LINNDALE (inc. 1902) is the smallest village in Cuyahoga County. Located southwest of downtown Cleveland, it encompasses only .08 square miles (less than 1 dozen blocks). It is by bordered by BROOKLYN to the southeast and on its remaining sides by the city of Cleveland. 180 people (65% white, 25% AFRICAN AMERICAN) reside there. Despite its small size, Linndale ranks in the state’s upper quartile for population density. Its residents are divided almost equally between renters and owner-occupants.
At the end of the 19th century, George Linn, a real-estate developer, sought independent status for the community, a part of BROOKLYN TOWNSHIP. He conducted official business in his home. Located on the main line of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad, Linndale prospered briefly. During Prohibition it was a notorious gambling district. When the CLEVELAND UNION TERMINAL opened in 1930, Linndale was the western station where trains changed their steam locomotives for electric engines before entering the city. After World War II, the demise of steam locomotives made the switchyards obsolete.
With the construction of I-71, which cleaves the village almost exactly in half, speed traps became a common site beneath the freeway’s West 117th St. overpass. For a time, 80% of Linndale's annual income was believed to emanate from traffic fines. In 1994 the Ohio house passed legislation curtailing such traffic enforcement, however the Ohio Supreme Court overturned the law five years later, allowing Linndale to continue patrolling the highway. In 2013 the State of Ohio dissolved the Linndale Mayor's Court, thus reducing fine-related income by directing traffic cases to nearby PARMA, which was allowed to keep most of the revenue. Linndale has since regained some local control of traffic violation processing, but its speed traps are limited to highly lucrative traffic cameras installed along Memphis Ave., its most heavily travelled non-freeway thoroughfare.
Linndale operates under a mayor-council form of government. It has its own town hall and police force, but it is part of the Cleveland City School District and contracts with Cleveland for fire protection.
Updated by Christopher Roy
Last updated: 12/6/2019
See also SUBURBS.