The Story of the Paul Laurence Dunbar Plaque

The Paul Laurence Dunbar plaque is over 80 years old. It was a gift from the Forest City Garden Club of Cleveland in 1941 along with two Japanese Lilac trees. One tree remains and it lives in the Western Reserve Herb Garden near the Terrace section. It is an excellent example of tribute to a great Ohio Poet and the enduring legacy of historic gardening. The story begins in 1872 when Cleveland Industrialist Jeptha Wade started developing his farmland from his Euclid Avenue mansion, along the Doan Brook watershed, as a park and recreational area. Mr. Wade donated 73 acres of that property to the City of Cleveland in 1882. Over the decades, in accordance with Wade’s intention, the section that came to be known as Wade Oval, became the location of the City’s preeminent public cultural institutions: Cleveland Art Museum, Natural History Museum, Severance Hall, Western Reserve Historic Society, and Cleveland Botanical Gardens.

The final major landscape elements of the park were completed during the 1920s. Many were designed in 1927-1928 by the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Associates. Severance Hall, the home of the world renown Cleveland Orchestra, was completed in 1929-31. In 1941, the Western Reserve Historical Society relocated to its present location on 10825 East Boulevard, on the north end of the Oval. It is now part of the Cleveland History Center.

On August 10, 1941, the Forest City Garden Club donated a Japanese Lilac Tree, to be planted in the public gardens in Wade Oval, together with a plaque dedicating the tree “In Memory of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Negro Poet.” At that time, The Garden Center of Greater Cleveland, founded in 1930 (later known as the Cleveland Botanical Garden), occupied the adjacent space. After a series of expansions, the current Cleveland Botanical Garden came to occupy its present footprint on East Boulevard.

That tree with its dedication plaque remained in its spot as Wade Oval changed around it. The tree remains to this day, a beautiful example of a tree not often found in northeast Ohio. Like the Oval, the Cleveland Botanical Garden also grew and took shape. The Paul Laurence Dunbar plaque and tree, ended up as part of the Western Reserve Herb Society Garden. The plaque was briefly removed in 2021 and it has been returned. On August 9, 2025, the Western Reserve Herb Society, Holden Forests & Gardens, and the Forest City Garden Club, who originally donated both plaque and tree, re-dedicated and celebrated the plaque’s return to its original resting spot.

History and Purpose: Members of Western Reserve Herb Society, a unit of The Herb Society of America, have maintained a public herb garden in Wade Park Oval, University Circle, Cleveland, Ohio, since the mid-1940’s. The present site was established by a 1969 agreement between the WRHS and Cleveland Botanical Garden (known as The Garden Center of Greater Cleveland until 1994). The Herb Society maintains the garden which was built entirely through the gifts of time, labor and resources of its members.