They called the stretch around East 36th and St. Clair the hrvatski kvart. You will not find it on any city map. But from the 1900s through the 1970s, if you turned off Superior at East 40th, the language on the steps of St. Paul was Croatian, the music spilling out of the lodge halls was tamburitza, and the smell drifting from the kitchens was paprika, smoked pork and rising bread. By the 1980s, more than 25,000 Croatians lived in Cleveland. It was one of the largest Croatian communities in the United States, and the largest in the American Midwest.
The Place
The old Croatian quarter sat in the St. Clair-Superior corridor on Cleveland’s near east side, roughly from East 24th out to East 79th, with St. Clair Avenue as its spine. Brick two-flats, frame doubles, corner stores and union halls filled the side streets between the lakefront mills and the rail yards. The heart of the settlement was East 40th and St. Clair, where the bell of St. Paul Croatian Church still marks the hours.
A second Cleveland Croatia grew up later along the Lake Erie suburbs in Lake County: Eastlake, Willowick, Wickliffe and Willoughby. Locals call this stretch of Lakeshore Boulevard the Croatian Riviera. It is a working description, not a tourist slogan.
How It Became Croatian
The First Wave: 1880s to 1914
The first Croatians began arriving in Cleveland in the late 1860s, drifting in from Pennsylvania and West Virginia mining towns where Slovenian neighbours had gone first. The Slovenes, already established along St. Clair Avenue, sent word back to the old country and pulled the Croatians in behind them.
The serious wave began in the 1880s and ran hard until the First World War shut the Atlantic. Most of these immigrants left lands then ruled by Austria-Hungary: Dalmatia along the Adriatic coast, the inland mountain districts of Lika and Gorski Kotar, and the wine country of Zumberak on the Slovenian border. They were leaving phylloxera-ruined vineyards, partitioned farms and Habsburg conscription.
Cleveland needed bodies. The steel mills along the Cuyahoga and the lakefront, the Otis and Republic plants, the foundries and the railroads were hiring. A Croatian man could walk off a train at Union Depot in the morning and be on a shift by the afternoon.
By 1914, an estimated 10,000 Croatians lived in Cleveland.
The Parish Anchors
Two churches did the heavy lifting. In 1901, fifty families from Zumberak founded St. Nicholas Church, the first Croatian Catholic parish of the Byzantine Rite in the United States. Rev. Mile Golubic arrived from the old country to lead it, then resigned over a salary dispute, and the church drifted without a permanent priest for nearly a decade before stabilising under Rev. Milan Hranilovic in 1913.
The Latin Rite Croatians, the larger group, organised their own parish next. They bought land at East 40th just south of St. Clair on 21 July 1901. Father Milan Sutlic, freshly off the boat from Croatia, became the first pastor of St. Paul in 1902. The cornerstone of the church was laid on 2 August 1903, and the first Mass in the new building was celebrated on Easter Sunday 1904.
A parochial school followed in 1910, taught from 1920 by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis of Christ the King.
The Peak: Between the Wars
The interwar decades were Cleveland Croatia at full voice. St. Paul filled three Masses on a Sunday. The Croatian Fraternal Union ran lodges across the east side, providing sick pay, death benefits and dance halls in the same building. Tamburitza orchestras rehearsed in church basements and union halls. Saint days were public. Weddings ran for three days.
Chain migration did the recruiting. A man would send for his brother, the brother would send for a cousin, the cousin would marry a girl from the next village over and bring her sister out next. Whole stretches of Lika and the Dalmatian hinterland depopulated themselves onto a few streets of east Cleveland.
The Second Wave: 1945 to 1955
The Second World War and Tito’s rise sent a different kind of immigrant. These were displaced persons: anti-Communist Croatians, many of them educated, professional and politically engaged, fleeing Yugoslavia rather than the Habsburg empire. They arrived under the Displaced Persons Acts of 1948 and 1950.
Many settled in the old St. Clair quarter and rejuvenated the parishes their predecessors had built. They brought a sharper political edge and a longer cultural memory. By 1985 the Croatian population of Greater Cleveland had reached about 25,000.
The Landmarks
St. Paul Croatian Church, 1369 East 40th Street. The mother parish of Latin Rite Croatian Cleveland, founded 1901 and dedicated 1904. Still standing, still active, still the symbolic heart of the old neighbourhood. The Easter procession out of these doors marked generations of Cleveland Croatian families.
St. Nicholas Croatian Byzantine Catholic Church, East 36th and Superior. Founded 1901 by fifty Zumberak families. The first Croatian Byzantine Rite parish in the country. The present church was dedicated in 1975 as a larger building to serve the post-war community.
American Croatian Lodge / Cardinal Stepinac Hall, 34900 Lakeshore Boulevard, Eastlake. The civic heart of suburban Croatian Cleveland, named for the Archbishop of Zagreb persecuted under Tito. Banquets, weddings, consular days, Croatian Day, kolo dances and the Dubrovnik Garden restaurant all happen here. The Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in Washington runs visa appointments out of this building.
Croatian Heritage Museum and Library, 34900 Lakeshore Boulevard, Eastlake. Founded 1983 inside the American Croatian Lodge. Collects folk art, embroidered lace, fine art, books and documents on Croatian Cleveland. Open Fridays and by appointment. Admission is free.
The Croatian Cultural Garden, Rockefeller Park. A monument garden on East Boulevard along the chain of cultural gardens that stitch together Cleveland’s old immigrant neighbourhoods. Restored and re-dedicated in the 2000s. A baptismal font marks Croatia’s conversion to Christianity. The Heritage Museum took the garden on as a special project in 2009.
Croatian Fraternal Union lodges, east-side Cleveland. The CFU, headquartered in Pittsburgh, ran multiple Cleveland branches that doubled as insurance societies and social clubs. The lodges paid out on sickness and death, taught tamburitza, hosted Saturday dances and ran the youth athletic leagues. Several still operate.
Where They Came From
The Cleveland Croatian community was assembled out of three regions of what was then Austria-Hungary and is now the Republic of Croatia.
Dalmatia sent fishermen, vineyard workers and stonemasons from the Adriatic coast and the karst hinterland behind it. Phylloxera wiped the vineyards in the 1890s and emptied villages around Split, Sibenik and the islands of Brac, Hvar and Korcula. Lika, the rocky mountain province between Zagreb and the Dalmatian coast, sent peasant labourers off thin upland farms that could not feed a fourth son. Gorski Kotar, the forested highlands east of Rijeka, sent woodcutters and sawmill hands. And from Zumberak, the Greek Catholic borderland on the Slovenian frontier, came the families who would found St. Nicholas.
The post-war wave was different in origin and class. These were urban Croatians from Zagreb, Split and the Dalmatian towns, displaced by the Communist takeover. Many had served in the wartime Croatian state, others were simply Catholic, propertied or politically suspect. They arrived through the Displaced Persons camps of Italy, Austria and Germany.
Cleveland Croatia Today
The old St. Clair quarter is largely gone as a residential neighbourhood. The mills closed, the children took degrees, and most of the families moved east along Lakeshore Boulevard to Eastlake, Willowick and Wickliffe in the second half of the twentieth century. The Croatian Riviera is where the active community lives now.
St. Paul still holds Croatian-language Mass on Superior. The American Croatian Lodge still books weddings into 2027. The Heritage Museum still opens its doors on Fridays. Croatian is still spoken on Lakeshore Boulevard, in church on Sunday, and in the kitchen of the Dubrovnik Garden.
The pattern is familiar across diaspora America. The first neighbourhood thinned. The institutions migrated outward. The community did not disappear. It moved twenty miles east, took the church and the lodge with it, and kept going.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Croatians settle in Cleveland?
Cleveland’s steel mills, foundries and railroads were hiring throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Slovenian immigrants already settled along St. Clair Avenue pulled their Croatian neighbours from the old country in behind them. By 1914 around 10,000 Croatians lived in Cleveland, most working in industry.
Is Cleveland still a Croatian city?
The old St. Clair quarter on the near east side has thinned, but the community itself is alive. Most Croatian Clevelanders now live in the eastern Lake County suburbs of Eastlake, Willowick and Wickliffe, known locally as the Croatian Riviera. St. Paul Church, the American Croatian Lodge and the Heritage Museum still anchor the community.
What are the most famous Croatian landmarks in Cleveland?
St. Paul Croatian Church at 1369 East 40th Street, founded 1901; St. Nicholas Croatian Byzantine Catholic Church at East 36th and Superior, also founded 1901; the American Croatian Lodge and Cardinal Stepinac Hall at 34900 Lakeshore Boulevard in Eastlake; the Croatian Heritage Museum and Library at the same address; and the Croatian Cultural Garden in Rockefeller Park.
Where in Croatia did the Cleveland Croatians come from?
The first wave came mainly from Dalmatia on the Adriatic coast, the mountain province of Lika, the forested highlands of Gorski Kotar, and the Greek Catholic borderland of Zumberak. The post-Second World War wave came from Zagreb, Split and the Dalmatian towns, displaced by the Communist takeover of Yugoslavia.
When did Croatians first arrive in Cleveland?
The first Croatians drifted into Cleveland from Pennsylvania and West Virginia mining towns in the late 1860s. The serious wave of direct immigration from Austria-Hungary began in the 1880s and ran until the First World War, peaking around 1900 to 1914. A second wave of anti-Communist refugees arrived between 1948 and 1955.
What happened to the Croatian neighbourhood on St. Clair Avenue?
The original near-east-side settlement thinned in the second half of the twentieth century as the mills closed and the second and third generations moved out to the suburbs. The churches and lodges remained, but most Croatian Cleveland families now live along the Lake Erie suburbs from Eastlake out to Wickliffe.
Your story, traced
If your family’s story passed through East 40th and St. Clair, or along the Croatian Riviera in Eastlake, or any of the Dalmatian, Lika or Gorski Kotar villages that fed them, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the old country to the mill gates to wherever you are now.