Cleveland’s Greek population, only 6 in 1890 and 42 ten years later, soared to near its peak of 5,000 before immigration restrictions in 1924 imposed low quotas for further newcomers from Greece and other eastern Mediterranean nations. A smaller but still sizable community of immigrants had also come from what are now Lebanon and Syria. So many Greeks settled in the Haymarket district around the Central Market that the enclave that some Clevelanders referred to this area as "Greek Town." Some Greeks worked as fruit and vegetable peddlers, others as day laborers or steelworkers. Over time, a number became storekeepers, bakers, and proprietors of coffee houses and wholesale import grocery houses selling everything from olives to dried devil fish. Bolivar Road emerged as the social center for Greeks, its numerous coffee houses serving as places where Greek men sipped coffee or tea, shared hookahs, gossiped, played cards, dominoes, or barbouth, and caught up on news from their homeland. Yet even as Greek Town lost more and more Greek residents to Tremont and neighborhoods along East 79th Street in the years after World War I, its businesses remained a magnet drawing them back both to buy goods and socialize.

By the early 1940s, Plain Dealer columnist S. J. Kelly lamented that he “found Bolivar Road sadly depleted of its Greek. It is, in fact, a modern business thoroughfare and most of its classic residents are scattered over the city.” In the postwar years, as so many Clevelanders departed for the suburbs, remnants of ethnic communities beckoned as “old and colorful” anomalies in a downtown increasingly dominated by office towers and parking garages. As Bolivar Road transitioned from a complete neighborhood to the central business district for Greek, Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian populations that were now spread across the metropolitan area, it also gained greater popularity beyond these communities. A succession of "Grecian-American" restaurant-clubs at 714 Bolivar — The Athenian, Grecian Nites, and Never On Sunday — enticed patrons with belly dancers and bouzouki music. Middle East Restaurant, opening in 1962, introduced many Clevelanders to Middle Eastern cuisine. The restaurant’s proprietor, Edward Khouri, a native of Aramoun, a village near Beirut, built a loyal clientele with inexpensive, authentic dishes prepared and served by Josephine Abraham, also Lebanese. As Abraham later recalled, pita and hummus were so exotic to many customers when she started at the restaurant that she had to instruct them on how to use pita to eat hummus; “It was like feeding babies,” she quipped.

In 1973, the Greek and Middle Eastern businesses on Bolivar Road, along with the L&K Hotel, a single-room-occupancy hotel for “down-on-their-luck men,” fell to the wrecking ball to make way for a parking lot, which was later replaced with a garage for Progressive Field and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Plain Dealer columnist George Condon echoed S. J. Kelly’s lament of three decades before, complaining that “downtown is diminished again.” While the Middle East Restaurant and Shiekh Grocery were able to find space in and next to the Carter Manor (formerly the Hotel Carter), other businesses dispersed. Today there is no sign of the Greek, Lebanese, and Syrian enclave on Bolivar. Greek culture revolves more around churches such as Tremont’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church. However, on nearby Carnegie Avenue, St. Maron Church and Aladdin’s Bakery and Market still offer visible reminders of where Cleveland’s Middle Eastern communities got their start.

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On the one hand, it was a bucolic, glass-walled, red-meat Mecca with unobstructed water and city views. On the other hand, both the Cuyahoga River and the city of Cleveland were increasingly dark, smelly and bereft of life. Moreover, travel to and from the restaurant was the kind of creepy, nail-biting experience that only a golem could love: a dim and bumpy ride to an isolated peninsula in the Flats.

Such were the contradictions that, by the middle of the 20th century, defined Jim’s Steak House. But through most of the restaurant’s life, negatives and setbacks hardly seemed to matter. In fact, in the eight years after its founding in 1930—when Cleveland and the Flats were still bustling—Jim’s Steak House served 280,000 steaks. Untold thousands of quality meals would follow until the eatery finally shut down in 1997.

“Jim” was James Kerkles, a Greek immigrant who arrived in the US in 1905. In 1930 he and his wife Hilda opened their restaurant on West 9th Street. They relocated to the Flats’ famous Collision Bend within a year, occupying a building that previously housed the Lumberman’s Club restaurant. (Ironically, the Lumberman’s Club had just moved downtown.) Jim and Hilda’s timing was ideal: The Eagle Street Bridge had just opened across the street and visitors would be able to view the newly completed Terminal Tower across the river. But like the two arteries leading to Jim’s (Scranton and Carter Roads) there were plenty of potholes ahead. On June 15, 1939, Kerkles died at the age of 53. From that point on, Jim’s Steak House would, in effect, be Hilda’s Steak House. The following year, the decision was made to make Collision Bend more navigable, which necessitated the restaurant’s demolition.

The new Jim’s opened within two years, only a few dozen feet southwest of the previous location. Accordingly, its address jumped from 1782 Scranton to 1800 Scranton. Such progress! Hilda later remarried and by the end of World War II she and her nephew Ray Rockey were the meat and potatoes of Jim’s Steak House. Hilda managed the money—keeping the restaurant in the black while hiring only white women as waitresses and clothing them in all-white uniforms. Ray handled most of the day-to-day operations, working constantly and living in an apartment above the restaurant. "It's like taking care of a baby that never grows up," Rockey once said.

The formula worked: Blue collars from the Flats, white collars from downtown and wet collars from the river and nearby fire station filled Jim’s during the day. At night couples, partiers and glitterati swilled Johnny Walker Black ($0.75 in 1950) and devoured strip steaks ($4.50 in 1950). The Goodtime ferried diners to and from Cleveland Indians games. Heavy food was de rigueur: red meat, no soup, no salad (except head lettuce) and no vegetables except onions (which were fried). 300 to 400 people was a decent day’s attendance.

In the 1960s the building was remodeled, with giant glass windows offering diners a more panoramic view of the city. Weeping willows and birch trees (planted over the years by Hilda) added to the ambience.

Hilda died in 1974 at age 75 and Ray Rockey assumed full control of what was still a thriving operation. But like graffiti emblazoned across the Flats, the writing was on the wall, and a lot of it spelled “competition.” By the late 1970s myriad entertainment options had popped up on both the East and West Banks. The Flats had always had niche bars and eateries (Pirates Alley, Otto’s Grotto, Harbor Inn, Flat Iron Café), but this was different: The area actually was becoming a destination of choice—not just for pubby drinking and dining joints like Fagan’s and the Cleveland Crate and Trucking Company but for high-end eateries such as the Watermark and Sammy’s.

The worst body blow landed in 1991 when the city closed the Eagle Avenue lift bridge for a two-year renovation. In a lawsuit, Ray Rockey claimed that, as a result, Jim’s lost 65 percent of its business. Rockey died in 1995 at the age of 71, three years before the Ohio State Supreme Court awarded the restaurant $483,000 in compensation. By that time the bridge had reopened (1993) but Jim’s had shut down (1997). The bridge closed for good in 2005. New occupants of the restaurant space—the River House, the Aqua club, the Mega Nightclub—soldiered on until 2011 when the building was demolished.

Readers responded en masse to a May 2020 Cleveland.com article on Jim’s Steak House. Virtually everyone heaped praise on the restaurant. However, the most vivid account may have come from Bruce Tyler in Cleveland Heights who recalled, “As restless 9-year-olds, [we] ran out back on the lawn toward the river before the food arrived. We watched in awe as an enormous ore boat negotiated the tight river bend. The water was an unhealthy shade of brown, with some iridescence on the surface, and rising bubbles would stretch a bit before they popped, as if trapped in goo. I thought about this sight last year when we kayaked on the river around the same location and saw blue water, not brown, and saw herons in the shallows. Thank you environmentalists everywhere.”

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Well into the 20th century, waves of immigrants swelled Cleveland's ranks. Among them was a Greek native by the name of Chris Mitchell. Rather than contenting himself with a factory job, however, Mitchell tried his hand in business. Unfortunately, it was during the Great Depression and Mitchell’s first three businesses failed. But then he made a particularly astute observation: One business that seemed to thrive despite hard economic times was cinema! For his fourth endeavor, Mitchell thus chose to open a candy shop next door to the Heights Theater in 1939. More than three quarters of a century later, the store is still a Cleveland Heights icon.

Originally located on Euclid Heights Boulevard, Mitchell's was not the only store selling popcorn and penny candy to moviegoers. At one point there were as many as sixteen others in the Cleveland area. However, when movie theaters started bringing concessions in house, businesses similar to Mitchell's began to die out. Rather than suffer the same fate, Chris Mitchell deemphasized popcorn and other inexpensive sweet treats and focused most heavily on chocolate. The store's chocolates and the methods by which they are made have remained the same for decades, with the exception of new molds, a few modern machines, and the introduction of more products.

Chris Mitchell's new wife, Penelope, joined the business in 1949, a year after they were married. Their son, Bill, who had worked for his father as a boy, eventually inherited the business. After fifty-two years in Coventry Village, Mitchell's relocated to Lee Road in May 1991. Chris Mitchell died in 2000 at the age of 102. Penelope Mitchell lived until her late nineties. She passed away in 2015, assisting in the shop until shortly before her death. In 2016, Bill Mitchell finally decided it was time for a change. The business is now owned by Jason Hallaman and his wife Emily, who are committed to maintaining the Mitchells’ impeccable legacy.

The view from the shop windows may have changed, as have the owners. However, the tastes and smells of fresh, hand-dipped chocolate remind loyal customers of the small candy store where they would spend their dimes as children.

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Greeks form a small but cohesive ethnic group in Cleveland. Panagiotis Koutalianos, a fabled "strong man," is said to have been the first Greek to settle in Cleveland in the 1880s. Between 1890 and 1925, another 5,000 Greeks settled in Cleveland. Many settled in "Greek Town"; an area around Bradley Ct. off Bolivar Rd. between Erie (E. 9th) St. and Ontario St. A second Greek community evolved along Woodland Ave. and E 79th St. The only Greek settlement on the west side was located in the Tremont neighborhood (bounded by W. 14th St., Fairfield Ave., W. 11th St. and Clark Ave.). This community was not formed primarily by recent arrivals from Europe though. Instead, it consisted largely of Greeks who moved to Tremont from "Greek Town". By the 1920s Cleveland's Greek population was around 5-6,000. Following WWII the population doubled, reaching approximately 10,000.

From the beginning, the Greek Orthodox Church was the cultural, social and educational center of the Greek community. Five schools were established alongside the churches. In the 1920s and 30s, classes were held after public school for 3 hours a day. Children learned language, history, literature, religious catechism, and performed in plays, presented songs, participated in dances and recited lengthy poems and dialogues - all in Greek. Today, Annunciation Greek Orthodox School's graduates' credits are accepted without examination by the public schools of Greece.

Laid out in the shape of a cross, the Greek Cultural Garden was formally dedicated on June 2, 1940. Dignitaries leading the ceremony included the Greek Minister to the United States, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Americas, Mayor Harold Burton and future Cleveland Mayor and United States Senator Frank Lausche.

Two Doric columns frame the garden's entrance, opening into a plaza containing a reflecting pool that offers a perspective on a wall and pylons which symbolize the wall of the Parthenon. Stone tablets on the wall and on pylons are inscribed with the names of prominent Greek artists, philosophers, writers, and scientists: Aristophanes, Pericles, Euripides, Homer, Socrates, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Pindar, Archimedes, Herodotus, Euclid, Hippocrates, Ptolemy and Pythagoras, to name but a few. Framing the symbolic wall are two paths that encircle it, leading to sandstone terraces that are lavishly planted with ilex, coloneastus, myrtle, and sweetbay. Cedars and Lombardy poplars giving the impression of cypresses provide an additional presence and atmosphere to the garden.

Maurice Cornell was the Garden's architect.

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Like all houses of worship, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church’s spiritual focus was skyward when it opened its doors in 1919. However, the structure’s earthly perspective was quite different from today. Early on, Annunciation Church looked out to a crowded, largely blue-collar neighborhood. Immediately to the south, however, many of West 14th Street’s (formerly Jennings Avenue’s) great estates were still viable and occupied. By the 1960s, the wealthy were largely gone, and Interstate 90 had eviscerated the Tremont neighborhood. Annunciation Church’s neighbors were mostly poor and (instead of densely packed homes) Annunciation Church now had a freeway on-ramp at its front door. Today the freeway is still there but with the advent of a new bridge, the Cleveland Metroparks is building a small (four-acre) public park in front of the church. What a difference a century makes.

The Pan-Hellenic Union, formed in 1910, helped organize members of the Greek Orthodox faith in Cleveland, whose numbers had grown rapidly since the early 1890s. Most Greeks settled in the area around Bolivar Road between Ontario and East 9th Streets. Then known as Greek Town, the district encompassed the Central Market and now is occupied by Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and Progressive Field. Many Greek Town residents eventually crossed the river and settled in Tremont (then known as South Side), the only significant Greek area on Cleveland’s west side.

Prior to the Pan-Hellenic Union's founding, Greek Orthodox worship in the city had been sporadic and decentralized. In 1912, the Union purchased the West 14th Street homes of industrialists Thomas and Isaac Lamson and Samuel Sessions, and held services there for two years before moving to Greek Town's Arch Hall at Bolivar Road and Ontario Street. The first regular service at that location (above a movie house) occurred on Christmas Eve. When a traveling Greek priest was in Cleveland, congregants might also worship periodically at Saint Theodosius Russian Orthodox Church on Starkweather Avenue. When Arch Hall became too small to meet the needs of the growing congregation, the Pan-Hellenic Union (which by then had changed its name to the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation) began constructing its own house of worship on the site of the Lamson and Sessions mansions in 1918. In 1919, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church became the first and only Greek Orthodox Church in Cleveland and remained so until 1937, when St. Spyridon was built at 6469 Saint Clair Avenue.

Father John Zografos became the church’s pastor in 1924. During his four-year tenure, he painted all 85 of the icons that still adorn the church’s interior. Father Zografos also helped establish the first Greek school.

Viewed today by tens of thousands of I-90 commuters, the golden domes of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church are Tremont’s most visible sight—a reminder that Tremont is still a hub of spiritual and architectural splendor. Every year, thousands more people experience it up close during the annual Greek Heritage Festival, held each Memorial Day weekend.

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