Slavic Village

12 Locations | Curated by CSU Center for Public History + Digital Humanities

In the late 19th and early 20th century, much of Cleveland’s booming Polish population settled just a few miles from downtown to establish an ethnic enclave. Roughly situated on a ridge between the low-lying, rapidly industrializing “flats” of the Cuyahoga River and Kingsbury Run in the vicinity of Fleet and Broadway Avenues, the area came to be known as Warszawa or Little Warsaw and was one of the largest Polish communities in the country. The adjoining area, called Karlin, became home to many Czech immigrants. These communities owed their immigrant-led transformation to the rise of industry.

The period between 1900 and 1930 saw an influx of heavy industry in the vicinity of Warszawa and Karlin: Republic Steel, Otis Steel, and Corrigan-McKinney Steel built sprawling mills in the Flats to either side of Clark Avenue, while companies like Standard Oil, Canfield Oil, Kaynee, Grabler Manufacturing, Cleveland Worsted Mills, Empire Plow, Cleveland Frog and Crossing Company, and others erected still more plants within walking distance of the thousands of closely packed houses along Warszawa’s and Karlin’s streets. Over the years, this area also became home to Cleveland’s oldest amusement park and one of the largest Polish American-led financial institutions in the country.

After World War II, Warszawa and Karlin, like many of Cleveland’s older neighborhoods, experienced a downswing brought on by suburbanization and deindustrialization. By the 1970s, the decline of factory jobs was steep and severe. Many immigrants and especially children of immigrants were joining the exodus to the suburbs or following jobs relocating to the Sunbelt states. Parma, Garfield Heights, and other suburbs siphoned Polish- and Czech-Americans from the “old neighborhood.” Ethnic churches, businesses, and community events followed the migration. In response, in 1977 Ted Sliwinski, a Polish-American attorney, spearheaded a campaign to recast several blocks of Fleet Avenue in the nostalgic Polish Hylander style. He even coined a new name for the neighborhood—Slavic Village—which mimicked other ethnocentric enclaves like Columbus’s German Village that were essential focal points of efforts to revitalize inner cities. However, unlike Hungarian-dominated Buckeye or Italian-specific Little Italy, Sliwinski’s neighborhood included large contingents of multiple ethnicities, mainly Polish and Czech, but also Slovak and assorted others. Slavic Village as a new place identity catalyzed considerable revitalization and Slavic-themed community events, but the name is not fully embraced by many remaining ethnic residents who identify more closely with a specific nationality. While the area is no longer dominated by the Polish and Czech populations, more than a few traces of ethnic identification and their cultural legacy remain.

At the turn of the 20th century, Cleveland already had its own version of today’s Donald Trump. Oliver Mead Stafford may have come from money, but he also had a talent for making and raising it, while he ceaselessly strived to keep up with the Joneses—or more precisely, the Rockefellers, Wades and…
View Story | Show on Map

In the early 1880s, an idea arose in the Lodge Bratri v Kruhu of the Czech Slovak Benevolent Association that people of Bohemian nationality needed a community building dedicated to their societies and culture. In August 1887, Bohemian representatives met to discuss the possibility of creating such…
View Story | Show on Map

If you are driving south on East 55th Street near its intersection with Broadway Avenue, you will notice on the left at 3289 East 55th Street a beautiful art-deco style grey limestone building that seems oddly out of place with the single family houses that surround it. The building, which has…
View Story | Show on Map

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…
View Story | Show on Map

One could easily mistake the recent proliferation of microbreweries and brew pubs springing up on what often seem to be every other block in Cleveland as a modern and unique phenomenon. All of this has occurred here before, however, and with even more vigor and success than today’s upstarts are…
View Story | Show on Map

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…
View Story | Show on Map

April 21, 1909 started out like any other day in Cleveland but that was quickly to change. Around noon the sky over the city darkened and the temperature dropped rapidly. A few minutes later at 12:36, wind speeds increased rapidly, creating a deadly tornado that would tear a path through Cleveland…
View Story | Show on Map

In this age of faster, higher coasters and parks like Cedar Point and King’s Island within a few hours drive, it is easy to forget some of the early amusement parks that once populated Northeast Ohio. The first such attraction for the city of Cleveland was Forest City Park in what is now the Slavic…
View Story | Show on Map

With research support from the Charles M. and Helen M. Brown Memorial Foundation, Slavic Village Development Foundation, and Third Federal Foundation.

Show Comments