Garrett Morgan spent much of his life in Cleveland, Ohio , where he lived for decades on Harlem Avenue and carried out most of his work as an inventor and businessman.

He was born in Paris, Kentucky, in 1877, but as a teenager he left the South, first moving to Cincinnati and then settling in Cleveland in 1895, where he found more industrial work opportunities. By around 1910 he owned a house at 5202–5204 Harlem Avenue in Cleveland, and sources note that he lived in this Harlem Avenue home for the rest of his life while raising his family there. This house later became historically notable as the “Garrett Morgan House,” remembered as his longtime residence until his death in 1963 in Cleveland, Ohio.