I first encountered the work of Lauren Pacini several years ago when I was doing research for a story about the Allen-Sullivan House, then one of the remaining nineteenth century mansions still standing on Cleveland's once grand Euclid Avenue. In the course of that research, I came across a number of photographs of the interior of that mansion that Pacini had taken. In a word, they were brilliant!

I didn't know then that Lauren Pacini was more than just a very good architectural photographer.  He is also a very good historian. In Empire Builders: An Illustrated History of the Rise and Fall of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers, Pacini has constructed a detailed and moving history of the lives and fortunes—and misfortunes—of Oris Paxton Van Sweringen and his younger brother, business partner, and life long confidante, Mantis James.  Almost as a bonus, he has included in the book a number of great  photographs of places in Cleveland and its suburbs where the Van Sweringen brothers made and left their mark. The photographs alone make this a wonderful book for any Clevelander's coffee table. Pacini's book however, is much more than just a great coffee table book. 

Organized into eight chapters, it begins with a broad view of the early urban development of Cleveland, and then quickly and efficiently takes the reader to the main subject: the era of the Van Sweringens.  Succeeding chapters, one by one, examine the growth and development of the various parts of their empire and, in the end, its collapse. Throughout these chapters, the reader is visually treated not only to pages of Pacini photographs, but is also given an option to use QR codes to see more related photographs. I used that option a lot.

As you read deeper and deeper into the book, you become more and more impressed with these two amazing Cleveland brothers, not just because of what they accomplished that left such an imprint on Cleveland and its suburbs, but also because they did it with sincerity and honesty and morality.  Those qualities often made converts of people in power—both in the public and private sectors—who often then became supportive of Van Sweringen projects. Thus, the book may also carry an incidental message for today's entrepreneurs who, like the Van Sweringens once did, are now developing plans and striving for success in today's business world.

What I especially appreciated about this book was how thoroughly and how smoothly Pacini blended the story of these two amazing brothers with other stories that are interesting and important to the history of Cleveland—the Terminal Tower, the Nickel Plate Railroad, the Rapid Transit, Erie-Lackawanna, Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, and Hunting Valley, to name a few.  When Pacini tells us about the rise and fall, and the successes and failures, of the Van Sweringens, he also then necessarily tells us also about the rise and fall, and the successes and failures, of Cleveland as a once great industrial city.  While there is certainly an element of sadness to both stories, they also inspire hope once the reader stops to consider what these two brothers were able to accomplish in the space of a few decades that left such a lasting imprint upon the City of Cleveland. [return]

~Jim Dubelko, contributor to Cleveland Historical and Encyclopedia of Cleveland History