Ohio in 1945 - Cleveland, Ohio City, Columbus

Arthur B. Suchy designed this pictorial map of Cleveland and Ohio City in 1936 and it was issued as a standalone commemorative sheet in 1945, published as a special anniversary edition by the National City Bank of Cleveland to mark the 1836 incorporation of both towns rather than bound into any larger atlas series. Suchy worked with the Western Reserve Historical Society and other local institutions to combine cartographic accuracy with illustrated vignettes of period buildings, giving the sheet a decorative, storytelling quality closer to a historical broadside than a conventional working city plan. The map recreates Cleveland and Ohio City, Ohio, as they stood at the moment of their 1836 incorporation, back when the two were still separate, rival municipalities facing each other across the Cuyahoga River rather than the single unified Cleveland they would become in 1854.

The Cuyahoga River runs through the center of the sheet, drawn as the dividing line that literally separated Cleveland from Ohio City before their eventual merger. Lake Erie dominates the top of the map, its shoreline the reason both settlements existed at all, competing for control of the same harbor trade. Trinity Church and the First Baptist Church are both illustrated among the map's period buildings, giving a sense of the young towns' earliest civic and religious institutions. Roads are traced connecting the two rival settlements, a network that would only grow busier as Cleveland absorbed Ohio City less than two decades after this 1836 scene.

This commemorative sheet is a distinctive gift for a Cleveland family tracing roots back to either side of the old Cuyahoga River rivalry, or for a collector who wants the story of Cleveland's founding alongside the store's later 1872 Walling and Gray map of the fully merged city; where that later plan shows Cleveland already organized into modern wards, this 1945 anniversary edition looks back at the moment before Cleveland and Ohio City were even one town. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.