The Home in the Sky was a 39 x 31 foot, two-story, six-room, Colonial-style house erected by Building Arts Exhibit Inc. in a 51-foot-tall open court on the 17th and 18th floors of the Builders Exchange Building. A gallery on the 18th floor enabled close inspection of the house's second story and roof. The house showcased the latest building materials, home decoration and furnishings, all surrounded by a landscaped lawn and additional "Building Arts" displays. The Home in the Sky emerged from plans by the Builders Exchange in the late 1920s. In cooperation with the American Institute of Architects Cleveland Chapter and the Better Homes Association, it held a statewide contest in 1929 to design the house. Fred J. Abendroth of Dunn & Copper Architects in Cleveland won first prize, beating about 2,500 other contestants. The house’s conservative design mirrored that of the nearby Terminal Tower, which mimicked 20- to 30-year-old skyscrapers in New York and Chicago rather than embracing the modernism of Art Deco.

The house's conservative architecture was perhaps best evoked in the Cleveland Builders Supply Company’s explanation of the use of “Cleveland Rustic” face brick for much of the exterior: “Vision, with closed eyes, a home of brick nestled amongst groups of trees and masses of flowering shrubs; a home, not glaringly new in appearance, but reflecting the softened, weathered touch which is Nature’s gift alone; a home redolent with the atmosphere and age-old glamour which typifies the architecture of our forefathers. This pictures, briefly, the effects created by ‘Cleveland Rustics’ in ‘The Home in the Sky.’”

The May Company’s home decorating department furnished the Home in the Sky. The house’s first floor featured a vestibule with coat closet; a living room with a bay window, a fireplace, and wooden mantel flanked by bookcases with a door opening onto a garden porch; a dining room; a modern kitchen with the latest electric appliances and a breakfast nook. The second floor included a stair-hall, three bedrooms with closets (one of them a nursery), and a green and mauve bathroom. In the basement was a pine-paneled recreation room with a fireplace, bright-red leather lounge chairs, and laundry with “electrical labor-saving devices designed to lighten the work on the modern home-maker.”

Visitors were free to roam the house on their own or to take a guided tour led by Florence LaGanke, who also served as the exhibit’s director of women’s activities. They could not only see a range of materials and furnishings in what the Plain Dealer called "a doll's house for grown-ups" but also obtain expert advice on construction, furnishings, home management, and even landscaping and gardening techniques. WTAM also broadcast a regular biweekly program from the exhibit to explore such topics. Clubs were also welcome to reserve space for their meetings.

In its first year, the Home in the Sky attracted 300,000 visitors. As novel as the Home in the Sky was, however, the Builders Exchange wanted to ensure that there was always something new to see so that Cleveland’s would make return visits. In May, as Clevelanders’ attention turned to the outdoors, it debuted a “summer cottage” and horticultural exhibition on the 18th floor and partnered with a number of local organizations to offer an eight-day gardening clinic. To make the garden as useful as possible, the exhibit builders hauled in tons of soil donated by gardeners all over Cuyahoga County and representing common types in the Cleveland area: “Raw Parma subsoil that has not seen the light of day for 6,000 years is there. Then there is well worked clay loam from the W. G. Mather estate, prize winning garden soil from Lakewood, the much maligned but fertile soil of downtown Cleveland, sands of Euclid Avenue, clay of the Heights. Your soil will be represented,” one newspaper article assured. The exhibit also displayed a flagstone terrace, a hedgerow, shrubs, and a backyard garden with “onions, spinach, beets and other homely vegetables.”

For a time, updates continued. In the fall of 1930, the Home in the Sky received a top-to-bottom refurnishing, this time by Higbee’s. The following spring, it opened a new exhibit called Sky City, a model streetscape lined by rows of homes exhibiting “building products in their proper settings.” It also featured the “Court in the Sky,” a courtyard to showcase different floor materials. In 1934, Kinney & Levan assumed responsibility for furnishing the Home in the Sky, along with the newest addition to the Builders Exchange exhibit, the American Institute of Architects Cleveland Chapter–designed “House of Tomorrow.” However, coverage of the Home in the Sky exhibit dropped precipitously thereafter. Occasional mentions suggest that it remained open but was not promoted. In 1941, the Builders Exchange moved to Euclid Avenue and East 18th Street and Sherwin-Williams took over its former space to house some of its operations formerly handled at its Canal Road facility. It is not recorded how the Builders Exchange dismantled the Home in the Sky.

The Home in the Sky was surely one of the nation's most ambitious demonstration houses because of its novel location atop a skyscraper. But downtown Cleveland also saw several other demonstration houses in the 1930s. Four of them appeared on the grounds of the Great Lakes Exposition in 1936. Two of those served as commemorative replicas of the log cabins that had once housed early settler Lorenzo Carter and future President James A. Garfield. (Local interest in commemoration had led civic leaders to build a log cabin on Public Square for the city’s 1896 centennial and would later inspire a replica of Carter’s cabin in the Flats on the occasion of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.) In contrast, the other two were showcases for the home construction and real estate industries. Nestled between City Hall and the Cuyahoga County Court House were a small brick demonstration house built by Cleveland Builders Supply Co. and a large wood-frame, columned mansion constructed by the Cleveland Lumber Institute and furnished by the Halle Bros. Co. The Halle House invited visitors to see how they could recapture the flavor of colonial Virginia in their own homes by shopping Halle’s. In 1939, yet another demonstration house, this one sponsored by the American Legion, opened to the public on Euclid Avenue at East 21st Street in front of the Legion’s headquarters (now the site of CSU’s Student Center). Known as the Low Cost Demonstration Home, the diminutive Cape Cod measured only 28 x 26 feet and surely reflected the harsh reality that a decade of depression posed for the building trades.

Two decades later, the city’s building trades had a new reason for downtown demonstration homes. Unlike in the context of the Great Depression, when the Builders Exchange attracted Clevelanders to the city center in hopes of inspiring them to build new homes on the suburban periphery, by the 1950s, civic leaders were grappling with the consequences of outward population movement for the central city. In 1955, on the cusp of federal urban renewal, the National Retail Lumber Dealers Association unveiled Operation Demonstrate on the Mall, adopting the slogan “Live Better Where You Are.” The organization split in half and hauled two “age-blacked shells” of houses from Charity Avenue (a street that would in a few years be obliterated for the St. Vincent urban renewal project) to the Mall, where they were rebuilt and renovated to become Operation Demonstrate’s Traditional House and a Contemporary House. After the demonstration ended, the houses were put up for sale, to be moved by the buyer. Ultimately, the houses were loaded onto a barge at the foot of East 9th Street and ferried fifty miles west to Huron, Ohio.

The Home in the Sky, along with other demonstration houses, was a symbol of the ascendancy of the idea of housing as a consumer product. Fearing the effects that the Great Depression (and, later, urban decay) might have on homeownership, those with a profit stake in the private housing market used demonstration houses to entice the public into a marketplace with countless materials and products that might make the American Dream their reality. In that sense, a visit to the Home in the Sky was not unlike how people today browse Zillow, watch HGTV, or visit the Home & Garden Show at the I-X Center for home buying, remodeling, landscaping, and gardening inspiration.

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Bloodgood Tuttle and the Van Sweringen brothers were a perfect match for each other. The Van Sweringens used strict building codes to ensure that every house in Shaker Heights was constructed and designed in a sound and attractive manner. Tuttle, too, stressed the need for high-quality design and workmanship in home building, but unlike the famously reticent Van Sweringens, Tuttle was not afraid to share his impassioned views in public forums.

During a speech to the Building Construction Institute in 1933, for example, Tuttle stated that "90% of all buildings in Cleveland should be either razed or renovated." These remarks built on his 1931 article in the trade magazine "Building Arts," where he again used the figure of 90%, this time attaching it to the "percent of the small houses erected today [which] are badly designed ...The fundamental reason for this is the fact that the general public has not demanded better design." Of course, in Shaker Heights the Van Sweringen Company maintained a tight grip on the types of houses being built, limiting the options for the public whose poor taste and scrimping ways (not hiring an architect or relying on low-quality materials, for example) Bloodgood Tuttle so clearly disliked.

Tuttle designed nine Van Sweringen demonstration homes in two clusters along South Moreland Boulevard (later renamed Van Aken Boulevard) in 1924. Built early on in Shaker Heights' history, the Demonstration Homes provided potential home owners with examples of the high-quality type of home that could be found in the exclusive suburb. The first cluster of Tuttle's homes is located at 3105 Van Aken, 3113 Van Aken, 3125 Van Aken, 3137 Van Aken, and 3149 Van Aken. The second cluster, further southeast down the road, can be found at 18405 Van Aken, 18419 Van Aken, 18435 Van Aken, and 18513 Van Aken. The homes include three designed in English style, five featuring French design, and one designed in Dutch Colonial style. Tuttle, like the Van Sweringens, did not approve of Italian and Spanish-style houses being built in Cleveland, declaring them "better left in Florida and California," because "they are intended to keep out the sun while we want to let it in...since we get so little of it at best."

Before his death at age 47 in 1936, Tuttle went on to design more than 30 houses throughout Shaker Heights, and several more in the neighboring suburb of Cleveland Heights. The city designated his Demonstration Homes as Shaker Heights Landmarks in June 1983.

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While most Clevelanders have never heard of the architect Philip Small, it is very likely that they have seen his work around town. In the 1920s, Small and his associate Charles Rowley became favorites of the Van Sweringen brothers, who commissioned them to design Shaker Square, the interior of the Higbee's department store on Public Square (now the site of the Horseshoe Casino), and the brothers' own Daisy Hill estate in Hunting Valley, to name a few. Separate from his work with the Vans, Small also designed nearby John Carroll University, the Cleveland Playhouse, the Karamu House, and a number of buildings on the Case Western Reserve University campus.

The Van Sweringens also entrusted Small and Rowley with the task of designing one of the four clusters of demonstration homes in Shaker Heights. Built early on in Shaker Heights's history, the Demonstration Homes provided potential home owners with examples of the high-quality type of home that could be found in the exclusive suburb. Indeed, the homes were a symbol of the dignified, up-scale community that the Van Sweringen Company desired to create, and they provided the foundation from which the city grew. The houses were designated as Shaker Heights Landmarks on June 27, 1983.

Small's five demonstration homes, built in 1924, lie along South Woodland Boulevard, just west of Warrensville Center Road at (from east to west) 20000 South Woodland, 19910 South Woodland, 19700 South Woodland, and 19600 South Woodland. The fifth is nearby at 3158 Morley Road. All of the houses were designed in various types of English style, are built of brick and stucco with wood shingle roofs, and feature Tudor half-timbering and leaded glass casement windows on their exterior. English architecture was popular during the development of Shaker Heights, and Van Sweringen Company newspaper advertisements from the 1920s favorably compared Shaker's ambience with the "charm of England." A 1926 ad even refers to Small's Demonstration Home at 19910 South Woodland Road as "a true modernization of the famous old country houses of Dickens' England." At this time, the idealized English countryside served as a symbol of peacefulness, beauty, and security to wealthy Clevelanders looking to escape an increasingly chaotic big city. Indeed, as the same 1926 ad asks, why "go to England, thousands of miles away, to visit that charm" when "we can live with it always in Shaker Village, thirty minutes away[?]"

Philip Small's masterfully designed Demonstration Homes helped further this conception of the English countryside in northeast Ohio, contributing to Shaker Heights' ultimate success. It is little wonder, then, that the Van Sweringens continued to turn to Small for the design of some of their most important construction projects.

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The 1920s witnessed a time of explosive growth and expansion in Shaker Heights. With the opening of the rapid transit system between Cleveland and the suburb at the beginning of the decade, the population grew from less than 2,000 to over 15,000 by 1929. As the transit system expanded, leading further into the planned community, the Van Sweringen Co. promoted the sale of the newly accessible lands in part through the construction of demonstration homes. Employing renowned local architects to create designs and oversee development, the Van Sweringen Co. constructed a series of homes in areas that were to be opened for public sale. These homes not only acted as examples of the desired character and quality of structures required by the Vans, but offered those interested in purchasing land an image of the exclusive community's possibilities.

Both small and large groupings of demonstration homes were constructed on Parkland Drive, Moreland Boulevard (now Van Aken), Courtland Boulevard, and South Woodland in the early 1920s. Reflecting the guidelines presented to prospective clients by the Van Sweringen Co. in "Shaker Village Standards", the structures were to define the character of the residential neighborhoods and promote the sale of surrounding lots. As prescribed by the Van Sweringens for all Shaker residences, the demonstration homes were designed by prominent architects such as Phillip Small, Howell & Thomas, and Bloodgood Tuttle.

The architects' designs for these demonstration homes spoke to the qualities and character of residential construction desired by the Vans. Each home was architecturally distinct, but also built in harmony with both surrounding structures and the natural environment. Designs for the demonstration homes employed the three recommended architectural styles for Shaker residences: English, French, and Colonial. The sturdy yet picturesque homes offered visions of permanence within the highly landscaped rural setting. These demonstration homes were a symbol of the dignified, enduring community that the Van Sweringen Co. desired to create and market. Such homes provided the foundation from which the cosmopolitan residential neighborhood grew.

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The design of at least 27 homes in Shaker Heights has been attributed to the architectural firm of Howell and Thomas, including the grouping of demonstration homes on Parkland Drive. Formed in 1908 by Carl Howell and J. William Thomas, the Columbus-based business made its name designing Revival style homes. The firm specialized in residential architecture for upper-class clients. The architects were brought to Cleveland by 1913 to help design homes for real estate developer Barton R. Deming's garden city suburb, the Euclid Golf Allotment. The firm relocated to Cleveland within five years and remained active in the construction of residences throughout Cleveland Heights. In 1922, the Van Sweringen Company retained the locally-renowned architectural firm to design four demonstration homes at Shaker and Courtland Boulevards. Their services were employed again in 1924 to design an additional seven demonstration homes at 3280 Maynard and 18414, 18428, 18500, 18524, 18560 and 18580 Parkland Drive.

The Parkland Drive demonstration homes not only advertised the possibilities of the emerging suburb, but provided examples to potential home owners of the type and quality of home appropriate for Shaker Heights. Designated a Shaker Heights Landmark on June 27, 1983, the homes are reflective of the Van Sweringen Company's architectural standards as well as Howell and Thomas' mastery of the Revival styles. The designs of the demonstration homes incorporated various French and American regional styles in a manner that captured distinctive elements without displaying a strict adherence to form. In this way, the homes were constructed to complement the surrounding built and natural environment. For example, due to the narrowness of the rear lot of the demonstration home at 3280 Maynard, the floor plan of the residence steps back - a design feature that allowed for multiple attractive window exposures and an interior space flooded with natural light. Similarly, gutters, downspouts and decorative gutter boxes were fashioned in copper in order that they weather to a natural green and blend with their surroundings. The Parkland grouping was estimated to have cost the Van Sweringen Co. over $250,000.

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