Shaker Heights Stories, Tours, Maps, Articles, and other online resources

 Audio and Video Stories

Shaker Heights Cable Access Television Programming

“Shaker Life” was a half-hour program aired on local cable access in the 1970s-1990s which profiled the events, people, and issues of the community of Shaker Heights, Ohio. It was produced by the City of Shaker Heights, with producer/director Douglas Drake and, after Drake’s death in 1983, Cynthia Merrick. These programs were donated to the Shaker Library Local History Collection by Doug Drake’s widow, Nola Drake, and their digitization from U-Matic format was made possible by generous support from Shaker Heights residents Sara and Brian Sullivan from Second Story Productions, the William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Foundation, and the Northeast Ohio Broadcast Archives at John Carroll University. The collection also contains several episodes of the Shaker Cable Access Television program “The Library Comes to You,” conceived and produced by Shaker Heights Public Librarian Kathy Englehart in 1983, and funded by a federal Library Services and Construction Act grant.

Presentations, Videos, Websites and other Multi-Media

Essays, articles and theses on Shaker Heights

Growing Up in Shaker Heights

“Witness to History with Donna M. Whyte”: Interviews of Moreland neighborhood residents.

           Usually recorded on the 2nd Sunday of each month at 6pm. Contact Neighborhood & Housing Specialist Theo Darden IV at 216-491-1333 or [email protected] to verify timing and receive the Zoom link.

Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection

Cleveland State University’s Center for Public History + Digital Humanities conducted interviews with Shaker Heights residents for several different projects:

See also their more user-friendly Cleveland Voices platform containing the same interviews.

Walking Tours

From 1982 to 2005 the Landmark Commission of the City of Shaker Heights produced self-guided walking and driving architectural tours of Shaker Heights, organized around the work of a prominent architect or a particular architectural style. Each included background information on the architect or style, and a map of the city showing the location of relevant homes.

Beginning with the city’s 2012 Centennial, the City of Shaker Heights’ Landmark Commission and the Shaker Library’s Local History Collection have co-hosted an occasional series of Architectural Walking Tours:

The City of Shaker Heights has also gathered these and other self-guided tours here.

Cleveland Historic Maps

Shaker Heights and Cleveland change over time on this interactive site of historic maps. Created with information from the Digital Gallery at the Cleveland Public Library and  the Cleveland transportation history maps resource Rails and Trails.

Cleveland Historical

Map-based, multimedia presentations and curated historical tours of Shaker Heights and Northeast Ohio, developed with Cleveland State University’s Center for Public History + Digital Humanities. Cleveland Historical and the Shaker Buildings Database together formed the grant-funded “Historic Shaker” project, created to commemorate Shaker Heights’ 2012 Centennial.