Edmund Gleason Farm at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cultural Landscapes Inventory

Rusch, Jonathon

The Edmund Gleason Farm is a historic farmstead comprising thirteen and one half acres along the eastern edge of the Cuyahoga River valley, located roughly ten miles south of downtown Cleveland and the Lake Erie shore. The farm’s cultural landscape overlooks the confluence of Tinkers Creek into the Cuyahoga River; it is also adjacent to an extant segment of the Ohio & Erie Canal, which connected Ohio’s productive agricultural hinterland to markets nationwide during the middle of the nineteenth century. The landscape includes an 1854 farmhouse and five outbuildings associated with the farm’s agricultural history, in addition to a noncontributing modern garage. The landscape also contains a portion of the land that historically served as the Gleasons’ agricultural fields, on which family members and hired laborers cultivated corn and oats; this portion of land contributes to the farm’s historic landscape, as it continues to be used for agriculture. The field measures approximately 1,000 feet wide and 400 feet deep, and it is situated between Tinkers Creek and Tinkers Creek Road. The western boundary of the cultural landscape extends to Canal Road; the canal bed and Cuyahoga River are located just beyond. The landscape is bisected by Tinkers Creek Road, which intersects with Canal Road in front of the farmhouse. The property’s contributing resources have been listed to the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A and C, representing a period of significance from 1851 to 1930. These years cover the farm’s historical association with agriculture and shipping on the Ohio & Erie Canal and on local rail lines; the period of significance spans from the farm’s founding until the end of crop agriculture’s economic dominance in the Cuyahoga Valley. The immediate physical context of the farmstead is a broad floodplain surrounding the Cuyahoga River, edged in by steep, forested valley walls. The farmhouse and outbuildings are situated on a slight rise above the valley bottom, with the contributing field lying lower beside Tinkers Creek. The farmstead’s location alongside the historic prism of the Ohio & Erie Canal conveys the site’s historical association with significant transportation routes and economic development in the United States’ first century. Modern features that fall within or adjacent to the landscape include paved highways, road signage, and telephone poles that follow the automobile corridors. The farmstead contains built features that are characteristic of agricultural landscapes of the Cuyahoga River valley. A one‑and‑one‑half‑story side‑gabled house, built in the Greek Revival style and clad in sandstone, was built circa 1854; it received a broad spindle front porch circa 1880, as well as a later rear addition and dormer windows. Southeast of the house is a large gambrel roof barn, built in 1905. The barn is banked slightly into the slope, and its south façade opens at ground level to a pen surrounded by a railed wood fence. Surrounding the barn are four additional outbuildings. A front gabled corn crib has spaced, vertical slat exterior walls and a vent in the center of the roof ridge. A second corn crib is located behind the barn, with vertical slat walls and a shed roof. Both of these outbuildings are elevated from grade by short piers. A small milk house is covered in horizontal wood shiplap siding and has a side‑gabled roof. A poultry house sits on a concrete block foundation and is covered by a shed roof. It is clad in vertical wood shiplap siding. A stone rubble foundation is found east of the barn; according to the property’s National Register nomination for a boundary increase, this foundation may belong to the first barn located on the farmstead.

Edmund Gleason Farm at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cultural Landscapes Inventory

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