Welcome to a unique American landscape of the twentieth century: The Cleveland Cultural Gardens. This site is a virtual monument to that living, organic landscape.

We are still under construction and will be well into the future. However, since going online six months ago, we have won an Interactive Media Award, and we have had several thousand visitors from 51 countries.

Largely a community endeavor, this site grew out of the Local History Seminar at Cleveland State University. It will regularly change as readers contribute materials to our editorial board, which will review and publish appropriate content. Much of the material presented here was created by scholars, undergraduates, graduate students, and regional teachers, working in collaboration. We also have had the cooperation of many organizations around town, including the Cleveland Cultural Gardens Federation. There is now a tab for them on the site, with a note from George Parras, the Federation President.

Some of the content that you will find includes: photographs, oral histories, historical essays, descriptive research statements about statues, sound portraits, and a Frequently Asked Questions page to let you know how to get involved (i.e. contact the Gardens Federation); contribute materials to this site; or work with CSU to document other neighborhoods in the city. More recently, we have been slowly adding sound files--oral histories, audio descriptions of the gardens, and music. We will be adding lists of organic materials in each garden, bibliographies, and multiple links pages moving forward. Please email any and all suggestions that you have about content because we listen.

Why the Cleveland Cultural Gardens? The Gardens embody the history of twentieth-century America. They reveal the history of immigration to, and migration within, the United States. They comment on how we have built communities and constructed our identities as individuals and collectives. The gardens reveal the stories of the major conflicts that gave shape to the century: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. They also provide insight into the large social, economic, political, and cultural upheavals that roiled through the nation during the last century: the Great Depression, suburbanization, the Civil Rights Movement, and the deindustrialization of America's industrial heartland.

This is a story of hope and despair, joy and sadness, conflict and cooperation, growth and decline. The stones, paths, and memories of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens tell us what it has meant to be an American.

Dr. Mark Tebeau, Department of History, Cleveland State University