Cleveland

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Cleveland sits on the southern shore of Lake Erie, a city that General Moses Cleaveland staked out on the 22nd of July 1796. He was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, and the settlement his surveyors laid down that summer took his name, though the spelling dropped the first "a" almost from the start. What they built at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River would grow into one of the most consequential industrial cities in American history. How does a swampy frontier outpost become the fifth-largest city in the United States? What forces turned a quiet lakeshore settlement into the birthplace of Standard Oil, a crucible of abolitionism, and a city that literally set its own river on fire? And how did that same city survive collapse, reinvent itself, and earn a reputation as both a rock and roll capital and a world-class medical hub? The answers run deeper than you might expect.

• 2. Water, Iron, and Fire

  ›

  The Ohio and Erie Canal, completed in 1832, was the first great turning point. It connected the Ohio River and the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, and Cleveland sat directly at the junction. Trade and people began pouring in. Railroads followed, and the city's fate as a transportation hub was sealed. By 1836, the eastern-bank settlement was incorporated as a city, with John W. Willey elected as its first mayor. The neighboring municipality of Ohio City, on the western bank, was a sharp rival until Cleveland absorbed it in 1854.

  John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in Cleveland in 1870. He moved its headquarters to New York City in 1885, but the company's Cleveland roots had already signaled what the city was becoming: a place where industrial fortunes were made. Immigrants from Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Ireland arrived in large numbers drawn by manufacturing jobs. Labor unrest was never far behind. The Cleveland Streetcar Strike of 1899 was among the most violent episodes of that era, a preview of sharper conflicts ahead.

  By 1910, Cleveland had grown large enough to be called the "Sixth City". Its automotive companies included Peerless, Chandler, and Winton, whose car was the first driven across the United States. Euclid Avenue earned the nickname "Millionaires' Row". The wealth was genuine, and some of it went into institutions that still define the city. The Cleveland Museum of Art opened in 1916. The Cleveland Orchestra was established in 1918. By 1920, the population stood at 796,841, with a foreign-born share of 30%.

• 3. Boom, Prohibition, and the River

  ›

  Prohibition arrived in Ohio in May 1919, well ahead of the national Volstead Act of 1920. In Cleveland it was not well enforced. Speakeasies multiplied across the city, and organized crime gangs, chiefly the Mayfield Road Mob, smuggled bootleg liquor across Lake Erie from Canada. The ban on alcohol had an unlikely side effect: it helped crown downtown Cleveland as one of the most fashionable retail districts in the country. Major department stores including Higbee's, Bailey's, the May Company, Taylor's, Halle's, and Sterling Lindner Davis clustered together, drawing shoppers from across the region.

  The Van Sweringen brothers began construction on the Terminal Tower skyscraper in 1926 and saw it completed in 1927. When it was formally dedicated as part of Cleveland Union Terminal in 1930, the population had crossed 900,000. The Terminal Tower would remain the tallest building in North America outside of New York City until 1964.

  The 1929 Wall Street Crash hit hard. Workers struck against Fisher Body in 1936 and against Republic Steel in 1937. To mark the centennial of Cleveland's incorporation as a city, business leaders organized the Great Lakes Exposition, which opened in June 1936 at North Coast Harbor. Conceived as a way to lift spirits during the Depression, it drew four million visitors in its first season and seven million by the end of its second and final season in September 1937.

  The Cuyahoga River had been catching fire since 1868, a consequence of industrial runoff so severe the water itself became flammable. It was the fire of June 1969 that finally forced a reckoning. The burning river brought national attention to industrial pollution and played a direct role in the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the National Environmental Policy Act later that same year. Mayor Carl B. Stokes, who had been elected in November 1967 as the first African American mayor of a major American city, worked to restore the river.

• 4. Racial Fault Lines

  ›

  African Americans from the rural South had been arriving in Cleveland since the early 20th century, part of the Great Migration, drawn by factory jobs and relief from the most brutal forms of racial discrimination. Between 1910 and 1970, the Black population of Cleveland grew significantly, concentrated largely on the city's East Side. By 1940, African Americans made up 9.6% of the city's population; by 2020 they were 47.5%.

  Housing discrimination and redlining blocked Black residents from moving into many neighborhoods. Tension accumulated for decades. The Hough riots erupted from the 18th to the 24th of July 1966. Less than two years later, on the 23rd of July 1968, the Glenville Shootout took place. Both events reflected a pattern of exclusion that had been building for generations.

  In November 1967, between those two violent episodes, Cleveland made history. Carl B. Stokes became the first African American elected mayor of a major American city. His election did not resolve the structural inequalities, but it marked a shift in who held power at the city's center. The racial and ethnic composition of the city today shows how much Cleveland has changed: a 2020 analysis found it to be the most ethnically and racially diverse major city in Ohio.

• 5. Default, Recovery, Reinvention

  ›

  In December 1978, Cleveland became the first major American city since the Great Depression to enter financial default on federal loans. The national recession of the early 1980s deepened the wound. Unemployment reached 13.8%, higher than the national average, driven by the closure of several steel production centers. The decade of the 1970s had already been grim enough that Cleveland was known as "Bomb City U.S.A." because of bombings tied to organized crime rivalries.

  The city emerged from default in 1987. A building boom followed in the 1980s and 1990s. Downtown saw the construction of Key Tower, still the tallest building in Ohio, and 200 Public Square. The Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex brought Progressive Field and Rocket Arena. North Coast Harbor was developed along the lakefront, adding the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, designed by I. M. Pei, the Great Lakes Science Center, and Cleveland Browns Stadium.

  Healthcare became the new engine. The Cleveland Clinic, the largest private employer in the state of Ohio with a workforce of over 55,000, grew into one of the most recognized hospital systems in the world. In 2013, Cleveland's Global Center for Health Innovation opened with 235,000 square feet of display space for healthcare companies from around the world. The GDP for Greater Cleveland reached $138.3 billion in 2022. Combined with the Akron metropolitan area, the eight-county Cleveland-Akron economy was $176 billion in 2022, making it the largest in Ohio.

• 6. Rock, Jazz, and the Long Musical Thread

  ›

  Alan Freed was working as a disc jockey at WJW when he first popularized the term "rock and roll" on air in Cleveland. Beginning in the 1950s, Cleveland built a reputation as a key breakout market for rock music. WMMS radio program director Billy Bass called Cleveland "The Rock and Roll Capital of the World". From 1974 through 1980, the city hosted the World Series of Rock at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

  Jazz had arrived in Cleveland even earlier. Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Billie Holiday all performed in the city. Art Tatum regularly played Cleveland clubs in the 1930s. Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt gave his U.S. debut performance in Cleveland in 1946. Noble Sissle, a prominent jazz artist, was a graduate of Cleveland Central High School.

  Polka carved its own place. Frankie Yankovic, a Cleveland native, was considered "America's Polka King". A subgenre called Cleveland-style polka grew from the city's ethnic communities. The Tri-C Jazz Fest has been held annually at Playhouse Square since 1980, and the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra was established in 1984.

  The Cleveland Orchestra stands apart from all of it. Established in 1918, it is considered one of the "Big Five" major orchestras in the United States and is widely regarded as one of the finest in the nation. It plays at Severance Hall in University Circle during the winter and at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls during the summer. Langston Hughes, who attended Central High School in Cleveland in the 1910s and wrote some of his earliest poems there, once shared the city with all of this.

• 7. Sports and the Weight of Loyalty

  ›

  The Cleveland Guardians, known as the Indians from 1915 until 2021, won the World Series in 1920 and 1948. Between 1995 and 2001, the team sold out 455 consecutive games, a Major League Baseball record that stood until 2008.

  The Browns hold eight titles from a concentrated run: 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1954, 1955, and 1964. They have never played in a Super Bowl. Owner Art Modell relocated the franchise after the 1995 season, a decision that caused, by any measure, some of the deepest resentment in the history of professional sports fandom. A compromise between Modell, Cleveland mayor Michael R. White, and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue eventually brought a new Browns team back for the 1999 season, retaining all historical records and titles.

  The Cavaliers' 2016 NBA Championship carries its own weight in Cleveland history. The Cavs came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Golden State Warriors. Afterward, more than 1.3 million people attended a parade held on the 22nd of June 2016 in downtown Cleveland. It was the city's first major professional sports championship in 52 years.

  Jesse Owens, one of the city's most celebrated athletes, is commemorated by a monument at Fort Huntington Park. The second American Chess Congress, a predecessor to the U.S. Championship, was held in Cleveland in 1871. Bobby Fischer won the 1957 U.S. Open Chess Championship there.