Cleveland Mass Mob XI
Saint Mary of the Assumption (Collinwood)
10 a.m. Sunday 22 March 2015
15519 Holmes
The first Cleveland Mass Mob of the new year will be south of the railroad tracks in the northeastern part of Cleveland, Collinwood. Collinwood, before 1910, was a separate municipality. Collinwood largely exists because Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway needed a flat spot between Toledo and Buffalo. Cornelius Vanderbilt bought the Lake Shore line in 1877, and it became part of New York Central. Collinwood Village in Euclid Township expanded from the railyard. To-day, the locomotive turntable and dormitories are gone, one can still see a coal tipple at the Saranac yard.
The first Catholic church in Collinwood was St. Joseph, which started as a mission from Saint Paul Euclid (suppressed in 2009). Originally, St. Joseph was on Aspinwall (near Saranac), later on St. Clair (1994 merged into St. Aloysius). Saint Mary was the first nationality church in Collinwood. Saint Mary is a Slovene parish, Marija Venobovzeta (Mary of the Assumption).
Cleveland was the capital of the diaspora of more than one nation. Outside of their respective homelands (the old country), Cleveland was the largest Slovene, and the largest Magyar/Hungarian city in the world. Cleveland (the new country—America) had heavy immigration from east and central Europe before the First World War, and after the Second. Those that came early went to escape poverty, and many just changed the locale; those that came after had often just escaped death. Those generations are largely gone. Those that have recently come, have not generally had those hardships and many live in suburban Lake County, and not in easy walking distance.
1906 cornerstone
The first building was from 1906, and its cornerstone is by the Marian altar, often with flowers. The present church is from 1957 during the peak of the second migration. Now, Saint Mary's was built just before the Second Vatican Council, and was a modern church in Catholic style; but that style is not current fashion, and most whom prefer the ancient style of ecclesial design are pleased enough with Saint Mary's.
