Central, also known as Cedar–Central, is a
neighborhood
A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...
on the East Side of
Cleveland
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...
,
Ohio
Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
. Situated on the outskirts of
downtown
''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...
, Central is bounded roughly by East 71st Street on its east and
Interstate 90
Interstate 90 (I-90) is an east–west transcontinental freeway and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at . It begins in Seattle, Washington, and travels through the Pacific Northwest, Mountain states, Mountain West, Great Pla ...
on its west, with
Euclid Avenue on its north and
Interstate 77 and the
Penn Central Railroad to the south. The neighborhood is named after its onetime main thoroughfare, Central Avenue.
It is home to several schools, including
East Technical High School.
History
With its settlement beginning during the city's infancy in the early 19th century, Central is one of Cleveland's oldest neighborhoods. An influx of
Germans
Germans (, ) are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are of German descent or native speakers of the German language. The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, constitution of Germany, imple ...
in the 1830s marked the first in several waves of immigration to what would be gateway community for many ethnic groups in the Cleveland area.
The neighborhood had large, working-class populations of
Jews
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
,
Italians
Italians (, ) are a European peoples, European ethnic group native to the Italian geographical region. Italians share a common Italian culture, culture, History of Italy, history, Cultural heritage, ancestry and Italian language, language. ...
, and
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
s, as well as communities of
Czechs
The Czechs (, ; singular Czech, masculine: ''Čech'' , singular feminine: ''Češka'' ), or the Czech people (), are a West Slavs, West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common Bohemia ...
,
Hungarians
Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are an Ethnicity, ethnic group native to Hungary (), who share a common Culture of Hungary, culture, Hungarian language, language and History of Hungary, history. They also have a notable presence in former pa ...
, and
Poles
Pole or poles may refer to:
People
*Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland
* Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name
* Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist
...
. The community was fairly integrated at the time, as observed by the poet
Langston Hughes.
By the beginning of
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, the neighborhood's Jewish community gradually relocated further east mainly to the
Glenville neighborhood. Due to the immigration restrictions of
1921
Events
January
* January 2
** The Association football club Cruzeiro Esporte Clube, from Belo Horizonte, is founded as the multi-sports club Palestra Italia by Italian expatriates in First Brazilian Republic, Brazil.
** The Spanish lin ...
and
1924 enacted by Congress, very few new European immigrants arrived in Central and the population was replenished by a growing community of African Americans arriving from the rural South as part of the
Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1920, the African American population of Cleveland increased from 8,448 to 34,451, the majority settling in Central.
With the onset of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
and the advent of the
Public Works Administration
The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by United States Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was ...
(PWA), the State of Ohio preceded the federal body established in the
National Housing Act of 1934
The National Act of 1934, , , also called the Better Housing Program, was part of the New Deal passed during the Great Depression in order to make housing and home mortgages more affordable. It created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA ...
by creating the nation's first public housing administration in 1933: the
Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA).
Central would become the location for Cleveland's largest concentration of
public housing projects.
In 1937, the PWA, working with the CMHA, built two segregated housing projects in a community that had previously not known segregation: the
Outhwaite Homes (for African Americans), and the Cedar-Central projects (for whites).
Reflecting a national trend in other major American cities at the time, the imposition of segregated housing in Central and the
redlining
Redlining is a Discrimination, discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of Race (human categorization), racial and Ethnic group, ethnic minorities. Redlining has been mos ...
of the neighborhood by the
Home Owners' Loan Corporation became significant catalysts in its economic decline.
Until just after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Central was a major retail center in Cleveland.
Its population peaked at a post-war number exceeding 69,000.
Although Central still retained a significant ethnic European population until 1960, its ethnic European communities, supported by benefits from the
G.I. Bill
The G.I. Bill, formally the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I. (military), G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in ...
, began to gradually move out to better neighborhoods and nearby suburbs.
African Americans
benefited less from the G.I. Bill, but many also left for better East Side neighborhoods. These developments, combined with the loss of manufacturing jobs in Cleveland, led to a further decline in population.
Today, Central is a largely
African American neighborhood with less than one-fifth of its 1950 population.
Its poverty rate is 68.8%, the highest in the city.
In recent decades, the neighborhood has emerged as a center for
urban farming in Cleveland.
Famous visitors
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
Russian futurist poet
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...
gave a poetry
recitation
A recitation in a general sense is the act of reciting from memory, or a formal reading of verse or other writing before an audience.
Public recitation is the act of reciting a work of writing before an audience.
Academic recitation
In a ...
and "proletarian culture lecture" in Central during his visit to Cleveland in 1925.
The jazz orchestras of
Don Redman and
Fletcher Henderson also performed in the neighborhood, as did singer and civil rights activist
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional American football, football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for h ...
.
Famous residents
*
Bill Cobbs - Movie and television actor
*
Langston Hughes - Author and playwright, attended
Central High School.
*
Frank G. Jackson - 57th
Mayor of Cleveland
The mayor of Cleveland is the head of the executive branch of Local government in the United States, government of the Cleveland, City of Cleveland, Ohio. As the chief executive in Cleveland's Mayor–council government#Strong-mayor government fo ...
(2005–2021), currently lives in the Central neighborhood.
*
Carl Stokes - 51st
Mayor of Cleveland
The mayor of Cleveland is the head of the executive branch of Local government in the United States, government of the Cleveland, City of Cleveland, Ohio. As the chief executive in Cleveland's Mayor–council government#Strong-mayor government fo ...
(1968–1971), first African American mayor of a major U.S. city, grew up at Outhwaite Homes.
*
Louis Stokes - 15-Term
US Congressman (1969–1999), brother of Carl, also grew up at Outwaite Homes.
See also
*
List of African-American neighborhoods
*
Andrew and James Dall Houses
References
External links
*
{{coord, 41, 30, N, 81, 40, W, display=title
Neighborhoods in Cleveland
Czech-American culture in Cleveland
German-American culture in Cleveland
Italian-American culture in Cleveland
Hungarian-American culture in Cleveland
Populated places established in the 1830s