The Smokestacks of the Flats

From 1829 to 1859, Case lived in a small house on Superior Street near the corner of Bank Street (today's West 6th), while he and his father steadily accumulated their fortune. In 1856, as his wealth matured, he moved into a double brick house on Rockwell Avenue at the corner of Wood Street, a more substantial address that reflected his standing as one of Cleveland's foremost early proprietors.

Stone's mansion stood at 1255 Euclid Avenue, among the grandest addresses on the Row. His daughter Clara later married John Hay, Lincoln's former secretary and future Secretary of State under McKinley, cementing the family's place in national life as well as Cleveland society.

Rockefeller's Cleveland home stood at 3920 Euclid Avenue, placing him among the titans who made that boulevard the most storied street in 19th-century America. His summer retreat, the Forest Hill estate in East Cleveland, was a sprawling 700-acre property he later opened to the public, a rare philanthropic gesture from the world's wealthiest man.

Mather's home at 2605 Euclid Avenue was one of the most distinguished on the Row, a Romanesque Revival mansion that reflected both his wealth and his serious civic temperament. The house later became part of Cleveland State University's campus and still stands today.

Hanna grew up at his family's 40-room yellow-brick mansion at 2717 Euclid Avenue, one of the grandest addresses on the Row. In later life he built Hilo Farm in Kirtland, a 300-acre estate laid out in the style of an English feudal village, complete with a covered bridge, guest houses, and a stone structure dating to 1492 that he had shipped from England and reassembled on the grounds. He died there in 1957. The Euclid Avenue mansion was eventually given to house the original Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Brush built his turreted mansion at 3725 Euclid Avenue and powered it with his own private wind turbine, making it the first home in America lit entirely by wind-generated electricity. Neighbors reportedly marveled at its glowing windows on still nights when every other house on the Row was dark.

In 1903, Winton completed Roseneath, a 25-room estate at 12700 Lake Avenue in Lakewood, overlooking Lake Erie. The name evoked his Scottish roots, and the scale of the house announced his arrival among Cleveland's industrial aristocracy on his own terms, away from the Euclid Avenue establishment and facing the open lake instead.

The brothers lived together their entire lives at Roundwood Manor on their Daisy Hill estate in Shaker Heights, the very suburb they had conjured from farmland. They also maintained a private suite at the top of Terminal Tower, their own downtown monument, allowing them to move between the city they built and the retreat they built to escape it. The estate was sold after their deaths to settle staggering debts left by the Depression.