Courtland, The

Standing at Detroit Avenue and West 54th Street in Cleveland, the Courtland combines ground-floor shops with upper-floor apartments. It was built in 1896-1897 for Ambler J. Rodgers, with Charles Schoenberg as masonry contractor, at a cost of $22,000. The architects were the local firm Steffens, Searles and Hirsh. The three-story building is half-timbered and masonry, with stone lintels, sills and quoining, projecting half-timbered oriel bays, and a corner treated to resemble a tower. Four storefronts face Detroit Avenue. Inside, apartments of four to six rooms surround a two-story atrium topped by a skylight, with interior windows borrowing light from that space. When built, it was the largest brick building for several blocks, apart from a school and a church, and it offered middle-class housing. It was listed for its architecture as an early Jacobethan mixed-use building, distinctive for its atrium and representative of the firm's early work. Its condition is described as good.