Cleveland was home to an important race track in early auto history, but it disappeared with barely a trace more than a century ago. Here’s a quick look back at a lost race course. 

The Cleveland Driving Park, like many race courses in the early days of the automobile, was originally constructed for the hay burners—in this case, harness racers. Built in 1870 by the Cleveland Driving Park Co., the elegant facility was billed as the Golden Oval and was a key element of harness racing’s Grand Circuit—when harness racing was a big money sport in America. While it was named the Cleveland Driving Park, the facility was actually located just over the city line in the eastern suburb of Glenville, on the south side of St. Clair Avenue, directly across from the former Northern Ohio Fairgrounds. Many knew the race course simply as Glenville.

Harness Racing at Glenville

And as it happened, a few years later the one-mile dirt oval would prove ideally located to serve Cleveland’s infant automobile industry. The Peerless shops were less than three miles south at Quincy and E. 93rd Street. Winton was a mile west via St. Clair Avenue, while the White race shop was just across the creek (Doan Brook) from the track. Walter Baker’s Baker Motor Vehicle Company, noted builder and racer of electric cars, was based at E. 65th Street near the Pennsylvania Railroad, three miles southwest. All these manufacturers used the Glenville track for testing and competed there as well. A number of important auto races were held on the one-mile oval, and on August 14, 1905 the facility hosted an AAA championship event that was won by Charles Burman driving a Peerless.

Glenville starting line, September 1903. From right to left: the Olds Pirate factory racer; the battery-powered Baker Torpedo Kid; Cleveland car maker Otto Konigslow’s two-cylinder OttoKar; an unidentified four-cylinder French racer. 

However, the racing facility found itself at odds with the mayors of both Cleveland and Glenville, who were determined to put an end to gambling on horse racing and all the negative elements it attracted. By 1908 the city fathers managed to have the track closed for good, and shortly thereafter it was broken up into residential building lots. By 1910 the track disappeared from city maps without a trace.

Finding the track’s location using modern coordinates is a little tricky. Glenville was annexed to the city of Cleveland at around this time; also, in July of 1906 all the street names and numbers in the city of Cleveland were rejiggered. In this little part of the world, Parks Street became E. 93rd Street, while Harvard Street, interestingly, was renamed Yale Street. A handy landmark is Doan Brook, which runs just to the west of the location.

Cleveland Driving Park aka Glenville on 1908 city map. 

The map above from 1908 shows the exact location of the race track, while the map below shows the same general area today. The intersection of the present-day E. 93rd and Columbia Streets (blue arrow below) is almost dead center in the former track’s infield. Today the area is a typical Cleveland working-class residential neighborhood filled with two-story wood-frame homes. But here’s an interesting item: Just off St. Clair Avenue at the upper left of the modern-day map is a tiny lane called Driving Park Court (red arrow) that does not appear in the early maps. We’ve been there and we can report the street actually exists, complete with street signs, though it’s essentially an alley. Perhaps the street was originally a driveway or service road for the track, just as a guess.

Glenville area today in location of race track. 

Item from the August 17, 1905 issue of the The Automobile magazine. On August 12 of that year, the well-known Dayton, Ohio driver Earl Kiser lost a leg in a practice crash while competing for the Diamond Trophy at Glenville in the Winton Bullet.

Final Note: About four miles southwest of the old Glenville oval is Burke Lakefront Airport, the site of so many memorable CART and Champ Car races between 1982 and 2007. The airport is still there, of course, but auto races are no longer held at the facility.