In search of the elusive inner-city Greek Revival house

I've always had a thing for Greek Revival houses. Their lines and proportions seem so right. For a while I've thought it would be interesting to have an old farmhouse and tiny farm in the inner city. With falling real estate prices, I've decided to look a bit harder to see if I can really find that magical Greek Revival farmhouse.

This is not as a replacement for my current residence, but rather, an additional project. The house would end up as a rental property after I had fixed it up, though I would probably make at least some effort to cultivate the land around it. As a result, I'm somewhat more inclined toward areas where I would be able to find a house with a chunk of land adjacent or nearby - these areas also tend to be cheaper.

My personal interest would be in a smaller house that either had really great lines or retained plenty of original detail. A smaller house would be a more managable project to rehab and maintain.

I've begun to systematically search through the areas where I might expect to find such houses, and will be documenting as I find them, as well as including them in this map. I welcome any additional sites you may be able to identify.

The photograph at the top of the page is of the Dunham Tavern, on Euclid Avenue. The oldest building in Cleveland on its original foundation, it is also probably the best known Greek Revival house in the city.



I often pass by this c.1835 house on Buckeye Road at East 108th Street. It was made from stone quarried nearby. I hadn't noticed the detail work on it before, but it is really quite nice. Replace the glass block windows and remove the vinylcide, and one would be left with a very nice house.



I started looking methodically near my neighborhood, hoping to find something interesting. I came across this house on East 130th Street, just north of Kinsman. Kinsman is one of the oldest roads in the area.



This angle shows the original lines a bit more clearly.

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Today, on my lunch break, I found three houses - two solid Greek Revivals and one suspect.



This one is hard to see, due to the trees, but I didn't venture further up the driveway to take a photograph, out of respect for the owner. This photograph shows the lines a bit more clearly. The house is located at Located at 1158 Addison Road, Cleveland, Ohio.



This house, at 1209 East 71st Street, has really nice lines. The windows, in their original locations, would have looked great. For the purposes of this argument, we're going to assume that they're currently ugly vinyl replacements (I actually have no idea) and that you'd want to replace them, so they might as well be replaced in the original locations. The foundation is locally quarried sandstone, and there's exterior access to the cellar.



The addition to the rear, presumably the kitchen, is reasonably harmonious with the rest of the house. The other addition, with the flat roof, should probably be removed.



The addition has the same style of sandstone foundation as the rest of the house, suggesting that it wasn't built terribly long after the main part of the house. I'd almost be inclined to think that the space I've been calling an addition might have come first, except that the pitch on the roof is slightly steeper than the rest of the house.



The other side of the house looks quite presentable, too. Street presence would be improved by a bit of pruning of the tree in front of it and removal of the porch.

The house is owned by Great Lakes Home Remodelers, Inc., which purchased the property on 13 July 2006 for $4,800 from the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae). It is one of five properties that they own, four of which were foreclosures. They are delinquent on taxes on all five of the properties as of today, according to the Cuyahoga County Auditor's website - the balance owed on this property is $2719.32. The auditor states that this house is a duplex. It is 1536 square feet.

At this point, I suspect that the current owners would be happy to get rid of this house, even at a loss. There's enough vacant land nearby to have some serious potential for gardening or a yard.



This house, at 6833 Bayliss Avenue, is the last I will mention today. It's a bit of a puzzler to me. The proportions seem just about right, but there's simply been too much work done on it for me to be sure one way or the other.