Soaring above a surfeit of drugstores, convenient marts and fast-food eateries a bell tower stands. The tower looms above the modern conveniences on Euclid Avenue, as testament to a different time. The tower once belonged to the parish of St. Agnes, and although the church has since been demolished, the tower remains on Euclid Avenue. The St. Agnes tower prevails as a reminder of an era when the church was the center of the community.

In 1893 a group of Catholic women approached the Bishop, Ignatius Frederick Horstmann, and explained the necessity for an English-speaking parish on the east side of Cleveland. Until these women took the initiative, the only English-speaking parishes on the east side were St. Edwards and Immaculate Conception. The others represented a roster of mostly central and eastern European ethnicities who masses were conducted in other languages. The Diocese of Cleveland conducted a survey that accounted for the number of Catholics that resided in the territory. The results indicated the need to restructure parish boundaries. The small, but zealous band of Catholic women received their desired parish.

The construction of St. Agnes in Cleveland marked the transformation of Catholicism from a predominantly immigrant religion to one of mainstream prominence. The establishment of St. Agnes symbolized that "the church of immigrants was no longer only 'a mission to the poor.'" In 1893, the Diocese of Cleveland started to purchase land on Euclid Avenue. The Diocese's dream to possibly build a cathedral, a place for the Bishop to reign from an edifice of stone and feather out his decrees among the company of the wealthiest in Cleveland, launched. The purchase of land plots on Euclid Avenue beckoned a new beginning for Catholicism in Cleveland. The construction of St. Agnes proved that Catholicism, built alongside the high-architectural structures on Euclid Avenue, could be incorporated into mainstream American society.

St. Agnes' cornerstone was set for the permanent stone church on March 19, 1914. At first, the parish was prosperous and thriving. The church collected enough funds in the offering to contribute to various charitable missions directed towards the immediate community and beyond. The new church continued to attract members leading up to World War I, but a massive demographic transformation was afoot on the east side. In the 1910s, thousands of African Americans were migrating to the Cedar-Central neighborhood immediately south of Euclid Avenue, and many of the mansions of the old “Millionaires’ Row” were falling to the wrecking balls as businesses and large apartment buildings rose along the avenue. The parish was left vastly unprepared for what these changes meant.

After World War I, the flight to the suburbs quickened, including by many original members of the parish. St. Agnes was the last of the grand church buildings constructed along a Millionaires’ Row whose cachet was fast receding. By the 1930s, St. Agnes' revenue had significantly tapered off and soon the coffers were depleted. The 1940s only brought further despondency. The first pastor of the parish, Monsignor Jennings, passed away on April 17, 1941. After two years his successor, Father Richard P. Gibbons, also died.

The high hopes once founded in St. Agnes started to wane. But then, finally, on January 23, 1949, a savior of sorts, Father Floyd L. Begin was assigned to St. Agnes. Fr. Begin attempted to resuscitate St. Agnes. He recognized the demographic change in the parish's territory. The parish needed a revival. He called on his devoted parishioners to embrace a most incredible change.

Over his next twelve years of service, Fr. Begin set out to restructure the parish. On his first order of business Fr. Begin headed into the community and encouraged African American community members to join him and the parish. In addition, Fr. Begin made controversial statements and delivered provocative sermons. His sermons and statements occasionally rattled the beliefs of remaining congregants, but Fr. Begin refused to back down. In one sermon he stated that "Adam and Eve were black." On another occasion he was overheard commenting, "God must have given the Negro something extra in virtue because of the way we whites have treated them." These statements shook the foundations of the church; however, Fr. Begin realized that only through a reassessment of an individual's core values could the parish be turned around. For the church to survive, Fr. Begin looked to the parishes southern territory, between Carnegie and Central, for there laid "a vast potential missionary [field] which we have neglected."

Fr. Begin encouraged many African Americans, from the surrounding community, to start coming to the church. His efforts came too late, however, and by 1958 the parish permanently operated in the red. In a letter to Bishop Edward Francis Hoban, Fr. Begin inquired if St. Agnes annual collection for the Pentecost be instead incorporated into the operating budget for St. Agnes. The church continued to decline, regardless of Fr. Begin's dedication to revival. The committed parishioners struggled to keep the church afloat, especially after losing Bishop Begin to a new assignment. Ultimately, in 1975, ten years after Fr. Begin's departure, St. Agnes was demolished.

St. Agnes never quite achieved the preeminence its founders desired, but throughout the twentieth century, the church adapted to and advocated social diversity. The parish's social evolution maintained its relevance in the community. St. Agnes never achieved the distinction of a cathedral, but following the demolition of the church a faithful band of parishioners worshiped "together in the basement chapel of the rectory." The Diocese of Cleveland had envisioned a different future for St. Agnes. Perhaps the Diocese's hopes were not dreamed of in vain, for good Catholicism is not measured in grandeur, but in the devotion of a few reverent servants.

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In 1850 Bishop Amadeus Rappe traveled to Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, to seek aid from his former colleagues for the Cleveland Diocese. He invited the Ursuline nuns to come to Cleveland to initiate efforts to provide education within the diocese. In August 1850, four sisters traveled to Cleveland and assumed residence in the Samuel Cowles House secured by the Bishop near East Fourth Street and Euclid Avenue. By September, a space was opened to board girls and provide a day school. During the ensuing years, the school expanded in enrollment and the nuns required more space to accommodate growth. The Ursulines began staffing parish day schools by 1853 and also ventured to Youngstown, Toledo, and Tiffin, Ohio, creating the parochial school system as the community grew in size. Commercial Cleveland was growing and surrounding the school.

By 1874, reacting to Mother Mary's observations concerning the shrinking downtown facility, Bishop Gilmour determined the conditions on Euclid and Fourth could no longer adequately serve the students, staff, and program. He urged the Sisters to purchase property on the lakeshore in the village of Nottingham, just east of Collamer Village. Thirty-seven acres of property bounded by Euclid Creek to the east was owned by George Gilbert and was for sale. The Bishop originally sought the land as a site for a diocesan seminary but thought again to urge the nuns to consider the property. They toured the beautiful property, buried religious medals at the site, and prayed for a favorable acquisition of the land. Mr. Gilbert met the offer tendered by the Sisters and completed the sale in June 1874. They named the grounds Villa Angela in honor of their foundress Saint Angela Merici. The Ursulines used the next three years to build a residence and a school for girls called St. Mary School and began classes in September 1878 for boarding and day school enrollees.

At the urging of Cleveland’s bishop, the Ursulines opened a school for boys in 1886 on the grounds at Villa Angela. St. Joseph Seminary grew in service to young boys in grades one to eight. In 1892 a new larger building was built to accommodate the boys at St. Joseph; it remained in service until 1946 when a fire destroyed the facility. Interestingly, within five years, the Marionists, a Catholic order of priests and brothers, would open Saint Joseph High School about a mile east of the Villa Angela property on the Lake Erie shore.

Meanwhile, St. Mary remained a popular residence and day school for girls staffed and managed by the Ursulines. The property housed the schools, a convent for the nuns and open orchard property. In 1906 the Humphrey Company (owners of next door neighbor Euclid Beach) bought 11 acres of Villa Angela property. The real estate proved most profitable and provided ongoing financial support for the Ursuline educational efforts in the community. The historical records show St Mary School was renamed Villa Angela Academy in August, 1941 as it transitioned to a four year high school which served girls until its merger in 1990 with St. Joseph High School. Villa Angela - St. Joseph High School serves coeducational classes on the lake shore at East 185th Street.

The original Villa Angela property is currently owned by the City of Cleveland and is the home of the Memorial-Nottingham Branch of the Cleveland Public Library. The surrounding grounds make up part of the system of lakeshore parks on Cleveland’s east and west sides. Villa Angela Beach adjoins Euclid Beach Park and Wildwood Park to provide scenic overlooks, a fishing pier, a sandy beach and boat launch access to Lake Erie.

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St. Stephen Roman Catholic Church, located on West 54th Street near Lorain Avenue, is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful interiors in Cleveland. Included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, its spacious inside is adorned with intricately carved alters and statuary, stained glass windows, and ecclesiastical artwork.

The highly ornate interior of St. Stephen Roman Catholic Church is a reflection of the German parish that funded and built the church. In 1860, residents of German descent constituted one third of Cleveland's population. They remained the largest ethnic group settling in the city until the mid 1890s. While many of Cleveland's German inhabitants arrived from within the United States, other Germans immigrated from their homeland for reasons including religious persecution, political unrest, and economic depression. Many were professionals and skilled craftsmen, and Cleveland's German population quickly became one of the most influential and prosperous ethnic groups.

The parish was founded in 1869 in response to the growing German population on Cleveland's West Side. St. Stephen's was the daughter church of St. Mary's of the Assumption of Mary Church on West 30th Street, and was organized to serve the German-speaking residents west of West 44th Street. A two-story building was constructed in 1869 that housed both a school and church. The parish continued to grow, and the cornerstone for a new St. Stephen church was laid in 1873.   Initially delayed due to the Panic of 1873 and the economic depression that followed, finances to resume construction on the church were in part gathered by the mortgaging of personal properties by parishioners. The present church was completed and consecrated in 1881.  

By the turn of the century, St. Stephen's was home to the largest number of German Catholics in Cleveland.   To meet the educational needs of the growing parish and surrounding German community, a new brick school house was opened in 1897 and construction of a high school was completed in 1916. Enrollment in schools continued to increase through the mid century, and a ten-room addition to the original school was completed in 1952.

St. Stephen's, like many other urban Catholic churches in Cleveland, found itself facing a shrinking congregation and declining enrollment in its schools throughout the second half of the 20th century. Due to a combination of the pressures for Germans to assimilate following the World Wars and the general exodus of more prosperous residents from the area, much of the German and Catholic population disappeared from the surrounding neighborhood.   The high school was consolidated with Lourdes Academy in 1970 to form Lourdes-St.Stephen's High School for girls, which merged with St. Peter's High School the following year to become Erieview Catholic High School for girls. The elementary school was consolidated with St. Michael's and St. Boniface to form Metro Catholic Parish School in 1988.   While maintaining a variety of organizations and societies associated with German heritage, St. Stephen's expanded its ministry to be inclusive of new Catholic settlers in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood; in 1970, the church became the headquarters for a Hispanic ministry. Masses are still held in German the first Sunday of every month.

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In 1915, Father John Mary Powers was assisting at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in Cleveland when Bishop Farelly assigned him to create a parish for families residing in the village of Cleveland Heights. Fr. Powers walked up Cedar Glen from the eastern end of the streetcar line and continued roughly one-half mile beyond the top of Cedar Hill. There, at the southeast corner of Cedar and Coventry Roads he found a suitable site. He then set three goals: build a church that could serve about 40 families, construct a school, and extend the public transportation line into the neighborhood. Within four years, he had fulfilled the first mission: the new wood church would continue serving a growing Catholic community for 33 years.

Fr. Powers turned next to his school and transportation goals. An advocate of housing and residential space, he successfully argued that no commercial enterprises should border the church grounds. With this commitment from the municipal government, he then set about building his school. The three-story design technically defied city code, but Powers got around this issue by disguising the building as a two story structure.

On a trip downtown for a haircut in 1925, Fr. Powers stopped into the recently failed First National Bank on Euclid Avenue. According to Powers, he went into the bank to buy a desk. However, he left with myriad additional items: the rudiments of a collection that would ultimately furnish a new church. It would take 25 years to convince skeptical Cleveland bishops to approve plans for construction.

In 1948, ground was finally broken for the current St. Ann Church. Designed by Walker and Weeks, it incorporated an organ from Massachusetts Pilgrim Church; oak woodwork from one of the Hanna family mansions; marble from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Manhattan; and chandeliers, choir loft railing, columns, and brass and bronze doors from the First National Bank.

Fr. Powers remained in his leadership role for 51 years before retiring in 1966. He was a tireless promoter of fair housing, pursued interests with theater productions (The Powers Players), and guided an active greenhouse and floral enterprise for church events for many years. St. Ann Church is on the grounds of the Communion of Saints Parish in Cleveland Heights.

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Located along the shore of Lake Erie, where Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School now stands, was once the largest hyperbaric chamber ever built. The Cunningham Sanitarium was an institution that focused on clean-air breathing treatment. It was built in 1928, only eight miles east of the industrial heart of Cleveland, near East 185th Street at 18485 Lake Shore Boulevard. Named after a Kansas City physician specializing in hyperbaric oxygenation (or "tank treatment,") Doctor Orval J. Cunningham, and funded by Canton-based Timken Roller Bearings Company's owner Henry H. Timken, the Sanitarium's coastal property was chosen because it was aesthetically pleasing.

Dr. Cunningham based his treatment on the belief that diabetes and cancer are caused by living organisms that fail to grow in the presence of oxygen. Therefore, by increasing the oxygen, the organisms fail to multiply and eventually die off. To do this accurately, Cunningham would sequester his patients in highly oxygenated environments for long periods of time cycled with periods of normal atmospheric conditions.

The million-dollar facility, engineered by Alois Hauser, chief engineer of Timken Co. at the time, was considered the first "attempt in human history to house people in such a unique structure." After nearly a year of hard labor by the Melbourne Construction Company, the facility opened to the first of its patients on December 1, 1928. No luxury was spared in the the five-story, sixty-five foot, 900-ton sphere. Able to accommodate forty patients at a time, the climate-controlled environment maintained a steady sixty-eight degrees with sixty-five percent humidity.

Unfortunately, five years after the hospital's opening the depressed financial status of the economy forced Cunningham to sell. Desperate for a buyer, Cunningham offered the institution to his twenty-year-old protégé, James Rand Jr., son of James Rand, president of Remington-Ran New York. The half-million dollar sale took place on September 28, 1934. Renamed the Ohio Institute of Oxygen Therapy, the investment failed to attract patients or an income, and changed hands once again in 1936. Abandoning oxygen therapy and operating as a general hospital, Boulevard Hospital also closed quickly due to financial problems.

After years of being shuttered and unused, the sanitarium and hospital was sold to the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, which built St. Joseph High School next door and continued to operate the former facility in various ways. Under orders from the U.S. War Production Board, on March 31, 1942, the steel ball was dismantled and scrapped for a mere $25,000 worth of metal weight. In 2009, following its purchase from the Catholic Diocese by the Hospice of the Western Reserve, the former sanitarium hospital met a similar fate, with many of its building materials being salvaged for reuse.

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St. Elizabeth of Hungary Roman Catholic Church sits on the corner of Buckeye Road and East 90th Street in Cleveland's Lower Buckeye neighborhood. In the late nineteenth century, the neighborhood became home to thousands of Hungarian immigrants who were drawn to the area by nearby factories and mills, especially the Cleveland Malleable Iron Company and the Eberhard Manufacturing Company, which were known to these immigrants as, respectively, the "old" factory and the "new" factory.

Hungarian immigrants initially worshiped alongside Slovak immigrants at St. Ladislas Church, located on the corner of Holton Avenue and East 92nd Street. However, when a dispute broke out between Hungarian and Slovak parishioners as to which mass should be said in which ethnic group's native language, the Hungarians were induced to leave St. Ladislas and form a parish of their own. That new parish became St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish, the first Roman Catholic Hungarian parish in the United States.

The first parish church was built in large part as a result of the efforts of Father Karolyn Boehm. Arriving in America in 1892, Fr. Boehm temporarily held masses for the parish in a nearby hall and led the efforts of the parish in constructing a small wood-framed church on the corner of Buckeye Road (then called South Woodland Avenue) and East 90th Street (then called Bismark Street).

On June 4, 1893, the cornerstone of the first St. Elizabeth's Roman Catholic Church was laid. This first church provided seating for up to 800 Hungarian immigrants at a single mass. Within a decade, however, it was too small to accommodate the thousands of Roman Catholic Hungarian immigrants arriving in Lower Buckeye. As early as 1907, Father Szepessy, the second pastor of St. Elizabeth began to petition the Bishop of Cleveland for permission to raise money to build a new church that would hold up to 1300 parishioners. Permission was finally granted by the bishop and, in 1918, construction of the new church was begun.

The new church, designed by French-born architect Emile Uhlrich, was completed in 1922. The church is a large rectangular building with a gable roof and exterior masonry walls composed of large smooth grey blocks of stone. A prominent feature of the Church are its twin bell towers which flank the front of the building, each topped with a brass dome and an internally illuminated cross. The two exterior side walls of the Church are each graced with six large stained glass windows with semicircular arches. The Church has a front entrance way consisting of ten wide and deep stone steps that lead up to three large metal front double doors with semicircular arches above them. Each doorway is flanked by stone columns, and above the doors, arches and columns is a decorative triangular pediment. The facade of the building also features a large ornate circular window with carved stone decoration directly above the front doors.

De-industrialization and suburbanization induced the Hungarian population to begin leaving the Buckeye neighborhood in the 1960s. Today, few Hungarian-Americans live in the Buckeye neighborhood. A small group of Hungarian-Americans--most of whom live in Cleveland's suburbs, however, continue to worship at St. Elizabeth of Hungary. The church now serves as a symbol and reminder of the once thriving and bustling Hungarian-American population that resided in Cleveland's Buckeye neighborhood for nearly 100 years.

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St. Colman Catholic Church, located on West 65th Street near Lorain Avenue, was founded in 1880 as a response to the rapidly growing Irish immigrant population on Cleveland's West Side. Father Eugene M. O'Callaghan, former pastor of the predominately Irish St. Patrick's Catholic Church, held the first mass in a rented home off of Gordon Street (W 65th Street). Later that year, the first church was constructed on Gordon Street and the home was converted into St. Colman School. With over 1,000 worshipers in 1883, the church was expanding in both its size and the role it played within the surrounding community. A new school was built on Gordon Street in 1885, and a convent was constructed for the Sisters of St. Joseph to begin their residency the following year. By 1904, a larger three-level schoolhouse opened that included a 1,000 seat auditorium in the basement.

Taking four years to construct, St. Colman Catholic Church opened its doors in 1918. The classically styled structure could accommodate 2,800 people. St. Colman continued to expand, with a convent added in 1921, and both a second school and rectory constructed in 1930. The Church continued to act as the centerpiece of the neighborhood's Irish community until the middle of the century.

The West Side Irish community remained stable until the end of World War II. Soon after, however, the community dissolved as a result of the general exodus of Cleveland residents away from the urban core. In this changing environment, St. Colman Church evolved to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse and less prosperous community. With the 1904 school being closed and demolished in 1974, St. Colman opened one of the West Side's first preschools in its 1930 school building. Additionally, the church expanded its role ministering and providing social services to the outlying neighborhood through the development of a recovery program, literacy projects, an outreach ministry, and HUD-supported housing for senior citizens.

In an effort to downsize the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, Bishop Richard Lennon announced that St. Colman would merge with St. Stephen in March 2009. This order led to local grassroots efforts by the community to get Lennon to reconsider his decision. Rev. Bob Begin visited Lennon on two occasions to make the case for St. Colman. A flurry of appeal letters were sent to Lennon, arguing that the parish's social services had a tremendous impact on the urban poor, and that the church was financially stable. The works done by both Begin and St. Colman’s parishioners convinced Lennon to keep the church open.

However, not every church was spared closure. St. Emeric Church closed on June 30, 2010, leaving hundreds without a parish. Enter St. Colman; Rev. Begin collaborated with St. Emeric’s parishioner Eva Szabo, to hold monthly masses at St. Colman. Begin started learning Magyar, a Hungarian language, in order to prepare for St. Emeric’s churchgoers. He told the Plain Dealer, “I’ll learn to speak Hungarian enough to do the prayers.” The masses continued while Szabo and others continued to fight for their parish.

When Rev. Begin turned 75, he had to retire under church law. St. Colman’s parishioners disagreed, wishing Begin could stay longer. In their efforts, they submitted over 3,000 signatures and letters to Lennon to change his mind about Begin’s retirement. Lennon listened and offered to allow Begin to work for one more year, which Begin accepted. Begin officially retired in 2014, but continued to help and assist the church and those in need.

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St. Augustine Parish was formed in 1860 as part of Ohio City's St. Patrick's Parish—one of the oldest Catholic parishes in the city. Other Tremont churches formed from St. Patrick's include Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church (1871) and St. John Cantius (1899).

The need for a new parish in Tremont arose as people of Irish descent began moving into the neighborhood. In 1896 the Cleveland Catholic Diocese purchased the old Pilgrim Congregational Church (whose congregation had recently moved into a new building at the corner of West 14th Street (Jennings Avenue) and Starkweather Avenue. The “new” St. Augustine had been built in the 1860s in Victorian Gothic style, replacing the original frame church which stood at Tremont Street and Jefferson Avenue.

St. Augustine is an interesting blend of Romanesque and Gothic styles. Its Romanesque features include a corbel table–that is, a line of stone blocks–below the roofline; large gables; and rectangular columns or pilasters. The pointed arches above several of the entrances are more Gothic in design.

To meet the needs of the neighborhood's changing demographics, St. Augustine began offering Spanish-language services in the 1970s. The congregation focuses particularly tightly on aiding the homeless and people with disabilities.

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Merrick House Social Settlement was established in 1919, in part to help “Americanize” immigrants by inculcating middle-class social and cultural values as bases for citizenship. By this time, Tremont had changed a good deal from its original 1850s inception as an enclave for Cleveland’s wealthy citizens. After the Civil War, European immigrants flocked to the area, finding work in the booming factories and steel mills nearby. Rudimentary housing (often without running water or electricity) sprang up within walking distance of the Flats. Poverty became commonplace and working/living conditions were frequently dreadful.

Responding to the struggles facing the urban poor, reformers in England and the US had begun opening settlement houses like Merrick during the late 19th century. The first settlement house established in Cleveland was Hiram House (1896). Roughly ten such facilities were built in Cleveland and a handful (e.g., Merrick, Karamu and Alta) still survive. Unlike its counterparts, however, Merrick House was funded through the National Catholic War Council, using surplus funds from war relief. The original facility, named for Mary Merrick, founder of the National Christ Child Society, was located in a small storefront on Starkweather Avenue and West 11th Street. In 1949, the facility was largely rebuilt at the same location (the northwest corner of Lincoln Park).

Merrick House quickly became the neighborhood’s go-to spot for English classes, child care, recreation, cultural programs and neighborhood clubs. In the 1950s, additional facilities were developed and, with the arrival of Puerto Rican immigrants to the area, Merrick launched Spanish-speaking programs. Under long-time director Gail Long, who served from 1972 to 2006, Merrick House also promoted the peaceful desegregation of Cleveland’s public schools, helped keep Metro General Hospital a public hospital, enhanced community health by assisting with the establishment of the Tremont People’s Free Clinic and Neighborhood Family Practice, and worked to maintain affordable housing in Tremont. In 1979, Merrick House helped found the non-profit Tremont West Development Corporation (TWDC)—part of a city-wide network of community development corporations (CDCs) which have played a significant role in the revitalization of Cleveland neighborhoods.

Today, Merrick House’s core service areas include early childhood education, youth services, teen and adult education, recreation, community organizing, and outreach programming, including a “MomsFirst” program for at-risk pregnant women.

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