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Italian Cultural Garden Construction Photographs

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Title	Italian Cultural Garden Construction Photographs
Subject	Military Ohio Immigration and Ethnic Heritage Arts and Entertainment Plants and Animals Gardens Construction Sculpture World War I Trees Italian Americans Columbus Day
Place	Cleveland (Ohio) Cuyahoga County (Ohio)
Description	These two 6.5" x 8.5" (16.51 x 21.59 cm) photographs show the construction of the Italian Cultural Garden in 1939. The opening of the Italian Garden was on October 12, 1930, during a joint celebration of Columbus Day and the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Virgil. It was at this time that the bust of Virgil was unveiled. The garden is in the Italian Renaissance style with an upper garden that has a large circular fountain and a lower garden with a double shell fountain upon which six medallions of Italians such as Giotto and Petrarch are located. In 1932 a stone from the side of Monte Grappa was added in honor of the northern Ohio members of the 332nd Regiment who fought alongside Italians during World War I. New construction on the garden began in 1939 by the Works Projects Administration, and on September 14, 1941, the completed Italian Cultural Garden was officially dedicated. Many Italian immigrants to Cleveland were peasants from southern Italy, where extreme poverty and government negligence forced many to look for a better life around the turn of the twentieth century. At first Italians were largely employed in the street and city service sector. Later, both Italian men and women were largely concentrated in the garment industries, monument work, and gardening. By the late 1920s six Italian neighborhoods had been established in Cleveland. The largest was Big Italy, located along Woodland and Orange avenues from E. 9th St. to E. 40th St. Little Italy, centered at Mayfield and Murray Hill roads, proved the most enduring of the settlements. The Cleveland Cultural Gardens, located along East Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, are landscaped gardens with statuary honoring Cleveland's ethnic groups. During the dedication of the Shakespeare Garden in 1916, it was decided that similar sites should be prepared for each of the city's ethnic communities. The first of these gardens, the Hebrew garden, was established in 1926. On May 9, 1927 the city set aside areas of Rockefeller Park for future gardens. The Italian, German, Lithuanian, Slovak, and Ukrainian gardens were established in 1930; the Polish, Hungarian, Czech, and Yugoslav gardens in 1934; and the American, Russian, Irish, Greek, and Syrian gardens in 1938. Romanian, Estonian, Afro-American, Chinese, Finnish, and Indian gardens have since been created. Planning and fundraising for each garden was undertaken within the ethnic communities, while the Cleveland Cultural Garden Federation (established in 1925) oversaw planning and coordinated various joint programs.
Creator	Cleveland News
Date of Original	1939
Collection	Cleveland Parks Rockefeller Cultural Gardens Photograph Collection
Source	Audiovisual material
Submitting Institution	Cleveland Public Library, Photograph Collection
Type	StillImage
Format	picture

Title	Om2014_2775197_013
Rights	For rights and reproduction requests, go to the Ohio Historical Society's Audiovisual and Graphic Reproduction Services page at http://www.ohiohistory.org/resource/audiovis/photodup.html; Online access is provided for research purposes only. For rights and reproduction requests or more information, go to http://www.ohiohistory.org/images/information
File Name	Om2014_2775197_013.tif
Image Height	3590
Image Width	4720
File Size	1557.954 KB
Format	picture

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Italian Cultural Garden Construction Photographs

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Italian Cultural Garden Construction Photographs

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