Officially naming a street “Boulevard” was popular in the Cleveland of 1900-30, though in some other cities the term “Parkway” or the standard “Avenue” were more common for similarly platted streets.

Our Cleveland Heights has its share of Boulevards, generally broader than average streets. The term stems from the French for bulwark (the top surface of a military rampart); apparently, the broad, gracious, nineteenth-century boulevards of Paris replaced these early fortifications.

Our Euclid Heights (originally Euclid) and Fairmount Boulevards were planned with spacious lots and tree lawns, and for many years sported streetcar lines over their median strips. Washington is our only other Boulevard even partially divided and it, too, has generous lots and tree lawns. Our Cleveland Heights Boulevard lacks the median but is uniquely curvilinear; it is among about a dozen boulevards named for the Cleveland suburb they are in.

Meadowbrook is our Boulevard that truly meanders, like the brook it covered, and North Park is a Boulevard, like Fairmount and Euclid, planned for mansions, but it substitutes a real park view for parkway strip. Besides Lincoln, a two-block winding boulevard with large homes, and Runnymede, a 1950s Boulevard, our remaining Boulevard – Forest Hills, Lee, Monticello, Mt. Vernon, and Northvalle – are all wide parkways traversing the picturesque Forest Hill development.

Long live our majestic Boulevards!