From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Slavic Village is a former predominantly Central and Eastern European neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. It encompasses two ethnic subneighborhoods, the largely Czech Karlin and the old Polish Warszawa.
Warszawa was the primary area of settlement for the city's Polish immigrants who arrived in the 1880s. The lives of these immigrants were centered around their parish, St. Stanislaus Church at East 65th Street and Forman Avenue and the thriving Polish commercial center along Fleet Avenue and East 71st Street. The population of Poles and other Eastern Europeans in the neighborhood peaked from about 1920 to 1940 and began to decline during the mass suburbanization the city suffered during the 1950s and 1960s. On November 28, 1980, Warszawa was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Warszawa Neighborhood District.
An attempt to revitalize the neighborhood was undertaken with the organization of Neighborhood Ventures, Inc., in 1977. With Teddy and Donna Sliwinski, along with architect Kaszimier Wieclaw, the area began to come alive once again. In order to attract people of various eastern European descent, the name of the region was changed to "Slavic Village". More recently, Slavic Village has seen difficult times. The zip code that includes the neighborhood, 44105, recorded more home foreclosures than any other zip code in the country during the second quarter of 2007,[2] causing the national media to declare the neighborhood the center of the 2007 foreclosure crisis.
The neighborhood saw an increase in crime during 2007, much of it related to youth gangs, drugs, and prostitution.[citation needed] Some of the increase in property and violent crime can be attributed to the extremely high number of home foreclosures in the area.[3] The City's plan to eliminate the 3rd police district, which includes Slavic Village, has been an issue of concern for some residents.[4]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
