Local History · From Lodi Village
Lodi's general store that became Higbee's on Cleveland's Public Square
In 1835, Jeremiah Higbee opened a mercantile in Lodi. Twenty-five years later, Edwin Converse Higbee co-founded a Cleveland retailer whose downtown building later starred in A Christmas Story.
In 1835, when Lodi was still called Harrisville, a merchant named Jeremiah Higbee arrived and put up what a local paper later called "the great village store." He was also appointed the town's first postmaster the same year.1 Within a few decades he had helped establish Lodi's First National Bank.
On September 10, 1860, a man named Edwin Converse Higbee, born in Lodi in 1831, opened a dry goods store at 237 Superior Avenue in Cleveland with a partner named John G. Hower, from nearby Burbank. First-day sales were $100.2
The store was called Higbee & Hower Dry Goods. When John Hower died in 1897, Edwin Higbee became president. The name became The Higbee Company.3 It went on to become one of the most iconic department stores in Ohio for 132 years. The art-deco building the company built on Cleveland's Public Square in 1931 became famous a second time, in 1983, when it appeared in the film A Christmas Story as the site of the Santa slide scene.
The chain from a Cleveland cash register back to a Lodi general store on Harding Way is documented in the Medina Gazette's account and in the Village of Lodi's own history. The Wikipedia article on Higbee's does not mention the Lodi origin. Local historians treat it as settled; national coverage never picks it up.4
Jeremiah Higbee's store is long gone. First National Bank is long gone. But a Higbee-family plaque exists at Central Park in Lodi, on land the family gave to the village. If you drive around the Lodi Square today, you're circling the place where a merchant put up a general store 190 years ago that his descendants took to Cleveland.
Footnotes
- Jeremiah Higbee, 1835 arrival and mercantile. Documented on the Village of Lodi official history page, the Lodi-Harrisville Historical Society timeline, and in the Medina Gazette's article “Higbee Co. origins began in Lodi.” Higbee's role as first postmaster of Harrisville is cited on the same sources.
- September 10, 1860 Cleveland store opening with $100 first-day sales. Date, location (237 Superior Avenue), and sales figure appear in the Wikipedia entry on Higbee's, in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, and in the Department Store Museum blog. All three trace the source back to company records.
- Hower's death 1897; Higbee becomes president; renamed The Higbee Company. Wikipedia and the Cleveland State University Press “Let's Go Shopping” chapter both document this transition.
- Source conflict: Jeremiah / Edwin family relationship. Local Lodi sources (Village of Lodi history, Medina Gazette) treat the Cleveland Higbee as descended from the Lodi Higbee. The Wikipedia article on Higbee's, more heavily sourced by academic historians, does NOT explicitly document the family relationship. Also: Find a Grave lists Edwin's birth year as 1837, but Wikipedia, Cleveland State's press, and the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History all cite 1831. Where sources disagree, we go with the majority of scholarly citations (1831).
Sources
- Village of Lodi, “Lodi History.” villageoflodi.com
- Medina Gazette, “Higbee Co. origins began in Lodi.” medina-gazette.com
- Lodi-Harrisville Historical Society timeline. lodiharrisvillehistorical.org
- Wikipedia, “Higbee's.” en.wikipedia.org
- Cleveland State University Press, “Best Quality, Lowest Prices, It's Got to Be Higbees.” pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu
- Department Store Museum, “Higbee Company, Cleveland Ohio.” departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.com
Jeremiah Higbee's 1835 Lodi arrival and Edwin Higbee's 1860 Cleveland store opening are both documented in multiple independent sources. The specific family link between them is treated by local Lodi historians as settled and by national historians as unmentioned; we present both accounts and let the reader decide.