Glenville 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 ...
. To the north, it borders the
streetcar suburb
A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Such suburbs developed in the United States in the years before the automobile, when ...
of
Bratenahl, the
Cleveland Memorial Shoreway, and the
Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( ) 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 also has the shortest avera ...
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 and
University Circle. Glenville borders the
Collinwood 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.
Following World War I, 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 (, , ), 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 ...
neighborhood with a small
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 ...
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
synagogue
A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...
s 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.
In the 1960s,
racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation), leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of Race (classification of human beings), race, and t ...
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 in other major
US cities as well as in the adjacent
Hough neighborhood, racial tensions were a catalyst for an ensuing demographic
shift.
Today, Glenville is predominantly
African-American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...
. 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, also known as prep football, is gridiron football played by High school (North America), high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular high school sports, interscholastic sports in both c ...
team, which has rapidly become one of the better known preparatory programs in Ohio as well as the nation.
https://rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1150869
https://n.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1150869
Education
Glenville High School and its feeder schools serve the community at large.
Parks
Glenville is bordered on the northwest by
Gordon Park (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 businessman and philanthropist. He was one of the List of richest Americans in history, wealthiest Americans of all time and one of the richest people in modern hist ...
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 limits of Cleveland.
Notable people
Notable residents of Glenville include:
*
Leon Bibb,
WEWS television news anchor
*
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Bone Thugs-n-Harmony (formerly known as B.O.N.E. Enterpri$e and also referred to as simply Bone Thugs or Bone) is an American hip hop group formed in 1991 in Cleveland, Ohio. Consisting of rappers Bizzy Bone, Wish Bone, Layzie Bone, Krayzie ...
, Cleveland-based
hip-hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hi ...
/rap group
*
Walter Fovargue, professional golfer and golf course architect
*
Benny Friedman, NFL Hall of Fame
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
player and coach
*
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 National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South division. Since 1975, the team ...
*
Steve Harvey
Broderick Stephen Harvey Sr. Also aired August 16, 2015. (born January 17, 1957) is an American comedian, television host, actor, writer, and producer. He hosts ''The Steve Harvey Morning Show'', ''Family Feud'', ''Celebrity Family Feud'', '' ...
,
actor
An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...
and
comedian
A comedian (feminine comedienne) or comic is a person who seeks to entertainment, entertain an audience by making them laughter, laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolishly (as in slapstick), or employing prop c ...
*
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 tree, ...
to NCAA Football Championship in 2015
*
Jerome Lawrence, 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; it is a major national newspaper. In the fall of 2019, it ranked 23rd in U.S. newspaper circulation, a significant drop since March 2013, when its circulation ranked 17th daily an ...
'')
*
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who made history at the Athletics at the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1936 Olympic Games by becoming the first person to win four gold meda ...
, famed track and field athlete who won four Gold Medals in the
1936 Summer Olympic Games.
*
Rich Paul, sports agent
*
Jerry Siegel
Jerome "Jerry" 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 was the co-creator of ...
, fanzine editor and comic book writer, co-creator of the first comic book superhero
Superman
Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, which first appeared in the comic book ''Action Comics'' Action Comics 1, #1, published in the United States on April 18, 1938.The copyright date of ''Action Comics ...
.
*
Joe Shuster
Joseph Shuster ( ; July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992) was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in ''Action Comics'' #1 ( cover-dated June 1938).
Shuster was involv ...
, cartoonist and comic book artist, co-creator of the first comic book superhero Superman.
*
Troy Smith, 2006
Heisman Trophy Award winner, former
quarterback
The quarterback (QB) is a position in gridiron football who are members of the offensive side of the ball and mostly line up directly behind the Lineman (football), offensive line. In modern American football, the quarterback is usually consider ...
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 tree, ...
, 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 (2009–2012), United Football League, joining the league as an expansion team in 2010 UFL season, 2010. During ...
of the United Football League
*
Donte Whitner,
NFL player for the
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. The Browns compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The team is named after ...
*
Michael R. White, former mayor 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
*
Pierre Woods,
NFL University of Michigan linebacker and player for the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. The Patriots compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The Pa ...
See also
*
Glenville Shootout
*
Shooting of Robert Godwin
*
Jews and Judaism in Greater Cleveland
References
Further reading
*
External links
Cleveland City Neighborhood ProfileHear Her Sports Glenville - A project to highlight female athletes from the Glenville neighborhood including
a projected 100 interviews to be posted.
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Neighborhoods in Cleveland
Populated places established in 1870
Jews and Judaism in Cleveland
Historic Jewish communities in the United States
1870 establishments in Ohio