By the 1920s, Cleveland's growing Jewish community approached 10% of the city's population. As with Jewish enclaves in other major American cities of the era, the Jewish-American community of Cleveland began spreading into the suburbs. B'nai Jeshurun, became the first to make the move when in 1919 the congregation decided to relocate out of the city proper and into the nearby suburb of Cleveland Heights. The new building on Mayfield Road held over 3,000 worshipers and included a gymnasium, a banquet hall, and an entertainment hall, as well as a library. The congregation also retained its old building on East 55th Street for other social events before the existing structure became Shiloh Baptist Church.

Cleveland's Jewish population went back decades. Fleeing religious persecution in Europe and seeking greater job opportunities, Hungarian Jewish immigrants to the United States flocked to large cities. The western side of Cleveland attracted to pre-existing Jewish settlements and manufacturing jobs. The old German synagogues of earlier settlers simply would not do, necessitating buildings for distinctly Hungarian congregations. In 1866, Hungarian Jewish immigrants began meeting in their own homes, and then in Gallagher’s Hall on Erie and Superior to pray, partially because they simply could not afford the fees the German synagogues required. In 1906, the Hungarian Jewish community of B'nai Jeshurun constructed their first permanent synagogue on East 55th Street and called it home for two decades.

B’nai Jeshurun’s congregation moved into the new temple in March of 1926, and Rabbi Abraham Nowak consecrated the structure in August of the same year: by now, over a thousand Jews called B’nai Jeshurun home. It was also at this time that B’nai Jeshurun gained its famous moniker— the Temple on the Heights, or more simply, Heights Temple. In comparison, the second Jewish congregation to move to the suburbs came nearly 20 years later when Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, Cleveland's oldest Jewish congregation, moved to Beachwood in 1947.

The congregation elected its first Cleveland-born Head Rabbi in 1934, Rudolph Rosenthal. At the time of Rosenthal’s election, the Temple on the Heights served more than 1,000 families, had more than 600 youths in its education program, and was home to one of the largest Conservative congregations in the entire United States and would continue to grow over the next three decades. By the late 1960s, further suburbanization of the Jewish-American community moved congregants farther east. It was obvious the still-vibrant synagogue would need to move once again.

In 1978, only a few years after the 110th anniversary of B’nai Jeshurun’s founding, some 400 members of the congregation participated in a ceremonial groundbreaking of the temple’s new location on Fairmount Boulevard, in Pepper Pike, further east than Cleveland Heights and truly suburban. In late 1979 Rabbi Herbert Schwartz consecrated the new temple on the first night of Hanukkah.

On October 30, 2016, B’nai Jeshurun, Cleveland's third-oldest continuously operated Jewish congregation, capped off its 150th anniversary with a gala. The success of the Temple on the Heights in smoothing its congregants' transition to suburban life and the congregation's continued vitality over the past century and a half cements B'nai Jeshurun as a mainstay of the Cleveland metropolitan area.

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Many people don't know the difference between a Christian Scientist and a Scientologist--other than perhaps to hazard a guess that Tom Cruise is a member of one or the other of these two religious groups. Clevelanders do, however, know a beautifully designed church when they see one. The Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist, located until 2016 on the southeast corner of Lake Avenue and West 117th Street, was not only one of Cleveland's most beautifully designed churches, but, as it exterior sides formed an octagon, it was also one of the city's most uniquely-designed churches.

The Fifth Church of Christ served as the home of a Christian Science congregation from 1927-1989. Christian Science is a Christian religious sect that was founded in 1866 by Mary Baker Eddy, a New Englander who was influenced by the religious fervor of America's Second Great Awakening. Soon after the religion's founding, Christian Scientists began to appear in Cleveland. In 1891, Christian Scientists built their first church in Cleveland on the corner of Kennard (East 46th) Street and Cedar Avenue and appropriately named it the First Church of Christ, Scientist. Three additional churches--named the Second, Third and Fourth Churches, were built on the east side of Cleveland during the period 1891-1914.

In 1915, Cleveland's Christian Scientists crossed the river and formed their first west side congregation. The congregation--appropriately named the Fifth Church of Christ, had as its first permanent house of worship a church built on the northeast corner of West 58th Street and Franklin Avenue in 1889, home originally to the Franklin Congregational Church. That church served the Fifth Church of Christ congregation for ten years. In 1925 the congregation purchased land for a new church to be located on the southeast corner of Lake Avenue and West 117th Street, just across the municipal corporation line from Lakewood. Architect Frank W. Bail (who also designed the majestic Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court building on East 22nd Street in Cleveland and the elegant Lake Shore Hotel (now LakeShore Towers) on Edgewater Drive in Lakewood) was hired to design the new Fifth Church of Christ.

Bail, a talented architect, began his design of the new Fifth Church of Christ much like other Christian Science churches built in the early twentieth century-- an ornate temple in neoclassical style. However, Bail modified the traditional round temple style of these other Christian Scientist churches, giving the new Fifth Church of Christ an octagonal shape, making it unique among the sacred structures of Cleveland. Bail also utilized some unusual materials for the church's exterior, including Birmingham buff sandstone and Nebo marble. Construction of the new church was completed in 1927 and thereafter it served the Fifth Church of Christ congregation for more than 60 years.

In 1989, the Fifth Church of Christ church closed its doors and a grocery store chain, which purchased the church, threatened to demolish it. When nearby residents protested, then Ward-17 councilman (and later Cleveland Housing Court Judge) Raymond Pianka led an effort to have the church declared an historic landmark and to enact legislation to protect it, and other historic landmarks in Cleveland, against "demolition by neglect." The grocery chain eventually bowed to the community pressure and, in 2002, donated the historic sacred structure to the City of Cleveland.

Although Ray Pianka's efforts in the 1990s saved the church from destruction then, the historic building on Lake Avenue was once again threatened with demolition in 2014. And this time, there was no one around to save it from the wrecking ball. The City of Cleveland contended it did not have the funds to repair and maintain this unique historic church and sold it to a local developer who proposed to build a mixed use development on the site. A ground roots community effort was made to save at a part of the historic structure, but that ultimately failed because of estimated preservation costs. In October 2016, the Fifth Church of Christ Scientist was torn down.

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On the north side of South Park Boulevard, just east of Lee Road, there is a solitary grave which is the final resting place of an American Revolutionary War soldier--Jacob Russell. Next to the grave is a large stone with a bronze plaque commemorating Russell's life. The plaque, placed there in 1926 by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), is the oldest historic marker in Shaker Heights.

Jacob Russell was born in Connecticut in 1746. In May 1775, just weeks after the battles of Lexington and Concord, twenty-nine year old Jacob, who was married and had two young children at the time, enlisted in the 8th Company of the Connecticut Continentals. He served in this unit for five months and was discharged in October 1775. Little else is known of his Revolutionary War military service.

But the story of Jacob Russell did not end when his military service came to an end. Sometime around 1800, Jacob, his wife Esther, and their by then ten children moved west from Windsor, Connecticut to Jefferson County, New York, located on the eastern shores of Lake Ontario. A little over a decade later, the family moved west again, settling in northeast Ohio in 1813. It was a dangerous trek in that year, as the United States was at war with Great Britain, and northeast Ohio was in the middle of the war's western front.

The Russell family survived the War of 1812, and were among the earliest permanent settlers of Warrensville Township. Among their neighbors was Daniel Warren for whom the township was later named. The 1820 federal census found the Russell family living in Warrensville Township, constituting 26 of the 133 persons counted in the census--almost 20 percent of the township population.

In 1821, at age 75, Jacob Russell died. It was said that his son Ralph was so distraught over the death of his father that he turned to religion for solace and became a member of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance, better known as the Shakers. Following his conversion, Ralph Russell founded the Shaker North Union Colony on Russell family farmlands in what is now the City of Shaker Heights.

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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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In the March 1963 edition of Cosmopolitan, a feature article titled "The Good Life in Shaker Heights" declared the spotlighted residential community to be the closest thing to a utopian society as could be found anywhere in the U.S. Using the most recent Bureau of the Census figures as evidence, the author portrayed the suburb as both an idyllic society and the new demographic face of prosperity in the United States. While the Cleveland suburb seemed an unlikely candidate for this distinction, it was statistically the wealthiest community in the country.

The appeal of Shaker Heights, however, spoke to something larger. Life in the suburb reflected and embodied a pervasive conservatism that characterized 1950s culture. Shaker Heights was not an emerging city. The homes were not modern. There were few large estates with multimillion dollar mansions, and the city lacked a night life, celebrities, and cultural institutions. Displays of extreme excess were frowned upon, and a very suburban-esque semblance of uniformity permeated the affluent community. Churches, country clubs, and schools acted as the centers of the community. The streets were quiet. There were no slums. Consumerism flourished, and the troubles of unemployment and crime were virtually nonexistent. Even the problems associated with race relations that had become increasingly pronounced over the prior decade seemed to have passed the utopian city by. Within this context, the designation of Shaker Heights as the wealthiest community in the United States reaffirmed the ideals associated with both suburban living and the American dream.

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