File:Eleanor B. Rainey Memorial Institute.jpg

English: The Eleanor B. Rainey Memorial Institute building at 1523 E. 55th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.

Anna M. Edwards (1849-1923) was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister who had moved his family to Cleveland at the end of the Civil War. She attended local schools and studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She became involved in the temperance movement in 1873, went to work for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

Edwards gave temperance lectures for a decade. Exhausted, she began spending more time at the WCTU mission house at St. Clair and Willson Avenue (now E. 55th Street). Determined to keep kids from alcohol, she opened a coffee house and formed a youth band.

Her work caught the attention of Eleanor B. Rainey, widow of a wealthy Cleveland industrialist, who purchased the lot at 1523 E. 55th Street and built on it a three-story, 9,000-square-foot Tudor Revival building on the site. The structure was designed the architectural firm of Badgley and Nicklas.

Officially called the Willson Avenue Industrial Institute, it opened in 1904. It had offices, reading and game rooms, classrooms, and a gymnasium.

Eleanor Rainey died in 1905, but her heirs set up an endowment to support Edwards' work. The building became the Eleanor B. Rainey Memorial Institute.

The Rainey Institute functioned as a settlement house, offering instruction in industrial trades, home economics, stenography, bookkeeping, and recreational activities. Frank Lausche, future mayor of Cleveland (1942-1944), Ohio governor (1949-1957), and U.S. Senator (1957-1969) received instruction there as a child.

Edwards died in 1923. Her younger sister, Flora, served as head of the Rainey Institute until her death in 1949. Jessie Peloubet, who was 67 years old, succeeded Flora Edwards. The Goodrich settlement house moved just up the street from the Rainey Institute, putting pressure on Rainey to close, merge, or move.

White flight hit the area in the 1950s, and Blacks moved in. Peloubet struggled to adapt to these changes, and she resigned by 1959. The Rainey Institute almost closed.

Social worker Shirley Lautenschlager was hired in 1960. By this time, the institute was little more than a rec center. Lautenschlager instituted a number of new social programs, including after school care, activities for teens, and classes. In 1964, she implemented a music program.

The music proved immensely popular, and in 1966 the Rainey Institute decided to concentrate solely in the field of music. Rainey's focus eventually narrowed to theater and dance.

In 2011, the Rainey Institute moved into a new 27,500-square-foot Arts Center.