Cuyahoga County OHGenWeb

Street Names

As the City of Cleveland annexed more and more real estate, the naming patterns for streets, which were rather willy-nilly, made for confusion. In 1868 some street name changes were done, but the big change was in 1906 when the entire system changed. North-South thoroughfares became streets and most of them were numbered, deleting their names. East-West streets became avenues. Directional designations were given each street, road, and avenue such as 24th Street NE. Later these were dropped for the simpler designation of East or West, such as E. 24th St.

Photos by Laura Hine. Left: street sign. Right: 1906 Cleveland Map from City Directory.

1868 STREET NAME CHANGES

Cleveland passed an ordinance on April 21, 1868 changing the names of certain streets. See the list here:

East Side

West Side

Late Brooklyn

Late Newburgh

1906 STREET NAME CHANGES

CONVERTING PRE-1906 ADDRESSES TO POST-1906 ADDRESSES

In 1906 the City of Cleveland decided it was necessary to rename the streets. By doing so, the addresses on the streets also changed. This website will show you the old and new names, as well as providing a link to a publication at the Cleveland Public Library that will allow you to find the correlating old/new addresses of homes on the streets. You may find that where you thought an ancestor moved in 1906 to a new home, in fact, they were still residing in the same home but the address and street name changed. This is also helpful for tracing the history of a home and for property research. Have an old address for your ancestor and want to see what that house looks like today? - Use this site to convert from pre-1906 to post-1906 and you'll be successful! Once you are done, don't forget to do a Google search for the address today and look at Street View to see the house/property as it stands today.

Street Name Changes For the simple way to get just the street names, do this one. It has some nice explanations and other links, too.

Old and New Street Numbers is a book of all the house number and street changes in Cleveland. It is on the Cleveland Public Library site.

A Sanborn Fire Insurance Map that was "corrected" for the 1905 to 1907 period shows both house numbers and street names on it. One such corrected copy is at Western Reserve Historical Society.

Another version of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1896, corrected to 1910 is at Clevleand Public Library and is on-line at their Digital Gallery. There are four volumes there -- 1, 2A, 2B, and 3. From the index in the front of the book, you find the old address range, and it gives you the volume and page number. Page number seems to be the same as plate number.

In 1906, the city directory for Cleveland included the old and new addresses for every person listed. This can be found on Fold3.com. Another is at HathiTrust.