Settlement Chronology and Geography

1848-1870

Polish immigration to, and settlement in, Cleveland resulted from several factors. These factors, common to all immigration, were need in the receiving country, reason for and ease of exit in the home country and ease of access to the new country. Prior to the 1870’s only one of these factors was favorable to Polish immigration to Cleveland; hence Polish settlement in the city during this period was minimal.

Cleveland needed immigrant laborers in the years following 1836 when the Ohio-Erie Canal was completed. The canal, which linked the Great Lakes port of Cleveland with the Ohio River, transformed the city into a thriving mercantile center with great potential for manufacturing. Immigrants came to the city in large numbers to fill the rapidly growing job market. Only a few Poles, however, were among those who came to the city. The Prussian, Russian and Austro-Hungarian governments that controlled the Polish lands allowed for little free movement within and out of the country. Transit to European ports was difficult to obtain and transport across the ocean was still slow and dangerous.

This is not to say, however, that no Poles settled in Cleveland in the years prior to 1870. The unsuccessful revolts of the 1830’s, ’40’s and ’60’s forced many of the Polish intelligentsia and middle class into exile, with some of the exiles traveling to the United States. While it is conjectural whether any of these political emigres settled in Cleveland, by 1848 the city had acquired a population of four Poles.^[1] It might also be assumed that some of the mid-nineteenth century political emigres visited or passed through Cleveland on journeys to the western parts of the United States because of the city’s position on major east-west rail, road, and water transport routes.

The Poles who had arrived by 1848, and the small number that followed them in the years prior to 1870, chose to settle in the Czech settlement about Croton Street.^[2] The Czechs, subject to slightly looser emigration laws and severely disrupted by the revolts of 1848, formed the only sizable Slavic community in Cleveland in the years prior to the Civil War. It was natural for the Poles to seek out the company of fellow Slavs by settling on Croton Street. Like the Czechs, Poles were usually self-employed in various trades or businesses, or worked for wages in some of the small manufacturing plants situated in the Kingsbury Run to the immediate west of the community.

In 1856 the first iron mill was established in Cleveland. The opening of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal in that year had made possible the shipment of iron ore to Cleveland and hence the establishment of the mill. The Cleveland Rolling Mill was located in Newburgh, a separate town approximately three miles to the southeast of the Croton Street settlement. Its position on the Cleveland-Pittsburgh railroad line made the shipment of southern coal and ore from the lakeside docks easy, and the skilled Scotch and Welsh inhabitants of the town made Newburgh a natural site for the mill.

The Czechs, and presumably the Poles of Croton Street, sought jobs at the mills. Until the demands of the Civil War overwhelmed the mills, the Scotch, Welsh, and growing Irish population of Newburgh provided the primary labor force. It was the demands of the war years that first brought the Czechs and Poles to the mills. It was also during the Civil War that the main Czech settlement shifted closer to the mills. The settlement relocated at Willson Avenue (E. 55th Street) and Broadway Avenue, across Kingsbury Run from Croton Street and only a mile distant from the rolling mill. Accounts of strikes in the 1880’s indicate that Czechs and Poles living in this new area had been employed at the mills since the early 1870’s.^[3]

Though evidence points to Poles working in the rolling mills around 1870, their presence could not have been large. The 1870 census lists only 70 Poles in the city, comprising a mere .08 percent of the total population. This figure may be slightly low since many Poles were listed as Austrians, Germans or Russians, according to the sector of Poland from which they emigrated, until 1920.

However, a fairly large, cohesive group of Poles lived just to the southwest of Cleveland during this period in the town of Berea. Poles had been employed in the sandstone quarries that provided Berea with its economic base since 1865.^[4] In 1872, the Berea Polish community was substantial enough to warrant the establishment of a Roman Catholic parish to serve it.

The Czechs were beginning their own settlement near Tod Street (E. 65th Street) and Fleet Avenue. This region was still farm land and was situated about a mile to the south of the Czech settlement and a half mile to the north of the Irish and Welsh settlements around Broadway and Harvard Avenues.

The Polish settlement grew quite rapidly in the early 1870’s. By 1873 enough Poles lived near the mills, and in the Cuyahoga Valley to the west (where they may have worked as ore unloaders), to occasion the establishment of a Polish Catholic parish in Cleveland. The parish, St. Stanislaus, first held church services in St. Mary’s on the Flats, a wooden church building that the diocese loaned to Catholic immigrant groups until they could build a church of their own. Mass was celebrated and sacraments were performed by Fr. Victor Zarezny, the recently appointed pastor of St. Adalbert’s in Berea. Fr. Zarezny journeyed to Cleveland whenever possible. In his four years of service to the parish he made the trip 60 times, baptizing 98 children and marrying 21 couples. In 1879, a German Franciscan priest, Fr. Wolfgang Janietz took charge of the parish, moving its services to a side chapel of St. Joseph’s German Catholic Church on Woodland Avenue.

Though much of the area north of the rolling mills was still undeveloped in 1881, enough Poles lived in the vicinity to force the location of the first permanent St. Stanislaus church building at Tod Street (E. 65th Street) and Forman Avenue. Initially the parishioners had sought to purchase land at McBride and Broadway Avenues near a convent in the Czech community.

1870-1900

In the early 1870’s Cleveland became one of the leading manufacturing cities of the Midwest. Spurred on by the needs of the Civil War, the city’s iron and steel industry had burgeoned and given rise to many subsidiary industries. The rapidly growing industries created an enormous labor market that could not be satisfied by the Anglo-German immigration that had predominated in earlier years.

This condition, along with the appearance of new push factors in Eastern Europe–the Kulturkampf and universal conscription in German Poland, and the easing of Austro-Hungarian restrictions on travel–opened the way for many more Poles to come to Cleveland in the post-1870 period. They were, of course, but a portion of the massive Eastern and Southern European immigration to America that began to gather momentum in this period.

Poles who landed at Castle Garden in New York City often heard of job opportunities in cities to the west, such as Cleveland. Theodore Dluzynski, a young Polish immigrant, was in New York when he heard of a large bridge building project in Cleveland. He arrived in the city in the early 1870’s to help construct the Superior Viaduct. When work on the bridge was completed, he drifted to the Newburgh district where he found work in the rolling mills.^[5] By this time the town of Newburgh and its prosperous mills had been annexed to Cleveland. About 70 to 80 other Poles were working at the mills when Dluzynski arrived.^[6] These Poles had moved away from proximity of the parishioners and the offer of free land by a local farmer-real estate salesman, Ashbel Morgan, resulted in the choice of the Forman Avenue location. Morgan offered a free lot to any parishioner who bought a lot for the church. In this manner thirteen lots were purchased, the church location agreed upon, and Polish settlement in the parish area given an added impetus. The first church building, a two-story frame structure, was erected by the parishioners in 1881.^[7]

With the church established, the community around it, known as Warszawa to its inhabitants, grew at an increasing rate. In the last four years that Fr. Janietz served the parish, 1879-1883, he baptized 455 children and married 84 couples.^[8] The greatest impetus to the growth of the community came in 1882 when a large number of Poles were imported to break a strike at the rolling mills.

After a change in the mills’ ownership in 1882, the wages of the workers were substantially reduced. This action resulted in a strike that involved the entire Irish, Welsh, Bohemian and Polish workforce of the mills. It was marked with violence–usually directed at the strikebreakers whom management tried to recruit locally. When local recruitment failed, the management looked abroad. Though reports on the methods used vary, the mill eventually contracted to import 500 or 1500 Poles to Cleveland to break the strike. The Polish strikebreakers were, in large part, experienced iron workers from Polish mills.^[9] Their reception in Cleveland was not the least bit hospitable. The reaction of their striking countrymen has not been recorded; however, their appearance planted the seeds of a lasting enmity between the Irish and the Poles of Newburgh.

As the Polish workers established themselves in the community following the failure of the strike, they sent for families and relatives from Poland, accelerating the growth of the Warszawa section. In a sense, they served as advance agents for further Polish migration to Cleveland by sending news of job opportunities to relatives and friends in Poland.

The 1890 census lists 2,848 Poles resident in Cleveland, or 1.09 percent of the city’s population. Again this figure must be considered inaccurate because of the German, Austrian or Russian census entries for people of Polish birth. Police Department records, however, give another indication of the volume of Polish immigration to Cleveland during the decade, 1880-1890. A police inspector at the lakefront railway terminal counted all immigrants entering the city through that station. During the years from 1885 to 1890, the inspector listed the following numbers of Poles arriving each year: 232 (1885), 221 (1886), 418 (1887), 694 (1888), 545 (1889), 794 (1890).^[10]

The continued influx of new immigrants caused the Warszawa community to expand outward from its nucleus around St. Stanislaus Church. By 1890, the settlement had expanded to the following approximate boundaries: the Morgana Ravine and Heisley Street on the north (these were also the southern boundaries of the Czech settlement), Willson Avenue (E. 55th Street) on the west, Broadway Avenue on the east, and the area presently crossed by Gertrude and Fullerton Avenues on the south. Though the area within these boundaries was not totally taken up by residences, its inhabitants were almost all Polish.

The growing number of immigrants also lead to the founding of other Polish settlements in Cleveland. As early as 1878, Poles were reportedly living in the area near E. 79th Street and Superior Avenue.^[11] This community didn’t begin to grow, however, until the late 1880’s. Because the residents were primarily Prussian Poles, they named the settlement Poznan after the region in Poland from which they emigrated. They chose to settle in the area because of the industry that was being established in it. It is also possible that the existing German population in this area may have proved attractive to the immigrants from Prussian Poland since the Poles would have had a knowledge of German, and this would facilitate dealing with the German shopkeepers and factory foremen. It was a German, Joseph Hoffman, who donated the land for the Polish parish, St. Casimir, established to serve the area in 1893.

Little is known of the early history of the Poznan community. It eventually developed into a compact, totally Polish region clustered about the church on Sowinski Avenue. The community reportedly had all the attributes of a small European village in which each resident knew his neighbors, and where everyone was aware of local news and gossip.^[12]

In the late 1870’s Poles also began settling on the west slope of the Cuyahoga River Valley near Columbus and Fairfield Streets.^[13] These early settlers were most likely dockworkers, or laborers in the lumberyards and light industry of the Flats immediately below this area. It was not until the 1890’s and expansion of the steel industry in this region that more Poles settled in the area. Attracted by the jobs in the mills, Poles settled in the Lincoln Heights region directly above the valley. Before the influx of immigrant laborers in the 1890’s, this area had been one of the more exclusive residential districts in the city.

By 1897 enough Poles had settled in Lincoln Heights to require the creation of a Polish Catholic parish, St. John Cantius. The Poles named their community Kantowa, after the parish. The community was not, however, totally Polish. Initially it was shared with Russians, Ukrainians and Germans, and eventually with Syrians and Greeks as well. The Poles, however, were the largest group in the area. They arrived in such numbers that in two years after its establishment, St. John Cantius Parish had to move to larger quarters in old street railway carbarns to gain additional space for teaching and church services.

Another west side Polish enclave founded prior to 1900 was again the result of job opportunities. Job openings at the National Carbon Company in Lakewood prompted many Poles to move there in 1892,^[14] settling near Madison Avenue and W. 117th Street. It was not until 1906, however, that enough Poles had moved into the area to require the establishment of a mission Catholic parish, St. Hedwig. Because the population of the area fluctuated, the parish became inactive for several years after 1900. It was reestablished as a formal parish in 1914.

During the period, 1880-1890, the main Polish settlement, Warszawa, acquired what can be considered two satellite communities. A small settlement was established to the south of Warszawa, across the ravines at Harvard and Ottawa Roads, in the late 1870’s. The settlement was located at the city limits, Marcelline Avenue (E. 71st Street) and Grant Avenue. By 1885 the community was large enough to support a Polish-owned grocery store.^[15] The residents of the area, which became known as Krakowa, either farmed small plots of land, or worked in the industries in Warszawa, or in the Cuyahoga River Valley to the west.^[16] Because many residents engaged in farming and kept poultry, the settlement acquired the nickname, Goosetown. The large number of geese that were raised roamed at will, often hissing at or chasing passers-by.

Early settlers in Krakowa belonged to St. Stanislaus parish and walked more than a mile to church each Sunday. In response to the community’s request for a more convenient parish of its own, Sacred Heart of Jesus was created in 1889. The first permanent parish building was erected the following year.

The second satellite community of Warszawa was situated to its northeast, near Tod (E. 65th) Street and Francis Avenue. The Poles who settled in this district in the 1880’s were most likely employed at the nearby Empire Plow Company, or in the industries that lined the edges of Kingsbury Run to the north of the community. At first, this community, like Krakowa, relied on St. Stanislaus Church for its religious needs. However, by 1907, the 200 families in the region (known as Jackowa) requested and received their own parish, St. Hyacinth.^[17] Though distance, as in the case of Krakowa, was a factor in the establishment of the new parish, the major reason for its creation was the overcrowded condition of St. Stanislaus at the time.

Though inaccurate, the 1900 census listed 8,592 Poles resident in Cleveland, comprising 2.25 percent of the total population. The influx of Poles reached such proportions in the 1890’s that in 1895 they became the most numerous immigrant group entering the city. Prior to this time the Germans had been the largest immigrating group. According to the reports of the Police Department’s immigrant officer, 8,597 Poles entered Cleveland by rail during the 1890’s.^[18]

At the turn of the century most of Cleveland’s Polish population lived in the Warszawa section which had been, and was to remain, the primary area of Polish settlement in Cleveland. Only the Kantowa and Poznan sections came close to rivaling it as large, cohesive Polish communities. Warszawa’s main thoroughfare, Fleet Avenue, was lined with Polish-owned businesses catering to every need of the community. It was, in essence, a Polish town situated in the corporate limits of Cleveland. Single and multi-family dwellings, along with business houses, extended along Fleet Avenue to Broadway on the east and E. 55th Street on the west. To the south, dwellings now virtually filled the area up to Fremont (Lansing) Avenue. On the north, homes solidly extended to the southern limit of Czech settlement at Heisley Avenue. To the south of Warszawa, the Krakowa community was steadily expanding northward on either side of Marcelline Avenue toward Warszawa.

At the very center of Warszawa stood the new St. Stanislaus Church. Constructed during 1889-1891 at a cost of $150,000, it was the largest church in the Cleveland Catholic Diocese^[19] reflecting the needs and interests of the city’s burgeoning Polish population.

1900-1920

From 1900-1914, the Poles were the second most numerous immigrant group arriving in America; the Italians were first. This relative position was retained in the measuring of arrivals in Cleveland.^[20] Cheaper transportation, ease of emigration, oppression and a shortage of farm land in Europe were responsible for pushing millions of Poles to America during this period. The expanding industrial plant of Cleveland and the good news from relatives already resident in the city drew many of these immigrants to it.

Most of the new arrivals settled in the existing Polish settlements in Cleveland. Kantowa gained an extraordinarily large number of new settlers in the post-1900 period. Soon it, like Warszawa, had a number of Polish-owned businesses, including a newspaper. Unlike Warszawa, where most of the residents came from Prussian Poland, Kantowa attracted Poles from the Austrian and Russian sectors. The reason for this difference in settlement patterns is unknown.

Kantowa, however, could not keep pace with the growth of the Warszawa section. New arrivals and the coming of age of the American-born children of the first settlers greatly increased the size of the community. Housing was continually being constructed for the expanding community. Many new homes were built to the south of the community in the area crossed by Worley, Ottawa and Indiana Avenues where construction was difficult since the region was crisscrossed with gullies. The type of homes built changed from single-family to two-family frame houses. The purchase of the latter enabled the owner to rent part of the house, thus easing the payment of the mortgage.^[21]

In about 1914 the southward expansion of Warszawa finally met the northward expansion of Krakowa near Harvard Avenue. These two communities now became, physically and geographically, one. Despite this physical merger, the sections retained their individual identities. To this day, the section of Kantowa south of the Newburgh and South Shore Railroad tracks at Irma Avenue is known as Goosetown.

While the Warszawa community could still expand to the south, movement toward the southeast was blocked by the Irish and Welsh settlements beginning at Broadway Avenue and Jones Road. Some Irish and Welsh still lived to the north of this border, and by 1914 found themselves surrounded by Poles. This frontier and area of overlap added to the bad relations between the Poles and Irish. Rock fights between children of the two nationalities occurred in this area until the 1940’s.

Despite this impediment, the Polish population managed to move to the southeast. It simply leapfrogged the Irish enclave. The growth of streetcar lines along Broadway and Miles Avenue in the early 1900’s made this move possible. Streetcars allowed Polish workers the luxury of living away from their jobs. One line ran along Broadway Avenue into Garfield Heights. Around 1910, Poles from Warszawa began moving into Garfield Heights, settling along the side streets lining Turney from just above Warner Road to immediately above Garfield Heights Boulevard. Others followed Harvard Avenue to the area near its intersection with E. 131st Street where they were close to the Miles Avenue streetcar line that ran to Warszawa.

Though the Garfield Heights area did not expand rapidly until the 1920’s, the Harvard-E. 131st Street area grew quite rapidly in the pre-World War I period. In 1914, sixty families lived in the area and a parish, St. Mary of Czestochowa, was established at E. 142nd Street and Harvard to serve them.^[22] Homes in the neighborhood were mostly the two-family style common to south Warszawa. Reasons for the rapid growth of this area, rather than Garfield Heights, can only be surmised. The presence of a Czech population along E. 131st Street may again have proved an attraction to Polish settlers and thus hastened the growth of the area.

During the pre-World War I years, two new Polish communities were begun also. One community, Josephatowa, is unique in that it was located near the central city. Shortly before 1900 Poles began settling in the area near E. 33rd Street and St. Clair Avenue, a section which was also the home of many South Slavic immigrants who were beginning to arrive in Cleveland. The area contained much light industry which probably attracted the immigrants. Though the South Slavs, mainly Slovenians, soon moved east along St. Clair Avenue, the Poles remained and the community grew. In 1908, 100 families lived in the area, enough to warrant the establishment of a new Polish Parish, St. Josephat (after which the community was named).^[23] Josephatowa was also unique in that it, unlike other areas of Polish settlement in Cleveland, was a section that had been built up by previous inhabitants. Whereas the settlers in Warszawa and Poznan erected new houses for themselves, many of the residents of Josephatowa inherited homes built by others.

A second large community, Barbarowa, like Josephatowa had meager beginnings in the 1890’s but attained no appreciable size until after 1900. Barbarowa began when Poles settled on the western edge of the Cuyahoga River Valley at Denison Avenue in the late 1890’s. These Poles worked either in the steel mills or the Grasselli Chemical Plant in the valley below. The area of settlement was quite extensive; some of the early settlers lived as far southwest of Dension Avenue as the Brookside Valley.

By 1905, 750 Poles lived in the Barbarowa section–on either side of the Brookside Valley.^[24] In that year a parish was established on the south side of the Brookside Valley to serve the rapidly growing Polish population. The church building for St. Barbara’s Parish (after which the community was named) was completed in 1906. When this building burned in 1913, the parish decided to relocate on the north side of the Brookside Valley. A new building was erected in 1926 on Denison Avenue at the edge of the Cuyahoga Valley, a more convenient location since most parishioners lived on the north side of the Brookside Valley.

With the beginning of World War I, Polish immigration to the United States and Cleveland came to a virtual halt. At the war’s end in 1918 large scale immigration began again; however, the literacy law of 1917 helped to reduce the number of immigrants eligible to enter the United States. In 1921 the institution of the quota system of admittance again cut the Polish immigration to a trickle. The National Origins Act in 1924 added only a few more Poles to the entry lists. Thus, in the years between 1914 and the end of World War II, large scale Polish immigration to Cleveland was halted.

These years, however, saw a continued expansion and maturation of established Polish communities in Cleveland as well as a continued movement of Poles to suburban areas. This was due largely to the birth and coming of age of many second generation Poles.

1920-1940

The years from 1920 to 1940 can be considered the peak years of Polish settlement in Cleveland. By 1920 an estimated 50,000-80,000 first and second generation Poles lived in the city, comprising approximately 10 percent of the total population.^[25] Warszawa reached its maximum geographic limits during this period, reaching Harvard Avenue on the south and E. 49th Street on the west. The section from E. 49th to E. 55th Street, however, was shared with many Czech settlers, as was the suburb of Newburgh Heights immediately to the west of E. 49th Street. Newburgh Heights had developed in the 1920’s as a suburban ethnic community quite similar to Garfield Heights. On the north the area was bounded by Heisley Street, with little expansion having occurred in this area since the early 1900’s. Similarly, the southeast boundary with the Irish remained much the same.

To the south of Warszawa, the Krakowa community now occupied almost all of the area south of Harvard Avenue. Its southern boundary was Grant Avenue. On the east the community followed, the Mill Creek Valley and on the west reached nearly to E. 56th Street.

The second largest community, Kantowa, was bounded by the Cuyahoga River Valley on the east, north and south sides. The west limit was near W. 25th Street. Though this perimeter encompasses a fairly large geographical area, it must be remembered that this was a polyglot ethnic community.

The third major Polish area, Poznan, was a compact twenty-five block area bounded by Liberty Boulevard on the east, E. 79th Street on the west, Superior Avenue on the south and St. Clair Avenue on the north.

Following World War I the minor enclaves also filled out. The Jackowa community around St. Hyacinth parish stretched along either side of Francis Avenue from E. 55th Street to E. 69th Street. The area about St. Hedwig’s church in Lakewood was now stable and encompassed the region along Madison Avenue from W. 117th Street to W. 130th Street. Approximately ten blocks surrounding the St. Josephat Church on E. 33rd Street had become largely Polish. St. Barbara’s area, as before, remained rather large and amorphous. However, a fairly solid Polish section did surround the church at about W. 15th Street and Denison Avenue.

Older suburban areas also matured in the post-World War I period. The community of St. Mary of Czestochowa stretched along either side of Harvard Avenue from approximately E. 116th Street to E. 148th Street. Garfield Heights which entered its major, period of growth at this time, received in 1925 its own Polish parish, SS. Peter and Paul, at Turney Road and Garfield Heights Boulevard. The population was centered in the area to the north of Garfield Heights Boulevard, along either side of Turney Road. The area to the west of Turney Road, enclosed by it, the Boulevard and Warner Road formed the major area of residential settlement. The Garfield Heights settlement was important because it became the residential region for the wealthier Poles. During the 1920’s Polish bankers and businessmen from Warszawa built substantial brick homes along Garfield Heights Boulevard where many older Polish businessmen still live.

During the 1920’s most of Cleveland’s Poles and their American-born children continued to be employed as laborers in steel and iron related industries. This was particularly true of the residents of the Warszawa, Krakowa, Kantowa and Barbarowa sections. In 1919 Poles comprised more than 50 percent of the workforce of United States Steel Company’s American Steel and Wire Division (formerly the rolling mills).^[26] The workforces of Superior Foundry, Crucible Company, Co-Operative Stove Foundry, Union Rolling Mills, and Foster Nut and Bolt Company were primarily Polish.^[27] Both first and second generation women, particularly from the Warszawa area, began to take jobs during and after World War I. Many worked at Kaynee Blouse Factory, Cleveland Worsted Mills, Buckeye Electrical Company and Foster Nut and Bolt Company.^[28]

Polish settlements in Cleveland expanded little in the 1930’s mainly because of the Depression which hit the Poles hard since many of them worked in the basic iron and steel industries. Because of this and their intense desire to own property, many Poles held mortgages when the economic collapse began. The years of prosperity preceding 1929 gave impetus to a surge of buying and building. In order to prevent foreclosures, entire families went job hunting during the 1930’s, each contributing his earnings to retain the family property. In this way most Polish families survived the Depression with their property holdings intact.

The only settlement expansion that occurred in the 1930’s involved the Barbarowa and Kantowa areas. A number of west-side Poles moved southwestwardly along Broadview and Pearl (W. 25 Street) Roads. In 1936 Corpus Christi Parish was established at Biddulph and Pearl Roads to serve about ninety families residing in the area.^[29] By 1940 the parish had grown to 350 families as the southwestward movement continued.^[30]

1940-1970

The beginning of World War II and the letting of massive war contracts in 1939 brought renewed prosperity of Cleveland’s Polish communities. Even the old American Steel and Wire Works in Newburgh, partially closed by the Depression, came alive again. There were more than enough jobs for the Poles and any draft-exempt descendants. Overtime earnings swelled savings accounts and provided the basis for a great post-war mobility for many of Cleveland’s Poles.

Even during the war many Poles moved whenever possible. The southwestward trend, evident in the establishment of Corpus Christi Parish, continued as war industries such as the Chrysler Tank Plant chose to locate in southwestern suburbs such as Parma and Brook Park.

By the end of World War II, many of Cleveland’s first generation Poles had died. While there were 35,024 Polish-born individuals in Cleveland in 1920, only 24,771 remained in 1940.^[31] Most of these were pre-quota immigrants advancing in age. Most of the city’s Polish population consisted of the sons and daughters of the original immigrants. Post-war chaos in Europe, however, helped to replenish the city’s foreign-born Polish stock. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 provided special provisions to allow non-quota entry of thousands of Poles evicted from their homeland by the war and the subsequent communist takeover. Unlike the previous waves of Polish immigration that consisted of peasants or artisans, post-war immigration was limited to individuals with skills that would allow their immediate placement in the American job market.

This new influx of Polish immigrants was not strong enough, however, to prevent the decline of the original Polish settlements within Cleveland. Many second and third generation Poles used their wartime savings or the newly approved GI benefits to purchase new homes in the suburbs, diminishing the population of the older areas. Many of the new Polish immigrants also chose to live in the suburbs. But if the entire post-war immigration had decided to locate in the older Polish neighborhoods, it is doubtful that they could have made up for the continuing population loss.^[32]

The late 1940’s and the 1950’s witnessed a tremendous growth in Garfield Heights, Parma, Cuyahoga Heights and a newer area, Maple Heights, which was situated just beyond Garfield Heights along Broadway Avenue. This new suburban movement was facilitated by the automobile which freed many Polish families from the necessity of settling on established public transportation routes. By 1970 only 6,234 individuals of Polish birth and 16,585 people of Polish background resided in Cleveland proper.^[33] In contrast, the four suburbs of Lakewood, Parma, Cleveland Heights and Euclid contained 7,071 Polish-born individuals and 31,595 people of Polish background in 1970.^[34]

This tremendous population movement created vacuums in many of the areas. By the early 1970’s, most of the older Polish settlements had lost, or were losing, their Polish character. Poznan became a largely Black residential area, as did the relatively newer area of St. Mary’s of Czestochowa. The population vacuum in Kantowa was filled by Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Appalachians. Warszawa, alone, retained a strongly Polish character; yet it, too, is changing.^[35] Many Appalachians settled in the community’s Broadway and Harvard Avenue fringe areas. Only the central district about Fleet Avenue remains strongly Polish.

In 1970 Greater Cleveland had 61,485 people of Polish birth or background,^[36] approximately two-thirds living outside of the city proper in suburbs such as Parma and Maple Heights. The majority of people represented by this figure were also American-born. As indicated in Appendix A, the number of first generation Poles in the Greater Cleveland area has dropped steadily since the 1920’s. What these figures portend for the survival of the Polish enclaves in Cleveland can only be surmised. Today it is sufficient to contrast the new suburban settlements and their inhabitants with the communities started by the Poles over a century ago. The first communities provided a language cushion, job proximity, and a common culture; the new suburban areas place the Polish-American in contact with the sons and daughters of other Slavic or Catholic immigrant groups. In the new communities, the English language, middle class background, and often religion, are the common denominators. Though some of the older communities persist, their functions as protective enclaves have disappeared and their future is uncertain. Their survival will be guaranteed only by a willingness on the part of newly-arrived Polish immigrants, and Americans of Polish background, to settle in them and rehabilitate their rapidly aging structures.