Tremont

TREMONT

Bounded on the North by the Cuyahoga River

Bounded on the South by Harvard/Denison

Bounded on the West by the Jennings Freeway

Bounded on the East by the Cuyahoga River

Click on Map to Enlarge

In 1818, the area now known as Tremont was a wooded plateau atop the Cuyahoga Valley. The early settlers were farmers from New England who wished to build their homes outside of Cleveland. Tremont was originally part of Old Brooklyn and the area was a section of Ohio City from 1836-1854. Cleveland University was founded in 1851 in what was then called Cleveland Hts. The University only lasted until 1853. The name was then changed to Lincoln Hts. to commemorate the area's role as the site of two Union Army camps during the Civil War. The Union Troops had set up the area for their northern operations. When Tremont School was constructed, the neighborhood officially received its current name. The current street names of Professor, College, University and Literary are what remains of the educational history of this neighborhood. Tremont's industrial base began with Lamson and Sessions Co. in 1869 on Scranton Road. Numerous other businesses provided employment to the new immigrants who settled in the area, including the Irish, Germans, Poles, Greeks, Syrians, Rusyns and Ukrainians. A total of 30 nationalities have lived or were living in Tremont as of 1994. Scenic views of the Cuyahoga River and the Cleveland University attracted prosperous residents to Tremont in the late 1800's. Jennings Avenue, currently West Fourteenth Street, was called the Gold Coast of Cleveland. The opening of the central Viaduct in 1888 provided a link across the Cuyahoga River to downtown. This opened Tremont to an influx of Eastern European immigrants who wanted housing close to jobs in the steel industry.

LINCOLN PARK is a public park located between W. 11th and W. 14th streets and Kenilworth and Starkweather Avenues. In 1850 Mrs. Thirsa Pelton purchased about 70 acres on Cleveland's south side with the idea of founding a girl's school. She died in 1853, before the school could be built, and her heirs surrounded "Pelton Park," as it was called then, with a high fence and locked the gates. Local residents repeatedly tore the fence down. In 1879, the city purchased the property from John G. Jennings for $50,000. Residents celebrated the opening of the park on 4 July 1880. By 1896, restored with new walks, a fountain, and a bandstand, the park was renamed Lincoln Square, and later Lincoln Park in honor of the Civil War encampment and hospital located in the neighborhood. In 1913 brewer Otto I. Leisy donated $50,000 to build a playground in the park, and in 1936 Lincoln Park was graded and landscaped under a WPA project. In the early 1950s a swimming pool was installed. In 1989, a community-based effort to revitalize the park and the Tremont area resulted in the construction of a $25,000 gazebo in the center.

Lincoln Park

MERRICK HOUSE on Starkweather Avenue was founded in 1919 by the National Catholic War Council. Merrick House offered assistance such as English language classes to the immigrants that were making the south side of Cleveland their home. The settlement originally emphasized citizenship and included cultural and recreational activities. During World War II, Merrick House extended nursery and daycare hours and added civil-defense and first-aid programs, scrap drives, and a victory garden. Poles, Slovaks, Ukrainians and those peoples from the Carpathian Mountain area (Rusyns, Ruthenians, Lemkos) of Austria-Hungary predominated in the Tremont neighborhood until the 1950s, when there was an influx of Puerto Ricans.

Merrick House

The LINCOLN PARK BATHS opened in 1921 on Starkweather Ave. The baths were built to serve a community whose housing lacked modern plumbing. There were separate entrances for men and women and the patrons paid between a penny and a nickel for the use of the facilities. These are now condominiums.

Lincoln Park Bathhouse

There were two important HALLS before the 1920's, the Heights Mannerchor Hall and Korenys Hall. Heights Mannerchor Hall was located on the corner of Starkweather Avenue, West 10th St. and Jefferson Ave. Korenys Hall was located at W. 11th St. and Literary Road. The others were built in the early 1920's, The Ukranian National Home, The Polish National Home, and Holy Ghost Hall, the Ukranian Labor Temple, St. Augustine Hall, and St. John Cantius Hall. The Ukrainian Labor Temple was on Auburn Avenue and West 11th St. The Ukranian National Home was situated on West 14th St. across from the Jennings Theater at Fairfield Ave. The Polish National Home was at the corner of Kenilworth Ave. and West 11th St. Lemko Hall was on W. 11th St. and was founded in 1931 by the immigrants from Lemkovina. Lemko Hall was used for the preservation and association of the Slavic people. The Lemko Association showed films of their homeland, and also had banquets, dinners and dances. Lemko Hall was the site of the wedding reception in the film, The Deer Hunter, and in 1987, was converted to commercial space and condominiums. The Ukrainian Museum is located on Kenilworth Avenue. This museum has one of the finest collections of material related to Ukrainian immigration in the United States.

Koreny's Hall - later known as Lemko Hall

Ukranian Labor Hall (photo by Laura Hine)

Ukranian Museum and Archive (photo by Laura Hine)

Most of the children attended TREMONT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL and later, Lincoln High School. Tremont Elementary School was located in the center of the Southside, on West 10th St., between Kenilworth and Jefferson Avenues. The original school was a brick school, with oak floors three stories high, oak rails, no elevator, and the center of the building was a well where one could look down to the first floor. A new addition to the school was built in the early 1920's. It was connected to the older building. Classes were primarily academic along with manual training in woodcraft for the boys and needlecrafts for the girls. The gymnasium was large, and the gym teachers taught calisthenics and sports. There was a large playground located on the south side of the building facing Jefferson Ave. and it was large enough to accommodate all of the children. Tremont was the first school to experiment using students as safety patrol street crossing guards. The plan worked so well at Tremont that it received national attention and was introduced on a country-wide scale.

Tremont Elementary School

Lincoln High School

The UNION GOSPEL PRESS was located on W. 7th Street. It began as Cleveland University, but only remained until 1853. The building hosted many other educational endeavors including the Humiston Institute. The facility later housed The Union Gospel Press. This building was recently purchased by a group of developers and will soon be apartments, condos and retail space. It is a red-brick, four-story building. Its entrance is not on W. 7th, but at Thurman Ave. The W. 7th St. side was an almost blank brick wall. The width of the building covered the area between W. 7th St. and Thurman Ave. On the Thurman Ave. side was a loading dock. There was a tall iron fence and gate bordering Thurman Ave. The UNION GOSPEL PRESS was a magazine shipped to all parts of the Christian world by subscription.

Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

Union Gospel Press Bldg.

Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

Inside the Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

In the courtyard of the Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

Side of the Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

Inside Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

Back of the Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

Courtyard of the Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

Union Gospel Press (photo by Laura Hine)

Interior of Union Gospel Press (photo by Laura Hine)

Union Gospel Press (photo by Laura Hine)

Rear gate of the Union Gospel Press (photo by Laura Hine)

Union Gospel Press (photo by Laura Hine)

Renovated condos on the north end of Union Gospel Press Bldg. (photo by Laura Hine)

THE PROJECTS AKA VALLEY VIEW were located at the end of W. 7th St., from Starkweather Ave. south to the bottom of the hill, where the Hadlow Farm area started. There were extensions off W. 6th St. and W. 5th St. The central offices were located in a building on the corners of Starkweather Ave. and West 7th St. The projects were a great help to the poor man in the days prior to World War II. The housing projects were built in the later 1930's. These projects have recently been torn down and rebuilt.

TOPOGRAPHY AND STREETS

The Southside (Tremont) had 3 levels: West 14th to West 10th, then West 7th to West 5th, and then the lowest was West 3rd. Hadlow Farm was located down in the valley.

Two of my favorite streets on the Southside (Tremont) are Holmden Avenue (also known as Dutch Hill because of the large Dutch settlement there), and Clarence Court, which is no longer there. Clarence Court was down the hill behind St. Theodosius. Running alongside St. Theodosius Church were St. Tikhon Street and St. Olga Street. Here are some images of those streets:

Clarence Court

The view behind St. Theodosius showing Clarence Ct. in a painting by Cora Oltman

This image shows Clarence Court and St. Theodosius along with a view of what was called Clarence Lake. Clarence Lake was located where Henry Hadlow's "Hadlow Farm" was.

This view is from the Grasselli Chemical Co. weigh station. You can see St. Theodosius in the background up on top of the hill.

St. Olga Street

St. Tikhon Street

St. Olga Street

This image shows St. Theodosius and the valley below. You can see St. Tikhon and St. Olga Streets on either side of it coming down the hill.

Holmden Avenue aka Dutch Hill

Holmden Hill

Holmden Hill today (photo by Laura Hine)

By the 1980s, Tremont was an isolated neighborhood in which 68% of the housing had been built before 1900. The population shrank from 36,686 in 1920 to 10,304 in 1980. The closing of the Clark Avenue Bridge and construction of highways I-71 and I-490 cut the area off from the rest of Cleveland. Merrick House Social Settlement, founded in 1919 as a neighborhood settlement, served as a community focal point for Tremont, and the Tremont West Development Corp. was organized in 1979 to revitalize the area. By the early 1990s, Tremont was known for its restaurants and a growing artist community. There are also trendy shops, galleries, and restaurants located along Professor Street and around Lincoln Park.

MAJOR ETHNIC GROUPS:

Any that you can think of, but mostly English, Irish, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Belarusians, Carpatho Rusyn, Ukrainian, Slovenians, Greeks, Syrian, Lebanese, Dutch, and Great Russians.

NEARBY CEMETERIES: For a Spreadsheet showing where records can be found for the cemeteries mentioned below, see this site: http://usgenwebsites.org/OHCuyahoga/Cemeteries/index.html

Scranton Cemetery

Brookmere Cemetery

Denison Cemetery

Monroe Cemetery

Willet Cemetery

Brooklyn Heights Cemetery

Riverside Cemetery

Lutheran Cemetery

CHURCHES: Click here to see church histories and possibly pictures of the churches below

https://sites.google.com/site/faqcuyahogactyresearch/cleveland-pastors-and-their-churches/cleveland-individual-church-histories

Many of the churches in Tremont are on national historic landmark registers. These include St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral (1912), Pilgrim Congregational (1893), St. Michael the Archangel (1888) and St. Augustine Roman Catholic (1896). Saint Theodosius is the oldest Russian Orthodox Church in Cleveland. It is located on 733 Starkweather Avenue overlooking the Cuyahoga River Valley. The churches are listed below in chronological order of founding. The ethnicity that was instrumental in founding the church is listed if known.