Take the Walking Tour of Tremont
Ukrainian immigrants first came to Cleveland in the late 19th Century settling in Tremont where the neighborhood meets the industrial valley, its heavy industry and jobs. Many came with the intention of working in a factory for a few years, saving money and returning home to buy land and raise a family.
In the late 19th Century, Ukrainians in the Austrian and Russian Empires were experiencing mass unemployment while the US in the Industrial Revolution had a labor shortage. Hence, mass immigration to the United States.
As immigrants from Ukraine settled into America, a social-economic society formed with bakeries, meat shops, print shops, restaurants, saloons, choirs, theater groups and churches. That history is documented in the UMA collections.
Twenty years ago, UMA volunteer historian Ihor Kowalysko created a data base of hundreds of Ukrainian businesses located in Tremont that had placed advertisements in commorative books. Mr. Kowalysko searched the program books in our archives from the 1920s to the 1970s to compile a list of over 435 records.
In 2021, Walsh Jesuit High School student Daniel Jarosewich started with this list and conducted additional research to create this walking tour of Tremont that highlights business that were once owned by Ukrainian immigrants.
The tour was created in PlacePress, a new WordPress plugin for publishing location-based tours and stories created by the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University. You can read more about PlacePress here.
