How Cleveland's Rail Money Built a Suburb of Mansions and Then Vanished: Shaker Heights

Shaker Heights, Ohio was built by two brothers who controlled a railroad empire worth billions. Then they lost all of it, and the way they lost it is the story. The Van Sweringen brothers, O.P. and M.J., started with almost nothing and built one of the most beautiful planned suburbs in America, east of Cleveland. To move buyers to their lots they built their own rapid-transit line, and to run that line into downtown Cleveland they started buying railroads, until by the late nineteen twenties they controlled around thirty thousand miles of American railroad and were called the most powerful men in the country. They built the Terminal Tower on Public Square. They wrote rules for Shaker Heights so strict they governed the color you were allowed to paint your own house. This is how that fortune rose and how the whole thing came apart, through the crash, the holding-company pyramid the brothers built, and what was actually left at the end. It is not a story about mansions being torn down. The mansions of Shaker Heights are still standing, still beautiful, on their curved tree-lined streets. It is a story about what happened to the men who built them. If you live in Shaker Heights, or you know the Van Sweringen name from Cleveland history, this is the part that does not make it onto the neighborhood tour. WATCH NEXT → How Cleveland's Oil Money Built a Street of Mansions and Then Tore Them All Down:    • How Cleveland's Oil Money Built a Street o...   SUBSCRIBE →    / @ohiouncovered   If your family lived in Shaker Heights, what year did you move in? Tell me below. CHAPTERS: added after render (needs the finished video's timestamps) Historical and informational only. Locations are real; some footage is illustrative. #ShakerHeights #ClevelandHistory #OhioHistory