The Elephant Stairs are a set of covered stairs that connect Top of the Hill with Bottom of the Hill. They are located at 41.5008277° N, 81.601885° W.

The stairs were built in 1968 to provide access for students to Top of the Hill, where the university was building new dormitories such as Kusch House. But it wasn't until then-president Robert Warren Morse struck a deal with the Cleveland City Commission for Civic Services that the stairs earned the name they hold to this day. In partnership with the new university, formed the year earlier, the commission had started planning a Labor Day parade along the trail of the Hudson Relays. However, the city had entered into an non-negotiable contract with a local carnival establishment, the Western Reserve Revelry Society. According to the agreement, the city would award its parade contracts to the carnival in exchange for a guarantee that at least five parades per year would include a marching progression of elephants. After a particularly poor fiscal year, the city had panned on parades and had only held two to date, forcing the Western Reserve Revelry Society to include elephants in the parade under the terms of the contract, since this would probably be the last parade of the year. At the time, the main boulevard into Cleveland Heights, Cedar Road, was completely closed to traffic, let alone elephants. So president Morse decided to kill two birds with one stone, and had the designs for the new pedestrian staircase spanning the Hill modified to allow the width of an adult male elephant to pass unassisted. Slack-jawed students, witnessing a sequence of a dozen elephants ascend the new staircase, naturally started calling the staircase the "elephant" stairs.

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