Preserving the Vanishing City: Historic Preservation amid Urban Decline in Cleveland, Ohio

Preserving the Vanishing City tells a highly local story to convey the history of historic preservation within the context of decline. The book chronicles the rise of Cleveland’s local preservation movement, which had seeds in growing awareness about architectural heritage in the 1950s and 1960s. Ultimately, Cleveland created the State of Ohio’s first local preservation commission, the Cleveland Landmarks Commission, in 1971. As preservationists navigated how to establish a preservation ethos in the city, they confronted local policies that heavily prioritized demolition, local skepticism that the city had much of anything of historic value, and a lack of resources that made their work a constant uphill battle. In response, they adopted an entrepreneurial approach that relied on cultivating advocates who had a deep passion for the city’s history and future, establishing local partnerships, engaging with national networks, and finding creative sources of funding.In the 1970s and 1980s, Cleveland’s preservationists managed to tackle an array of preservation challenges, with varying degrees of success. They were deeply passionate about the city’s industrial heritage, which included unique infrastructure and machinery – the preservation of which often remains in question today. They engaged in physical planning and urban design to transform the city’s downtown Warehouse District, while simultaneously working to change state and local zoning and building codes to support – rather than ban – creative adaptive reuse. Preservationists worked in neighborhoods across the city and, often, neighborhood preservation was led by resident activists and neighborhood organizations. At the same time, Cleveland’s preservationists, like many of their peers around the nation, struggled to engage with the city’s Black residents and lacked the tools and ability to navigate the city’s changing racial landscape. This was particularly evident in the Buckeye neighborhood, once the nation’s largest Hungarian enclave, that underwent rapid racial change from the 1960s through the 1980s and is now a predominantly Black neighborhood. Preserving the Vanishing City also dives into the landscape of residential rehabilitation by stepping outside of traditional preservation to explore if and how other public and nonprofit initiatives support the retention and rehabilitation of Cleveland’s vast residential landscape.