Ansel Road Apartment Buildings Historic District

Along Ansel Road, facing Rockefeller Park in Cleveland, a row of apartment buildings records the city's apartment boom of the early twentieth century. The district has nine contributing buildings erected between 1910 and 1928, including the Overlook (1910), Parkcliff (1914), Wade Chateau (1920), the three-part Linnette (1925-28), and the six-story Devon Hall (1925-26). Their designs span Colonial Revival, Mission, Renaissance Revival and Tudor Revival styles. Parkcliff's cantilevered reinforced-concrete balconies are described as an early use of that technique in Cleveland residential architecture. The buildings are masonry, fire-resistant structures, built under a stricter building code adopted after the 1908 Collingwood School fire, and they offered modern comforts such as steam heat and private baths. Several neighbors, including the Carwilnor and the Florence, were demolished in the 1970s. The surviving group is the only apartment cluster on the park's west side and a rare surviving example of its type in the area.