Our Cleveland Heights streets can boast no fewer than 16 streets with names ending in “wood.” There are also Wood Road and four other streets beginning with “Wood,” plus four streets with exact tree names: Forest View and Chestnut Hill Drives, and Birch Tree Path. What was the rationale in the ca. 1900-25 period for naming streets as such?

We can understand ‘wood’ added to “Beech”’ “Elm,” and “Oak”’ “Briar” (root) is closely related to wood as is “Har”’ (horn). “Redwood” is an actual tree, and a del or glen may be wooded. “Kirkwood” (as “kirk” means church) may evoke the image of a peaceful church in a woods and “Idlewood” surely sounds restful. An “ingle” (fireplace) sounds cozy, but what are an “engl”’ or a “kerr” and what do ‘Brentwood’ or “Rexwood” mean – a wooded area with wild geese (“brent”) and a king’s (“rex”) woods, respectively?

Such names were selected all over the United States by developers for streets and by publishers of house plan catalogs. In actuality, most of our “wood” names are American towns, such as California’s Brentwood, Edgewood, Glenwood, Inglewood, and Kirkwood or New Jersey’s Englewood. A connection with the suburbs of California or the Garden State in the 1910s and ’20s assuredly lured Clevelanders to our lush young suburb, as well as the public to purchase house plans.