An Historic West Park Corner Gets an Updated Look
The historic northeast corner of Rocky River Drive and Puritas Avenue on Saint Patrick Parish West Park’s campus recently received an upgrade thanks to support from Cleveland Neighborhood Progress’ Middle Neighborhood Initiative.
For over one hundred and fifty years, Saint Patrick Catholic Church has occupied the northeast corner of the intersection, growing from a modest parish in 1848 to a campus including a church, rectory, school, gymnasium, and cemetery that passers-by would be familiar with today. Saint Patrick’s is recognized as one of the oldest parishes in the Cleveland Catholic Diocese and while its history tells a compelling story of a people dedicated to their faith, the cemetery anchoring the campus may be one of its most unique features.
Few urban cemeteries remain in the City of Cleveland, and had it not been for the advocacy of Saint Patrick’s congregation the cemetery on the corner of Rocky River Drive and Puritas Avenue would have been relocated at various times throughout its history. Parishioners saved the cemetery by championing its preservation amidst calls to expand Puritas Avenue in the 1920s and to relocate the interred to Holy Cross Cemetery on Brookpark Road in the 1940s. It has been important to the congregation to maintain the cemetery over time because many of those laid to rest there were early settlers of the West Park community, previously known as Rockport Township.
In total, the 0.3 acre cemetery has two hundred and eleven plots with the oldest gravestone dating back to 1861. In 2010, the last person to be laid to rest filled the final cemetery plot. Just one year prior in 2009, though, Saint Patrick Catholic Church was closed by the Cleveland Catholic Diocese as part of their downsizing efforts. Similar to parishioners who advocated to save the cemetery in the early twentieth century, the congregation once again rallied to save Saint Patrick’s by appealing the closure to the Vatican. As a result of their efforts, Saint Patrick Catholic Church opened its doors for worship again in 2012, reactivating an historic landmark in West Park.
Since reopening, the congregation has led several improvements across the campus to ensure the buildings are well maintained and honor the legacy of the parish. One task that had been on the list of needed repairs was addressing the dilapidated chain link fence surrounding the cemetery. During a community meeting in 2024, Saint Patrick parishioners shared with WPKND staff the desire to replace the fence, though they needed support with funding to cover the project costs.
At the time, no grant programs supporting this type of work existed, however just a few years later a new opportunity called the Middle Neighborhood Initiative was launched by Cleveland Neighborhood Progress. The Middle Neighborhood Initiative made grant funding available to support investment projects in Cleveland’s middle neighborhoods. Middle neighborhoods are defined as areas that are not experiencing a significant amount of investment or decline but, rather, live somewhere in the middle on relatively stable ground. Without intervention though, middle neighborhoods are considered to be highly susceptible to eventually become blighted and disinvested. In Cleveland, West Park Kamm’s, West Park Jefferson, Old Brooklyn, Lee-Harvard, and North Collinwood are all considered to be middle neighborhoods.
When the program officially launched, WPKND staff recalled those previous conversations with Saint Patrick congregation members from a few years prior and reached out to see if the church would be interested in exploring this opportunity to support replacing the cemetery fence. One arm of the Middle Neighborhood Initiative called the Clean and Green Campaign set aside dollars for public realm & neighborhood beautification projects which the fence replacement fit nicely into.
After discussions with parish leadership, WPKND assisted the church with their grant application as well as obtaining necessary approvals from the City of Cleveland for the project to move forward. Because Saint Patrick Church is designated as a local landmark, any alterations to the property require approval from the Landmarks Commission. The new ornamental fence now in place harkens back to the original fence that existed prior to the chain link and gives a much improved appearance to the burial ground.
West Park Kamm’s Neighborhood Development would like to thank Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and Saint Patrick Parish West Park for their partnership on this project to bring another improvement to the Rocky River corridor. West Park Kamm's Neighborhood Development would also like to extend their thanks to Murdock's Crew, the contractor who installed the fence.
