Why Ludwigs?

We live in a time where we carry technology in the form of a smart phone that can connect everyone with such immediate gratification that it has reshaped the world we live in. Commerce on Main Street and walk up retail business is evaporating before our eyes.

It is almost hard to believe that there was a time where business was not only on Main Street but in the middle of roads close to home.

20160 Lindberg Avenue was a early 20th Century wood frame house, that when you walked in the side door you were in a bar room that transported you back to the time when the local tavern was much more than a place to stop and take the edge of the workday off.

Ludwigs Bar had been a survivor of urban planners, municipal zoning, Federal decrees, and the evolution of a township full of grape vineyards to a bustling suburb that became a manufacturing powerhouse.

Ludwigs was a gathering place for an area that was Euclid, Collinwood, and Nottingham. Most summer holidays families would take a street car and picnic all day around the tavern on the edge of a grape vineyard. When immigrants arrived in town, they stopped at the bar to find out where their family lived. When you were out of work, you went there to find out who is hiring, there were even church services on Sundays. Few homes had telephones, you made calls and picked up messages from Ludwigs.

It was more than a gin joint, it perpetuated a kind of quality of life that has been passed to us. Growing up in the area we identify who we are from where we’re from. The streets, stores, and gathering spots.

Although the physical structure expired and was razed, it was an important name to keep alive to pay reverence to the history of who we are and why we gather, trade, and celebrate.