The East Woodland urban renewal project was proposed in the late 1950s, though it was officially approved in 1960. The area between East 79th Street, East 71st Street, the Nickel Plate Road, Platt Avenue, and the Pennsylvania Railroad was in a sorry state in the middle of the 20th century. This particular urban renewal project is unique because it was rezoned to make the land available for industrial use, and then back again to its original intent of renewing the urban neighborhood for residential use. East Woodland represents the tension between two big needs in the city of Cleveland in the mid-20th century: conserving residential neighborhoods and maintaining industry within the city limits.

The East Woodland Project saw very little activity for ten years after its inception. Problems that faced the earlier Longwood urban renewal project, located farther west on Woodland Avenue, raised concerns over whether the East Woodland project would be successful. The major concern was how the project would attract people back into the city. People were already flocking to the suburbs because there were lower crime rates as well as better opportunities for employment. The concerns grew so much that the project was halted and reframed to address another concern. Industry was leaving to suburbs as well and, in an effort to attract new industry and keep manufacturers that were already in the area, East Woodland was to change its purpose in 1965 to become an industrial renewal area.

The change created a new problem, however. The eighty residents within the proposed area had already put money into fixing up their homes on the promise that federal funding was going to rejuvenate the area as a place of residence. Changing the land to industrial use would also evict them from their homes. Despite their outcries and a legal battle led by James Scribner and his wife, a court ruled that the project was to be industrial. Nevertheless, the people of the neighborhood won a pledge from Mayor Carl B. Stokes in 1968 to return the intent of the project to residential in nature. Mayor Stokes was sympathetic to the cause of the people because he grew up only a few streets away in the Outhwaite Homes and was well aware of the poor state of East Side neighborhoods because he drove daily on Woodland Avenue between his Larchmere Boulevard home and City Hall. Land development would not officially start until 1971, more than a decade after the original announcement of the project.

Industrial space within the city was still a concern as the 1970s dawned. Industrial leaders in the area took action to work with their community and formed the Woodland East Community Organization (WECO) in 1971. Some of these businesses included Van Dorn Iron works, Empire Plating, Eaton Industries, and Ramsey Labs. The original charter included around 500 acres between Woodland Avenue and Buckeye Road to the north, Kinsman Road to the south, East 93rd and Woodhill Road to the east, and East 75th to the west. WECO was dedicated not just to reviving the neighborhood economically, but to keeping the area safe for residents and businesses. The WECO safety patrol in conjunction with the Cleveland Police reduced crime in the area. WECO was also successful in keeping business in the area. Orlando Baking was persuaded by Mayor Dennis Kucinich and WECO to stay in the area when the firm was considering a move to suburban Solon in the late 1970s. The WECO project was not funded publicly with tax dollars, but rather from the private means of the industries involved. The efforts of WECO helped revitalize industry and community in East Woodland but ultimately could not halt the broader problem of suburban, Sunbelt, and overseas competition for manufacturing that decimated the industrial base of Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities.

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In 1888, Charles Eisenman and Jacob Kastriner pooled their resources to create a company that would provide boys with quality shirts and washtogs. The company was originally named the Kastriner and Eisenmann company but underwent a number of name changes before finally in 1914 settling on Kaynee, a phonetic spelling of the founders' surname initials.

From the very beginning Kaynee offered employees a number of benefits and services that are unheard of in most companies of today’s world. There was a staffed day care free for all employees and workers could visit the children on breaks. In addition to a large cafeteria and kitchen for employees, there was also a recreation room for various indoor games and activities, most notably exercise. A large area was used primarily as a dance floor but could also be transformed into a motion picture theater. The company used this area to host a number of dances and concerts for their employees in efforts to promote company loyalty.

The company also invested in improving the welfare and education of all employees. Medical and dental offices were located on the premises, providing inexpensive and convenient healthcare for employees and their family. Employees could choose to participate in continuation school, the expense taken care of by the Kaynee Company, in order to further their education in avenues related to the business and work they were performing.

In 1915, the company donated a play area to the neighborhood, equipped with tennis courts, a baseball diamond, and sand boxes for younger children. The company looked to improve conditions under which children in the district grew up. This generosity was not altruistic as much as it was a strategic business decision. A company representative stated, “All that Kaynee does is done in the cause of better business. Children who are brought up in the open grow into better men and women, and the better men and women are, the healthier they are- the better employees they will make.”

Kaynee was also able to find a way to promote itself while simultaneously supporting children’s education and astuteness. From 1940 to 1953, Quiz Kids was a popular weekly show in which a panel of children were asked a series of trivia questions and gave very detailed answers without the help of calculators or notes. Kaynee used the show to promote their line of boys clothing in commercials and started a new Quiz Kids line. Kaynee also sponsored a contest for boys to write in why they wanted to be a quiz kid and the winner would be featured on the show.

Despite the plethora of welfare programs available to employees, problems arose. Workers began pushing for unionization at the behest of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. On November 8, 1934, workers began a strike for unionization. A majority of the employees refused to strike or join the union and was thus susceptible to attacks by strikers. Despite what union leaders claimed, a large number of employees did not walk out; the plant entrances were barred by the picket line and they were unable to begin work. On November 12, Kaynee announced the closing of its Cleveland plants and cancelled all orders placed for delivery. The decision came in the wake of brutal attacks on their employees when riding to and from work and even at their homes. The strike ended January 1935 when the two entities reached an agreement that provided collective bargaining, reinstatement of workers without discrimination, equalization of work, and a reconsideration of wage rates.

The company quickly resumed production and continued operations peacefully until the 1950s. Aetna International bought a large share of stock in 1952 and later sold it to Piedmont Shirt Co. of Greenville, South Carolina. Piedmont bought out the company in 1958 and soon closed both plants (the other being in Williamsburg, Kentucky), putting around 600 employees out of work. The company is still in operation today but is known as Rifle Kaynee and is based in New Jersey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The story of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969 - the event that sparked pop songs, lit the imagination of an entire nation, and badly tarnished a city's reputation - is built more on myths than reality. Yes, an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River - polluted from decades of industrial waste - caught fire on a Sunday morning in June 1969 near the Republic Steel mill, causing about $100,000 worth of damage to two railroad bridges. Initially the fire drew little attention, either locally or nationally. The '69 fire was not even the first time that the river burned. Dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, the river had caught fire on several other occasions.

The picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire that ended up in Time Magazine a month later - a truly arresting image showing flames leaping up from the water, completely engulfing a ship - was actually from a much more serious fire in November 1952. No picture of the '69 river fire is known to exist.

Throughout much of Cleveland's history, water pollution did not trouble the city's residents very much. Instead, water pollution was viewed as a necessary consequence of the industry that had brought prosperity to the city. This attitude began to change in the 1960s as ideas associated with what would become known as environmentalism took shape. In 1968, Cleveland residents overwhelmingly passed a $100 million bond initiative to fund the Cuyahoga's cleanup. Also, by this time deindustrialization was somewhat alleviating the pollution problem, as factories closed or cut back operations. Ironically, the city and its residents were beginning to take responsibility for the cleanliness of the river in the years before the infamous fire of 1969.

The '69 fire, then, was not really the terrifying climax of decades of pollution, but rather the last gasp of an industrial river whose role was beginning to change. Nevertheless, Cleveland became a symbol of environmental degradation. The Time article contributed to this, as did the notoriety of Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes. Stokes, who was the first black mayor of a major city when elected in 1967, became deeply involved with the issue, holding a press conference at the site of the fire the following day and testifying before Congress - including his brother US Representative Louis Stokes - to urge greater federal involvement in pollution control. The Stokes brothers' advocacy played a part in the passage of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972. In Cleveland, a number of Cleveland State University students celebrated the inaugural Earth Day in 1970 by marching from campus to the river to protest pollution.

Even though it has been misunderstood, the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire did help bring about positive change. The river's water quality improved during the following decades, and business investors capitalized on this by converting parts of the Flats' abandoned industrial landscape into an entertainment district featuring restaurants, nightclubs, and music venues.

Much of the industry that both made Cleveland rich and caused its river to burn may never be coming back, but Clevelanders are meeting this challenge by reshaping their city to reflect its current realities.

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