Title
Parmadale Children's Village of St. Vincent de Paul
Description
At the time of its dedication in 1925, Parmadale Children's Village of St. Vincent de Paul led the way for a new style of how orphanages operated. It was the first orphanage to move away from the institutional type of care and to implement a cottage residential plan. Parmadale was a non-profit organization, established with planning and funding from the Catholic Charities Corporation, a fundraising agency focused on charities in the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. The Catholic Charities Corp. purchased 180 acres of land and constructed Parmadale at the location of 6753 State Road Parma, Ohio (see Google Map). It is still there to this day under the name of Parmadale Family Services.
The construction company chosen to build Parmadale was John Gill & Sons Co., a firm well-represented in Cleveland by its previous work on such noteworthy buildings as the Terminal Tower and the Federal Reserve Bank. The architect for this project was George S. Rider. Initially there were only 12 cottages, a school, central dining hall, kitchen, power house, and laundry room. Future additions included an athletic field and gymnasium in 1926, a pool in the 1930s, and a new administrative building in 1953, all necessitated because of the facility's gowth in population due to mergers and the closure of other orphanages.
Date Created
2012
Publisher
Cleveland Memory Project
What is Cleveland Memory?
The Cleveland Memory Project is a freely searchable online collection of digital photos, texts, oral histories, videos and other local history resources, built by the Michael Schwartz Library at the Cleveland State University in collaboration with a host of community partners around Northeast Ohio.
