Customer Reviews

Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers (Ohio)

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I grew up on the border of Cleveland Heights/Shaker Heights off Fairmount Blvd.A gradeschool classmate was Bernie Bernet. As a boy I rode my bicycle over to Shaker Blvd. to watch the Rapids go by. AtCWRU a colleague was Ian Haberman and my fellow members of NORM are Tolman and Wayne Hayes. I walked the East Cleveland Rapid line when it still stood empty. I was making notes for this history in about 1950. Except for the buying and selling of the various railroads, this book is a part of my life. I know every inch of it and except for a very few very tiny slips (in the maps mostly)it is a masterpiece. And the very book itself, without the contents, is a first class production.

After reading this very creditable biography I donated it to the local public library.

I recall many rather cryptic remarks made by my grandmother years ago during Sunday trips to Cleveland about the Public Square and the Terminal Tower. She remembered the Mall project and other aspects of Cleveland that were obscure even in the fifties. These rather hazy recollections have now been re-examined inder the considerable light that Mr. Harwood has brought to the Van Sweringen brothers who were averse to publicity, even though they figured so much in the development of Cleveland in the 20th century. And their reach went far beyond that--these facts were not widely known. Excellent source.

I read a lot of books on train history. Once I started this one I could not put it down. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in railroad history during the glory days.

Mr. Harwood has produced a little known true story of two brothers who came from poverty, developed real estate, produced a myriad of holding companies and established a major national railroad network.
This is the true life story of two brothers named Van Sweringin who over a period of thirty plus years transformed Cleveland from a small Midwestern city to a national business center. The Van Sweringen brothers were the prime developers of Shaker Heights. Along with trying to establish a direct transit route from Cleveland to Shaker Heights, they accidentally stumbled into the railroad business. In trying to gain trackage rights for the transit system they ended up buying the Nickel Plate Railroad.
This turned out to be just the beginning through a rather complicated use of holding companies, leveraged buyouts and stock issuances in which the brothers created a conglomerate beyond imagination or comprehension. It is my advice not even to try to follow the financial antics of the brothers in their structuring of their financial organization. The Nickel Plate was just one railroad however, and after that purchase what followed reads like a who's who of railroads. The names include the Pere Marquette, the C&O, the B&O and the Missouri Pacific just to name a few.
With the effects of the Great Depression, all the holding companies and other enterprises were in great peril. Many thought of the Van Sweringen Empire as a house of cards. Many thought the brothers as charlatans and swindlers. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
In reality the Van Sweringen's were meat and potato men of integrity who were idealists and great builders. They were the architects of the Terminal Tower projects and the primary developers of Shaker Heights. They were responsible for the running the most efficient railroads of their times. Their failures were in the manner of their financing which was complicated and not tolerant to big market fluctuations. If it were not for the Depression,the names of the brothers Van Sweringen would be on the historical plane of Gould, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller.
This book is the definitive history of American enterprise and ingenuity which is truly unknown. Well deserving a five star rating.

This was a difficult book to write. And to have written it as well as the author has is truly a remarkable accomplishment. The subject is one that only students of Roaring 20's railroad finance history would know. So by design, the book will have a limited audience. But within that confine, the book succeeds superbly.
A) The author achieves the near impossible by actually conveying the Van Sweringen brothers ( notorious for their secrecy and privacy) as living, breathing people. We can feel their inner struggles under the intense pressure of their business lives.
B) The incredibly complex tangle of railroad financing and cross-stock manipulations is conveyed in as clear a fashion as posssible. Yes, it still requires patience to wade through it, but it's done here better than most such books Iv'e read. This is the author's most impressive accomplishment in the book: The arcane is rendered understandable.
C) Spice is added to the story by bringing in all the colorful supporting cast of characters that moved in and out of the Van Sweringen lives; Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Gould, etc.
D) The author, a railroad expert if there ever was one, combines plenty of relevant pictures to the text. Each picture is lovingly captioned which conveys the author's affection for these old steam engines, buildings, people ( some rare photos here), and bridges.
E) Indiana Press has done a fine job in producing a high quality book. Good paper. Large format. Clear pictures.
F) Finally, the author's style of writing is perfect for this subject. He has written a story that is hard to put down. He achieves this by balancing all the above points harmoniously, never overweighting one above the other.

This book should be required reading in any business or economic history curriculum. The story and lessons are as pertinent today as they were then.

The author has an encyclopedic knowledge of the railroad systems and is clearly fascinated and passionate as regards them. The strong side of the text is its love of the railroad, the weaker side the near lack of historical or broader economic development or critique. The author makes light of the lack of many substantive documents as regards the business and yet there is often an overwhelming and whirring citation of byzantine purchases and ever expanding holding companies. Train specialists will be fascinated, but anyone looking for a wider or even more speculative book on the Van Sweringens or social history will not find it here. Nevertheless, to each his own!

Did not know how much they controlled or had, I only knew them for building the Terminal Tower in Clevleand. What an empire they built, treated people well and put money back into the properties rather than milking them dry