Highland View Hospital was a Warrensville Township gem. Originally known as the Cuyahoga County Hospital, the name was changed to make the hospital sound private. Opening in 1953 as part of the Cuyahoga County Hospital System, with the goal of treating chronically ill patients, Highland View was known for treating and rehabilitating victims of strokes, those suffering from neuromuscular diseases, and the chronically crippled. The hospital continued a long history of rehabilitative institutional use of the Cooley Farms, named for minister and reformer Rev. Harris Cooley, in Warrensville Township. This land was outside of the Cleveland's corporation limit but was owned by the City of Cleveland. It was believed the "fresh air" of the pastoral area was good for the patients of the various institutions. By the mid-1910s, the land included the Cleveland Workhouse, Warrensville Sanatorium (later Sunny Acres Tuberculosis Hospital) and an Infirmary. Highland View Hospital was a county hospital on city property, making use of part of the former infirmary.

Highland View was a leading facility of its type in the country whose programs were innovative and proven to work. The hospital always had vacant beds, especially in the 1950s, because of a shortage of staff. Patients were not accepted for permanent placement, but the average stay of a patient was 67 days. The challenge the staff at Highland View faced was helping those under their care and getting them back into society and back to their regular lives. The hospital was excellent at helping people with spinal cord injuries. People who were expected to only live for another year at most were able to get the help they needed to return to an almost regular life. A unique service the hospital offered was the mobile dentist's office, which allowed patients with little mobility to get the dental care they needed in their own homes. Highland View staff helped their patients relearn not just simple things such as walking or how to maneuver around in the kitchen, but also complex things such as relearning to drive. The hospital had a mock kitchen to help patients relearn how to get around and do things in the kitchen with their new found disabilities. Dr. Charles Long II headed a program that helped handicapped patients relearn how to drive. The "automobility clinic" became a way to evaluate how patients reacted to driving situations and retrain them accordingly. "In all cases, those who (had) taken the driver's licensing examination (had) passed with above-average scores." The program gave hope to those with disabilities that they could get around by themselves when they left the hospital.

Not only were patients at Highland View Hospital prepared for their departure, but they were also mentally stimulated while at the hospital. Many patients needed some kind of activity to prevent boredom and possible depression. The two most popular programs were the Studio Greenhouse and the Art Studio. In the greenhouse patients could "work in soil, plant bulbs, root cuttings, clip faded flowers, arrange bouquets and do other small chores that are fun, and also good for muscles that need mild exercising." The plants and flowers provided a fun activity that surely added some joy to the patients' day. When discharged patients could take plants with them if they wished. In the Art Studio they could paint, draw, write, read or people watch. The staff members in the room were not there to supervise. All they did was provide advice or criticism if someone requested it. Those in the studio could express themselves in any manner they wished. Some of the art was even placed into the art sale held by the hospital or placed on display at the public library.

Despite all the good Highland View Hospital was doing, Beachwood Councilman Ralph S. Bing fought the hospital for years over the pollution pouring out of the hospital's two smokestacks. The hospital was confronted by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, which said it would deny air pollution variance applications made by the hospital because of unsatisfactory schedules for complying with state air pollution regulations. Ironically, patients came to Highland View for its pastoral setting and fresh air, yet the hospital was polluting the same air. In 1970 a proposal was put forth to the board to consolidate Highland View Hospital. The plan was to merge Highland View Hospital into Metropolitan General, a plan that took about six years to accomplish. In the last two years of the plan, people began speaking out against it. They wanted to polish Highland View into the gem it once was. People claimed a misuse of money from a levy occurred because the hospital board decided the money was better spent else where and that Highland View was beyond saving. The court ruled in favor of the hospital board and Highland View Hospital was closed and split between Sunny Acres and Metropolitan General.

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Located within a small business district at 3451 Lee Road, Warrensville West Cemetery offers a reminder of the individuals and communities that inhabited the area prior to the development of Shaker Heights. The headstones and markers adorning the small graveyard speak of an unfamiliar landscape, lost to time, that was the home of brave pioneer families and their descendants, immigrant settlers, and the North Union Shakers. Listed as a landmark on August 24, 1976, these symbolic grounds are among the oldest designated landmarks in Shaker Heights, and provide a fitting place of remembrance for Warrensville Township's earliest residents.

The history of the cemetery can be traced back to the first settlers, and namesakes, of Warrensville Township. Daniel and Margaret Prentiss Warren emigrated to the Western Reserve from Acworth, New Hampshire in 1808 with their infant son. Working as a brick-maker, Daniel earned rights to a $300 parcel of land for his work in the construction of the Court House in Jefferson, Ohio. Choosing a lot based on its vicinity to Moses Cleveland's settlement, the Warrens built a log cabin in 1809 and cleared land for crops in the heavily wooded forest. The Warrens then began to raise a family in the rugged environment, and were soon joined by relatives in what was eventually named Warrensville Township.

In 1811, the couple's two year old daughter, Lovisa, died. She was buried on a ridge at the edge of their property. When this land was purchased by Asa Stiles in 1812, the grounds were transferred to the township for use as a cemetery. The burial ground would continue to be used by the Warren family, as well as other early settlers of Warrensville Township. Similar to community burial grounds formed in other inhospitable areas of Cuyahoga County, the cemetery was small, rustic, and unadorned. With roads and trails that proved to be unsuitable for travel much of the year, no nearby church, and living conditions that tended to promote their frequent usage, the centralized burial grounds soon became a repository of the township's pioneer settlers and their descendants.

As Warrensville attracted new residents, the cemetery began to reflect the changing face of the surrounding community. In 1826, three families that had recently emigrated from the Isle of Man arrived in Cleveland. Within a year, more than 200 Manx residents had settled in the Newburgh and Warrensville area. As word spread that Warrensville was a desirable location for farming, the township quickly became the center of the region's Manx population. Often characterized as deeply religious, hard-working and clannish, many of the pioneers of Warrensville's Manx settlement purchased lots in the austere graveyard. A demographic shift within the cemetery resulted from the combined influence of this growing immigrant population, changes in popular taste of burial grounds, and improved routes of transportation into and out of the township. By the early 1900s, vver half the graveyard's population were Manxmen.

The community burial grounds became host to a new group of Warrensville settlers at the turn of the 20th century. A 40-foot lot was purchased by the City of Shaker Heights to re-inter bodies from the North Union Shaker cemetery. Located on land that was to be developed as a residential neighborhood, the Van Sweringen Company received permission from the Shaker Society in Union Village, Ohio, to relocate the bodies of the 138 members of the communal society to Warrensville West Cemetery. The remains of eighty-nine Shakers were located, placed in coffins, and buried in a common grave. The site would not be marked until 1949, when the Shaker Historical Society placed a granite boulder from an old Shaker farm above the grave.

While the cemetery markers reflect the history of Warrensville's founders, Manxmen and Shakers, they also offers clues to the lives led by those interred. The many children and infants buried in the graveyard are a reminder of the harsh living conditions endured by Warrensville's earliest resident. Engravings on headstones identify the veterans of five wars. Of these veterans, four served in the American Revolution, two in the War of 1812, one in the Mexican-American War, fourteen in the Civil War, and one in World War II. Familial relationships, birthplaces, and occupations are also memorialized. Although most markers have been weathered to the point of ineligibility, the grave of Mary Brogden -who died in 1843 - even offers visitors to the burial grounds advice:

"Friends as you pass me by, As you are now, So once was I. As I am now, So all must be. Prepare for death, And follow me."

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The house at 18829 Fairmount Boulevard is not only one of the oldest in Shaker Heights. It is also a house which has been associated over the years with a number of Shaker Heights most famous families.

The Jacob Strong home is believed to have been built sometime during the years 1839-1847 by Jacob Strong, a Pennsylvania native who migrated to northeastern Ohio around 1830. In 1835, Strong purchased 160 acres of land in Lot No. 14 of Warrensville Township. Several years later, he built on that land the house which today bears the above address.

Strong farmed 100 of the 160 acres he purchased, selling the other 60 acres to a neighbor in 1838. On this land, Strong and his wife Clarissa raised their eight children--Lucina, Hannah, John, Ely, Spencer, Albert, Jacob and Myron. In 1853, perhaps hearing of more fertile lands in the west, Strong sold his farm to John Hecker and moved with his family to Indiana.

It is an understatement to simply write that the Hecker family lasted longer in this area of northeastern Ohio than the Strong family. John Hecker, and later his son Jacob, operated a dairy farm on the 100 acres purchased from Jacob Strong from the 1850s until the second decade of the twentieth century. Shortly after Shaker Heights incorporated in 1912, the Hecker Family sold their farm to Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen. Even after the Hecker Farm had been sold to this pair of famed Shaker Heights developers, the Hecker family remained active and involved in the community. John A. Hecker, a grandson of John Hecker, was a life long resident of Shaker Heights, served as a Councilman for thirty years during the first half of the twentieth century, and was one of the founding members of the Shaker Historical Society.

In 1919, the Jacob Strong home was sold to William W. Bustard. Bustard was a fiery and controversial Baptist minister who served as pastor of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland from 1909 to 1925. Upon purchasing the Jacob Strong home, Bustard commissioned the well-known Cleveland architectural firm of Walker and Weeks to make additions and changes to the house to convert it from Western Reserve Greek Revival style to Colonial Revival style. In 1921, shortly after Walker and Weeks completed their work, the house was the site of an attempted attack upon Reverend Bustard. In the evening hours of November 28, 1921, five armed gunmen cut the telephone wires to the house and assaulted an employee of the Church who lived with the Bustard family. Rev. Bustard was not at home at the time. While no one was ever arrested or charged in connection with this attack, which also involved a gun battle between the armed gunmen and Shaker Heights police in the middle of the night, many at the time suspected that the attack was in response to Bustard's fiery condemnation of former Cleveland Police Chief Fred Kohler who had recently been elected Mayor of Cleveland.

It has also been noted that during these years the Jacob Strong home was visited by John D. Rockefeller, the most famous parishioner of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. During the period 1909-1925, Bustard was not only Rockefeller's spiritual adviser when the latter was in Cleveland, but, as a former college athlete, Bustard quickly became one of Rockefeller's favorite golfing partners.

While perhaps the house at 18829 Fairmount has not seen in recent years the sort of political and social excitement which circulated about it during the years of its ownership by Rev. William W. Bustard or the Hecker family, it has remained a house which always seems to attract owners who become actively involved in the community and in politics. Thus, it should have come as no surprise that, in the last several decades of the twentieth century, the Jacob Strong home was owned by Margaret Anne Cannon, the long time and well-respected Law Director of Shaker Heights.

The Jacob Strong Home was designated a Shaker Heights landmark on May 14, 1966.

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