The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
By Katharine G. Trostel and Valentino L. Zullo The work of the Rust Belt Humanities Institute at Ursuline College is rooted in imagining and co-creating new futures. As two native Clevelanders (raised by the Rust Belt) teaching at a local institution—the majority of our students are firmly anchored in the greater Cleveland region—we occupy a […]
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Review: American Splendor (New York: HBO Films, 2003). Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini By Evan Ash In a middle-of-the-night lymphoma-induced delirium, Cleveland everyman Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) asks his wife Joyce (Hope Davis): “Am I a guy who writes about himself in a comic book, or am I just a character in […]
Read MoreI have never been so sad to bid farewell to one of our Metropoles of the Month. Not only did the blog feature some incredible history and personal reflections on Believeland in October, but the SACRPH Conference this past weekend took the utmost advantage of #CLE and showcased everything the city has to offer. There […]
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By Adam Gallagher One of my earliest memories is of my dad, a pretty even-keeled guy most of the time, punching through a toy drum of mine after what surely seemed to be the trough of his Cleveland fandom. It’s the winter of 1988, and the Cleveland Browns are facing the Denver Broncos for the […]
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“[Cleveland, a city] of nearly 400,000 residents is where millennial boomerangs are returning and transplants are arriving, bringing with them big ideas,” Fran Golden wrote in the Los Angeles Times earlier this year. “Count me among the most surprised to see amazing stuff happening in the Rust Belt.” For much of the late twentieth century, […]
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By Todd Michney As for my earliest Cleveland memory, I am unsure, but riding the RTA’s Red Line Rapid Transit to the old Municipal Stadium for baseball games toward the end of the 1970s is one that certainly stands out. Initiated in 1928 when Cleveland still ranked as the country’s fifth-largest city, the facility […]
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By Nichole Nelson On January 3, 1956, a bomb exploded in the garage of John G. Pegg, an African- American newcomer to the Shaker Heights neighborhood.[1] The explosion was a turning point for the Cleveland suburb: the wealthiest neighborhood in America in 1960.[2] Though it destroyed Pegg’s garage, it also jolted Shaker Heights’ residents into […]
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By J. Mark Souther On a crisp October day in 1970, a crowd cheered Carl Stokes on as he scrambled down the dock behind Fagan’s Beacon House in his yellow fishermen’s boots onto a submerged platform and sloshed through the murky waters of the Cuyahoga River. Stokes, elected 50 years ago next month as the […]
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“I believe … the Cuyahoga will be the place,” Moses Cleaveland wrote in July of 1796. Working for the Connecticut Land Company, Cleaveland had arrived in Ohio to survey the land and plot it for settlement. Cleveland, he believed, would be well situated for future success. “It must command the greatest communication either by land […]
Read MoreJust as I’m sad to see that the warm days of summer are behind us, it’s bittersweet to realize that our coverage of Ho Chi Minh City has come to an end. In tandem with the Burns/Novick documentary on the Vietnam War, I felt immersed in this Metropolis of the Month. A trip to HCMC […]
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The Metropole 