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Memories of growing up along E. 105th Street
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By: GERT MANN Special to the CJN
I grew up in a Cleveland neighborhood that had reached its zenith in the years before World War II.
It stumbled through demographic change in the 1940s and early '50s, as its population moved out to the suburbs. Homes were sold, businesses moved, and the institutions that had served a once-thriving community were relocated. Yet the neighborhood extending along East 105th Street from St. Clair to Euclid avenues lives on in memory for thousands of residents who participated in its glory days.
Those of us who lived within its boundaries came from homes headed by immigrant parents or first-generation Americans. We were predominantly Jewish, steeped in a culture and religion passed on by our parents and grandparents. Many practiced the religion as they had "in the Old Country" (Eastern Europe).
Both of my parents came here from Europe as young children. My mother's family came from Lithuania, my father's from Russia. The language spoken in their childhood homes was Yiddish. They learned English when they started school. I remember all four of my grandparents speaking to me in broken, accented English, but communicating with my parents in Yiddish.
Families lived near one another in this proud, self-contained neighborhood, where shared values and customs bound us together. Small synagogues dotted the streets, places for traditionalists to say their morning, afternoon and evening prayers, and to observe the sanctity of the Sabbath. These little "shuls" educated boys in after-school sessions to prepare them for bar mitzvah and for accepting the religious responsibilities of a Jewish male adult.
At the more modern and liberal synagogues, girls could receive a Jewish education, too. Here, Jews would gather on the major holidays to pray, greet friends and wish each other a "gut yontif" - a good holiday.
I remember a yontif custom in our family - visiting my mother's parents in their synagogue.
First, we'd tiptoe into the downstairs section, where the men swayed over their prayer books. My grandpa's mustache tickled when he kissed me. Then, we'd climb the stairs to the women's section, where we'd see grandma all dressed up, wearing her black hat with a feather. Even though I didn't understand the words or what was happening, it felt good to be there, seeing them in exactly the same place, year after year.
These grandparents lived on Tacoma, just a few streets away from Olivet, where my mother's sister, Aunt Ida, lived with her family. We lived on Kempton, within walking distance of both their houses. My other grandparents lived on Linn Drive, further away from East 105th, but still part of the neighborhood. A few of the streets, such as Drexel and Pasadena, boasted large homes, each with a commodious front porch and luxurious trees on the lawns. Their boughs bent and arched over the road like a green canopy hanging over the street.
Our friends all lived nearby on streets with names like Columbia, Elgin, Pierpont, Somerset, North and South boulevards, Adams, Parkgate and Yale. We could ride our bikes to each other's houses and play outdoors with no worries about safety.
Our schools were within walking distance. Miles Standish, built in the 1930s, was my elementary school, with Empire Junior High close by. Glenville High School, the legendary school that turned out so many future professionals and community leaders, was just far enough away to give us time to gossip while walking to school. For recreation after school, we went to the Council Educational Alliance (forerunner of today's Jewish Community Center), an agency that dazzled us with clubs and activities while promoting good citizenship.
A streetcar rattled down the middle of East 105th, providing transport for the whole neighborhood. Very few families had two automobiles and none of my friends had mothers who knew how to drive. An adult could buy a streetcar pass for $1 that was good for transfers to connecting buses. It could be sold at the end of the work week to someone who needed Saturday transportation downtown. I remember my mother's arrangement with a clerk at the corner bakery.
"Mrs., you want to use my pass? I don't ride on the Sabbath. Take on Friday early for 50¢." The deal was struck, and my mother (not a Sabbath observer) planned her downtown shopping trip. She felt free to do so because she didn't practice (in her words) "all that religious stuff." However, she told us emphatically that she'd never wash clothes on Saturday because it was "Shabbos."
Various interpretations of Jewish practice prevailed, but one's identity as a Jew was without question.
Up and down the main street were the stores that sustained us. Sherwin's Bakery had cinnamon kuchens, caraway-seeded rye bread and braided, golden challahs. At Danch's chicken store, one could select poultry and wait for it to be gutted, defeathered and made ready for a cooking pot. Solomon's and Perkal's delicatessens featured succulent corned-beef sandwiches, chicken soup with matzo balls, lox and cream cheese on bagels and barrels of pickled green tomatoes and juicy dill pickles.
Ice cream at Uberstein's drug store cost 3¢ a dip and candy bars were a nickel. My mother shopped daily, buying her meats at the butcher shop, vegetables at the fruit store and canned goods at small markets where the merchants knew all of their customers by name.
We went to the movies as often as we could find 10¢ for admission. For a grownup, movies cost more, maybe 25¢. The Crown Theater was at the corner of our street, but there were several movie houses to choose from at other locations. St. Clair and E. 105th had the Uptown and the Doan; Superior and E. 105th had the Liberty; and Euclid and E. 105th, an exciting conglomeration of theaters and restaurants, had the Alhambra, Circle, Park and RKO Keith's that also featured vaudeville.
My Aunt Estelle took me to Keith's for some long-ago birthday treat to see "Dust Be My Destiny" with Priscilla Lane. I remember the name of the movie and the thrill of that outing, especially the slice of apple pie à là mode at Clark's restaurant across the street.
Aunt Estelle is gone and so is Priscilla Lane. My mother, whose presence fills so many of my childhood memories, died 11 years ago. The people who filled the streets with the drama of their lives have either died or moved on.
Today, the boundaries of St. Clair and Euclid remain the same as do the names of the streets lining East 105th. But storefronts are boarded up or enclosed by bars. the buildings are defaced with graffiti and there is trash in the street. Riding down the streets, one can see many of the stately homes, some nicely maintained, but there are also crack houses that have been boarded up by the police. Debris fills the unkempt lawns. There are no theaters or restaurants. The synagogues have been razed or converted to churches. The neighborhood, as we knew it, has vanished.
E.B. White, ranked the best essayist of our time, wrote: "The only sense that is common in the long run is the sense of change - and we all instinctively avoid it."
But when it happens, as it always will, we know enough to move on. What was once precious becomes part of us to be carried in memory and deed wherever we go.
It stumbled through demographic change in the 1940s and early '50s, as its population moved out to the suburbs. Homes were sold, businesses moved, and the institutions that had served a once-thriving community were relocated. Yet the neighborhood extending along East 105th Street from St. Clair to Euclid avenues lives on in memory for thousands of residents who participated in its glory days.
Those of us who lived within its boundaries came from homes headed by immigrant parents or first-generation Americans. We were predominantly Jewish, steeped in a culture and religion passed on by our parents and grandparents. Many practiced the religion as they had "in the Old Country" (Eastern Europe).
Both of my parents came here from Europe as young children. My mother's family came from Lithuania, my father's from Russia. The language spoken in their childhood homes was Yiddish. They learned English when they started school. I remember all four of my grandparents speaking to me in broken, accented English, but communicating with my parents in Yiddish.
Families lived near one another in this proud, self-contained neighborhood, where shared values and customs bound us together. Small synagogues dotted the streets, places for traditionalists to say their morning, afternoon and evening prayers, and to observe the sanctity of the Sabbath. These little "shuls" educated boys in after-school sessions to prepare them for bar mitzvah and for accepting the religious responsibilities of a Jewish male adult.
At the more modern and liberal synagogues, girls could receive a Jewish education, too. Here, Jews would gather on the major holidays to pray, greet friends and wish each other a "gut yontif" - a good holiday.
I remember a yontif custom in our family - visiting my mother's parents in their synagogue.
First, we'd tiptoe into the downstairs section, where the men swayed over their prayer books. My grandpa's mustache tickled when he kissed me. Then, we'd climb the stairs to the women's section, where we'd see grandma all dressed up, wearing her black hat with a feather. Even though I didn't understand the words or what was happening, it felt good to be there, seeing them in exactly the same place, year after year.
These grandparents lived on Tacoma, just a few streets away from Olivet, where my mother's sister, Aunt Ida, lived with her family. We lived on Kempton, within walking distance of both their houses. My other grandparents lived on Linn Drive, further away from East 105th, but still part of the neighborhood. A few of the streets, such as Drexel and Pasadena, boasted large homes, each with a commodious front porch and luxurious trees on the lawns. Their boughs bent and arched over the road like a green canopy hanging over the street.
Our friends all lived nearby on streets with names like Columbia, Elgin, Pierpont, Somerset, North and South boulevards, Adams, Parkgate and Yale. We could ride our bikes to each other's houses and play outdoors with no worries about safety.
Our schools were within walking distance. Miles Standish, built in the 1930s, was my elementary school, with Empire Junior High close by. Glenville High School, the legendary school that turned out so many future professionals and community leaders, was just far enough away to give us time to gossip while walking to school. For recreation after school, we went to the Council Educational Alliance (forerunner of today's Jewish Community Center), an agency that dazzled us with clubs and activities while promoting good citizenship.
A streetcar rattled down the middle of East 105th, providing transport for the whole neighborhood. Very few families had two automobiles and none of my friends had mothers who knew how to drive. An adult could buy a streetcar pass for $1 that was good for transfers to connecting buses. It could be sold at the end of the work week to someone who needed Saturday transportation downtown. I remember my mother's arrangement with a clerk at the corner bakery.
"Mrs., you want to use my pass? I don't ride on the Sabbath. Take on Friday early for 50¢." The deal was struck, and my mother (not a Sabbath observer) planned her downtown shopping trip. She felt free to do so because she didn't practice (in her words) "all that religious stuff." However, she told us emphatically that she'd never wash clothes on Saturday because it was "Shabbos."
Various interpretations of Jewish practice prevailed, but one's identity as a Jew was without question.
Up and down the main street were the stores that sustained us. Sherwin's Bakery had cinnamon kuchens, caraway-seeded rye bread and braided, golden challahs. At Danch's chicken store, one could select poultry and wait for it to be gutted, defeathered and made ready for a cooking pot. Solomon's and Perkal's delicatessens featured succulent corned-beef sandwiches, chicken soup with matzo balls, lox and cream cheese on bagels and barrels of pickled green tomatoes and juicy dill pickles.
Ice cream at Uberstein's drug store cost 3¢ a dip and candy bars were a nickel. My mother shopped daily, buying her meats at the butcher shop, vegetables at the fruit store and canned goods at small markets where the merchants knew all of their customers by name.
We went to the movies as often as we could find 10¢ for admission. For a grownup, movies cost more, maybe 25¢. The Crown Theater was at the corner of our street, but there were several movie houses to choose from at other locations. St. Clair and E. 105th had the Uptown and the Doan; Superior and E. 105th had the Liberty; and Euclid and E. 105th, an exciting conglomeration of theaters and restaurants, had the Alhambra, Circle, Park and RKO Keith's that also featured vaudeville.
My Aunt Estelle took me to Keith's for some long-ago birthday treat to see "Dust Be My Destiny" with Priscilla Lane. I remember the name of the movie and the thrill of that outing, especially the slice of apple pie à là mode at Clark's restaurant across the street.
Aunt Estelle is gone and so is Priscilla Lane. My mother, whose presence fills so many of my childhood memories, died 11 years ago. The people who filled the streets with the drama of their lives have either died or moved on.
Today, the boundaries of St. Clair and Euclid remain the same as do the names of the streets lining East 105th. But storefronts are boarded up or enclosed by bars. the buildings are defaced with graffiti and there is trash in the street. Riding down the streets, one can see many of the stately homes, some nicely maintained, but there are also crack houses that have been boarded up by the police. Debris fills the unkempt lawns. There are no theaters or restaurants. The synagogues have been razed or converted to churches. The neighborhood, as we knew it, has vanished.
E.B. White, ranked the best essayist of our time, wrote: "The only sense that is common in the long run is the sense of change - and we all instinctively avoid it."
But when it happens, as it always will, we know enough to move on. What was once precious becomes part of us to be carried in memory and deed wherever we go.
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