heights.



The successes of Temple Beth-El can in part be attributed to its close ties with the municipal government.  While the City had already shown a willingness to work with the Jewish community in providing access to its schools for use in religious services during the late 1940s, a personal relationship between Rabbi Genuth and Mayor Barkley helped color the interaction between these two institutions. Upon news of John Barkley’s election in 1950, Rabbi Genuth had penned a letter of congratulations to the Mayor-elect. The written correspondence evolved into a friendship. From the outset, the congregation found city officials to be supportive of their ambition to build a Jewish sanctuary in Shaker Heights.  Permissions were secured by both the Mayor of Shaker Heights and the Superintendent of Shaker Heights Schools to use the Moreland School Auditorium for forum meetings and religious services.    Upon Barkley’s subsequent acceptance of invitations to participate in Beth-El’s public ceremonies, relationships were forged between the Mayor and numerous congregation members.  



Through Mayor Barkley’s participation in public ceremonies, a precedent was set for the involvement of future administrations in Beth-El’s religious affairs. Personal ties would also be built by Rabbi Genuth with Mayors Wilson G. Stapleton and Paul K. Jones. The various Mayors participated in nearly all public events during these early years, including annual officer installations, construction-related ceremonies, ribbon-cuttings, and dedications.  This eventually extended to their attendance at significant religious observations, and a tradition emerged that the Mayor of Shaker Heights visited services on High Holy Days. The friendship and goodwill between municipal leaders and the congregation proved beneficial through the many difficult years of inspections, planning and construction of Temple Beth-El’s new structure. 



On September 15, 1957, Governor Frank Lausche and Mayor Wilson G. Stapleton of Shaker Heights convened to celebrate the dedication of Temple Beth-El’s House of Worship. The American colonial-type structure, situated at the rear of the historic farmhouse, was officially opened as the first built Synagogue in Shaker Heights. Designed to reflect the architectural motif of Shaker Square, the building merged traditions of the Jewish community and a historically exclusionary suburb. The dedication of a synagogue did not mark an end to the suburb’s troubled history of discriminatory real estate practices. The symbolic support offered by the City of Shaker Heights to Temple Beth-El throughout the 1950s, however, indicated the beginnings of an institutional shift towards inclusivity that would later become a cornerstone of the city’s identity.  Fittingly, the banquet that followed the official opening of Beth-El was held in Naiman Hall of the new synagogue. 



Under the leadership of David Genuth, Temple Beth-El continued to expand. The synagogue become a refuge for modern Orthodox Jewish religion, culture and education within Shaker Heights.  The congregation grew to 450 members by its tenth anniversary, 80 percent of whom lived in the immediate vicinity of the neighborhood. Even as the Kinsman-Lee Jewish community dispersed to the outer-ring suburbs of Cleveland during the 1960s and 1970s, Temple Beth-El maintained many of its members and a full schedule of religious services. The historic synagogue regularly reached full capacity on High Holy Days.  After nearly twenty-four years of service as the spiritual leader of Temple Beth-El, Rabbi Genuth passed away on February 23, 1974.  The Shaker Heights congregation continued on its path of fostering the traditions of modern Orthodox Judaism for the next twenty-five years.  Attrition, continued decline in the surrounding neighborhood’s Orthodox Jewish population, and the burdens of an aging structure impelled the sale of the synagogue to the City of Shaker Heights in 1998. Under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Moshe Adler, the Beth-El congregation merged with 35 members of Beth Am to form Beth-El — The Heights Synagogue in January, 2000. The congregation is currently located in Cleveland Heights.

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In 2013 the Lillian and Betty Ratner Montessori School celebrated the semicentennial of its founding in 1963. Melding its Jewish roots with the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, the Ratner School is both a story of innovative education and of suburbanization. Ratner developed at Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights, where it was housed for most of its first two decades before moving to Lyndhurst and, later, Pepper Pike.

For a generation, Cleveland Heights represented upward mobility for Cleveland Jews, just as the Glenville neighborhood had for the previous generation. The Temple on the Heights (B'nai Jeshurun), which opened on Mayfield Road in 1926, signaled that decades of eastward movement of the city's Jewish population might continue into the suburbs, but in the meantime East 105th Street in Glenville was still on the build as a hub of Jewish life. Another congregation, Anshe Emeth, had recently moved from the Central neighborhood to a new facility on East 105th. Known as the Cleveland Jewish Center, the synagogue housed a religious school and recreational facilities that included the Council Educational Alliance, a forerunner of the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland.

Meanwhile, a group of Vassar-educated women founded the Park School in 1918 to provide a setting for "learning by living." Originally holding classes in the Heights Masonic Temple at Mayfield and Lee roads, the Park School grew to serve preschool through high school. The school leased a tract between Euclid Heights Boulevard and Mayfield Road in 1929 from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who tore up the lease three years later. The school's president, Harold T. Clark, predicted that the Park School would complement Rockefeller's nearby Forest Hill residential allotment.

By the early 1940s, it was already apparent that the Jewish community was forsaking Glenville for Cleveland Heights. Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo purchased the Park School grounds with the idea of building a new synagogue there. In the meantime Lillian Ratner, whose husband Leonard B. Ratner headed Forest City Materials (which progressed from lumber sales to suburban real estate development after World War II), worked with Rabbi Armond E. Cohen and Anne Cohen to reorganize the Park Nursery School under congregational control in 1943. Instruction focused on "character training, handicrafts and Jewish customs." After World War II, Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo commissioned renowned architect Eric Mendelsohn to design Park Synagogue. The congregation sold the Cleveland Jewish Center to Cory Methodist Church in 1946 and moved into Mendolsohn's new copper-domed synagogue four years later.

Twenty years after leading the transition of the Park School, Lillian Ratner acted upon her interest in the Montessori method and founded the Lillian Ratner Montessori School in 1963. The nursery school operated for the next nineteen years at Park Synagogue, during which time it attracted a diverse student body that was eventually primarily non-Jewish. In 1969 the school expanded to the third grade and was renamed the Lillian Ratner Montessori Day School. Over the next dozen years the school gradually expanded to serve through the eighth grade. The growth necessitated a move, and Ratner left Park Synagogue's grounds to occupy a repurposed school building in Lyndhurst in 1982. Finally, in 2006, it moved to its present location in Pepper Pike.

Ratner's current facility began as the Brith Emeth Temple. From its inception in 1959, the Brith Emeth Congregation had met in the First Unitarian Church in Shaker Heights. Under Rabbi Philip Horowitz's guidance, Brith Emeth grew to nearly 400 families in its first few years, making it the tenth largest Reform congregation in Ohio. Brith Emeth acquired land for its own temple in Pepper Pike in 1962. In doing so, it overcame the legacy of exclusion embodied in the Van Sweringen Company deed restrictions since 1926, when the railroad barons' Shaker Heights venture grew to include Shaker Country Estates, a vast, wooded expanse earmarked for large home sites. Later absorbed by Beachwood, Pepper Pike, Orange, Hunting Valley, and Gates Mills, the properties continued to carry their original Van Sweringen restrictive covenants. Brith Emeth's success in building on former Van Sweringen land contrasted with a fight that pitted another Jewish congregation against a hastily formed Pepper Pike Homeowners Association that purportedly opposed the temple on grounds of endangering the community's residential character.

Like Park Synagogue, Brith Emeth sought a highly regarded architect for its building. Edward Durell Stone, who had designed Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, and the U.S. Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels world's fair, built a modernistic temple on the north side of Shaker Boulevard. Brith Emeth worshipped at the temple from 1967 until its membership shrank to the point that it merged with Park Synagogue in the 1980s, by which time the latter was reacting to the large-scale departure of Jewish residents from Cleveland Heights into more easterly suburbs. From 1986 to 2006, when it built its current facility across Brainard Circle, Park Synagogue East progressed from a branch of the main temple in Cleveland Heights to become the location of its main offices and many of its activities. The congregation sold the onetime Brith Emeth Temple to the Ratner School, which benefited from the fact that the original temple design provided for a 500-student religious school. Indeed, in 1970 the Samuel Y. Agnon School, an ecumenical Jewish day school, opened in the temple before moving several years later. Ratner's history, like that of Park Synagogue, reflects the eastward migration of Jewish Cleveland and a legacy of strong congregational support of Judaic education aimed toward a broad cross-section of society.

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