This 19th-century mansion on Cedar Avenue in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood faces demolition as the adjacent Gardens of Fairfax Healthcare Center is about to expand under new ownership (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Gardens of Fairfax to double in size
A nursing home complex is proposed for a major expansion but requires the demolition of two historic homes, including a 19th-century mansion designed by a famous local architect. A permit application for the mansion’s demolition was submitted to the City of Cleveland last month and is still pending.
That development is the expansion of the 30-year-old Gardens of Fairfax Healthcare Center, 9014 Cedar Ave. in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood. Investment in the site includes a purchase of the facility in 2024 by Foundations Health Solutions of North Olmsted for more than $2 million, county records show.
Foundations Health operates nearly 60 nursing homes in Ohio, making it the state’s largest nursing home provider. On Cedar, it continued to acquire properties into 2025, including some by entity transfers of the corporations owning them.
View showing existing conditions on the 3-acre site with north at the top (Bauer/MCG).
The result was the creation of a larger, 3-acre development site to allow for a $4.6 million renovation project and initial expansion of a 1995-built, 42,000-square-foot nursing facility that extends south from Cedar along East 90th Street. It has 98 residents in it, but only in semi-private rooms.
In addition to renovating the existing nursing facility last year for $4 million to turn the 42 semi-private rooms into 39 private rooms, a new $600,000 first-phase structure is proposed to be built possibly starting this year.
Two more phases of expansion will provide a total of 84 new private rooms including for the care of ventilator patients. Conceptual plans for the expansion were developed and shared in this article but have not gone through the design-review process yet.
Two features from the existing mansion are to be incorporated in the new nursing home that’s proposed to replace it (Bauer/MCG).
The addition of private rooms along with fresh interior designs are intended to “create a more homelike and welcoming environment,” said Foundations Health in a written statement.
They will also make the facility more competitive with suburban nursing centers that offer more private rooms. That means Cleveland residents won’t have to travel up to 40 minutes away to visit loved ones, said Kay Edeh, administrator at Gardens of Fairfax.
But two structures were in the way of the expansion. One has already been demolished — a roughly 125-year-old, 3-story colonial-style home at 2190 E. 93 St. It was administratively approved for a demolition permit last August by the city’s Division of Building and Housing.
An expansion of the Gardens of Fairfax is shown here at the southwest corner of Cedar Avenue, at right, and East 93rd Street (Bauer/MCG).
This house, measuring about 3,000 square feet, was vacant for years and subjected to vandalism and multiple efforts to board up the structure. That demolition, by KMU Trucking & Excavating LLC of Avon, was undertaken last fall for about $58,675, public records show.
The other is an 1891-built mansion designed by famous Cleveland architect Charles Schweinfurth. It was originally built as the Infants Rest Inner City Nursing Home. That would signal its general purpose throughout its history.
“In terms of its history and historic nature, it’s really that Charles Schweinfurth was the architect,” said Brian Bauer, president of Bauer Architecture in Dover, OH, in testifying before the City Planning Commission in October. Bauer is designing the Gardens of Fairfax expansion with MCG Architecture of Independence.
Site plan for the three-phase expansion of the Gardens of Fairfax with the existing 1995-built structure at the bottom along East 90th Street. North is at the left of this image (Bauer/MCG).
“He’s a notable architect around the city of Cleveland,” he added. “But even in the (planning) meetings we’ve attended, it’s been recognized that it’s not really one of his better works. But even at that, it is knowledge and it is recognized that he was the architect.”
In 1915, the mansion continued its service to the community. It was acquired for the Holy Cross House for Crippled Children by the Episcopalian Guild of the Holy Cross for Invalids to house children, many of whom were crippled by polio.
After Holy Cross House moved out in 1931, the mansion briefly served as a bible school. In the midst of the Great Depression in 1935, it became an office for the Cuyahoga County Relief Administration.
Lobby interior of the expanded Gardens of Fairfax showing the proposed location of another feature from the 1891 mansion as well as information about the site’s history in serving the community’s charitable and health care needs (Bauer/MCG).
At the end of the 1930s, it was acquired by the Mount Zion Church with an addition built to the south of the mansion that more than doubled it in size. Added features included a sanctuary, gym, offices and basement dining room,
Bauer said New Sardis Church purchased the mansion property in 1950, but remained there only until 1959. The property apparently was left vacant throughout the 1960s.
In 1970, Melvin Sr. and Ethel Pye founded a nursing service that began as part of the Mt. Zion Congregational Church. A year later it moved into the Cedar mansion, evolving from Inner City Nursing Home into Fairfax Place.
The Gardens of Fairfax expanded dramatically in 1995 with this 42,000-square-foot addition along East 90th Street and replaced the 1891-built mansion. This view looks north toward Cedar Avenue (Google).
The mansion and its expansion to the south was last renovated in 1987. The Pye family dramatically expanded the facility in 1995 and continued to operate it until Foundations Health acquired it in August 2024.
City Planning Commission conditionally approved the $578,875 demolition of the mansion and its addition at its Oct. 3, 2025 meeting. The conditions include preserving some of the mansion’s features for inclusion in the expansion of the Gardens of Fairfax, Bauer said.
Zoning for the site, located in the Euclid Corridor Design District, requires a landscaping strip at the front of the new building along Cedar and parking to be located behind the building. Bauer said that precludes keeping the historic structure along with its poor condition and difficulty in providing access for disabled people.
END
