Cleveland Historical

The Sapirstein Family: A Greeting Card Company Grows in Glenville

2024-10-31T18:21:09+00:00

In 1930, a year after the start of the Great Depression, 21-year old Irving Sapirstein, oldest son of postcard jobber Jacob Sapirstein, came to the conclusion that the Sapirstein family could make more money manufacturing and selling their own greeting cards rather than only selling those manufactured by others. To help make his point, he wrote some greeting card verses and then had printing plates made for them. When he approached his father and began telling him his idea, his father grabbed the metal plates from his hands and smashed them on the ground, declaring, "We're jobbers, not manufacturers."

The website of the American Greetings Corporation contains scant information — more corporate legend than historical fact — regarding the founding of the company by Jacob Sapirstein, a Polish Jew who immigrated to the United States in 1906. A review of news articles, deeds, directory listings, census sheets, and other records available online, provides a fuller view into the early years of the business that, in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood, began to grow into the world's second largest manufacturer of greeting cards.
Jacob Sapirstein was born in 1884, in the village of Wasosz in northeastern Poland. His parents were Rabbi Isaac Sapirstein and Marion (Mollie) Berenson. He grew up in nearby Grajewo, which, like Wasosz, was located in a region of Poland that had been seized by Russian Empress Catherine the Great during one of the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. When he was 21 years old, Jacob decided to leave the village and his family, and immigrate to the United States. Sources differ as to exactly why he decided to leave Poland when he did, but they all agree that it was related to the harsh conditions to which Jews were subjected while living under Russian rule.
With financial assistance from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Jacob booked passage on a ship bound for America. He landed in Boston in late December 1906 and then continued on to Chicago where he had been offered a job as an apprentice tailor. However, he found that the job was not at all to his liking, and, within days after starting, he made the life-changing decision to quit the job and head for Cleveland where another job, and another future, awaited him.
Jacob's new job in Cleveland was working in the card shop at the Hollenden Hotel. For many years, this legenday hotel stood on the southeast corner of Superior Avenue and East 6th Street where the Fifth Third Center stands today. The card shop in the hotel was then operated by Moses Fenberg, variously described as a relative or friend of the Sapirstein family. He not only gave Jacob a job, but also a place to stay—in Fenberg's house on the West Side. As it turned out, Sapirstein wasn't very happy with the card shop job either, and complained to Fenberg that he wasn't making enough money. Fenberg responded with what Jacob Sapirstein later said was the best advice he ever received — "If you want to make more money, become a postcard jobber." And so that was exactly what he did.
In the early twentieth century, postcard jobbing — wholesaling cards of manufacturers to retail stores — was a tough job with long hours. In his early years of jobbing, young Sapirstein used streetcars to travel to the commercial areas of the east and west sides of Cleveland, carrying with him boxes containing an assortment of postcards. At each stop near drug stores, candy shops, and other retail businesses that he thought might buy his cards, he got off and peddled them. Then, after he had visited all the stores in one area, he caught another streetcar that took him to the next commercial area of the city. And so his work days went, traveling the streets of Cleveland, peddling from the time stores opened in the morning, until they closed in the evening. And when he returned home in the evening, he spent more hours doing the work necessary to fill the card orders he had procured that day.
In time, just as Moses Fenberg had told him, Sapirstein was making more money than he had at the card shop — in fact so much more that, by 1908, he could afford to marry Jennie Kanter, a young woman from his home village in Poland. After they married, they moved out of Fenberg's house and into a Woodland Avenue apartment in the East Side's Cedar-Central neighborhood. At the time, it was a working-class neighborhood and home to many Jewish immigrants. Jacob and Jennie's first son, Isaac (later known as Irving), was born there in 1909. Their second son, Moses (later called Morris) was born there two years later. Both sons, as well as third son Harry (born in 1917), would come to play important roles in the early growth of the company that eventually became the American Greetings Corporation.
In 1914, World War I began. Soon after the start of hostilities, the United States imposed an embargo on the import of German goods, including the then-popular German-made postcards and greeting cards. This embargo, as well as the increased demand for cards that occurred during the war years, benefitted not only America's domestic card manufacturing industry but also jobbers like Jacob Sapirstein who sold those cards to retail businesses. Soon, Jacob could afford to purchase a horse and wagon with which he could more easily travel the streets of Cleveland peddling his cards, especially the new folded greeting cards which had become popular during the war. In time, as his jobbing business grew, Sapirstein exchanged that horse and wagon for a new Ford automobile.
With the growth of his business, Jacob and his wife and children were also able by 1918 to move out of the Cedar-Central neighborhood and into the more upscale Glenville neighborhood, one in which they would live for the next two decades and during which time Jacob's jobbing business would see substantial growth before transforming into a card manufacturing business. The first house the Sapirsteins bought in Glenville was a two-family house at 856-858 East 95th Street, near St. Clair Avenue. However, after living in this house for only a year, they sold it and purchased the house right next door — also a two-family — at 852-854 East 95th. Why the family would sell the first and buy the second is somewhat of a mystery, but it may have been related to the so-called first business expansion of the company described below.
As earlier noted, Jacob Sapirstein's jobbing business now included the new and popular folded greeting cards, as well as the more traditional postcards. As a result of this enlargement of his inventory and other growth in his jobbing business, Sapirstein at some point found it necessary to move all of his inventory out of the house and into the family garage. Different articles published by different newspapers in different years assign different addresses and dates to this first so-called expansion of the business, but the article that was published in the Cleveland Jewish News on May 24, 1985, which was based on an interview with Jacob's son Irving, is the most detailed and convincing. It also featured a photograph of Irving standing in front of what is clearly the garage at 852-854 East 95th Street. The caption below that photograph reads: "The company's first expansion — in 1917 — to Jacob Sapirstein's garage on East 95th Street." (The expansion at that address actually most likely occurred not in 1917, but instead in 1919 when the Sapirsteins purchased the second house on E. 95th Street.)
It was not only the expansion of the business into the family garage that was a marker of the growth of Sapirstein's jobbing business in the early years of the family's residency in Glenville. During the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920, Jacob Sapirstein contracted the virus and became so ill that he couldn't work. According to several articles, his sons Irving and Morris — though then not yet even teenagers — had to perform many of their father's jobbing duties, including jumping on streetcars in order to deliver cards to customers and keeping the books of the business at home. This inevitably led, in the decade of the 1920s, to both Irving and Morris becoming jobbers like their father. This, in turn, likely resulted in a large increase in the customer base of the business. Notable of the sons' early efforts, in 1928, Irving and Morris successfully procured a large order of postcards and greeting cards for Euclid Beach Park. This sale produced $48,000 in revenues for the family jobbing business — the equivalent of almost one million dollars in today's money.
By the time the Great Depression arrived in 1929, both Irving and Morris were jobbing full time with their father in the family business that was now known, according to Cleveland directories, as "The Sapirstein Greeting Card Company." It was at about this time, according to Jacob's son Irving, that he had the conversation with his father about going into the greeting card manufacturing business that led to his father shattering Irving's printing plates. However, while, according to Irving, Jacob (who later became known at American Greetings as "J.S.") was a hard sell, he "finally came around." While the exact year that the Sapirstein family began manufacturing their own greeting cards is difficult to determine, it may well have been in 1932 when, for the first time since 1919, the family business address was listed not at 852 East 95th Street but instead at 9313 Yale Avenue, then the site of a brick commercial building located less than a quarter mile from the Sapirstein home.
In 1934, the Sapirsteins incorporated their new manufacturing business under the name of the Sapirstein Greeting Card Company, and, in 1935, Jacob's third son Harry joined the company as a full-time employee. Meanwhile, his oldest son, Irving, who exhibited an artistic bent, became involved in the creation of the company's first greeting cards. His most notable early verse, which became the company's slogan, was: "From someone who wants to remember someone too nice to forget."
In 1938, the Sapirsteins changed the name of their company to the American Greeting Publishing Company, after expanding outside the Cleveland area by opening a manufacturing facility and branch office in Detroit, Michigan in 1936. (The company name would later be simplified to the American Greetings Corporation.) Several years after this, in 1941, the Sapirsteins moved their company out of Glenville and into a large commercial building complex on West 78th Street on Cleveland's West Side. And, several years after the business left Glenville, Jacob and Jennie Sapirstein left too, selling their house in the neighborhood and moving to University Heights.
Since the 1940s, American Greetings has grown and expanded numerous times, and now has manufacturing facilities and offices in many locations across the United States and around the world. Its headquarters today are located in Westlake. It is unlikely that many current employees of American Greetings are even aware of the company's humble beginnings in the Glenville neighborhood. Nevertheless, this is exactly where, over the course of more than two decades, that the Sapirstein family grew Jacob Sapirstein's postcard jobbing business into the second-largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the world.
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Fir Street Cemetery: Cleveland's Second Oldest Jewish Cemetery

2017-05-31T09:25:09+00:00

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Emma Lazarus' immortal words from her poem "The New Colossus," etched on the Statue of Liberty, had special meaning to one immigrant family buried in this historic Jewish cemetery in Cleveland.

When James and Fannie Horwitz experienced the unspeakable heartbreak of losing a child--their 2-year-old son Aaron in January 1865, they undoubtedly found some consolation in burying him in the new Jewish cemetery out in the countryside, west of the Cuyahoga River in Brooklyn Township, on a charming little lane called Peach Street (later to be renamed Fir Street). The cemetery had just been opened that year by the Hungarian Aid Society (HAS), an organization formed in Cleveland in 1863 by Morris Black, Herman Sampliner and others, for the purpose of providing aid, including burials, to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. Aaron Horwitz was the organization's first burial at the new cemetery.
Aaron's father James (or Jacob as he was known in Europe) was a Vienna-trained medical doctor, and his mother Fannie a sister of Michael Heilprin, a brilliant Hebrew scholar. Both men were Polish Jews who lived in Galicia, an area of historic Poland that had been "annexed" by Austria in first partition of that country in the late 18th century. In 1848, both men had become ardent supporters of Lajos Kossuth and the Hungarian Revolution. And when the Hapsburgs defeated the insurgents and Kossuth fled Hungary, both men also did the same. Horwitz, immigrated to Cleveland, via Sandusky, practicing medicine before turning to business enterprises. Heilprin went instead to New York, where he became a celebrated Hebrew scholar, a friend of Horace Greeley, and mentor to the young poet Emma Lazarus. Several sources attribute the inspiration for Lazarus' 1883 poem "The New Colossus" to a meeting she earlier had with Michael Heilprin. Heilprin was both inspiration to Emma Lazarus and the uncle of an unfortunate young boy who was the first person to be buried at the new Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn Township.
The cemetery where Aaron Horwitz is buried we know today as Fir Street (or Fir Avenue) Cemetery. The second oldest Jewish cemetery in Cleveland, it is actually three small, separate historic cemeteries which are located on a rectangular-shaped piece of land bounded on the north by Fir Avenue; the east by West 59th Street; the south by Bayne Court; and the west by West 61st Street. The center cemetery, where Aaron and other members of the Horwitz family are buried, was owned by the HAS until 1963 when the land was deeded to the Jewish Community Federation (JCF) of Cleveland. While the first burial took place there in 1865, permission to operate a cemetery on the grounds was not officially granted by the City of Cleveland until 1880, several years after the section of Brooklyn Township in which it was located was annexed to the City.
The western cemetery was established by Anshe Emeth, the largest and oldest conservative Jewish congregation in Cleveland. It was founded by Polish Jewish immigrants in 1859. The Congregation made its first purchase of land on Fir Street in 1877, the same year that it was granted permission by the City to establish a cemetery on its grounds there. Anshe Emeth, in the twentieth century, merged with Beth Tefilo congregation to form Park Synagogue Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo Congregation.
The eastern cemetery may also have been founded by Polish Jews, although there is some mystery surrounding the identity of the two Jewish organizations which owned the land in the nineteenth century. Chebra Kadisha, which acquired the land in 1866, was identified in the conveyance deed simply as a "religious organization." Thirteen years later, in 1879, through its trustees, it deeded the land to the B'nai Abraham Cemetery Association, an organization for which no records appear to exist. Chebra Kadisha may have been an early congregation which later merged with other congregations to form what became, in the twentieth century, the Heights Jewish Center (HJC). Or, it may have simply been a "burial society."
Among the locally famous residents of Fir Street Cemetery are: Herman Sampliner (1835-1899), founder of the B’nai Jeshurun Congregation; Harry “Czar” Bernstein (1856-1920), owner of Perry Bank and the Perry Theatre, and city councilman allied with Mark Hanna; Moses A. Adelstein (1813-1903), organizer of Cleveland’s first Russian synagogue and first free Jewish cemetery, Lansing Cemetery; Isaac Goldman (1858-1919), Cleveland’s first Jewish building contractor; Fanny Jacobs (1835-1928), founder of Park Synagogue’s sisterhood; Rabbi Gershon Ravinson (1848-1907), a 10th-generation rabbi who became a leading scholar of Talmud; Reverend Elias Rothschild (1858-1914), a kosher butcher with a reputation for offering meals and beds to the down-and-out. Rothschild is believed to have saved the Hebrew Free Loan Society when it ran into financial difficulty.
This final resting place of so many locally famous Clevelanders, as well as families with heart-wrenching stories like the Horwitz's, Fir Street became an inactive cemetery in 1971, after the last burials there took place. In the decades that followed, the condition of its grounds steadily deteriorated, in part due to acts of vandalism and in part because the Cleveland Jewish community had moved east, leaving the cemetery geographically distant from its founding congregations. The condition of Fir Street Cemetery troubled Cleveland Housing Court Judge Raymond J. Pianka, who been interested in the history of the cemetery, and the strange inscriptions on its gravestones, ever since he was a young boy attending Waverly Elementary School, just a block away from the cemetery. In 2007, he and a stalwart group of neighborhood residents collaborated with Park Synagogue and successfully formed a coalition of funding, organizations and volunteers that, over the next two-year period, renovated and restored the cemetery, cleaning its grounds, fixing broken grave stones, planting trees and hundreds of tulip bulbs, and repairing the entrance gate and signage. Since the completion of these repairs and renovations in 2009, the cemetery has been maintained by Park Synagogue Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo Congregation with financial assistance from the JCF. Fir Street Cemetery is now, once again, a source of pride not only for Cleveland's Jewish community, but also for the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood.
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Saint Josaphat Church: A Sacred Polish Landmark is Saved by a Croatian Angel

2016-04-07T14:10:22+00:00

Many would argue that the heart of Cleveland's historic Polish community lies at St. Stanislaus Church and in Slavic Village on the southeast side of the city. But there is so much more to Cleveland's Polish community than this one church and that one branded neighborhood. In search of housing located close to where they found work in Cleveland's booming late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries industry, Polish immigrants clustered in at least six distinct neighborhoods in the city, each of which they colorfully named either after the church which they built there or to remember a city in Poland dear to them. One of these Polish neighborhoods was Josephatowa, located on the northeast side of the city--very near to where Asiatown is today. It was named after the St. Josaphat Roman Catholic parish established there by Polish immigrants in the early twentieth century.
Polish immigrants began arriving in numbers in this neighborhood in the early 1890s, finding work at a number of factories and mills that were built near the tracks of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, and Pennsylvania Railroad lines. One of these was the mammoth Otis Steel Works (later purchased by Jones & Laughlin) which in the second-half of the nineteenth century built a complex of mills, warehouses, and office buildings that eventually stretched for more than a half mile along the lakefront from East 25th Street to East 40th Street. Poles who worked at Otis Steel, or at other nearby factories or mills, first found housing on Lakeside and Hamilton Avenues, much of it built and first occupied by other ethnic groups, including Irish, Germans, Slovenians and Croatians. From there the colony spread to other streets south of Lakeside.
In the early years, Poles worshiped with Lithuanians at St. George Lithuanian Catholic Church at the corner of East 21st and Oregon (Rockwell) Avenue. But when that parish moved to a new location further east, Poles living in the neighborhood sought and in 1908 received permission from the bishop to form their own parish. At first named after St. Hedwig, the parish was soon renamed St. Josaphat to distinguish it from the identically-named Polish parish founded in Lakewood's Birdtown neighborhood in the same year. For almost a decade after the founding of the parish, masses were held in the chapel at St. John's Cathedral. Then, in 1915, the parish's second pastor, Rev. Joseph Kocinski, undertook to construct a church building on several lots which the parish had purchased several years earlier on the east side of East 33rd Street, between Superior and St. Clair Avenues. The new church, which was designed to seat 800 at church services, was completed in 1917. One of its stained glass windows depicted a fifteenth century battle scene in which a Polish army defeated the German Teutonic Knights. That stained glass window was said to later become a source of irritation for one of Cleveland's bishops who was of German descent.
Like many other Catholic parishes founded by East European immigrants, St. Josaphat had periods of growth and decline. Early in its history it experienced a precipitous drop in membership when a number of Polish immigrants returned to Europe, followed by others who departed to attend St. Stanislaus in the Warszawa neighborhood to the south. But the church persevered, reaching a peak population of approximately 1,000 parishioners in the late 1930s. But then, as large employers like Otis Steel moved their operations away from lakefront, as small industrial shops "invaded" some of the residential streets, and as people began to move from the neighborhood to the suburbs, the church suffered a decline in its membership from which, this time, it did not recover. In 1966, the elementary school closed and three decades after that, in 1998, the church itself was closed by the diocese.
St. Josaphat might have met the fate of other shuttered inner city Catholic Churches, which struggled to find a new use after closing, but fortunately that was not the case. In the same year that it closed, a Croatian immigrant, Alenka Banco, who had grown up in the neighborhood, happened to drive by the church while furniture was being removed. Intrigued, she contacted the diocese and learned that the church was for sale. A patron of the arts who had already opened two art galleries in Cleveland, Banco made an offer to purchase the church. While, according to church officials, it had received higher dollar offers for the property, Banco’s offer was deemed the best, and was accepted, because she proposed to devote the church property to a community use. Banco moved into the former rectory on the property and, with a business partner, began making repairs and renovations to the church building which she renamed Josaphat Arts Hall. In late 2005, she opened Convivium33, an art gallery, in the former church building. One Cleveland journalist with an eye toward turning a phrase said that the historic Polish church had been purchased, and saved, by an angel.
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Sokolowski's University Inn

2016-03-07T12:37:18+00:00

Victoria and Michael Sokolowski opened Sokolowski’s University Inn in 1923 as a tavern at the corner of University Road and West 13th Street. For nearly a century, the family served up exceedingly generous portions of traditional Polish-style food, making it a popular spot for generations of visitors from every walk of life. Local heroes from steel workers to accountants. Hollywood types from Ursula Andress to Jimmy Fallon. Politicos from Lech Walesa to Bill Clinton. Rock ‘n rollers from Dion DiMucci to Trent Reznor. Celebrity chefs from Bobby Flay to Michael Symon.
When Sokolowski’s opened its doors in 1923, Tremont was rather different from the gentrifying neighborhood it became around the turn of the 21st century. For one thing, the area was called the South Side. The neighborhood was more densely populated. Poles rubbed shoulders with Ukrainians, Russians, and a host of other nationalities. Large families in small houses were the norm. And there were many more houses than there are today. Construction of Interstates 71, 90 and 490 resulted in the loss of hundreds of residential structures. In fact, when Sokolowski’s opened, homes along University Road rimmed the Flats as far west as West 14th Street. Homes also lined both sides of West 14th as far north as University. Abbey Avenue stopped at West 14th instead of West 11th. On the south side of Abbey in 1923 — just up from Sokolowski’s — there was a stable. Directly across Abbey from the stable there was a Horse and Dog Hospital.
Ironically, the freeway that lopped off the tavern's neighbors to the west also turned Sokolowski's into its modern form. The most dramatic evolution may have been Sokolowski’s expansion from bar to full restaurant. It wasn’t until the late 1950s — when iron workers building the Inner Belt bridge started coming in at lunchtime — that the family began serving cafeteria-style food. The establishment expanded over the years, including the addition of three new dining rooms. Sokolowski's remained a family-owned and -operated business through the generations, with successive owners growing up in the business and living next door to the restaurant.
Sokolowski’s was a cult favorite among Cleveland diners for decades before it began attracting attention from well-known food critics across the US. Sokolowski’s appeared on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” program on the Travel Channel in 2007 and on Michael Symon’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” on the Food Network in 2010. In 2014, Sokolowski’s won the James Beard “American Classics” Award — one of only five designations the prestigious New York-based foundation makes each year to honor "enduring, quality restaurants and food establishments that reflect the character and hospitality of their cities and communities.” Mike Sokolowski – grandson and namesake of the founder – observed at the time that winning a Beard award was "like winning the Oscar."
Like many small businesses, Sokolowski's University Inn did not survive the COVID-19 pandemic. On October 13th, 2020 – after three generations of family ownership across 97 years – the Sokolowski family announced that they would close the restaurant. In 2023, the property was purchased by a real estate developer.
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Immaculate Heart of Mary Church: The Struggle for a Polish Church in Cleveland's Warszawa

2016-01-30T12:07:56+00:00

On August 19, 1894, Immaculate Heart of Mary Church opened its doors for the first time to its congregation, all of whom had been recently excommunicated from the Catholic Church by the Bishop of Cleveland. Excommunication did not bother the ethnic Polish parishioners attending Immaculate Heart of Mary Church because the opening of an independent Polish-American church was a triumph they had waited years to achieve.
In the early 1890s, parishioners of the Polish Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus, became unhappy with the role of the Diocese of Cleveland in their religious affairs. Members of the congregation, led by Father Anton Francis Kolaszewski, demanded that St. Stanislaus should have a more autonomous role in the diocese as a separate Polish church. The congregation wanted to be able to select its own pastors, parish leaders, and manage church finances independently. Because the congregants were Polish, they did not feel comfortable being managed by an American diocese, and wanted church business to operate in a more ethnically and culturally sensitive manner. The Bishop of Cleveland, Frederick Horstmann, refused. Despite this rejection, Fr. Kolaszewski continued to preach his desire for an independent Polish church. In 1892, frustrated by Kolaszewski’s refusal to accept the authority of the Diocese and accusations of sexual abuse against him, Horstmann forced Kolaszewski to resign as pastor of St. Stanislaus.
Many supporters of Kolaszewski’s and an independent Polish catholic church met this decision with indignation. When the new pastor Benedict Rosinski arrived at St. Stanislaus to assume his duties, members of the parish greeted him with their broomsticks; they wanted Kolaszewski to continue as pastor and pursue a more independent Polish Catholic Church, and Rosinski represented a departure from that rhetoric. As news of the conflict spread throughout the Warszawa neighborhood, rival supporters of both the diocese and Kolaszewski arrived on the scene to participate in the brawl.
While violent scenes like the one that greeted pastor Rosinski did not occur with regularity, the Polish community continued to request permission to form an independent church from Bishop Horstmann. Again, Horstmann refused those requests. In early 1894, after two years of consistent denial, the St. Stanislaus parishioners called upon Pastor Kolaszewski to return to Cleveland. Kolaszewski returned to assist the community in fundraising and other planning related to the construction of the new, independent Polish-American Catholic Church. Despite threats of excommunication from Bishop Horstmann, Immaculate Heart of Mary opened its doors to parishioners later that year.
Immaculate Heart of Mary’s parishioners remained outsiders until both Kolaszewski and Horstmann died several years later. After both of their deaths, the Diocese of Cleveland accepted the church into its diocese and it continued as a regular member of the church district.
When Poles discuss the conflict today, they often characterize as a conflict between the diocese and Kolaszewski, rather than a major fracture in the social structure of Warszawa. This distinction is important, as the memories of the conflict passed down reflect a struggle of authority and a demagogue, rather than one that divided a community.
The story of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church illustrates two major themes of immigrant Polish life: the importance of religion to Poles and the desire for an independent Polish-American rhetoric. Polish communities across the United States participated in squabbles over church ownership, resulting in myriads of independent Polish churches. The church's providing the grounds for this kind of conflict is also significant as it blatantly displays how central the church was and is to Polish life. Poles wanted independent control in their churches because in Polish communities, the church not only provides religious support, but also social and educational support. Control over their own churches therefore meant greater control over all aspects of life in a Polish community.
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Prosperity Social Club: Neighborhood History On Tap

2015-10-28T21:53:13+00:00

In 1938, Stanley Dembowski opened a small pub called Dempsey's Oasis at 1109 Starkweather Avenue. The establishment would become one of Cleveland's most enduring taverns.

What kind of pub gets shout-outs from national media ranging from Maxim and GQ to Huffington Post and Better Homes and Gardens? The answer is Prosperity Social Club—one of Tremont’s, and Cleveland’s, homiest and most storied spots for drinking and dining.
Prosperity Social Club, formerly known as Dempsey's Oasis, has a history that comprises almost 80 years. That history started with Jack Dempsey, heavyweight boxing champion of the world from 1919 to 1926, and namesake of the pub's original incarnation. Stanley Dembowski, born in Dulsk, Poland, in 1896 (one year after Jack Dempsey was born in Manassa, CO), opened Dempsey’s Oasis on Starkweather Avenue in 1938. Dembowski fought in France in World War I and was discharged on June 18, 1919. Sixteen days later, Dempsey won the heavyweight crown, knocking out Jess Willard. In a 1982 interview with The Plain Dealer, Stanley Dembowski recalled betting $500 that Dempsey would defeat Gene Tunney in their 1926 fight. Dempsey lost, but from then on “Everyone began calling me Dempsey. So when I started this business [at 1109 Starkweather, which previously hosted an establishment called Hot Dog Bill’s], I called it Dempsey’s. The Oasis part was added because an oasis is where thirsty people go to get dethirsted.” Stanley retired in 1967 and his son Richard, together with wife Theresa, took over. They remained until 2000 when the pub was sold to a pair of Irish businessmen. Veteran restaurateur Bonnie Flinner purchased the establishment five years later and renamed it Prosperity Social Club—a salute to the sardonic optimism that pervaded the Great Depression.
In a 2015 interview, Richard Dembowski stated that one of the restaurant’s keys to success was its ability to attract a diverse clientele: Tremont residents, downtown businesspeople, steelworkers, healthcare workers from Metro General and so on. He noted sanitation as another cornerstone—that the family made such a strong commitment to cleanliness that the local health inspector became a regular patron. According to Dembowski, “The inspector knew where he could get a good, safe meal.” The Dembowskis also gained a place in the neighborhood’s heart by actually being “locals” (they lived next door) and by being exceptional citizens. The family worked on Saint Augustine Church’s Food for the Poor campaigns and spearheaded Coats for Kids programs. In the 1980s, Stanley and Richard became local spokesmen for the Polish Solidarity campaign—the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country and a key contributor to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
A final success factor, recalled Dembowski, was that Dempsey’s was the first public house in the neighborhood to have a television. Good food, drinks, camaraderie and TV: a winning combination in any decade. Small wonder that people occasionally refer to Dempsey’s/Prosperity as a real-world “Cheers.”
Like any great old pub, Prosperity Social Club has changed little in appearance. Art Deco influences, wormy chestnut walls, a walnut bar, and vintage beer memorabilia abound. Most of the tables and chairs are original. A flickering television quietly displays shows from the 1950s and 1960s. A kitschy game room includes an old-fashioned bowling machine and vintage board games. One thing the pub lacks, however, is clichéd celebrity photos, although there certainly have been enough notable visitors. Over the years, Dempsey’s/Prosperity has been patronized by notables ranging from Dennis Kucinich and George Voinovich to John Glenn and Robert De Niro (the latter showed up in full “army greens” during the 1977 filming of The Deer Hunter).
Not only is Prosperity Social steeped in history, it also is surrounded by history. Immediately to the west is the Lincoln Park Baths (c. 1921), the last of 10 bathhouses erected in Cleveland to provide sanitary services to the working poor. Next to the Baths is the building that once housed the Royal movie theater, one of several theaters in or near the Tremont neighborhood. And across the street is Lincoln Park, public green space whose “roots” date to the 1850s. But in that special way that only pubs can be, Prosperity Social Club is truly ”living history.”
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Third Federal Savings and Loan: The Nation's Largest Polish-American-Led Financial Institution

2015-10-20T15:02:37+00:00

In 1938, Ben Stefanski and his wife Gerome started Third Federal Savings and Loan, with the promise of helping those in the community achieve the dream of home ownership and financial security. In addition to offering mortgage loans, Third Federal has long been dedicated to educating their customers on the requirements of home ownership beyond the down payment.
Through the years, Third Federal expanded far beyond its home office at 7007 Broadway Avenue. In 1957, the company opened a second branch in Brecksville and by the end of the 1960s had an additional seven branches. By 1983, the savings and loan had 16 branch offices and $1.08 billion in assets. Today, Third Federal has 46 branch offices in Ohio and Florida, and lends in 21 states and the District of Columbia, making it the largest Polish American-led financial institution in the country.
While the company has always dedicated itself to helping members of the Slavic Village community afford homes, they have also earned a reputation as a company devoted to giving back to the community through philanthropy. Ben Stefanski was a strong supporter of the arts movement, most noted by the commissioning of a mural by Peter Paul Dubaniewicz. The mural was dedicated to the public and depicts the building of America by men of many cultures.
In addition to the arts, Stefanski was a great supporter of education in the community. In 1965, he gave $1 million to the Catholic Diocese High School Fund for the building of 11 new high schools and expansion of seven existing schools. It was this extreme charity that earned him the nickname “Benefactor” Stefanski. Today, Third Federal still follows the example of Mr. Stefanski in their dedication to the education and health of those in the community. In 2007, the company created the $55 million Third Federal Foundation when the company went public through its IPO. The purpose of the foundation is to bring partners together in collaboration of programs that promote education in the community. The foundation’s initiatives include the P-16 program and a Service Scholarship program at Cleveland Central Catholic High School. The P-16 program works closely with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to improve educational experiences for those in the Slavic Village through the implementation of tutoring programs, after school programs, and scholarships. They have also collaborated with Metro Health to put a clinic in a local school. The program has proven so effective that a mobile health clinic was added to service additional schools, more school-based clinics are planned.
Most recently, Third Federal developed Trailside Slavic Village. A neighborhood of new construction, affordable housing, built on the site of former light industrial buildings. Beginning construction in 2013, Trailside is located along the Morgana Run Trail and is adjacent to the Third Federal headquarters. Currently in Phase 1, the development offers two different style homes, each with three bedrooms and open floor plans. All of the homes meet or exceed Cleveland’s Green Energy standard with down payment assistance and tax abatement.
Third Federal is committed to benefiting not only the surrounding community, but also the associates who make the company as successful as it has become. Third Federal has been featured on Forbes' list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, and the company boasts that it has not had a single layoff in its history. Associates are cross-trained to assist in other areas as needed. Third Federal offers a number of training opportunities, tuition reimbursement, and throws annual appreciation events.
In its 77 years of operation, Third Federal has become a crucial piece of the Slavic Village neighborhood through its continued dedication to the betterment of the community as a whole. The company has long lived up to its mission of “helping people achieve the dream of home ownership and financial stability, while creating value for our communities, our customers, our associates, and our stockholders.”
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Broadway and East 55th: The Slavic Downtown

2015-07-28T12:20:32+00:00

The area around Broadway Avenue and East 55th Street was originally developed by Irish and Welsh immigrants, but in the 1880s large groups of Polish, Czech, and Slovak newcomers moved into the area for work in the Cleveland mills and steel yards. With this ethnic shift, the area took on a Slavic identity that has remained to this day.
The Broadway-55th district had a number of businesses and institutions that paid homage to the roots of its inhabitants. One of the earliest Slavic establishments of the area was Our Lady of Lourdes Church, showing the central role that religion played in the lives of settlers. Established in 1883 by Rev. Stephen Furdek, the current church was built in 1902. The church functioned as more than a religious center; it also provided a safe haven for incoming immigrants and a social hub with events to bolster community relations. For decades, Our Lady of Lourdes was the largest Bohemian parish in Cleveland and remains an integral part of the neighborhood.
The First Catholic Slovak Union was created by Stephen Furdek in 1890 to provide insurance and benefits to immigrant Slovaks living in America. As the organization grew it became obvious that larger offices were necessary. In 1919, the FCSU purchased a large house in Slavic Village at 3289 East 55th Street where it continued to serve the Slavic community for decades.
A few years later, Broadway Savings and Trust opened. Owned by Oliver Mead Stafford and Caesar A. Grasselli, it primarily served the financial needs of the Polish settlers and became a mainstay of the area. In the mid-1900s, the business was sold and the building became Fisher’s Dry Goods, catering to the needs of the neighborhood and selling products needed to make traditional Polish meals. While the building changed hands again in 1958, it maintained its Slavic roots. Yaros Podzimek, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1950, opened Hubcap Heaven in the historic building, and the business still operates there today.
The area of Broadway and East 55th was also a central location of ethnic entertainment. In 1913, the Olympia Theater opened as a vaudeville house and in 1918 was renovated to operate as a movie theater. In addition to the movies shown, the theater was home to a number of performances by the Polish Opera, Polka performances, and local bands. Also in the area was Bundy’s Music Center. In addition to hosting performances by a number of polka performers and opera singers, the center was where Chester Bundy, who recorded polka music for Bravo, Dart, and Columbia Records in the 1950s, began his career. A block away was the Hruby Conservatory of Music, which operated from 1918 to 1968. Today it is the Broadway School of Music & Art.
More important than the businesses of the Slavic Village neighborhood is the sense of community and deep connection to traditions. Beginning in 1978, the area started an annual Broadway Fair and Street Sale. Businesses would have sidewalk sales, live music, and plenty of ethnic food such as kielbasa and Hungarian horns. Around the same time the area began hosting an annual Harvest Festival, the majority of which took place on Fleet Avenue but was celebrated throughout the entire area. There is an annual Polish Constitution Day Parade, a celebration of the 1791 creation of the Polish Constitution.
Over the decades, many changes have been made to the Broadway and East 55th neighborhood; businesses have come and gone, the population has declined with suburban migration, and other ethnicities have moved into the area. Despite these changes, Slavic pride and traditions have remained strong and show no sign of disappearing.
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Shrine Church of Saint Stanislaus: The Heart of Polish Cleveland

2012-03-16T15:42:04+00:00

The Shrine Church of Saint Stanislaus is dedicated to St. Stanislaus, the bishop, martyr, and patron of Poland. It represents the history of the Polish community in Cleveland, Ohio since the mid 1800s. Cleveland's Bishop asked the Pastor of St. Adalbert in Berea to 'gather and care' for the Poles in Cleveland and Newburg who were living in the Flats and worshiping at the abandoned St. Mary church.
By the 1870s, the community grew rapidly as Amasa Stone sought to solve a labor dispute by recruiting workers from Poland to staff his Newburg Rolling Mill. Community members soon built the first Saint Stanislaus church on its present site on East 65th Street in 1882. This structure was replaced in the 1890s with a large brick Gothic cruciform design with two magnificent spires. The spires were toppled in an April, 1909 tornado that killed seven people in the neighborhood. The interior of the church remained intact with nearly two dozen stained glass windows, several statues, frescoed walls, and plaster engravings. Forty rows of hand-rubbed red oak pews and a wood carved pulpit adorn the nave of the church.
The parish and schools grew to serve the Polish community with elementary and high school programs which included language and culture instruction. The high school program merged with three other Cleveland Catholic schools to form Cleveland Central Catholic in 1969. The school remains in operation today.
St. Stanislaus remains the center of the Polish community in greater Cleveland. It hosts many events celebrating new and old world Polish achievements. Most notably, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, later to be Pope John Paul II, visited the church in 1969 to present relics of St. Stanislaus as a gift from Poland in thanks for Cleveland's consistent support. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa also visited in 2004.
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Polish Cultural Garden

2011-01-06T11:45:29+00:00

Located near the southwest corner of St. Clair and East Boulevard, the Polish Cultural Garden was dedicated in 1934 with the planting of an elm tree from Poland. Originally designed as a sunken, hexagonal court, the Polish Garden was designed with organic material from Poland.
Poles were one of Cleveland's largest nationality groups in the 20th century. Some arrived even earlier. In 1870, the first notable U.S. Census counted 77 Poles living in the city. The earliest Polish immigrants settled within the Czech community around Croton Street. Eventually, however, the Poles created their own settlement adjacent to Tod (E.65th) St. and what became Fleet Avenue. The area soon became known as Warszawa, after the capital city of Poland. Today, the area is known simply as Slavic Village today. Immigrants continued to move to Cleveland in the 1880s, increasing the Polish population considerably. Two more settlements grew up in the late 1880s and 1890s. The Poznan neighborhood was established around E. 79th St. and Superior Ave. and Kantowo arose in the Tremont area.
Cleveland's Polish community continued to grow with the city's need for workers. The largest influx occurred between 1900-14. The U.S. Census for 1920 records 35,024 Poles with several smaller neighborhoods having been settled by WWI: Josephatowo near E. 33rd St. and St. Clair Ave., Barbarowo at Denison Avenue, and along Madison Ave with other groups including Slovaks. All immigration after WWI was inconsequential and the Cleveland Polish community peaked in 1930 with a population of 36,668 foreign-born Poles.
The movement to the suburbs began as early as 1910. By 1970, only 6,234 Poles still resided within the city limits. The U.S. Census for 1990 estimated that only 1,635 Poles remained in the city, with Slavic Village being the community's main center.
At the center of the Polish Cultural Garden stands an octagonal fountain decorated with allegorical figures that represent music, literature, science and astronomy. It has an ornamental border of jumping fish and small carved turtles along its base. The fountain was dedicated to the daughter of 16th century poet Jan Kochanowski. The little girl's death at 2 ½ years of age prompted Kochanowski to write a series of 19 elegies. Fittingly, the fountain was built largely by the help of small donations from schoolchildren. It was dedicated in 1953.
Surrounding the central fountain are seven busts showing Polish notables. All the busts were dedicated between 1947 and 1966. Among the notables are 19th century composer and pianist Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), 16th century astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), and 20th century physicist and chemist Maria Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934).
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Saint John Cantius Catholic Church

2010-11-27T14:36:58+00:00

In the 1880s, Polish immigrants began settling in Tremont. Many of these new arrivals found work in the booming steel mills just down the hill in Cleveland’s industrial Flats. They frequently referred to their new neighborhood as Kantowo, a village in northern Poland that, before 1945, was part of Germany. By the late 19th Century, two other heavily Polish neighborhoods also existed in Cleveland: Warszawa (now known as Slavic Village) and Poznan (the area around East 79th Street and Superior Avenue).
Tremont’s new Polish residents established St. John Cantius Catholic Church in 1898, with services held initially in a refurbished streetcar barn at Professor Street and College Avenue. The rear portion of the structure was used as a school and residence for the pastors and the sisters of Saint Joseph. New structures—a combination church and school along with a separate parish house and convent—were erected in 1913. The current church, designed by architects Gabele & Potter, in what is often called the Polish Cathedral Style, was erected on the same site in 1925. The church’s namesake is Saint John Cantius (1390–1473), a Polish priest, scholar, philosopher, physicist and theologian, who was named patron of Poland and Lithuania in 1737, and canonized 1767 by Pope Clement XIII. Along with many other Cleveland churches (including Tremont’s Saint Augustine, Annunciation and Saint Michael), St. John Cantius shares a “mother church,” Saint Patrick’s, which was founded in Ohio City in 1853, six years after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland was established.
By 1908, the St. John Cantius congregation had grown to 400 families. Although today’s group is somewhat smaller, the church remains vibrant, celebrating masses daily in several languages. Other landmarks of the Polish community in Tremont (e.g., the Polish Library Home and the Polish Daily News) have disappeared. However, visitors and residents still enjoy hearty Polish meals at nearby Sokolowski's University Inn, which will celebrate its centenary in 2023. Saint John Cantius Church also is the site of Tremont’s Polish Festival, held each Labor Day weekend.
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