It’s difficult to think of a community of people coming together and celebrating its rich history as you drive past Buckeye Road today.
What was once the center of the Hungarian culture in the early 1900s, Buckeye Road has since scattered to the suburbs on the east side of Cleveland. Once a resident living on Buckeye Road, George Krozser often finds himself reminiscing what Buckeye Road once was like when he was growing up there with his father.
In fact, every other week, George Krozser saunters down the narrow, empty sidewalks along Buckeye Road and all that remains standing from his childhood are houses with peeling paint that sit in-between abandoned business buildings. The only sound he hears is from the wind whispering through the broken windows and thin trees.
Walking down the quiet street of Buckeye Road leaves the 62-year-old scratching his head and rethinking what this street once was. He often recalls thousands of Hungarian and Slovak residents standing in a crowd that’s like a river of people, rubbing shoulders with strangers directly across St. Elizabeth Church at 9016 Buckeye Road in celebration.
The crowds of jubilant residents flooding Buckeye Road was a scene Krozser will always remember when he revisits his old neighborhood. Most of the churches that once brought hope and life to the Buckeye area are now closed. The most notable church in the area, St. Elizabeth, is one of the prominent buildings left in the area that helps former residents bring back memories that once stood with them forever.
St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish was formed in 1892, eventually becoming the first Roman Catholic Hungarian parish in the United States. By the early 1920s, the church expanded so that it could accommodate more Hungarian immigrants who later arrived in the Buckeye area. The ageless, old stoned church stands out in the distance as you drive down the road that features old and irregular shaped buildings. This was a building that welcomed Hungarians all around the community and it’s the one prominent building that still stands tall on the corner of Buckeye Road and E. 90th St.
According to former Buckeye residents, crowds of different people in the community would come down to the church for winter bazaars and the George Harvest Festival that was held every year. The Hungarians made up 18 percent of the Buckeye community by 1920.
This street was once a place full of celebration and adventures within the Hungarian culture in the early 1900s. It was a place where Michael Feigenbaum once used to ride his bike to from his home in Shaker Heights just to get his favorite pastry dish from Lucy’s Sweet Surrender. This restaurant, which first opened in 1960, was home to the city’s most popular sweets that once brought the Buckeye community together.
The shop was put up for sale in 1994 and once Feigenbaum heard about the opportunity to own the place he would once spend most of his childhood at, he took advantage and hopped on the opportunity.
“There aren’t many bakeries like the old days,” he said. “I take pride in what I do.”
One of two signs left remaining along Buckeye Road today.
He’s now the current owner of the restaurant today, which is now located at 20314 Chagrin Blvd. To this day, Lucy’s Sweet Surrender proudly serves the famous Hungarian pastries and sweets that once stood in the heart of the Hungarian community in the late 1900s.
Like Lucy’s Sweet Surrender, residents of Buckeye Road waited in lines at the Balaton restaurant. This small, family-friendly restaurant swiftly became a haven for fine dining within the community. It was a place where Suzanne Radkowsky often found herself when growing up, largely because her mom was a cook who made extra money there during the week.
The restaurant— once located on East 126th and Buckeye Road— has now moved to 13133 Shaker Square. The ambrosial smell of the famous chicken paprikash dish roaming through the open windows and out onto the streets had Hungarians coming inside to get a bite to eat. Even after moving out of the city years ago, Suzanna and her father still go here to relive the memories that quickly became apart of her childhood growing up.
Nearly eighty years ago, Buckeye Road was in the midst of a time of great expansion. Immigrants came and went following World War 1 and after 1920, more residents began to purchase their own homes and became U.S. citizens. Hungarians came to Cleveland for many different reasons, but none more important than job availability and accessibility. Population in the area grew from 1,500 in 1900 to more than 40,000 in 1940 according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. The new residents were able to set up old-country institutions, speak their native language and do most of their business with former countrymen. They eventually established 10 churches and synagogues, businesses and nationality organizations that reenacted native celebrations.
One celebration, the Harvest Festival, filled Buckeye Road with residents wearing long, silk skirt costumes inside of cars crowding the streets. The Harvest Festival occurred once a year and lasted from the early 1900s to the late 1980s. It was held at St. Margaret church, at the corner of E. 116th St. and Buckeye Road.
The street became flooded with people in celebration. Suzanne Radkowsky, a former Buckeye resident, remembers the trumpeting noise from hundreds of car horns that echoed through the two-mile long street while sharing laughs that had the people in the community smiling from cheek to cheek.
Everyone was dressed up in different costumes to show off their source of national pride. This brought traditions from their homeland to America, which was a way of celebrating their heritage. Looking back and telling stories about how her mom made her hand-sewed skirts for the Harvest Festival often brings back memories that leaves a big smile on her face.
“Proud and happy. Those are the two best words to describe the feelings engendered by my memories of Buckeye Road,” Radkowsky said.
One of the many prominent shops located along Buckeye Road in the late 1900s.
Located on an intersecting street next to St. Elizabeth church is Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. On this road, you find Benedictine High School, a Roman Catholic high school that was founded in 1927. During its early years, enrollment began with just 12 men. But as the school still expands today, Benedictine high school has an enrollment of more than 350 young men.
Barbara Gongos-Sefcovic, a former resident who grew up on Buckeye Road in the 1950s-1960s, knew that everything she wanted to do growing up was located in the Buckeye area.
From going out to seeing movies at the Regency movie theater at the corner of E. 117th St. and Buckeye Road for 10 cents all day on Saturdays to simply checking out the mom and pop stores located on the corner of side streets, the neighborhood was filled with everything families needed during her time growing up there.
“Buckeye Road was really a self-contained community,” Gongos-Sefcovic said. “Shopping, entertainment, we had it all right there. We lived in a thriving community.”
What really made Buckeye Road the center of American and European cultures were the different European-style shops that were lined up with taverns on every corner of the street. Not only that, but four different movie theaters, two public elementary schools and a junior high school were built on the East End of the neighborhood to serve the thriving community according to the book, Cleveland’s Buckeye Neighborhood.
The crowds of younger people in the community would start to diminish starting in the mid-1950s. According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, younger Hungarian Americans began to abandon the neighborhood in the late 1950s, leaving one-third of the population left in the area over the age of 55 years old.
During this time, Mariann Gugliotta Rosen recalls her family driving down to lower Buckeye to get groceries at the A&P grocery store located on the corner of Buckeye Road and East 118th street. After packing the groceries into their car, the Rosen family would then walk 15 minutes down the crowded sidewalks smelling the savory Hungarian dishes being served all along the street. Along the walk, Mariann would stop at several different stores looking for either a chocolate sundae or hot fudge during the winter days.
The A&P grocery store that once attracted many different faces over the years has since changed. By January, 1968, the building turned into a Hungarian book and record shop. Since then, it’s changed to the headquarters of the Buckeye Area Development Corporation.
By this time, several different businesses began to fall off with the decline of the Hungarian community. Younger Hungarians began to abandon the old neighborhoods, leaving more than one-third of the Hungarian population over the age of 55 years old during this time, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
Near the end of the 1970s is when the majority of the original inhabitants of Buckeye Road moved out of the area to the suburbs. The White flight had a lot to do with this and by the early 2000s, only a handful of Hungarian residents were left living in the neighborhood. In fact, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, the Buckeye community rose to 90 percent African American by 2000.
Houses started to age and deteriorate along with more violence occurring throughout Buckeye Road, forcing many businesses to close down and people leaving the city. Despite the loss of the Hungarian culture in the Buckeye area today, renovations and planning goals are helping shape for a better community.
The Slovak Institute Library— which was dedicated to the Slovaks in 1952— is a place where you can learn about Slovakia and the Slovak language as they settled in with the Hungarians all throughout Buckeye Road. Today, the library is still located at 10510 Buckeye Road where you can find different books and maps that make it easy for current and returning residents to explore the growth of the Slovak people in Cleveland and around the world. This remains one of the few historical buildings left standing in the Buckeye area.
The Buckeye Shaker Square Development Corporation is positioned to turn around the neighborhood and sits today as one of the most productive development corporations in the city of Cleveland, according to their website. From new apartment buildings to improving the area’s physical appearance, Buckeye Road is looking to become a place that residents and visitors feel safe going to, like they were nearly a century ago.
Residents walking down the old Hungarian neighborhood today will have a hard time picturing the flow of people walking into each other surrounded by the crowded bakeries and local taverns that once was the heart and soul of the Hungarian community in Northeast Ohio. On his routinely trips down to the old neighborhood, George Krozser is seen with an exuberant look on his face, a look he gets passing by the old business buildings and restaurants he grew up going to. Despite a whole new scenery, the time spent growing up alongside Buckeye Road will be memories that Krozser will never forget.
“It was a place where [Hungarians] felt comfortable with others that spoke the same language,” Krozser said. “The ethnic Hungarians, Slovak, German and Irish neighborhoods will never exist again. It is an end of an era.”
