About Upper Edgewater
Upper Edgewater is the bluff-top half of the Edgewater Park complex — thirty-five acres of mowed lawn, mature hardwoods, playgrounds, picnic pavilions, and the Edgewater Beach House with its panoramic lake-view terrace. It was the first section of the park to be developed, beginning in the 1890s, and remains the most-used green space on Cleveland's west-side lakefront.
History
The Original Edgewater
What is now called Upper Edgewater was simply "Edgewater Park" when the Cleveland Metropolitan Park District began acquiring the land in 1894 from Jacob B. Perkins and other west-side landowners. The lower beach did not yet exist; the bluff dropped directly to a narrow, rock-strewn shore. The park's earliest features were carriage paths, picnic shelters, and overlooks, oriented to the view rather than the water.
The first Edgewater Beach House was built in 1921, originally as a changing pavilion for the narrow lower beach that had begun to be filled and stabilized. The upper park's Bath House Lagoon, once a skating pond in winter and a small-boat pond in summer, was filled in the 1960s.
Today
A Working Community Park
Upper Edgewater hosts the weekly Edgewater LIVE concert series every Thursday evening from June through August, drawing crowds of several thousand. The renovated Beach House (reopened 2013) operates a year-round community space and a seasonal bar-and-restaurant on its lake-facing terrace.
Basketball courts, a playground, paved walking paths, and the Cleveland Metroparks' bike connection to the rest of the Lakefront Reservation all converge here. On any summer weekend the park hosts a dense cross-section of Greater Cleveland.
Nearby on the Shoreline