As Cleveland’s eastern suburbs were just beginning to establish themselves in the 1920s, Cleveland’s Lee-Harvard neighborhood, bordering Shaker Heights, Warrensville Heights and Maple Heights on the the city’s south east side, was thriving in its own right.
The Lee-Harvard neighborhood, once known as Miles Heights Village and the Lee-Seville neighborhoods, was historically an integrated community of notable firsts. Ohio’s first African-American mayor, Arthur Johnston was elected in 1929 when the neighborhood was mostly white. His house on East 147
th Street still stands today.
The neighborhood established many of the first citizen's councils and neighborhood associations in the region and had an interracial police force.
On Thursday, October 6, the
Cleveland Restoration Society (CRS), along with Cleveland Ward 1 councilman
Terrell Pruitt, the
Harvard Community Services Center and CSU’s
Maxine Levin Goodman College of Urban Affairs, will present “Cleveland’s Suburb in the City: The Development and Growth of Lee-Harvard.”
The free discussion will be led by Todd Michney, assistant professor at the University of Toledo and author of
Changing Neighborhoods: Black Upward Mobility in Cleveland, 1900-1980.
“We at CRS have been so impressed with the neighborhoods of Ward 1, Lee-Harvard and Lee-Seville,” says Michael Fleenor, CRS director of preservation services, "because they reflect our recent history – Cleveland’s last expansion, progress in Civil Rights, and the growth of neighborhood associations and community development corporations in the late 20
th Century."
Click here for photos and to continue reading about the fascinating history of this stalwart Cleveland neighborthood.