About Broadview Heights

Broadview Heights is a welcoming suburban city in southern Cuyahoga County, Ohio, about fifteen miles south of downtown Cleveland. Known for its rolling, wooded terrain, it grew from a rural township into a thriving community of nearly twenty thousand residents.

• Broadview Heights was formed as a village on December 17, 1926, from the western portion of Brecksville Township in southern Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
• Floyd C. Harris took office in 1927 as the first mayor of Broadview Heights.
• Broadview Heights became a city in 1960, after census results confirmed its growing population.
• The city takes its name from its hilly terrain — some of the highest elevations in Cuyahoga County reach about 1,275 feet above sea level.
• Broadview Heights sits roughly 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland and covers about 13 square miles.
• The first white settler in the area was surveyor Seth Paine, who arrived in 1811; the land was then part of Brecksville Township.
• A schoolhouse was built at Broadview and Avery roads in 1815, one of the community's earliest institutions.
• In 1829, a plank road was built from Wallings Corners toward Cleveland, an early link connecting the area to the growing port city.
• By 1840 the settlement supported a cheese factory, a tannery, distilleries, sawmills, and grist mills.
• Broadview Heights grew from about 300 residents in 1926 to 4,000 by 1954 and 5,400 by 1960 as Cleveland's postwar suburbs expanded.
• At the 2020 census, Broadview Heights was home to 19,936 people.
• The area was originally home to Native American peoples before European-American settlement began in the early 1800s.

The facts on this page are drawn from public, verifiable sources:

• City of Broadview Heights — Official History
• Encyclopedia of Cleveland History — Broadview Heights
• Broadview Heights, Ohio — Wikipedia