Coventry Village is a commercial business district in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, situated on Coventry Road between Mayfield Road (U.S. Route 322) and Euclid Heights Boulevard. Coventry is associated with Northeast Ohio's artistic, musical, bohemian, hippie and emerging hipster communities and is the center of Cleveland's creative class, inviting comparisons to the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in New York City, although on a smaller scale.
The road bisecting what is now Coventry Village appears in the map of Harris H. Blackmore of 1852 as an unidentified north–south route connecting the North Union Shaker Settlement, then near its peak of about 300 settlers, to what is now Mayfield Road. It was the eastern terminus of Cedar Road in the rural area then known as East Cleveland Township, separating it from Warrensville Township to the east. The road passed through farmland acquired by Worthy S. Streator located between Mayfield Road and Cedar Road who chose aptly to assuage his wife's growing misgivings over haunted[ clarification needed ] farmland by turning the wartime burial gulley into a commercial area funded by the Shakers. By 1890 it was known as the North-South County Road, or Streator Road. That year, Patrick Calhoun, a lawyer visiting town on railroad business, spied[ clarification needed ] the James A. Garfield Memorial in Lake View Cemetery from a bluff[ clarification needed ] on Streator's farm. He immediately offered to purchase Streator's acreage surrounding Streator Road for $30,000, closing the purchase in 1891. Calhoun intended to develop acreage as part of an upscale planned community that he named "Euclid Heights". Calhoun intended Euclid Heights to be a New England–style upper-income community of Protestants of Anglo-Saxon heritage. By 1892 the road was identified as Coventry Road in George F. Cram & Company's atlas of that year. The part of East Cleveland Township now known as Cleveland Heights became a hamlet in 1901, and then a village in 1903.
As demand for large houses declined in the coming decades, and Calhoun's realty company became insolvent in the 1910s, unbuilt lots in the portion of Euclid Heights near Coventry Road were sold at foreclosure sales. Developers built apartment buildings on these empty lots.
The Euclid Heights and Mayfield streetcar routes met at the Coventry–Mayfield intersection, making the area a convenient commuter transfer point after 1907. Most of the buildings on Coventry were constructed between 1913 and 1933, with the greatest growth occurring between 1921 and 1925, when 18 commercial buildings were erected. Buildings erected for retail walk-in traffic typically included second story apartments, to maximize the benefits of urbanization and rapid population growth. The new Coventry business district served streetcar passengers and the increasing populations of the Euclid Heights and Mayfield Heights developments. Before then, the nearest commercial center was at Doan's Corners.
By the early 1920s, the newly built apartment district attracted a large, thriving Jewish community. This influence was reflected in the commercial district by, among other things, a kosher poultry slaughterhouse. In 1921, Cleveland Heights attained cityhood.
The motion picture Les Amants ("The Lovers") was first shown locally in 1959 at the Heights Art Theatre, then located at the intersection of Coventry Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard. Theater manager Nico Jacobellis was arrested and convicted on obscenity charges for showing the film. By its decision in Jacobellis v. Ohio , 378 U.S. 184 (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction. Agreeing that Jacobellis' criminal conviction was improper and that the film was not obscene, Justice Potter Stewart famously described his perspective on obscene material: "I know it when I see it..." The U.S. Supreme Court diminished the importance of Jacobellis by decisions it entered years later, yet "I know it when I see it" remains one of the best-remembered quotations in its history.
In the second half of the 1960s, Coventry became the gathering place for Cleveland's counterculture, owing partly to the popularity of the C-Saw Café with bikers, and to the area's proximity to John Carroll University and the predecessor schools to Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University. As one writer explains, this transition was sudden:
"In addition to the problems facing aging communities everywhere...the Jewish community of Cleveland Heights faced two additional problems at the end of the 1960s: the dramatic takeover of a small area of the city by hippies and motorcyclists, and the quickening pace of integration....The counterculture flower children with long hair, health food, music, and, most significantly, drugs virtually took over [Coventry Village] during the second half of the 1960s. Hippies overflowed the Gothic apartments, cardboard "Store for Rent" signs seemed to be everywhere, and motorcycle groups (if not gangs) dotted the corners in the evening....[P]olice had begun to probe recurrent reports of drug use (marijuana and LSD) among Cleveland Heights High School students." (citation and footnote forthcoming)
Record Revolution, which opened in 1968 and continues to operate, became a destination for rock stars passing through Cleveland, and most of its famous customers autographed the store walls. Among them were members of Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Bad Company, The Who, Mott the Hoople, Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, Hall & Oates, Brian Eno, the Psychedelic Furs, Deborah Harry of Blondie, and the Pixies. The staff hosted in-store album signings with then-breaking artists Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Elvis Costello. In his book The Catalog of Cool (1982), rock critic Gene Sculatti called Record Revolution “the coolest place to buy records” in Ohio. In the 1970s, Record Revolution was one of the three "breakout" record stores in Greater Cleveland that affected radio play at the influential rock station WMMS. When WMMS management added to its playlist a new album or a new artist, particularly one on the cutting edge or left of center, an early indicator of success was sales at Record Revolution. To stay competitive, Record Revolution expanded its business model to retailing of clothing and paraphernalia euphemistically called "smoking accessories". [1] [2]
Over the years, the sense of a Jewish neighborhood on Coventry transitioned into a more eclectic marketplace. Pioneering entrepreneurs included Kaufman's, Frankel's Jewelry, Irv's Deli, Heights Art Theatre, Allen Lock & Key, A-Appliance, Dobama Theatre, Arabica coffeehouse, Renaissance Parlour, Generation Gap, and High Tide Rock Bottom.
Cuyahoga County is a large urban county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. The county seat and largest city is Cleveland. As of the 2020 census, its population was 1,264,817, making it the second-most populous county in the state.
Cleveland Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 45,312 at the 2020 census. One of Cleveland's historical streetcar suburbs, it was founded as a village in 1903 and a city in 1921.
South Euclid is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. It is an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland located on the city's east side. As of the 2020 census, the population was 21,883.
The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 census results, the six-county Cleveland, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) consists of Cuyahoga County, Ashtabula County, Geauga County, Lake County, Lorain County, and Medina County, and has a population of 2,185,825, making it the 33rd-most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the third largest metropolitan area in Ohio. The metro area is also part of the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton Combined Statistical Area with a population of over 3.7 million people, the most populous statistical area in Ohio and the 17th most populous in the United States.
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court decision handed down in 1964 involving whether the state of Ohio could, consistent with the First Amendment, ban the showing of the Louis Malle film The Lovers, which the state had deemed obscene.
U.S. Route 322 is a 494 mi (795.0 km) long, east–west United States Highway, traversing Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The road is a spur of US 22 and one of the original highways from 1926. A portion of it at one time was concurrent with the Lakes-to-Sea Highway.
Euclid Avenue is a major street in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It runs northeasterly from Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, passing Playhouse Square and Cleveland State University, to University Circle, the Cleveland Clinic, Severance Hall, Case Western Reserve University's Maltz Performing Arts Center, Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center. The street runs through the suburbs of East Cleveland, Euclid, and Wickliffe, to Willoughby as a part of U.S. Route 20 and U.S. Route 6. The HealthLine bus rapid transit line runs in designated bus lanes in the median of Euclid Avenue from Public Square to Louis Stokes Station at Windermere in East Cleveland.
University Circle is a district in the neighborhood of University on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. It is home to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance Hall, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland; the Cleveland Botanical Garden; historic Lake View Cemetery; the Cleveland Museum of Natural History; and University Hospitals/Case Medical Center.
Sun Newspapers was formed as a chain of weekly newspapers serving Northeast Ohio. Prior to a major reorganization in 2013, the chain consisted of 11 weekly newspapers serving 49 different communities in Greater Cleveland. The papers are focused on suburbs and exurbs in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lorain and Medina counties. Its offices are in Valley View.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL) has 27 branches that serve 47 communities in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. It was ranked the number one public library in the United States among libraries serving populations of more than 500,000 by the Hennen's American Public Library Ratings 2010. In 2009, more than 19 million items were borrowed by its 528,449 cardholders, and 7.6 million visits were made to branches.
The May Company Ohio was a chain of department stores that was based in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States is divided into 21 townships.
Kenny Yuko is an American politician and union activist who served as a member of the Ohio Senate, representing the 25th District. Previously, he was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, representing the 7th District from 2005 to 2012. Yuko was a political and union activist for more than two decades.
The Fairmount Boulevard District is a 130-acre (53 ha) historic district in Cleveland Heights, Ohio that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
The Jewish community of the Greater Cleveland area comprises a significant ethnoreligious population of the U.S. State of Ohio. It began in 1839 by immigrants from Bavaria and its size has significantly grown in the decades since then. In the early 21st century, Ohio's census data reported over 150,000 Jews, with the Cleveland area being home to more than 50% of this population. As of 2018, Greater Cleveland is the 23rd largest Jewish community in the United States. As of 2023, the Cleveland Jewish Community is estimated to be about 100,000 people.
William Herbert "Bert" Way was an English professional golfer and golf course designer. Way tied for second place in the 1899 U.S. Open, held 14–15 September 1899, at Baltimore Country Club in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Euclid Golf Allotment, also known as the Euclid Golf Historic District, is a historic district located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in the United States. Roughly bounded by Cedar Road, Coventry Road, West St. James Parkway, and Ardleigh Drive, the 142-acre (0.57 km2) site contains primarily residential homes built between 1913 and 1929. The historic district is built on land formerly owned by John D. Rockefeller and at one time leased to the Euclid Golf Club for its back nine holes, and it takes its name from this historic factoid. The Euclid Golf Allotment is a largely undisturbed example of an early 20th century planned community containing American Craftsman, Colonial Revival, French Renaissance Revival, Italian Renaissance Revival, Prairie School, Shingle Style, and Tudor Revival architecture.
The Cedar Glen Apartments is a historic apartment building located in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Designed by prominent local architect Samuel H. Weis and completed in 1927, the building originally contained luxury apartments and served as a gateway to the more exclusive neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, on whose border the building is located. Threatened with demolition in 1992, the building was purchased by new owners and converted into condominiums.
Superior Avenue is the main wide thoroughfare and part of U.S. Route 6 in Ohio in Downtown Cleveland, the largest and most populated city of Northeast Ohio. Superior runs through the central hub of Cleveland, Public Square. However, the only traffic that can go through the square is bus, bike, and pedestrian transportation. In 2016, the city of Cleveland completed renovation of the Public Square green space and it was decided that no civilian vehicular traffic should be allowed to traverse the park area. Public Square is the "hub" because all of the main streets in downtown jut out from this central greenery. To the east and west, Superior, to the north and south Ontario Street as all the north–south roads are Streets in Cleveland (which goes back to the 1906 Street Plan Decision, and diagonally to the southwest, Euclid Avenue.
Euclid Creek is a 43-mile (69 km) long stream located in Cuyahoga and Lake counties in the state of Ohio in the United States. The 11.5-mile (18.5 km) long main branch runs from the Euclid Creek Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks to Lake Erie. The west branch is usually considered part of the main branch, and extends another 16 miles (26 km) to the creek's headwaters in Beachwood, Ohio. The east branch runs for 19 miles (31 km) and has headwaters in Willoughby Hills, Ohio.
