By Julie McGovern Voyzey
Over the last year, the City and its partners in the
Moreland History Project – including the Shaker
Library and Cleveland State University’s Center for
Public History + Digital Humanities – have taken a
deep dive into the neighborhood’s past. There is
now a more complete picture of the neighborhood,
beginning in its earliest days in the 1920s.
This body of work includes numerous
individual stories that are singularly revealing, but
taken as a whole uncover the many facets of this
dynamic neighborhood.
Two pieces, written by Richard Raponi for
Cleveland State University’s Center for Public
History + Digital Humanities, focus on the period
when Moreland became home to a thriving Jewish
community that was migrating from Cleveland
to inner-ring suburbs. While much of Shaker was
reined in by restrictive anti-Semitic covenants
and discriminatory real estate practices instituted
by Shaker’s original developer, the Van Sweringen
Company, the Moreland and Lomond neighborhoods
lay outside of the legal boundaries of the Van
Sweringens’ control. In 1937, a population study
estimated that 15 percent of the population in Shaker
Heights was Jewish. This accounted for over 3,600
individuals in 837 families.
WWW.SHAKER.LIFE | WINTER 2019 51
Always Vibrant,
The Moreland History Project
has revealed little-known
aspects of this dynamic
neighborhood’s past,
including the fact that
it was once a thriving
Jewish enclave.
Ever Evolving
Opposite page
and page 54:
The original
stained glass
windows in the
Shaker-Lee
Synagogue are
still intact in the
building, now
the Chapel of
Hope Christian
Fellowship.
/WWW.SHAKER.LIFE