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Jerry Adams has been a railfan, train-spotter and habitué of railroad facilities most of his life. When a friend, the late Vernon Murray, a Cleveland Union Terminal employee, told him that they had orders to throw away a massive assemblage of office records, Jerry rushed over and purchased the entire lot and hauled it to a storage locker. There it languished, though safely, for years while he attempted to find an institution willing to accept it as an archival collection. Finally he met Dr. Walter Leedy, Professor of Art at Cleveland State University, an architectural historian and expert on the Van Sweringen brothers' famous Shaker Heights real estate development. Dr. Leedy immediately recognized the importance of this collection of construction records from the brothers' related project, which was designed in part to bring suburban commuters downtown from Shaker Heights, and facilitated the transfer of the collection to the C.S.U. Library. Once a grant was obtained from the John P. Murphy Foundation - Mr. Murphy having been the Van Sweringen's attorney - the present project to process the collection began in 1994.
Jerry Adams continues his association with the records he saved from the landfill and is very knowledgeable about local railroad history, particularly the part of it that is visible on the ground. A drive through the Flats with him is a education in the story behind ruined building foundations, weed-choked bridge approaches, abandoned passenger stations, former streetcar power poles, and grades and fields where vast amounts of tracks once ran before tax rules caused them to be pulled up.
Here, accompanied by his faithful hound, "Zeus," he strides along railroad right-of-way somewhere in Cleveland.
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The other photo is a train observed on the same excursion:
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Last updated June 19, 1997