CLEVELAND, Ohio - A century after Levi Scofield died, the revitalization of Public Square is providing a new showcase for his Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in the heart of downtown. At East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue, his family's onetime homestead, an office building he designed reopened this year as a hotel and apartments after an elaborate restoration project.
Five miles away on Mapleside Road, the stone mansion that the prominent architect built for himself in 1898 has been largely forgotten. The yard is strewn with tires and trash. "No Trespassing" signs warn passersby to keep their distance. The glassless windows are black holes, save for the occasional wisp of tattered fabric.
A lower level door is wide open, voiding a trail of mostly unidentifiable debris. A scrap of clothing here. Styrofoam there. Bottles and cans glinting in the autumn sunshine.
Now local nonprofit groups are mounting a last-ditch - and admittedly risky - campaign to save the Scofield mansion. The Cleveland Restoration Society has applied for a $10,000 Ohio History Fund grant to kick off a preservation push. Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, which has experience in financing and developing tricky projects, is trying to structure an agreement with the Cuyahoga Land Bank to get the property into responsible hands.
Donors and contractors have said they're willing to step in and help, if the nonprofits can end a decade-long cycle of tax delinquencies, litigation and distress. "That building would probably be receiving the attention it deserves in any other neighborhood in Cleveland," said Justin Fleming, director of real estate services for Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.
Instead, the mansion - on an easy-to-miss street near the low-slung public housing at Woodhill Homes - has generated scads of ghost stories and countless complaints. Privately owned, it has been condemned by the city and is tied up in Cleveland Housing Court.
"If it could be restored to some glimmer of its former self, it could transform the worst blight in the neighborhood into the most interesting property," said Kathleen Crowther, the restoration society's executive director.
On Thursday, the Cleveland Landmarks Commission recommended that the mansion be designated as a city landmark, a protective label that provides for extra scrutiny and helps the property's chances to win preservation funds. Historic status of some sort - local or national - is a prerequisite for the grant the restoration society is pursuing. The landmark legislation will now head to Cleveland City Council for a final vote.
Scofield, who also was a sculptor, designed monuments, schools and penitentiaries including the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield. The Schofield Hotel, a historic-preservation project at Euclid and Ninth, bears the original spelling of his name, which he changed.
He left downtown for a more pastoral setting in the late 1800s, building the 6,000-square-foot mansion where he lived until death in 1917. His six-acre estate was subdivided into lots, trimming the property overlooking the Fairmount Reservoir to a quarter of its original size.
The house became a convent in the 1920s and a nursing home in the 1950s. City records show that a second structure, a 98-bed nursing home, was built along Baldwin Road at the base of the bluff in the late 1960s. The nursing home's parking lot was cut into the hillside below the mansion, turning the property into a sharply split-level site.
The vacant nursing home on Baldwin Road sits far below the Scofield mansion. The building was constructed in the late 1960s. When the Cleveland Landmarks Commission voted Thursday to recognize the mansion as a city landmark, the designation did not extend to the nursing home.
The mansion has been empty since 1990 or so. The last occupant at the nursing home was the Youth Devoted to Christ Ministry Holy Spirit-Led Holy Spirit-Fed Church, which acquired the property in 2007 after a short chain of strange real estate transactions. The church lost both buildings to property-tax foreclosure. In 2012, Rosaline Lyons bought the parcel for only $1,400 at a state forfeiture auction.
She wanted the nursing home, which she hoped to renovate as a treatment center and living space for recovering addicts. She didn't know that she also was buying the mansion. From the street, it's impossible to tell that the two buildings occupy a single plot of land.
Over the past four years, Lyons has struggled to find funding for the sobriety center, the first phase of her project. The mansion, part two, would have become longer-term housing for women who had finished treatment but needed additional support. But both structures have continued to stagnate. She's accumulated $55,000 in unpaid property-tax bills.
And last year, she ended up in court after the city cited and condemned the buildings.
"I've had some financial problems, and I was unable to get financing for it, with no help and no support for my vision," said Lyons, 50, of Cleveland. "So I have now reluctantly been forced to give it up because of back taxes and fines and fees that I have been charged with."
At a recent court hearing, she agreed to offer the property to the Cuyahoga Land Bank, which has the ability to wipe out tax delinquencies. Lyons will lose the property that she hoped to remake and name after her grandmother, Melrose, who died in early October. But she'll be freed of the liabilities associated with the buildings, at a time when she's facing tens of thousands of dollars in housing-court fines and potential time in jail.
"People have painted [it as though] I was bringing down the community, that the house was haunted, that I need to just tear it down," Lyons said. "Like this whole problem was my problem. But this house had been sitting empty for two decades before I even purchased it."
The plight of the Scofield house garnered attention in 2014, when the Western Reserve Land Conservancy's urban-focused arm was conducting property-survey work in the area. Jay Westbrook, a former Cleveland councilman and a special projects manager for the conservancy, talked to community groups and pushed to have the mansion inspected and cited by the city.
"I'm not going to take issue with her feelings of persecution," Westbrook said of Lyons. "She's entitled to those. But we're talking about a historic property, and we're talking about the responsibilities of owners of any property to be accountable."
At this point, the land bank hasn't formally agreed to accept the mansion and nursing home. The quasi-governmental entity only accepts commercial properties or bizarre real estate in special circumstances, and there must be an exit strategy - a buyer or long-term user waiting in the wings.
Cleveland Neighborhood Progress is willing to be that repository, though Fleming cautioned that there's not a signed agreement yet between the nonprofit and the land bank.
"We're working through details," he said, pointing out that the organization has made major investments in the area, including the mixed-use redevelopment of the historic Saint Luke's hospital building on Shaker Boulevard. "We're still very, very early in the process. And we don't have a this-is-what-it's-going-to-be lined up. But we didn't with Saint Luke's either."
Fleming said it might cost $130,000 to stabilize both buildings on the Scofield site.
Once the building is secure, then the nonprofit groups can focus on finding potential users - other nonprofits, service providers or institutions, perhaps. Cleveland Neighborhood Progress could be the sole developer, part of a joint venture or a conduit for turning the site over to a preservation-minded private developer.
"It's a very tricky location, but it's by these tremendous assets," said Fleming, referring to the mansion's proximity to University Circle and the Saint Luke's campus. The property also is less than a half-mile from the path of the Opportunity Corridor, a planned boulevard that will run from East 55th Street to East 105th Street, cutting through east side neighborhoods.
"The reason we exist," he added, "is to take this type of risk."