St. Mary's on the Flats
St. Mary's on the Flats, originally known as the Church of Our Lady of the Lake,: 34–35 : 8 was the first Catholic church building in Cleveland, Ohio. The location where the church once stood can be found, in an 1881 atlas, at the south-east corner of Columbus Ave. and then Girard Ave. on the east bank of the Cuyahoga river in the flats. Irishtown Bend Archeological District, where many of the parishioners lived, lies to the west, across the Cuyahoga river in what was Ohio City. Ohio City was annexed by Cleveland on June 5, 1854. Malaria was common in the area the church was built, but drainage was improved during the 1830s as Cleveland evolved into a major lake shipping port. The 1830s and 1840s brought continued prosperity to the port of Cleveland, but communicable diseases such as cholera were widespread in the low-lying Flats. As a result, low cost land was available for housing the workers who walked to the jobs on the docks.The number of Irish immigrants increased after the Great Famine, and many worked as unskilled laborers and dockworkers, and on the excavation of a new channel and mouth for the Cuyahoga River. In the 1850s, the area of Irishtown Bend was established and dominated by the winding Cuyahoga River with its swampy flood plain. Houses were primarily one or two stories and built of wood.As the second generation of Irish families obtained better-paying work, and dock work was increasingly mechanized, the Irish began moving out of the Flats. By 1900, more than half of this area's residents were of Eastern European origin. Irishtown Bend was gradually abandoned.
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Columbus Road, Cleveland
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Geographical coordinates (GPS)
Latitude | Longitude |
---|---|
N 41.49002 ° | E -81.7003 ° |
Address
The Foundry
Columbus Road
44113 Cleveland
Ohio, United States
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