Abstract

In this 2005 interview, Nancilee McCormack, a resident of the westside of Cleveland since 1966, talks about moving to Cleveland from southern Ohio as a young woman and working for 40 years as a waitress in a number of well-known and not so well known bars and restaurants of Downtown and the west side of Cleveland, including Tony's Diner and the "infamous" Egg Palace. She recounts stories of shopping in Downtown Cleveland with a friend and their children in the 1970s and 1980s before the last of the large retail stores left Downtown. She also talks about her work as a member of the West Clinton Block Watch and, most recently, as an employee of the Detroit-Shoreway Community Development Association. In connection with her current employment, she talks about a number of project sponsored by the Association to promote the neighborhood community.

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Interviewee

McCormack, Nancilee (interviewee)

Interviewer

Souther, Mark (interviewer);Yanoshik-Wing, Emma (participant)

Project

Detroit Shoreway

Date

12-8-2005

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

76 minutes

Transcript

Mark Souther [00:00:00] Just go to begin. Sorry, forgetting the date. Today is December 8, 2005. My name is Mark Souther from Cleveland State University and I’m at Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization today talking with Mrs. Nancy McCormick. Nancy, could you tell me for the record your full name and when and where you were born?

Nancilee McCormack [00:00:29] My full name is Nancilee McCormick. I was born in Woodsfield, Ohio. It’s a small village in southeastern Ohio down on the Ohio River.

Mark Souther [00:00:43] When did you move to Cleveland?

Nancilee McCormack [00:00:45] 1966.

Mark Souther [00:00:48] How old? Tell me, forgetting the date, how old would you have been at the time?

Nancilee McCormack [00:00:54] Twenty.

Mark Souther [00:00:56] When you moved to Cleveland, what neighborhood did you first move to?

Nancilee McCormack [00:01:00] I lived in. It was various places. But one of the areas that I did live in was the Dudley. The block club area is called the Urban Terrace now. It was Dudley Elton. And at that time it was really great. It was rednecks, it was hillbillies, and it was pretty cool. Now it is a weed and seed area. It’s going down a little bit, but it’s coming back.

Mark Souther [00:01:31] How long did you live at that location?

Nancilee McCormack [00:01:33] I was there for a couple years.

Mark Souther [00:01:35] When you say it was rednecks and hillbillies, do you know where any of these people were from?

Nancilee McCormack [00:01:41] It was mostly West Virginia, Pennsylvania, southern Ohio.

Mark Souther [00:01:46] What brought them to that neighborhood?

Nancilee McCormack [00:01:50] Probably the housing at the time wasn’t all that expensive. And there were some pretty neat houses. There still are.

Mark Souther [00:01:58] What job did you hold when you first moved to Cleveland?

Nancilee McCormack [00:02:03] A job that I did for 45 years. I worked as a waitress. So I’ve been- I worked in several places. One of the places I worked was Tony’s Diner on 117th street, which was a big deal place for all the Plain Dealer editors. And everybody hung out there. And Dennis Kucinich hung out there for years and years and years. And then they moved it. I think it’s out in Sandusky. It’s someplace out west now. The diner itself, they moved and they put a Rite Aid in its place.

Mark Souther [00:02:42] Was the diner an original building at its location and they moved it elsewhere?

Nancilee McCormack [00:02:46] I think so, yeah. It had been there for a very long time. It was. It should have been a historic landmark, but they moved it for progress. Drugstores have always got to be on the corner there.

Mark Souther [00:03:00] What brought you to Cleveland? You mentioned you moved here at age 20 from southern Ohio. What brought you to Cleveland?

Nancilee McCormack [00:03:08] Just getting out of a small town. Everybody else went to Columbus, and I’ve never been one to do the norm, so I came to Cleveland.

Mark Souther [00:03:18] What did you think of the city when you first moved here?

Nancilee McCormack [00:03:21] I thought it was really neat because it had these little pockets of neighborhoods. It was like Slavic Village. And there was. I’m not sure that they even called it that then. That’s what it’s called now. But each little area had its grocery store and maybe someplace to shop close by. And it was just full of small neighborhoods. And I’ve always said, anyway, that Cleveland is a small town with a lot of people.

Mark Souther [00:03:55] Which ones of these areas, these little commercial nodes, if you will, did you tend to frequent the most?

Nancilee McCormack [00:04:02] Oh, possibly. Probably. Lorain. Well, downtown, actually, in the early days, in its heyday. I have a friend that I’ve known for 35 years. Our kids are the same age. They grew up. And we would go downtown on Saturday because you could shop everywhere. It was really- We would go to Halle’s first and the kids would go through and they’d look at everything. And then we’d go up to Kresge’s and buy it for like a third the price. But there was a Kresge’s, a McCrory’s, a Grant’s, a Jupiter. There’s a little place on Fourth Street called Lynn’s, and you could just buy tons of clothes for the kids and not spend a whole lot of money. And we would always go to Woolworth’s, then to the lunch counter because the kids loved to eat there. Downtown was really exciting then, and hopefully with the Euclid Corridor going in, some of that will come back.

Mark Souther [00:05:03] Did you drive downtown or take the bus?

Nancilee McCormack [00:05:06] Sometimes we drove and we’d park at May Company, and sometimes we’d just hop on a bus and go down. And every once in a while we would take the rapid.

Mark Souther [00:05:19] Where did you pick up the rap? At what station?

Nancilee McCormack [00:05:22] At 98th Street, because we lived on Madison, we’d just walk across and get on it there.

Mark Souther [00:05:29] Can you describe the houses on your street?

Nancilee McCormack [00:05:32] Back then?

Mark Souther [00:05:33] Back then.

Nancilee McCormack [00:05:34] There were not a whole lot of houses. I lived in an apartment that was pretty neat. It had 1, 2, 3, 4 apartments, and the one downstairs was a bar. And the place next door was sort of a secondhand store. There was a laundromat within walking distance. There was a drugstore on the corner, Leader Drug. There was a Convenient Food Mart. There’s a grocery store. There was an A and P grocery store. They had a lady there named Margaret that was absolutely the best packer in the world because I didn’t always have a car and she would pack the stuff so I could actually carry it. It was pretty neat.

Mark Souther [00:06:24] Did you make a lot of friends in the neighborhood when you moved to Cleveland, or did you find it difficult?

Nancilee McCormack [00:06:29] I didn’t find it difficult. I didn’t. I didn’t make a lot, because I don’t. That’s just my personality. The friends that I tend to make, you know, are lifelong. To have a lot of them, I don’t. I just know a lot of people.

Mark Souther [00:06:51] Did you meet anyone in particular in the neighborhood that became a close friend?

Nancilee McCormack [00:06:56] Yeah, Donna, the friend that I went downtown with all the time. Our kids were the same age, in the same class at school. They’re in Brownies together and Girl Scouts, and she and I are still close friends.

Mark Souther [00:07:15] I’m curious. You work for Detroit Shoreway now and you lived in the Detroit Shoreway for some, the neighborhood, for some time. When were you first aware that there was a place called Detroit Shoreway and did you think of yourself as living in it?

Nancilee McCormack [00:07:33] When I moved into Detroit Shoreway neighborhood was 1984, and I was aware of Detroit Shoreway, and I used the facility some. And as the years progressed and I got more involved in the neighborhood, I came to know a lot of the people over here. That’s how I got my job. I was block club chair for 10 years, and I just worked a lot with Detroit Shoreway, and I got to know all the people over here and the people in my neighborhood. Ray Pianka was, I think he was the first director of Detroit Shoreway. And I didn’t know him then, but I came to know him when he was councilperson. And I was at a meeting one night, and Tim Melena had started the block club. And Ray Pianka knows everybody that moves into the neighborhood, and he sent Tim over to talk to me. So I started going to block club meetings and meeting more people and getting even more involved. I’ve always been sort of involved, but sort of peripherally, you know, like, you know, I would vote and I would go to meetings and stuff like that, but I never, you know, hi, I’m your neighbor. Wasn’t my personality. Now it is.

Mark Souther [00:09:07] I guess. In your position at Aston.

Nancilee McCormack [00:09:08] Yeah.

Mark Souther [00:09:11] Were you more familiar, more aware of Detroit Shoreway as being the crossroads, sort of commercial crossroads, initially West 65th and Detroit, or did you always conceive of it as a larger neighborhood? I’m from outside Cleveland.

Nancilee McCormack [00:09:29] Okay. I’ve always said over the last few years, I sleep on West Clinton, but I live on the West Side. My neighborhood is from 25th Street to 117th, from the Lake to Denison. It’s a pretty big neighborhood. I never think of Detroit Shoreway as that confined. To me, it’s- I don’t know. I do think of Detroit Shoreway as a neighborhood, but more, more than just a neighborhood. I don’t think it of just of the corporation or organization as just bricks and mortar. I think of it as a lot more than that.

Mark Souther [00:10:23] Is the Detroit Shoreway unique in your opinion?

Nancilee McCormack [00:10:29] I don’t know that it’s unique because there’s so many other CDCs around. Do you mean as the organization or more the neighborhood?

Mark Souther [00:10:39] More the neighborhood. What is your [crosstalk] How would you describe it?

Nancilee McCormack [00:10:41] Our neighborhood? Okay, I can compare it to like Ohio City. Ohio City is so gentrified. There’s no more affordable housing there. Detroit Shoreway is not that way and will not be that way. We have a lot of affordable housing. We have a lot of up-end housing. It’s just, it’s pretty, it’s just a nice neighborhood. Housing values have gone up. The neighborhood itself is going up. The arts district is just, it’s not booming but it’s going to be. It really is. The whole, the whole landscape is just changing for the better. I can’t see us going down at all. There isn’t any reason for it to. On 70th we have the most eclectic housing ever. There’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel. And then right behind it is a highrise for the elderly. Right behind that is this group of cluster homes which go probably for like a hundred thousand. You know what a cluster home is? You know the four units and those are absolutely gorgeous inside. Right behind that is what we always called Section 8 housing. I think it’s called Housing Choice Vouchers now that they’ve just redone and they look pretty cool. And then right behind that is Belvedere which goes for like 220,000 starting. So it’s a very eclectic street and our whole neighborhood has pockets like that. My street, West Clinton, has a lot of century homes on it. Probably 80% of them are century homes. It’s a well-kept street. A lot of home owners, you know, owner occupied homes. It’s just when I talk to people, I’ll say West Clinton, man, I love that street. I want to move there. There’s couple houses available still. It’s a pretty cool street.

Mark Souther [00:12:48] I’d like to shift gears a little bit and ask a little bit about the block clubs. How you first became aware of the block clubs or were you initially involved?

Nancilee McCormack [00:13:00] I knew that they were around. I just didn’t want to get involved. And then Ray Pianka sent Tim Melena over one night. We were at a Democratic Ward Club meeting in fact and he told me, he says she lives like two houses from you. So he came over and he talked to me, and I started attending the block clubs, and I really enjoyed him. I met a lot more people and got. I was always involved, but not totally involved. But as I met more people, I got, you know, more involved. And then Tim was appointed councilperson by Ray because Ray was running for judge. So Tim asked me if I would take over the block club because he didn’t want it going down the tubes, which once they get a leader and then that person drops out, they sometimes just- The block club will just fall by the wayside. So I agreed to do that. And 10 years later, I finally stepped down, because I had to, because I got a job here as a community organizer. But it was a great 10 years. I was able to bring people together. We’ve got several grants over the years to do things in the neighborhood. We did safety issues. We did beautification issues. I’m on my second year of a grant to pay the kids in the neighborhood to help out with the elderly and single moms that don’t have, you know, a guy around to help with raking leaves and shoveling snow and running errands. And we do a lot.

Mark Souther [00:14:50] Can you describe for me the first block club meeting that you attended, if you recall when it was, and what some of the issues were that were raised?

Nancilee McCormack [00:15:03] Block clubs have a tendency to be complaint sessions. If the chairperson allows that, you know, and- And that is the whole point of bringing the people together in a certain area saying, what’s going on in the neighborhood? You know, are there safety issues? Are there housing issues? And this is what we do at every block club every month, is we run through, you know, all this. We have- Depending on what district we’re in, we’ll have somebody from either 1st or 2nd district come and speak and let us know what’s going on. And we report whatever is going on. And housing violations, they report. My block club, the last meeting that we had was, like, two hours long. And it was not two hours of complaints. It was two hours of discussion of things that are going on in the neighborhood. I mean, we did take whatever complaints there were, but they talked about the new Rite Aid, different places on the street, you know… might need some help. You know, we put a labyrinth in at 65th and Detroit. There’s an empty lot there that belongs to Detroit Shoreway. So about a year ago, we got a grant, and we have a labyrinth in there that we haven’t gotten paved yet, but we do have all the flowers and trees and everything planted and it’s really going to look spectacular in the spring. So you need to come back.

Mark Souther [00:16:37] Is that like a maze?

Nancilee McCormack [00:16:39] Yeah, yeah, a maze, yeah, through the lot. And it just winds through. And even when there was nothing there but that, I would see kids down there playing and people, adults walking, exercising on it, you know, with their little Walkmans.

Mark Souther [00:16:59] So was it actually- How would you describe it as it is now and then, how is it going to look?

Nancilee McCormack [00:17:07] It has- It starts at one end and just weaves back and forth like a snake to the other end of the lot. And in the places in between, we’ve planted flowers and they planted, I believe, a redwood and some other kind of tree. It’s really going to look great. It’s really- There was a sign there that we’d been trying to get down for years. You couldn’t even see what it said on it anymore. Originally it said “No Trespassing.” And everybody kept saying, we can’t take it down, we can’t take it down. We don’t have permission. And I said, but we’re doing all this work here. I don’t want this big metal sign. So one of the guys, I was working on it just went out in front of us all and took it down.

Mark Souther [00:17:54] Where is the labyrinth located in relation to the main crossroads out here?

Nancilee McCormack [00:18:00] Right on the corner of 65th and West Clinton, which is the first street south of Detroit.

Mark Souther [00:18:08] Okay, what year, what was your first year of involvement in the block clubs? I missed. You said 10 years.

Nancilee McCormack [00:18:18] It was like, all right, Tim was in from- It had to be like the mid-’90s that I started getting, you know, going to regular meetings and that.

Mark Souther [00:18:36] Prior to that time, just to fill in some of the gaps from the time that you were waitressing when you first came to Cleveland, can you take us through what your jobs were from that time, 1966, until the 1990s?

Nancilee McCormack [00:18:54] Where I worked, I worked at Tony’s Diner. I worked at Jim’s Whataburger. It was a really neat place on Lorain Avenue. It was a 24-hour spot. When I first started working there, the waitresses cooked their own orders. Except during a rush. Then we’d have a cook on duty. I worked at the Infamous Egg Palace down on Detroit. It was a 24-hour place also. And it was around for years and years and years. The owners had ties with the mob. It was kind of interesting to see who would come in and out over there. From there I went downtown to work. I worked at a place called Alvy’s. It was in the Williamson Building, which is where the BP building stands now. And it was down in the basement, and there was a Cunningham’s Drugstore upstairs. I’d quite often go up there and have my breaks so I wouldn’t have to be bugged by anybody. We only got half an hour. Right beside that was a bookstore, fabulous bookstore. And I was down there for a couple years. And then I went over to a place called Midtown, which is no longer there. That’s where Panini’s is now, and it is one of the old Clark restaurants. And now I don’t think there’s any of them. Clark’s was a chain here in Cleveland, and they were noted for- One side would be a big horseshoe counter, and the other side was a dining room with several tables for bigger parties and that. And that was a great job. I enjoyed that. I was there for a couple years, and the guy I was working for left there and went down to 13th and Chester. And this was an, oh, Bonanza Restaurant. And he took it over and he called it the Frontier. And it was set up like a Bonanza with all the little booths and corrals in that. And it was a crazy place to work because it was huge compared to any place I’d ever worked. I was always getting lost. But I was, I worked for this man then for 20 years. We were there till 19- Okay. I went over there in 1970, right after the huge blizzard that we had. That really stopped Cleveland for a few days. We were over there for several years. And in the mid-’80s, he opened a place in the Atrium, the 666 Building on Euclid. And after a couple years there, he decided to get out. So his son went back to the original Frontier. But then we called it Sidelines. It was a sports restaurant. And I was there until 1996. New owners took over. They brought in their own help. So then I went to this place called the New Yorker Deli. I started there in January 1997, and in February, I broke my shoulder and I was off for seven weeks. And the guy held my job because he really wanted me to work there. And I was there until I got the job here in 2005.

Mark Souther [00:22:36] Just briefly, I wanted to go back to one of the two of the places that you work on Euclid Avenue. On or near Euclid Avenue, you worked at the restaurant in the basement of Williamson Building. And then you mentioned later one at 666 Euclid. Could you recount the years for both of those and then your recollection of how Euclid Avenue changed between those two moments?

Nancilee McCormack [00:23:11] For Alvy’s would have been 19, 1972, ’73, ’74. I was there for a couple years. That was a neat place. We were so busy there. I mean, people were working downtown. There were a lot of restaurants. We were, you know, a corned beef place. We had tons. I mean, they still sold a ton. Hardly- Restaurants don’t even do that anymore. It was, I loved this place. It was really a cool place to work. Then from there I went to Midtown, which was on Prospect. And this was interesting because if I worked Saturdays, coming up, Prospect Avenue on a Saturday afternoon was like midway at a carnival. It was just so many, interesting because they had a lot of really neat shops and people hanging out. And I enjoyed working there. And then, like I said, my boss that was there moved to another place. So a few months after he left, I went with him. And business boomed at the Frontier on 13th and Chester. This was in the ’80s. I’m not exactly sure when everything started to fall apart downtown, but slowly but surely, there was no place to shop anymore. Petrie’s closed. Jean Nicole’s closed. All of the dime stores had closed. Kresge’s, Jupiter, McCrory’s. And Jupiter was on the corner of 4th and Euclid, where the Wendy’s is now. And it was a subsidiary of Kresge’s. It was a neat store. And then when Woolworth’s closed, that was a real downer for downtown because it was the last place to shop. And I think it really hurt, like the people that lived in Bohn Tower, because that’s for the seniors. That’s on the corner of 13th and Superior and St. Clair Place, it’s on 12th. It’s on 13th and St. Clair. And there’s an apartment building called the Parkview, which was, and still is, low income. So when Woolworth’s closed, that was really a death knell for downtown because there was absolutely no reason for anybody to go on Euclid anymore. There wasn’t anything to go to except for there was three or four shoe stores and a couple of pawn shops, which had never been on Euclid. They were always on Prospect. And the last really ritzy place to go was Beattie’s Jewelry, which closed last year. And the people there were just marvelous, marvelous people. They ate in a restaurant all the time where I worked. So I got to know all of them pretty well. And now there’s no reason to go in Euclid. There’s no stores, and I don’t know if the Corridor will bring it back. I hope it does bring. It’ll never come back to what it was because the economy isn’t there. There’s the people, the workforce downtown is just non existent as to what it used to be. And you see that in like where I worked when I started there in the early 90s. It was great. It was really busy and like 30% of our lunch was Penton Publishing because they were in Penton Plaza, which is now called Ohio Savings Plaza because they moved and went over on Ninth Street to their own building. It’s called the Penton Media Building. It’s across from the Galleria, which was a pretty neat place to go to. It was too expensive to shop in, but that was great. It was a great place. And then because of the economy, it started. You know, the more exclusive shops closed and then slowly but surely, I mean, they put a dollar store and a KayBee Toys store in there and neither one of those are there anymore. Now, I did not go down there this year during the Christmas season. I don’t know whether there’s any stores back in or not because I know somebody new took it over and wanted to get some retail back in there. And hopefully they did because that gives people a place that they can walk to that live in the apartment buildings downtown.

Mark Souther [00:28:22] Getting back to Detroit Shoreway, you mentioned some of the different efforts on the part of block clubs, and one of those was beautification. You’ve already mentioned that there was- Right now there’s the labyrinth. Can you tell me some of the other beautification programs, describe those for me?

Nancilee McCormack [00:28:43] My particular Block Club did, and this came under beautification and safety. Street lamps, lights for the front yards. And anybody could participate that wanted to on the entire street, which would have been 140 if we could have gotten everybody to participate. They didn’t, but we ended up putting in about 12 street lamps in different people’s yards. That was one of them. The other block clubs have done. We do cleanups, major cleanups once a summer where the councilman provides a dumpster for a particular area and we just clean the whole neighborhood. Start one end, go to the other. Some of them have done flower beds, some of them have done flower boxes.

Mark Souther [00:29:45] Do you do these for people’s homes or for businesses or both?

Nancilee McCormack [00:29:49] Well, most of the block clubs are residential, so it’s mostly whatever we do is for a particular area. We could do businesses if. But they use, they have their own merchants association, so they pretty much do their own stuff.

Mark Souther [00:30:13] What about painting buildings?

Nancilee McCormack [00:30:15] Has that been painting.

Mark Souther [00:30:17] Painting dilapidated buildings. Has that been something that–

Nancilee McCormack [00:30:21] That is something that the Detroit Shoreway tries to keep up on as much as possible. My particular block club has two houses that are not totally abandoned, but they’re owned by banks so they don’t come out very often. So that’s one of the things that I have the kids do is we keep the yards mowed and raked. Building-wise, we can’t do anything there because it would be too dangerous. It would be trespassing also.

Mark Souther [00:30:56] What age kids do this?

Nancilee McCormack [00:30:59] The first year that I did it, I made it 10 to 16. But the first time that I went out to get workers, they were six and eight years old. They can rake leaves as well as a 16 year old. The second year when I sent in my proposal, I made it school age. As long as they were in school and live in the West Clinton Block Club area. It’s been hugely successful. I’ve had other Block Clubs. Other people call me. How can I get this? How can I get this? So now that I’m the organizer, I’m going to help them write proposals to Neighborhood Connections, which is a great organization also to get more people involved.

Mark Souther [00:31:48] What about an area of safety? That was another area.

Nancilee McCormack [00:31:53] One of the- Well, the street lamps came under that category. We put lights on the back of Cleveland Public Theatre because that lot was big and dark. We did foot patrol in our neighborhood that we still have several hours coming on that we space the guys out. Certain days, like between Christmas and New Year’s or right before Christmas, we’ll have him out two or three hours in the morning or maybe two or three hours in the afternoon. Just keeping an eye on things. That’s one of the things that one of our grants paid for.

Mark Souther [00:32:40] Is it one person or more?

Nancilee McCormack [00:32:44] In our neighborhood, they usually just send one. We do CB patrols. Nelson heads those up. He’s our Nelson Beckford is our safety coordinator for Detroit Shoreway. We do walking CB patrols. I don’t think they’ve done too many of them in the last few weeks because it’s been so cold. And cold has a tendency to keep the criminals in too. It helps.

Mark Souther [00:33:15] It keeps the rest of us in too, I think.

Nancilee McCormack [00:33:17] Yeah. Really?

Mark Souther [00:33:21] Can you- Before I do it, there are some more questions I wanted to ask. But I keep glancing up behind you and I see something called the Detroit Shoreway- Detroit Merchants Group Snowflake Project.

Nancilee McCormack [00:33:35] Okay. They started and I’m not sure how many years ago this was started, but they started with, I think this area right here, like 65th to maybe 67th and did all the polls. And they get donations from the different merchants in the area. And I don’t think there’s quite as many merchants now as what there were was when this first started, because it started back- Okay. It just started in 1995, 10 years. But the first year they had so many. And then the next year they raised more money and added. Until now they have them from. I think they start maybe 45th. I don’t think they go down that far. But our goal is to get them from 45th, because that’s where Detroit Shoreway starts to 84th or 85th, it might even be 83rd. But our goal is to get the whole length. And then Jay Westbrook picks up with the Christmas trees in his ward.

Mark Souther [00:34:57] What’s your most striking memory of Detroit Avenue over the years?

Nancilee McCormack [00:35:02] Detroit Avenue? I don’t know. When I was younger, there were a lot of bars along Detroit Avenue. There was a place called the Yankee Bar on the corner of 58th and Detroit, where you would go in and sit with your back to the wall so you would see when the people came in with guns. This is a rough-and-tumble- This was a rough-and-tumble street, believe me. And it’s now called the Happy Dog. And they have their original bar in there. And it’s really a great place to go. Nice neighborhood bar, good music, great food. It’s really fun. And then there was a place called the Seaway. And there was a place called Rollis’s, which was right across the street where I think Julianne’s is now. And the Seaway is where probably the cell phone. They closed all those bars on that side of the street. The precinct closed them. So to get the Happy Dog back up to be able to open, they opened up as a restaurant. And they just couldn’t make it just as a restaurant. So they petitioned the precinct to let them get a liquor license. And some people that still lived in the neighborhood were opposed to it because they remembered the Yankee Bar and the Rollis’s and Seaway and all, you know, all the rough and tumble bars. But I met James Levin then, and the owners of the Happy Dog, Billy Scanla n and Don Sugar, and I invited him to the block club. And Ray Pianka came to speak. I think he came originally to speak against letting them do that. But then after he met them and saw what they were about, I think in the end that he backed them also, because it was just the precinct that could vote it back. And we didn’t vote it back for every place on the avenue to be able to open. It’s a spot wet. So we were able to let Happy Dog get a liquor license and CPT because CPT, to serve beer and wine at any of their productions always had to get a special permit which if you have very many of them over a year, runs into a lot of money. So now if the next time that there is like a beer and wine license available, they’ll be able to purchase it and it’ll just be for their events. You know, it’s not like you can walk in and buy a six pack of Cleveland Public Theater or anything, but it’s pretty cool.

Mark Souther [00:37:56] Do you remember any particular stores that you’re particularly fond of on Detroit Avenue either then or more recently?

Nancilee McCormack [00:38:05] Well, there was a Kroger’s which I very seldom shopped at, but when it went into Sapele’s Buy Rite, it was a great place to shop. Then it was several grocery stores over the years that didn’t fare nearly as well. And that’s where the Save-A-Lot is now. I really don’t remember shopping at a lot of stores on Detroit Avenue. There was a Pick-N-Pay where the CVS is now. That was great. It was a real grocery store. We shopped there for a lot of years. My husband was always amazed at double coupons how much money you could save. Most men are not into that. He thought that was really great and we could walk to it from where we lived.

Mark Souther [00:39:04] How far do you have to go to a grocery store today?

Nancilee McCormack [00:39:09] Well, Save-A-Lot is right behind my house. I haven’t done this for a while, but I used to just jump the fence and go over there. But then I didn’t want the kids jumping it so I thought, well, maybe I shouldn’t either, even though it is my fence, to go to a regular full service grocery store. And to me full service is not a pharmacy and flower shop in that it’s just more choice of groceries. I usually shop at Dave’s on Carroll Avenue, which is right off of 25th and Bridge, right in there.

Mark Souther [00:39:55] You mentioned some of these rough-and-tumble bars that closed. About when did they close?

Nancilee McCormack [00:40:05] Early ’80s.

Mark Souther [00:40:07] Did they move somewhere else or did they close completely?

Nancilee McCormack [00:40:11] No, they closed. Well, they closed them down and I would assume that some of them either sold their licenses to other places or moved to out further and probably changed their name to something else.

Mark Souther [00:40:28] What about Lorain Avenue? Do you remember anything in particular about the part of Lorain Avenue that runs say from the 40s to the 80s? West.

Nancilee McCormack [00:40:46] 40s to west? Yeah, it was a very active street. And once again the rough-and-tumble bars all got closed down. There was one over there called Avon Country Bar, which I- What is there now? Spanish American something or other. Country music was great. There’s a place called Ginley Silk Hat, which is really good. And the Hot Dog Inn. Steve’s Hot Dog. Not Steve’s Hot Dog Inn. The original one is on 41st in Lorain and it’s still there. And then there’s another one at 51st or 52nd and Lorain. It’s called Steve’s Hot Dog Inn. And you go in there and you get like a 12-pack of chili dogs. And they would pack them in the bread boxes, they would keep the boxes and then slip them right back in the plastic bag. Great place.

Mark Souther [00:41:45] How is it today?

Nancilee McCormack [00:41:47] Lorain is-

Mark Souther [00:41:49] No, Steve’s.

Nancilee McCormack: Steve’s. It’s good. It’s still, it’s, it’s not quite the same, but you can still go in there and get a decent chili dog for a decent price.

Mark Souther [00:42:01] Did they ever have Chicago-style hot dogs there?

Nancilee McCormack [00:42:04] What’s Chicago-style? Is that with the coleslaw and everything?

Mark Souther [00:42:07] Well, it has coleslaw, pickles and tomato and relish.

Nancilee McCormack [00:42:12] I don’t know. That wasn’t our thing. We always got chili dogs with chopped onions and mustard. It was pretty good.

Mark Souther [00:42:22] Are there any other restaurants that you remember either on Detroit or Lorain Avenue that were favorite lunch places?

Nancilee McCormack [00:42:32] Not in that particular area or another area. I can’t, I can’t think of. Well, Perry’s over here on Detroit. 64th in Detroit was a mainstay for many, many, many years. I think that may have been a 24 hour place too. And they had a fire a few years ago and closed and nothing has reopened there yet. Over the last few years we’ve gotten some new restaurants. We got the Happy Dog, which is a bar and restaurant. We had this place called Lou and Eddie’s that was just totally awesome. It was across the street from the Happy Dog. They had great pasta. It was a bar and restaurant. Then about three years ago, a car hit it on New Year’s Eve and knocked out the front. And it took them forever to remodel inside. They opened back up as Bell’s Four Seasons and never quite took off. They changed the menu and raised the prices. And now it is Snickers, which has moved over here from 76th Street. And they’d been over there for like 25 years. But they are right on the right in back of where they’re going to be building Battery Park. So I’m thinking I don’t know for sure. I haven’t talked to Ron. But I think maybe they decided that it might not be conducive for them to stay open while all that construction was going on because the parking wouldn’t be as available and it’d be dusty and everything. And then on 58th street, we have a place called the Parkview, which has been around for very long time. And it’s a bar and restaurant that serves excellent food. You walk in and you see pictures from. It’s an old sports bar. You see pictures from the Cleveland Press and the Plain Dealer, and they have an excellent Sunday brunch down there. It’s a good place to go. When I have company in from out of town, I like to take them down there.

Mark Souther [00:44:46] Is it still a sports bar today?

Nancilee McCormack [00:44:48] Or was it one sports bar? I don’t- I think they sort of are. I think it’s more noted now for its jazz nights. I think it has music down there two or three times a week.

Mark Souther [00:45:01] Mostly local bands, or do they tend to bring it in from other cities or both?

Nancilee McCormack [00:45:05] I think it’s mostly local. Happy Dog has a very eclectic bunch of music. They’ll have country one night and rock one night. And they have a lot of original Cleveland people there.

Mark Souther [00:45:31] Did you used to go to the Gordon Square Arcade?

Nancilee McCormack [00:45:38] No, I don’t know that I was ever in it in its heyday. I remember coming over here for, when, and I forget which group it was, but they had a little thrift shop called Treasure Trove.

Mark Souther [00:45:58] A thrift shop?

Nancilee McCormack [00:45:59] A thrift shop, yeah. It’s called Treasure Trove. And they closed, I’m thinking, like three or four years ago. [clicking sound in recording begins and continues] I can’t even remember exactly what stores were along here that are no longer here. And there are empty storefronts now.

Mark Souther [00:46:24] Is there a particular building or place within the neighborhood that you think really serves as a symbol for the neighborhood particularly special?

Nancilee McCormack [00:46:35] To me, it would be Cleveland Public Theatre. I would think that everybody has their own opinion on that, but to me, it’s Cleveland Public Theatre. I just think it’s a great establishment. It’s been there struggling since 1984. And it’s another building that might stand out. Would almost have to be here. You know, the Gordon Square building itself, it’s in a skylight thing, like, so it’s pretty big. I don’t know the measurements, what it would be.

Mark Souther [00:47:25] Speaking of the neighborhood in general, Detroit Shoreway in general, is there a point at which you really saw the community coming together in a way that you had not seen before or has it always really been a close knit community?

Nancilee McCormack [00:47:45] I think it was one of those things that was so gradual you didn’t notice it. Which is probably the best way for it to happen because for it to have been really noticeable would have meant that something big had to have happened. And that’s not always a good thing. I think it was more gradual. I think it was more the block clubs pulling people together and the block club leaders getting to know each other. And that’s one of the things that I’ve worked on for years, is to get the Block Club leaders to meet like once a month or every couple of months, exchange ideas, find out what’s going on in their neighborhoods. Bridge Brigade is a perfect example of a great block club. They started, I guess like maybe- Well, the block clubs probably been around longer than that. But about 10 years ago they were having a huge problem with drunks and everything and they decided to take back their street. And they just plastered the telephone poles with, we’re watching, you have cameras out there. They go out and they take license plate numbers. And they really, really fought back against a bad element taking over their neighborhood. And now there’s one two sets of townhouses that are complete. Another one is going to be complete probably by the end of this month. And they’re getting ready to build another set right on the corner of 58th and Bridge. And a few years ago that never would have happened. That never would have happened.

Mark Souther [00:49:37] We’ve talked some about Detroit Avenue. And Lorain, could you tell us a little bit more about Bridge Avenue? Sort of what makes it tick? Made it tick.

Nancilee McCormack [00:49:45] Made it tick. I’m, I’m not real knowledgeable about Bridge just from, you know, what I heard from people that have been in the block clubs and that over there. But I think they’re pretty closely knit too. They have, of course, part of Bridge is in Ohio City. Detroit Shoreway doesn’t start until 45th. I think they have a lot of dedicated homeowners over there also. And I think they really try to keep the neighborhood together and they keep it clean and as crime free as they possibly can. EcoVillage is just right on the other side of Bridge Avenue. And that’s the great boon for the neighborhood. When that went in, they look like, what word do I want? It’s not townhomes that they’re built right down to the sidewalk. You know, like in New York City. Here’s the sidewalk and here’s the steps going up to the house.

Mark Souther [00:51:06] Like row houses?

Nancilee McCormack [00:51:08] It’s not, it’s not, row house is not what I want either. It’s- [crosstalk] Pardon me?

Emma Yanoshik-Wing [00:51:13] Brownstone?

Nancilee McCormack [00:51:14] Yeah, more like that. Yeah, that. And they’re built with solar panels and all those conveniences. And I think all of those are filled. There might be one empty one now, but those are pretty- And I did not think I would like them at all when they first went in.

Mark Souther [00:51:40] Why not?

Nancilee McCormack [00:51:41] They just look so out of place. You know, I’m thinking this is what New York City, the Queens looks like. The Bronx. Not here in the middle of Cleveland. But it sort of grows on you and it so improves the neighborhood. You know, any new housing does. Now, if any new housing goes in on my street, I want it to look like all the other houses down here. I don’t want [laughs] any modernistic anything going on on our street.

Mark Souther [00:52:10] Did anyone in the neighborhood particularly oppose EcoVillage?

Nancilee McCormack [00:52:14] I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think they ran into maybe a few problems after it got built and everybody got in there because of parking problems and that, but. And they resolved that.

Mark Souther [00:52:27] It’s at 58th and where? Bridge?

Nancilee McCormack [00:52:29] 58th and- It’s between Lorain and Bridge. If you’re going. If you’re going up 58th, it’s past Bridge on the left, right before you get to Lorain Avenue.

Mark Souther [00:52:50] Do you know if there are plans for other types of developments that are similar to EcoVillage that will go in?

Nancilee McCormack [00:52:54] Yeah, I don’t know exactly. I know right across the street there’s going to be something going in there. That’s EcoVillage also. And I would imagine that if they get enough developers and enough space that a lot of what they do will be that sort of architecture, which makes sense in this climate up here. Anything you can do to save money on heating or electric in the summer. [clicking sound ceases]

Mark Souther [00:53:37] You’re mentioning Trunk or Treat.

Nancilee McCormack [00:53:39] Yeah. There he is again. Okay, so I can tell you about it anyway because he’s not going to tell you about it until next time. He had this idea to do a trunk retreat for the little kids in the neighborhood to make it a safe Halloween. So on the Sunday afternoon before Halloween, he had it set up that everybody would line up around the parking lot and have the candy for the kids in their trunk or on top of their trunk or whatever. And he had arranged for wagon rides for the kids and face painting. We passed out flyers everywhere. I took him to the schools, to Watterson and to Gallagher, and we took him to block club meetings and flyered streets. And we figured, you know, a couple hundred kids and we ended up with 500 kids easily. The mayor was on her way out and they called her back and told her to bring candy, which she did. She stopped and picked up candy. The kids waited like for an hour for the wagon rides. And the guy, and I don’t know who he was that did the wagon rides, but he stayed until every kid got a ride, even though it was way past 8 o’ clock. It was supposed to last from 6 to 8. And that was one of the festivals. He had a safety fair in the summer that was very successful. A lot of the block clubs have a summer end festival. Mine does. We partner with Bethany Presbyterian Church, which is on the corner of 65th, which is where we have our meetings, except in the summertime when we have them at different people’s houses. But they’re our host for our block club. And most of the block clubs have their own little festival. Bridge Avenue quite often has one. And they’ll partner with Bridge Watchers and Lorain to Fir and include three block clubs. And they’ll close off the street, like from 58 to 65th. And they’ll get the fire trucks out there and somebody to do face painting. We have a lot of those during the summer. Then this last summer we had a big West Fest was set up at Zone Rec that was really awesome. It was put on by, I think the main sponsor was Lutheran because they did a lot of health screenings there because I know I got all mine done there. And then they just had, you know, a lot of people. But you know, the different organization organizations on the west side of Cleveland, I think it was very successful also. And things like that have a tendency to bring a lot of people together. I mean, you run into people. Man, I haven’t seen her in like, you know, three or four months. And we have a lot of that going on.

Mark Souther [00:56:40] One thing that I touched on in this interview is the growing immigrant population. Do you have anything that you could tell us about your perception of the changing community?

Nancilee McCormack [00:57:04] I personally don’t know a lot of the immigrants, although at the Franklin Wakefield Block Club meeting in November, I believe it was the October one, they had an immigrant family from Africa that has just moved into the neighborhood. And the chairperson had invited him to the meeting. And they fit in quite well. I don’t think that it presents a problem in our neighborhood as of yet. Anyway, I can’t see where it would. We have the housing and everything for it. So what is your question on that?

Mark Souther [00:57:52] My question is more just your perception of how you see that influx of immigrants changing the community in terms of any new businesses, churches, these sorts of things?

Nancilee McCormack [00:58:11] Well, I don’t know that you would call her an immigrant, but Saigon Plaza just opened on 54th and Detroit. And it’s a marvelous place. It’s a non-profit. She raises money to go back to Vietnam and set up clinics and for education over there and everything. And you’ve got to stop in down there. They’re having a thing from 10 to 6 Saturday and Sunday this weekend where they’ll be selling stuff that’s from there. And all the money that they raise goes back over there. And she is an immigrant, but she’s been over here for several years now. I would hope that the immigrants coming in have the facilities to open a business and support themselves. I hope it’s not just immigrants that are fleeing prosecution and that that we’ll be paying to take care of. I mean, because although, I mean that adds some culture to the neighborhood, it doesn’t add anything else, but I can’t see it being a problem.

Mark Souther [00:59:33] Emma, would you like to add any questions?

Emma Yanoshik-Wing [00:59:40] I think I mainly had one. You mentioned Neighborhood Connections or that organization. Can you tell us what that is?

Nancilee McCormack [00:59:48] Neighborhood Connections is an arm of the Cleveland Foundation and their main goal is to fund projects for grassroots efforts in neighborhoods. And they’re in their third year of funding and I know they have at least two more years that they’re going to be funding neighborhood projects. You can apply for anything from 500 to $5,000. And they’re just great. They are awesome people to work with. They help you as much as they can. I can’t even say enough about them, you know, good about them. They just are. And they are there for neighborhoods for. I don’t want to say the little people, but you know, you know what I mean, the people that need it the most, they fund like they fund my project to put the kids to work. They normally don’t fund for the same thing two years in a row, but they were impressed enough with my program that they funded me again. They do things like safety fairs and the project that Herman Park did, I mean, they had movies and plays and just a little bit of everything imaginable for kids they had there. They’re just a great organization.

Emma Yanoshik-Wing [01:01:29] Also, the initial time that you tried to set up the murals, were those planned for the spot that the Cleveland Public Theatre mural is now on?

Nancilee McCormack [01:01:39] No, it was originally planned for. There’s a building right on the corner of 65th and Madison that’s just sort of a drab, dull-green concrete building. And that’s where they originally wanted to put it and the two Block Clubs up there, the Urban Tears and Lorain Defer, were vehemently opposed to it because they didn’t want their community to look like a ghetto. And they kept coming in with all this, you know, I guess Philadelphia has like tons of murals all over the place. And I kept saying, you know, that’s their first mistake. You know, Cleveland’s not Philadelphia. You know, we have our own identity. You know, bring us something that you think we’re gonna like, not another big city. So now we’re going to. We have a mural down on Detroit. It’s right past the Harp. The building here’s the Harp restaurant and then that next building, there’s a big mural in it and it looks really neat. And there’s several on Lorain Avenue that I thoroughly enjoy. I think, you know, people confuse murals with graffiti. There’s a difference.

Mark Souther [01:02:59] Do you think that is a widespread idea? It’s interesting that you mentioned that Philadelphia people said, well, you know, this isn’t Philadelphia.

Nancilee McCormack [01:03:10] No, I said that.

Mark Souther [01:03:11] You said that, but they probably didn’t want to hear about what happened in Philadelphia. Is that a widespread idea or do you think that people warm up to public art in the form of murals?

Nancilee McCormack [01:03:25] I don’t think this neighborhood will ever warm up to murals as public art, but it doesn’t make any difference because those of us that want them, we’ll put them up anyway. I think we should, you know, and I can see where, yeah, we’re not going to put up anything tasteless. You know, it’s going to be, I guess what we need is maybe every once in a while have a community meeting of art education. Because I am like, I go to the theater a lot, but I don’t know the difference between the acting methods in this. I just know whether I enjoyed it or not. And that’s all I care about. I don’t care about the genre or this or that. It’s what’s visually affects me. It’s whether I like it or not. And that’s the way art should be. We had a, I can’t remember his last name, but he’s a well known gallery owner. His first name is Bill. And he opened up a gallery over on Detroit and he had a three year lease there, but I think he only stayed two. And he showed some fairly abstract stuff because I went over because a friend of mine just raved about him and I said, do you have a real name for this genre of art other than ugly? I don’t know what it was called, but I went over every time I had a new show over there just to see if there was something that I would actually like. And there was a few things in different shows, but it was interesting.

Emma Yanoshik-Wing [01:05:31] Do you have a favorite production that you saw at Cleveland Public Theater?

Nancilee McCormack [01:05:37] Nickel and Dime was my favorite. It was absolutely- I went twice to see it. And I went this past weekend to see Holiday Hotline. It’s at the Romanian Church. It was produced by James Levin. And it’s very funny. It’s a little musical review. It’s very good. And either this weekend or next Sunday, I’m going to go see SantaLand Diaries and Mrs. Cratchit’s Christmas Binge. I wasn’t going to go see that this year because I’d seen it a couple years ago, but Randy Rollison’s in it this year so that’ll make me want to see it again.

Mark Souther [01:06:22] Those are all of my questions.

Nancilee McCormack [01:06:24] All right.

Mark Souther [01:06:24] Well, we want to thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.

Nancilee McCormack [01:06:28] Okay.

Mark Souther [01:06:28] I did an interview with Nancy McCormick. My name is Mark Souther. The interview was facilitated by Emma Yanoshik-Wing. Today is December 8, 2005.

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