Glenville is a
neighborhood on the East Side of
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
. To the north, it borders the
streetcar suburb of
Bratenahl, the
Cleveland Memorial Shoreway
The Cleveland Memorial Shoreway, often shortened to "the Shoreway", is a limited-access freeway in Cleveland and Bratenahl, Ohio. It closely follows the shore of Lake Erie and connects the east and west sides of Cleveland via the Main Avenue Bri ...
, and the
Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also h ...
shore, encompassing the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve. To the east, it borders the suburb of
East Cleveland, and to the south, it borders the neighborhoods of
Hough Hough may refer to:
* Hamstringing, or severing the Achilles tendon of an animal
* the leg or shin of an animal (in the Scots language), from which the dish potted hough is made
* Hough (surname)
Communities United Kingdom
* Hough, Alderley E ...
and
University Circle
University Circle is a district in the neighborhood of University on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. One of America's densest concentrations of cultural attractions and performing arts venues, it includes such world-class institutions as the C ...
. Glenville borders the
Collinwood
Collinwood is a historical area in the northeast part of Cleveland, Ohio. Originally a village in Euclid Township, it was annexed by the city in 1910. Collinwood grew around the rail yards of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway (now C ...
area to the northeast at East 134th Street, and
St. Clair–Superior to the west at
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and the
Cleveland Cultural Gardens in
Rockefeller Park.
History
The Glenville neighborhood was founded in 1870 as an independent village. Until 1904, it also included the now adjacent lakeside village of
Bratenahl, Ohio. Bratenahl departed from Glenville during the city of Cleveland's annexation of Glenville in 1904.
[Bratenahl](_blank)
Retrieved 11 December 2018. In its early years, Glenville had been a small village, serving mainly as a resort community to Cleveland's upper-middle class residents. It was also home to the Glenville Race Track (harness racing) and the Cleveland Country Club.
[CWRU Encyclopedia of Cleveland History](_blank)
/ref> Following WWI, developers invested in Glenville with the rapid construction of single and multi-family homes throughout the Cleveland neighborhood, turning the once quiet village into a bustling inner city neighborhood.
From a period beginning shortly after its annexation in 1904 and into the 1950s, Glenville was predominantly a Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
neighborhood with a small African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
population.
At its peak, Jews made up over 90% of Glenville's residents. The neighborhood's large Jewish influence during the time of its development was most notable along E.105th street, where dozens of Jewish owned stores, bakeries, kosher butchers, and other businesses lined the street. Several synagogues were built throughout the neighborhood, most of which are used today as African American churches. By the mid 1950s, the neighborhood's Jewish population began to relocate from Glenville to adjacent eastern suburbs. Similarly to surrounding inner city neighborhoods, Glenville rapidly turned into an African-American neighborhood
African-American neighborhoods or black neighborhoods are types of ethnic enclaves found in many cities in the United States. Generally, an African American neighborhood is one where the majority of the people who live there are African American ...
.
In the 1960s, racial integration saw an accompanying civil unrest in the neighborhood, which reached its climax in the 1968 Glenville Shootout. Like much of the violence associated with civil unrest during the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
in other major US cities as well as in the adjacent Hough Hough may refer to:
* Hamstringing, or severing the Achilles tendon of an animal
* the leg or shin of an animal (in the Scots language), from which the dish potted hough is made
* Hough (surname)
Communities United Kingdom
* Hough, Alderley E ...
neighborhood, racial tensions were a catalyst for an ensuing demographic shift.
Today, Glenville is predominantly African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
. While having been so for over a half century - being one of Cleveland's most visible examples of poverty, crime and urban decay - Glenville has in the early 21st century gained more positive national media attention, particularly in its high school football
High school football (french: football au lycée) is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both countries, but its popularity is declining, part ...
team, which has rapidly become one of the better known preparatory programs in Ohio as well as the nation.
Education
Glenville High School
Glenville High School is a public high school in the Glenville area on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. The school is part of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. The school originally resided at the former Oliver Wendell Holmes school ( ...
and its feeder schools serve the community at large.
Parks
Glenville is bordered on the northwest by Gordon Park Gordon Park may refer to:
Places
* Gordon Park, Cleveland, a city park located on the lakefront
*Gordon Park, Milwaukee, a county park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
*Gordon Park, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia
* Gordon Park, Zimbabwe
P ...
(part of the Cleveland Lakefront State Park district) and on the entirety of its immediate western edge by the winding Rockefeller Park. Built on land donated to the city by John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was ...
in 1897, the wooded 276 acres, through which a section of Martin Luther King Boulevard runs, is known for its historic greenhouse and the Cultural Gardens, and is the largest park located completely within the City of Cleveland limits.
Notable people
Notable residents of Glenville include:
* Leon Bibb, WEWS
WEWS-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with ABC. It has been owned by the E. W. Scripps Company since its inception in 1946, making it one of two stations that have been built and signed on by ...
television news anchor
* Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Cleveland-based hip-hop/rap group
*Walter Fovargue
Walter George Fovargue (October 13, 1882 – March 27, 1963) was an American professional golfer, club maker, and golf course architect. In 1916, he was one of the founding members of the PGA of America. He won the 1917 Northwest Open and finished ...
, professional golfer and golf course architect
* Benny Friedman, NFL Hall of Fame football player and coachHow Benny Friedman made football a quarterback's game , Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle
/ref>
* Abram Garfield, architect and son of US President James Abram Garfield
* Willie Gilbert, playwright
* Ted Ginn Jr., NFL player for New Orleans Saints
The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...
*Steve Harvey
Broderick Stephen Harvey Sr. Also aired August 16, 2015. (born January 17, 1957) is an American television host, producer, actor, and comedian. He hosts '' The Steve Harvey Morning Show'', '' Family Feud'', ''Celebrity Family Feud,'' the Miss ...
, actor
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
and comedian
* Wilson Hirschfeld, journalist
* Cardale Jones, quarterback who led Ohio State Buckeyes
The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tre ...
to NCAA Football Championship in 2015, current player for the Los Angeles Chargers
The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, and ...
*Jerome Lawrence
Jerome Lawrence (born Jerome Lawrence Schwartz; July 14, 1915 – February 29, 2004) was an American playwright and author. After graduating from the Ohio State University in 1937 and the University of California, Los Angeles in 1939, Lawrence pa ...
, playwright
* Hal Lebovitz, sports journalist/editor (most notably for his work in ''The Plain Dealer
''The Plain Dealer'' is the major newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. In fall 2019, it ranked 23rd in U.S. newspaper circulation, a significant drop since March 2013, when its circulation ranked 17th daily and 15th on Sunday.
As of Ma ...
'')
*Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.
Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifet ...
, famed track and field athlete who won four Gold Medals in the 1936 Summer Olympic Games
The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-sp ...
.
*Rich Paul
Rich Paul (born December 16, 1981) is an American sports agent based in Cleveland, Ohio. He founded Klutch Sports Group which represents a number of prominent NBA players. Paul was named by ''Forbes'' as one of the world's most powerful sports ...
, sports agent
*Jerry Siegel
Jerome Siegel ( ; October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996) Roger Stern. ''Superman: Sunday Classics: 1939–1943'' DC Comics/ Kitchen Sink Press, Inc./Sterling Publishing; 2006 was an American comic book writer. He is the co-creator of Superman, i ...
, fanzine editor and comic book writer, co-creator of the first comic book superhero Superman.
*Joe Shuster
Joseph Shuster (; July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992), professionally known simply as Joe Shuster, was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in ''Action Comics'' #1 (c ...
, cartoonist and comic book artist, co-creator of the first comic book superhero Superman.
*Troy Smith
Troy James Smith (born July 20, 1984) is a former American football quarterback. He played college football at Ohio State, was recognized as an All-American, and won the Heisman Trophy in 2006. He was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the fi ...
, 2006 Heisman Trophy Award winner, former quarterback
The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...
for the Ohio State Buckeyes
The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tre ...
, and current quarterback of the Omaha Nighthawks
The Omaha Nighthawks were a professional American football team based in Omaha, Nebraska, which played in the United Football League, joining the league as an expansion team in 2010. During their first season, the Nighthawks played their home gam ...
of the United Football League
*Donte Whitner
Donte Demetrius Whitner Sr. (born July 24, 1985) is a former professional American football strong safety. He played college football at Ohio State, and was drafted by the Buffalo Bills eighth overall in the 2006 NFL Draft. Whitner has also ...
, NFL player for the Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...
* Michael R. White, former mayor of Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, Ohio
*Pierre Woods
Pierre Woods (born January 6, 1982) is a former American football linebacker. He was signed by the New England Patriots as an undrafted free agent in 2006. He played college football at Michigan.
Early years
Woods was a two-year letterman at Gle ...
, NFL University of Michigan linebacker and player for the New England Patriots
See also
* Glenville Shootout
* Shooting of Robert Godwin
*Jews and Judaism in Greater Cleveland
The Jewish community of the Greater Cleveland area comprises a significant ethnoreligious population of the U.S. State of Ohio. It began in 1839 by immigrants from Bavaria and its size has significantly grown in the decades since then. In the ea ...
References
External links
Cleveland City Neighborhood Profile
Hear Her Sports Glenville
- A project to highlight female athletes from the Glenville neighborhood including
a projected 100 interviews to be posted
{{coord, 41, 31, 57, N, 81, 36, 56, W, display=title
Neighborhoods in Cleveland
Populated places established in 1870
Jews and Judaism in Cleveland
Historic Jewish communities in the United States
1870 establishments in Ohio