"Original Plan of the Town and Village of Cleaveland, Ohio, October 1st, 1796"

SETH PEASE, 1796

NO IMAGE OF THIS MAP IS AVAILBLE HERE

Amos Spafford's 1796 map of Cleveland, commonly referred to as the "First Map of Cleveland," was created "in the field" during the first summer of surveying Cleveland, using a sheet of paper constructed from the flattened envelopes that the field journal books came in. It was later found by Milton Holly's descendants and donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society Library.

This is a map of the "in-lots," or "two-acre lots," alone. The rest of the three part layout of the village, not shown here, consists of the surrounding "out-lots," or "ten-acre lots," and the "hundred-acre lots" even farther out from the village center. Euclid Avenue is not shown as it was not laid out until the following summer's survey. Superior was first called "Broad Street" which is shown crossed out on this map.

Keep in mind that the tract of land being described here was then dense woods and this map only represents what the Connecticut Land Company intended to develop here.

For more information on this map, including a black and white photo of the manuscript version (Figure 1), see Chapman's book. [see citation, below]

CITATIONS TO WHERE THIS MAP IS PUBLISHED

Chapman, Edumund H. Cleveland: Village to Metropolis: a Case Study of Problems of Urban Development in Nineteen-Century America. Cleveland: The Western Reserve Historical Society and the Press of Western Reserve University. 1964. Frontispiece.

Orth, Samuel P. A History of Cleveland, Ohio. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Company. 1910. Page 94. Note that Orth has no list of illustrations and his indexing for maps is very incomplete. The illustration used here was taken from Cleveland State's copy of Orth.

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June 21, 2003

ã Copyright 1996-2003 by William C. Barrow