In 2014, business consultant Jarrett Bayne was taking the RTA HealthLine to work from downtown to his job in Mayfield Heights. As he looked out the window while riding down Euclid Avenue, he started to reimagine what the street would have looked like 150 years ago—with the stretch of ornate mansions lining Millionaires' Row.

Jarrett Bayne“Cleveland was a completely different city 150 years ago,” he says, adding that he was particularly struck by the still-standing Stager-Beckwith mansion (now home to the Children’s Museum)—the last mansion standing on Millionaires' row. “I would go to work early sometimes so I could stop and take pictures. The last couple of years, I got back into it.”

By 2015, Bayne was working as a residential leasing specialist for Cleveland-area apartments. To increase interest in the apartments, Bayne started creating video tours, which proved to be a great tool—especially in 2020 when the pandemic hit.

“In 2018, the market dried up and people were going to Ohio City,” he says. “In January 2020 I had the video tours in place, and I got people from New York and Los Angles applying online, who based their decisions on the videos they saw.”

He made more than 100 video tours of apartments in the past four years. But Bayne kept thinking about those old mansions on Euclid Avenue. In June of this year, a friend introduced Bayne to the fourth floor of the Cleveland Public Library’s fourth floor photo collection, which includes a stereoscopic collection.

When he started going through the historic photos, Bayne knew what he wanted to do—­recreate Millionaires' Row. This week, Bayne released his Millionaires' Row Video Tour on YouTube.

The 14-minute video combines historic photos of homes, buildings, and churches along Euclid Avenue with modern day footage, giving viewers the ability to imagine what the street looked like in the late 1800s.

“I just want to present pictures and let people experience it for themselves,” he says. “Everyone loves it. I hope to keep doing this.”