Walking or driving through Little Italy, how many of us have wondered, “Why doesn't someone reopen or repurpose that old theater?” It’s a reasonable question despite the obvious challenges (cost, parking, safety, etc.). After all, the Mayfield Theater—a.k.a., the Mayfield Art Theatre, the Old Mayfield Theater, and the New Mayfield Repertory Cinema—has been shuttered for close to 40 years.

The “Old Mayfield” moniker is particularly resonant for those passersby of the Baby Boomer generation whose moviegoing journeys to 12300 Mayfield Road were in the late 1960s. That’s when this now-unassuming hole in the wall briefly became the go-to spot for silent films, silver screen classics, and revivals. For a time, “old was the new new.”

That incarnation (the theater's third) also may have struck a chord simply because the place exuded “old.” Original Arts and Crafts–style glass transoms. Crown molding. Time-worn terrazzo floors. Tickets were issued from a closet-like opening in the entryway, after which visitors would enter a gloomy and cramped low-ceilinged lobby. Directly above, a tiny projection booth could be accessed only via a metal ladder. By the late ’60s the theater’s original seats (some allegedly taken from the Euclid Avenue Opera House) were gone, but their rickety replacements were a perfect musty accompaniment to the showing of a 1920s or ’30s movie.

The first of the Mayfield Theater’s many lives began in 1923, when Michele Mastandrea, an Italian immigrant, built the two-story brick building with a theater on the first floor and a large apartment on the second. Mastandrea had previously operated a dry goods store on that same parcel. Before that he worked as a shoe salesman in a shop on the current site of Maxi’s Bistro. Mastandrea and his wife Christina lived in a small house behind the theater (fronting Fairview Court) until they moved to the new building’s second floor quarters in 1929. They operated the theater and remained in the spacious eight-room apartment until their deaths in 1955 and 1958, respectively.

The Mayfield wasn’t Little Italy’s first theater. The Venice, which opened around 1915, was a converted storefront at 12016 Mayfield Road, current site of the Little Italy Visitor Center at Random and Mayfield. The Roma Theater, a few years older than the Venice, staged live performances and possibly short films. It was located directly across Random Road from the Venice, where Tony Brush Park now stands. Both venues closed more-or-less concurrently with the opening of the Mayfield, which continued to be the only theater in Little Italy throughout its 32-year run. Mastandrea’s offerings included Italian-language and second-run Hollywood movies, as well as occasional live performances of Italian plays. As the neighborhood’s largest gathering space, the Mayfield also hosted community meetings and lectures, benefit performances (e.g., for Holy Rosary Church), Feast of the Assumption and Columbus Day celebrations, and political gatherings. In November 1930—the night before the national election—Ohio senate candidates debated at the Mayfield.

Michele Mastandrea died in August 1955 and the theater closed. In January 1959, it reopened as the Mayfield Art Theater, part of a national chain of art movie houses. Veteran managers Jack Silverthorne and Jack Lewis upgraded the marquee, interior, and projection equipment, and installed a new CinemaScope (super-wide) screen. The two Jacks showed first-run foreign films, as well as domestic comedies, dramas, and documentaries. Rod R. Mastandrea, a Cleveland attorney and son of Michele Mastandrea, assumed control in September 1959, a tenure that ended that December when the curtain came down again, save for a very brief attempt at live theater in 1961.

Amid the tumult of 1968, some Clevelanders may have been particularly primed for nostalgia. Thus emerged the space’s third reincarnation: the Old Mayfield, which the Plain Dealer’s George Barmann christened “Cleveland’s first silent movie house since the silent movie houses.” Blood and Sand with Rudolph Valentino kicked things off on October 3, 1968. Forthcoming attractions included The Gold Rush with Charlie Chaplin, Way Down East with Lillian Gish, Arizona Wooing with Tom Mix, The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney, and The Mark of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks.

The Old Mayfield's emergence wasn't driven by movie men. Instead, the rescuers were Sam Guarino, owner of Guarino’s restaurant and Hank Schulie of the Golden Bowl. After forming the Itlo Development Corporation (Itlo stood for Italian Little Italy Organization), the two restaurateurs cleaned the place up, hired a pianist, and installed a beer and champagne bar in a corner of the lobby. Alas, their enthusiasm was not enough to overcome the area’s incessant parking problems as well as the race-related tensions that typified the time and the neighborhood, and the theater closed in October 1969. It reopened briefly in January 1970 with a spate of Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields movies, but lapsed back into sleep by late spring.

After four years, the theater was resurrected for the last time by an English and drama professor and cinephile named Sheldon Wigod. Dubbing his new movie house the New Mayfield Repertory Cinema, he stuck with classic movies but interspersed them with foreign films—from Flynn to Fellini. Wigod brought a personal—and personable—touch to the business, introducing each film prior to its showing. It was during Wigod’s tenure that the building was designated a Cleveland Landmark.

Wigod’s labor of love did better than most; the New Mayfield Repertory Cinema stayed awake until 1985 but has been vacant ever since. However, it did receive a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. And why hasn’t there been another reawakening? We periodically see vague hints—a cleanup here, a supply truck there—but specifics are few and barriers are many. Parking challenges are clearly a major hurdle. However, it seems likely that adhering to modern fire and safety codes might play a part, as could the high cost associated with converting to a digital film format or turning the space into something other than a theater.

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Alta House is a landmark building in the Little Italy neighborhood. Constructed in 1900 by John D. Rockefeller Sr., and named for his daughter Alta Rockefeller Prentice, Alta House started as a settlement house for the immigrants coming over from Italy. This was part of the settlement house movement during which many immigrants who came to the United States were looking for a place where they could feel at home.

One of the main purposes of Alta House was to help the community grow, and to make the people better citizens. As part of this, Alta House early on offered immigrants a place to go for help with both food and board. It also helped people find employment and housing. With time, however, the responsibilities and services of Alta House expanded further. For instance, it acted as a day care for the parents who had to go to work and could not leave their children at home. Later on, it also provided education for people of all ages in the community, as well as a safe place for the children of the community to play and socialize. More recent responsibilities include helping the elderly with food and care, as well as other charities.

Alta House has also had its share of difficulties. In the mid 1970s, a youth set fire to the settlement house several times. The city eventually decided to tear part of the house down in order to rebuild it. In the process, a new design was preferred for the rebuilding. Therefore, when the reconstruction of Alta House was complete in 1982, it no longer had its original appearance. But, although its facade had changed, Alta House continued to provide its traditional services to the community. And so it does even today.

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Holy Rosary Church on Mayfield Road was constructed in 1892 to fulfill the need of Cleveland's Italian population for a Catholic institution. The church, located in historic Little Italy, is a staple in the Italian community and has been so since its construction. Not only does the church provide Catholic services to its parishioners. It also sponsors a festival every year that originated back in Italy and is celebrated all over the world. The festival is known as the Feast of the Assumption and celebrates Virgin Mary's passage into Heaven. The festival takes place over three days.

During the festival, a statue of Virgin Mary is paraded down the streets while crowds of people follow the virgin and put money on it as a donation for the church and its charities. The festival is also a time when the people of Little Italy can show their wares and cooking skills to both the community and to the thousands of other people who come to partake in the festival and festivities. Some of the money raised by the festival goes to various charities in and around the neighborhood as well as the parochial school that was built to accommodate the many inhabitants of Little Italy.

The Feast of the Assumption continues to this day as people still attend for both the services and the celebration. It is a time of great celebration but still remains true to its faith and purpose - the materialization of the Assumption of Mary.

The festival is celebrated in mid-August every year.

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Battery Park is an urban redevelopment project in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood located on W. 73rd Street and W. 76th Street. Laid out in a "U" shaped design, the $100 million development overlooks Edgewater Park and is surrounded by what has sometimes been dubbed the West Side's "Little Italy." The upscale residential enclave was built on the site of the Eveready Battery Co.'s old Edgewater Plant, which originally opened in the 1890s. Canadian-born engineer Lewis Urry, who worked at the Edgewater Plant, invented the modern alkaline dry battery (which became branded much later as Energizer) in 1956 at Eveready's research center in Parma. The plant on the site of Battery Park produced batteries until the late 1980s and thereafter became a battery-testing facility manned by a much smaller workforce. The facility closed permanently in 1999. Battery Park is currently the largest housing development in the City of Cleveland.

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One afternoon in the summer of 1869 Liberty Holden was riding down Euclid Avenue when he noticed a beautiful forested green space with rolling hills. Holden suggested the spot to the Lake View Cemetery Association as the perfect place for the cemetery they were planning. The Association bought the 211-acre spot and transformed it into the first rural cemetery in Cleveland.

The rural cemetery (or garden cemetery) movement in the United States began on the East Coast during the early nineteenth century. Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts (established in 1831), Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1836), and Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York (1838) are considered the nation’s first three rural cemeteries, and they laid the pattern that many other American cities would follow in establishing their own rural cemeteries.

Before the rural cemetery movement, most urban burial places were located in churchyards. The move from burial places in the city to a rural setting happened for a multitude of reasons. The first reason was many burial grounds in the city occupied prime locations eyed for commercial development. The second issue that led to the foundation of rural cemeteries was that the capacities of these burial grounds were reaching their limits. Yellow fever in New York led to high mortality rates. Mass graves, bodies being kept in church cellars, and the generally poor condition brought up concerns about respect for the dead. The condition of the burial grounds was also threatening to compromise public health. In particular the gas fumes from dead bodies were noxious. The final reason for the establishment of rural cemeteries was a change in view of nature. Nature came to be seen as beneficial for human health. Those who planned the first rural cemeteries responded by taking the natural landscape into consideration in their designs.

The rural cemetery movement was also called the garden cemetery movement because rural cemeteries, with their emphasis on cultivated nature, doubled as parklands. Rural cemetery planners drew inspiration from English gardens. Mount Auburn was the brainchild of Dr. Jacob Bigelow, a medical doctor and botanist. With the support of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the cemetery included a botanical garden. The cemetery, along with providing a place for burials, was a green space for the city of Boston and a popular destination for locals and tourists alike. Rules were implemented and updated in order to manage the number of visitors in respect of those buried and their families. The rural cemetery movement therefore helped with the creation of separate city parks.

Lake View Cemetery mirrored these predecessors in its creation. Jeptha H. Wade, Joseph Perkins, and Henry Bolton Payne were the first group to discuss the creation of a rural cemetery in Cleveland. Through their efforts, the Lake View Cemetery Association was organized on July 28, 1869. The Association looked for picturesque locations for the cemetery and acquired 211 acres (now 285 acres) east of Cleveland between Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road. The Association brought in Adolph Strauch, a well-known gardener, landscaper, and the superintendent of Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. Spring Grove was another well-known early rural cemetery designed by John Notman, who had previously designed Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. Lake View had hills and valleys with peaks high enough to look out over Lake Erie and still see the city. Parts of the land were densely forested. A few streams were located on the property that were planned for use in creating manmade lakes. Strauch laid out the walking paths and the lot boundaries before filling in where the trees and plants should be placed. His method involved accentuating the natural features of the landscape.

Not only did Lake View mirror Mount Auburn, Laurel Hill, and Green-Wood in its conception but also in its later regulation of visitors. These regulations reflected one of the intended aspirations for rural cemeteries besides merely housing the dead. The cemetery served as a place of moral education as well as a beautiful landscape with grand monuments, including memorials to President James A. Garfield, John D. Rockefeller, and Jeptha Wade. If the solemnity of its statuary failed to inspire, cemetery rules instructed visitors on how to act while on the grounds and guide toward solemn remembrance. An 1882 column titled “Lake View Cemetery: Not a Picnic Resort” brought complaints made by lot owners and family of the buried to the public's attention. Its author described the fanfare associated with visiting President Garfield’s memorial but emphasized the issue of strangers setting up picnics on grave monuments and the crowds trampling the grounds. There was a call for regulation on Sundays that led to implementation of ticketing for admittance to follow the same action taken at Green-Wood and Spring Grove cemeteries.

Once among the only substantial cultivated green spaces in reach of Clevelanders, Lake View Cemetery became less novel by the turn of the twentieth century, when newly opened city parks began to lure recreation-seekers away. Nevertheless, Lake View continued to attract visitors with its variety of plants, trees, and flowers. In the 1940s Dr. William Weir cultivated more than 170 varieties of daffodils and donated a large collection of bulbs to Lake View. The bulbs were planted in a three-acre portion of the cemetery with more being added each year. With more than one hundred thousand bulbs, Daffodil Hill has become a perennial attraction enticing visitors back to Lake View Cemetery yearly to see them in bloom.

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After a stint distributing records for jukeboxes, Hank LoConti opened the original Agora club on February 27, 1966, at 2175 Cornell Road, in the former Ripa Hall, which had been home to an Italian hometown society for immigrants from Ripalimosani, Italy. With its location in Little Italy just across the railroad tracks from Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, the original Agora was a simple venue intended primarily for students. The Agora grew steadily from the start, opening the nation's first in-house recording studio in 1968 and producing many live albums. As LoConti later reflected, from there the Agora “grew to the magnitudes no one had ever dreamed.”

As word spread and crowds began to swell, some residents in famously-protective Little Italy decided the Agora – with its raucous fans and loud music – didn’t fit with their vision for the neighborhood. A large group of locals formed one night to publicly voice their disdain for the college students’ unwelcome invasion. Moved by the group’s grievances but also pleased with the Agora’s rising success, LoConti arranged for a second lease at 1724 East 24th Street near Payne Avenue, opening a new club in July 1967, likely intending to reduce crowds on Cornell Road. For the next 18 months, LoConti operated two Agoras, nicknaming the original "Agora Alpha" and the new club "Agora Beta." Agora Beta would become the stuff of legend.

Throughout the 1970s, the Agora’s reputation grew as it began to host increasingly prominent acts and even expanded for a time into a chain with clubs in a dozen other cities. Deanna R. Adams’s book *Rock 'n' Roll and the Cleveland Connection* compares the Agora to other famous venues of the era, describing it as Cleveland’s counterpart to San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom and New York’s Bottom Line. The Agora’s floor plan allowed fans to experience live performances up close, fostering an electric atmosphere that artists and audiences loved. Artists like Bruce Springsteen, Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper, Roxy Music, Southside Johnny, and more came back to Cleveland time and again to play the Agora.

WMMS, Cleveland's leading rock radio station – and a national cultural force in its own right – also played a crucial role in the Agora's success. Disk jockeys like Kid Leo championed emerging rock acts and used their platforms to create buzz around upcoming shows at the Agora. WMMS’s Buzzard brand became synonymous with Cleveland’s rock identity, frequently broadcasting live performances from the Agora, and giving the club a regional and even national audience. Meanwhile, "Onstage at the Agora" became an internationally syndicated television show years before MTV brought rock music to the living room. At the Agora, attendees experienced a sense of community that went beyond entertainment, reinforcing Cleveland’s image as a “music town.”

As Cleveland underwent economic challenges and transformations in the 1980s, so too did the Agora. A fire broke out at the Agora in 1984 and forced the location to close. Due to a dispute with the property’s landlord, Cleveland State University, LoConti eventually opened the Agora in its present – omega? – form at East 55th and Euclid Avenue, formerly WHK Auditorium. Despite the apparent setback, the Agora, along with WMMS, continued to build its reputation as a proving ground for up and coming acts and bring a sense of cultural relevance to the city. Where once young Clevelanders had bemoaned having “no place to go,” the city now had rock and roll bragging rights.

The Agora’s legacy was ultimately recognized in the early 2000s, as Cleveland began to understand the importance of preserving its musical heritage. By this time, the Agora had solidified its reputation as a historical landmark, a status that attracted both financial support and media attention. The Agora was claimed to be “one of the hottest places to catch rock shows of every style and persuasion.” Seating an impressive 2,700 people in its theater and ballroom, the Agora was as welcoming as it was entertaining. The City of Cleveland acknowledged the Agora’s role in shaping Cleveland’s identity through renewal projects and official landmark status, recognizing it as more than just a concert hall but as a space where generations of Clevelanders have gathered to celebrate music and community. This support from the City of Cleveland, coupled with Cleveland’s broader efforts to promote its cultural assets, has allowed the Agora to continue evolving while honoring its roots.

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