Throwback Thursday: The Mystery of Shaker Heights' Fuller House

SHAKER HEIGHTS, OH - This week, Patch launches a new partnership with the Shaker Heights Historical Society to bring you a weekly peek into the past.

The Shaker Historical Society visited a house at 16390 South Park Blvd. over the summer and unwrapped the mystery of its history. The home was built before Shaker Village was incorporated in 1912, meaning records on the property are scarce.

It was built in 1910 for Joel Haven Fuller and his wife Lillian B. (nee Turner). On the 1912 map of Cleveland, the deed records the owner as LB Fuller. For the time, it was not unusual to put a house in the wife's name. The Historical Society's building is in Blanche Arter Myers' name and not Louis', her husband.

As you see in the photo, the house isn't a French design... but as you pass on Lee Road, you can easily see the fleur de lys painted on the street sign, embedded in the brick entrance and the brick wall on the left of the south facade, and depicted in metal on the stairs below the porte cochere.

"This peculiar use of the French emblem made us curious as to why? Could the original family have been French?" Ware Petznick, executive director of the Shaker Historical Society asks. "No sign of a French name yet. Perhaps one of you know why the Fullers had fleur de lys all over their house?"

The couple are listed in the 1912 Social Register at "the corner of Lee and South Blvd" This is now known as 16390 South Park Blvd, with its entrance now further south on Lee Road.

Joel Haven Fuller was president of the Stowe-Fuller Company. He married Lillian B. Turner in Buffalo, NY, on Sept 12, 1888. He was an Episcopalian and a Republican. His business and biography is described in great detail in "Cleveland and its Environs", pp132-133.

Story provided by Ware Petznick, executive director of the Shaker Historical Society

Images via Shaker Heights Historical Society Museum and Library