Introduction

The search for the history of one’s neighborhood is much like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. No single source will tell you how or why a particular neighborhood originated and changed through the years. But as the puzzle is slowly assembled, each component interlocks with others—until the larger picture begins to make sense.

The first pieces in the puzzle for a researcher are the written works available in public libraries: city histories, monographs, essays and institutional histories and records. However, the difficulty in doing neighborhood history is that few of these written works treat neighborhoods exclusively. Even studies of ethnic groups fail to provide a complete picture, since any given district of a city may have been occupied over the years by several ethnic and racial groups.

Maps, photographs and field trips can provide a stimulating introduction to the study of neighborhoods. And non-textual works such as historical census data, city directories and atlases can supply important information. Archival materials and governmental records can also be useful. Sometimes oral interviews with longtime neighborhood residents are the only available means of obtaining important historical evidence.

The following essays provide general descriptions that will introduce the reader to the resources mentioned above. Local examples are given, wherever possible, in order to aid the researcher in piecing together the puzzle of Cleveland’s neighborhood histories.