Once, Cleveland was America's startup hub. Can history repeat itself?

With a new thrust, the Western Reserve Historical Society is illuminating the entrepreneurs who made Cleveland the Silicon Valley of the Industrial Age Watch video

CLEVELAND, Ohio--A little more than a century ago, America was in the full boil of an industrial revolution and Cleveland was its Silicon Valley.

With more inventors and more millionaires than any city its size, Cleveland dominated whole industries and seemed to create new ones overnight.

The teeming Great Lakes port was, as one authoritative study observed, "a hotbed of high tech startups" driving the new economy at the dawn of the 20^th century.

The Western Reserve Historical Society has a message for a region trying to get the magic back: Remember when.

To help spur innovation and job growth, stewards of the region's deepest archives are blowing the dust off of seldom-heard stories and asking business enthusiasts to reimagine an entrepreneurial past. They say there are lessons to be learned and secrets to be gleaned from Cleveland's age of invention.

The society is launching new exhibits focused on the region's great entrepreneurs, changing awards programs to celebrate innovation, and shedding new light on lesser-known job creators.

Look beyond titans like Rockefeller, Hannah and the Van Sweringen brothers, the historians say. Meet people like Frank Vlchek.

He was a toolmaker and poet from Bohemia who built chisels and hammers for Cleveland bricklayers in the 1890s. He opened a small shop, took risks, and began creating tool factories that employed hundreds of workers well into the next century.

"He became a millionaire," said Edward Pershey, the society's director of special projects and exhibits. "He was a blacksmith who became a millionaire. His house in Shaker Heights is for sale."

Vlchek never applied for a patent because he did not want to divulge his formula for hardening tools, Pershey adds. Like Coca-Cola, he kept his ingredients secret.

The city was busy with Vlcheks; bold newcomers who brought new ideas from afar and found a welcome and often startup capital in a cultural melting pot.

In 1900, Cleveland produced more patents per capita than any city in America. Inventors tried, failed and tried, tried again.

Typically, their products were simple, functional, as ordinary as hand tools or caned chairs, but well made and enriched with an innovation or two.

The Taylor Chair Co. of Bedford went out of business two years ago--after an epic 196-year run. A company that began making rockers for pioneer cabins introduced high style in office furnishings in the 1960s and 1970s.

 "It's a great story," declares Pershey, a rumpled, white-haired historian with the enthusiasm of a wide-eyed intern. "Even though they're not in business anymore, it's a great success story."

He sees a company that never stopped re-inventing.

The society plans to start telling more tales of invention and innovation--in every facet of its operations.

Celebrating a spirit of entrepreneurship

On November 3, the historical society will induct another class into its 100 Year Club, companies and organizations that have reached their centennial. This year, the focus will shift from recognizing longevity to honoring the entrepreneurial spirit.

The club is inducting companies like Akron's Knapp Foundry, which is still run by members of the founding Knapp family.  Speakers include modern-day entrepreneurs like Charles Stack, who founded the downtown Cleveland startup accelerator, FlashStarts.

The backdrop is a larger education effort that taps the society's diverse facilities and vast archives.

Beyond the popular Crawford Auto Aviation Collection, deeper within the History Center at University Circle, awaits a fresh exhibit showcasing the new thrust.

"Genius At Work" introduces Frank Vlchek as well as Shaker Heights designer Joan Luntz. She created a bestselling line of sturdy plastic dishes, Brookpark dinnerware, in the 1950s.

The exhibit also explores the history of Taylor Chair and Morgan Lithograph, whose movie posters and printing innovations helped pioneer advertising and graphic design early in the 20^th century. The Cleveland printer lives on as Morgan Litho.

The society has carved out a 2,500 square-foot space for changing exhibits to reveal entrepreneurs, their products and their journeys.

Kelly Falcone-Hall, the WRHS president and chief executive, describes an ambitious quest. She sees an historian's role in economic development.

"Part of this region's history has really been predicated on what we call entrepreneurship," she said. "We have this strong, rich tradition of innovation, from the very beginning."

She hopes to not only document that history but help revive it.

Entrepreneurs from the get-go

Falcone-Hall began formulating the new approach six years ago at Hale Farm & Village, the society's living history site in the Cuyahoga Valley, where she was director.

John Hale bought the land sight unseen, she says. He walked here from Connecticut, then sent for his wife and kids.

"There's a lot of risk in that act"--and a lot of entrepreneur, she said.

With a grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, Hale Farm began sharing entrepreneurship lessons with the school children who stream through by the hundreds. The children not only see glass blowing, they learn how craftspeople identified a market and used local resources to fill a need.

In June, Falcone-Hall become CEO of the society and brought her innovation fascination to the History Center.

"There's this 200-year spectrum of entrepreneurship and these stories are all here," she said. "We're just looking at it more deliberatively."

History enthusiasts like Jennifer Coleman think the approach will find an audience.

Coleman, an architect, is the founder of CityProwl. She creates urban walking tours that can be downloaded to digital media players. She has a special fondness for Cleveland at the turn of the 20^th century.

"A lot of our most beautiful landmarks were created then," she said. "It was our golden age. I'm hoping we can work our way back."

Ray Leach shares that hope. As chief executive at JumpStart Inc., he's charged with building the region's entrepreneurial ecosystem, which means rebuilding an entrepreneurial culture.

Lessons from the early innovators remain relevant and potent, Leach insists. Charles Brush, the inventor of the arc light, showed the value of pluck and perseverance in pursuit of audacious ideas, Leach said.

Brush also shared his expertise and wealth with other inventors, contributing to a vast, self-sustaining business network in Northeast Ohio.

It all crashed with the stock market in 1929 but that doesn't mean it can't come back, Leach says, adding, "History repeats itself."

 

How to restart?

A handful of studies have chronicled the rise and fall of Cleveland as an innovation hub, most notably "Cleveland from Startup to the Present: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the 19^th and 20^th Century," which was commissioned by venture capitalist David Morgenthaller.

Researchers say the region's productivity fell as factories aged, labor unionized and became more expensive, and the bill for environmental degradation came due.

But other regions, like New England, bore similar costs and transitioned to a new, smarter economy.

Ohio never invested seriously in higher education, the study notes. When the knowledge economy bloomed, the state and region lacked a skilled workforce. Meanwhile, immigration slowed to a trickle, choking off the international talent that had proven so invigorating.

Pershey notes that Cleveland's rate of invention, as documented by patenting, aligned with migration waves.

"The success of Cleveland as an entrepreneurial place coincided with immigrants," he said. "I think that's something to consider when we think about Cleveland's future and how to restart."

Right now, his attention is captured by a Czech toolmaker from Bohemia. But that will change.

The society's archives include the records of more than 400 companies and corporations. They reveal the stories of businesses large and small, all of them started by someone, an entrepreneur in a city that first mastered the craft.