Garfield Heights, Ohio - History (timeline)

History (timeline)

• 1786: Moravians settle in the city.
• 1852: St. John Lutheran becomes the first church established in the city.
• 1895: Land is purchased from the Carter, Dunham and Rittberg families to create Newburgh Park.
• 1896: Newburgh Park is renamed Garfield Park. At this point the city becomes known as "Newburgh Hamlet".
• 1904: The Village of South Newburgh is established.
• 1910: A school board is established.
• 1918: Garfield Central School (later Garfield Elementary) is opened.
• 1919: South Newburgh is renamed Garfield Heights. The city is named after Garfield Park, not President Garfield, no matter what you heard at the bar. The village, which is largely still a farming community, is equipped with one Ford "Model T" fire truck and six volinteer firemen.
• 1920: Rapid real estate development causes the population to grow from 1,550 in 1920 to nearly 16,000 in 1930. This overdevelopment causes an 80% foreclosure rate during the first depression.
• 1923: The first Catholic church, St. Timothy, is established.
• 1925: Maple Leaf School opens and the first streetcars go into downtown. The city use a bookmobile as a library beginning this year. Warren "Bud" Nutt begins operating a Texaco filling station/repair garage-with one outside lift

on the northwest corner of Plymouth and Turney roads. Nutt will remain in business here until his retirement in 1979.

• 1926: The Sisters of St. Joseph establish their mother house in the 106 hundred block on the south side of Granger Road.
• 1927: Garfield Heights gains two new churches (Sts. Peter and Paul/St. Therese). This year also sees the building of Garfield Heights High School.
• 1929: 36-year-old City Councilman Otto Bicker is appointed as the city's Fire Chief. Bicker was instrumental in organizing the city's first fire department and through his efforts the American Legion John Lawrence post #304 enabled the city to acquire a pair of 1929 American Lafrance open cab ladder trucks. The city donates one of these vehicles to the Cedar Point Amusement park in 1966.
• 1930: Garfield Heights achieves city status.
• 1931: A 30 millimeter howitzer is donated and displayed at the Turney Road entrance of Garfield Park. It is later melted down for scrap during World War II.
• 1938: The city's first library is constructed in the basement of Garfield Park school.
• 1939: The city purchases its first ambulance, a 1930 Meteor.
• 1941: American Legion post 304 donates a 1936 Packard ambulance to be housed at fire station #1, then located near the northwest corner of Turney and Granger Roads.
• 1942: Jennings "Rest Home" begins operating on July 2. The Municipal Library now occupies two storefronts at 4663 Turney Road. In September, Mayor Ring demotes Police Chief Gannon to Patrolman after Gannon and two officers use a police car to go on a seven hundred mile trip to a police convention in Michigan. Gannon appeals this demotion and is overruled.
• 1945: Twenty-eight-year-old PFC William Foster of Garfield Heights is killed by diving onto a hand grenade to save fellow Marine, Melvin Hauge. He is awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.
• 1946: Fourteen die on July 6 as Jennings Hall burns. The newspaper "The Garfield Heights Leader" begins publishing featuring "more news about Garfield Heights than any other newspaper in the world" as well as slanted political articles cast in the opinion of amateur journalists and blue-collar intellectuals for the benefit of the slow witted.
• 1947: Four new Ford police cars are purchased and equipped with the city's first two-way radios.
• 1948: The Garfield-Bedford bus line starts service between Bedford and Garfield Heights into downtown Cleveland. Jennings Hall is reopened on May 8 in a new brick facility. Charles Nespor and Ted Flick open a Standard Oil service station on the northwest corner of Turney and Granger.
• 1949: Marymount Hospital opens. 100 new stop signs are installed as well as red lights at several major intersections.
• 1950: The city purchases a new American LaFrance "Quad" fire engine. The county immediately places a lien against the truck due to back taxes.
• 1951: A new library is built on the northwest corner of Turney and South Highland avenue. A new fire station is built on the southeast corner of Turney and McCracken as an extension of the old bus garage. Turneytown shopping center opens in October.
• 1952: St. Monica Church is established and Elmwood school opens; Garfield Heights Baseball League is founded. The city purchases a 1942 Buick ambulance.
• 1955: Andrew, Julius and Steve Homolak purchase a Standard Oil mechanical shop and service station on the northwest corner of McCracken and Broadway.
• 1956: The city purchases Ford Vanette ambulance, its siren ommitting an erie drone which could be felt ringing in the heads of those who were alive as far back as 1959. This vehicle will stay in full-time service until 1967. Funds to purchase and equip this vehicle are generated largely from a pancake festival. Through the efforts of Fireman Charles Mentkowski this vehicle is purchased as an empty van for $3,100 and equipped as a state of the art ambulance for $10,000. In June, founding Fire Chief Otto Bicker dies. City leaders are proud of the fact that the national problem of juvenile delinquency has not affected the city. The Polish population at large was enraged in August when 160 members of five families immigrate to garfield Heights as result of Eisenhowers program to allow five displaced families of Hungarian Freedom fighters to occupy four houses on E-85th Street. The City of Cleveland will offer the familys assylum later in the year with a plot of land just south of Buckeye Road.
• 1957: William Foster Elementary School and Marymount High School open. In March, the city's first traffic fatality is that of a 33-year-old father of four who dies after colliding with a dump truck on the Warner Road bridge. Councilman Charles Nespor unsuccessfully runs for Mayor. Nespor was known for being one of the most dynamic politicians in the city's history. Raymond Avenue, a subdivision formerly known as Prophits Hill Grove, is completed featuring state-of-the-art ranch homes. In July and August three children are struck down by cars within a four-week period at the intersection of South Highland and Turney roads, one of whom, a ten-year-old boy, dies as a result of his injuries. The city council forms an ineffective "safety council" to correct this problem.
• 1958: A new city hall is built at 5555 Turney Road. One of city Councils first acts in the new center is to pass a zoning law preventing Orientals from living within 500 feet of a war veteran. Five familys were "re-zoned" into maple Hts.
• 1960: Kennedy is elected through the efforts of Garfield Heights voters who are enraged over Ike and Dicks policy of "bringing in the D.P.s".
• 1962: Eddie Leitson opens Turney Restaurant (now known as Angelos Restaurant) in June.
• 1963: A new high school is completed at 12000 Maple Leaf Drive, leaving the old high school to be used as the junior high school, serving grades 7 through 9.
• 1964: On December 28 16-year-old Beverly Jarosz is found murdered in her Thornton Avenue home. The killer is never found, this being one of the strangest cases in criminal history. Detective Captain William Horrigan claims to be certain as to the identity of the killer, but without evidence he will take this secret to his grave.
• 1965: In January Michael Lindley Bane dies by his own hand in his E-88th street home. As police investigate, it is decided that this is not related to the Jarosz murder. Also in January a Mother and daughter are struck and killed while crossing Turney Road near Tonsing Avenue. Garfield Heights Recreational Center opens, the main focal point being the new library. The original fire station as well as Koppers Hardware and Felix Bicycle shop near the northwest corner of Turney and Granger are razed. An impoverished family living in the only house on the pie shaped lot are cast into the street. Among the city's worst traffic accidents is that of an eight-year-old boy crushed by a truck on the Whitehouse crossing bridge in July.
• 1966: A major fire at TurneyTown shopping center destroys several stores. Melted ice cream from "Franklyns" runs down the sidewalks and into the sewers as employees stand by and weep. In June a municipal swimming pool is opened at the recreation center. The city's first fleet of black and white police cruisers, 1966 Fords, is purchased. Garfield Heights will continue to use primarily Ford Interceptors until 2009.
• 1967: The Garfield Heights Historical Society is created. Fire station #2 is built across the street from its previous location on E-131st Street in November. In June the city purchases a 1966 G.M.C. Ambulance. The Garfield Heights Leader claims this ambulance is capable attaining speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour.
• 1969: Cardinal Karol Woltya (later Pope John Paul II) of Krakow, Poland, visits Garfield Heights. The city purchases five Pontiac Police cruisers, which are found to perform poorly.
• 1970: Sam Boyas purchases and expands the Rockside Road dump. Myron L. Twiggs purchases the Sohio station on the northeast corner of Granger and E-98.
• 1972: Automotive enthusiasm grows as local groups such as the "Park Heights Gang" promote street drag racing.
• 1973: Marymount High goes coed as Trinity High School is established. in June the recreation center is renamed the "Dan Kostel Center of Recreation" in honor of one Dan Kostel, the Rec center manager who was loved by all even when having embibed more than his share.
• 1974: Garfield Mall opens. Construction of I-480, the John Glenn Freeway, begins.
• 1975: The Garfield Heights-Bedford bus line is absorbed into the newly created Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. The bus line becomes the 76x/f route.
• 1976: On August 8, eight people die in a car crash on Granger Road hill, caused by the failure of truck brakes. The driver of the truck survives to face conviction on four counts of vehicular homicide.
• 1978: The I-480 twin span bridge opens to traffic. It is 4,025 feet (1,227 m) long and 212 feet (65 m) high. Its footing begins in Garfield Heights and ends in Independence. This bridge has become the scene of many suicides. In 1994 an auto plunged into the valley below.
• 1979: The Garfield Heights Branch Library experiences a fire in its building; the cost of fire damage totals $210,000. Also in 1979, Marymount Hospital completes a $30,000,000 renovation of its campus. The infamous dump finally closes.
• 1981: Alfred Antenucci jumps on John Hinckley, Jr. during the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. Antenucci, a labor union official, was outside the Washington Hilton Hotel where he noticed Hinckley with a handgun. Antenucci is honored for this act and a street is named after him.
• 1985: Ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran Jeffery Lawrence shoots and kills neighbors Jesse and Cheryl Mooney and wounds two others on August 25. Police had been called to the house twice concerning a loud party emanating from the Mooneys' garage. Lawrence simply walks away and turns himself in to Lyndhurst Police two days later. This is Garfield Heights' first double homicide. Lawrence is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
• 1986: Ohio's Metropark system assumes management and subsequent renovation of Garfield Park.
• 1991: A new city hall opens.
• 1994: Three police officers are killed in the line of duty. On August 15 Garfield and Maple Heights police respond to a shooting at an apartment complex at East 88th Street. Sergeant Dennis Glivar is fatally shot by Don Mits, who is captured after a four hour shootout with police from Garfield Heights and four other cities giving mutual aid. Mits is convicted and sent to death row. In December officers Brown and Stefanov are killed during a high speed chase into Cleveland when their cruiser is broadsided and collides roof first into a steel utility pole.
• 2003: 29 December, Garfield Alloys, a magnesium processing plant, catches fire.
• 2004: Garfield Heights opens its new high school, and ground is broken for the new City View Shopping Center.
• 2005: Marymount Hospital breaks ground for a $25,000,000 addition.
• 2006: City View Shopping Center opens for business. In September 2006 it is offered for sale. New York grocer Thomas Klein purchased the retail complex for $100 million. City View has a Wal-Mart, OfficeMax, Circuit City, JoAnn Fabrics, AJ Wright, Dicks Sporting Goods, Giant Eagle, Petsmart, and a future Home Depot. Wal-Mart closes on three occasions due to suspected methane gas leaks, though the problem is later attributed to cleaning equipment exhaust.
• 2007: The Marymount Hospital Emergency Room addition opens. Construction of Bridgeview Commons Shopping Center commences. This shopping center features a Target Store, a Lowes and other new stores. An article in a local free newspaper chronicles the high mortality rate due to cancer among the residents of Valley View and cites the former landfill (now City View) as the cause (see Controversy, below.) The city council introduces a ban on pit bull dogs.
• 2008: The Ohio E.P.A. and Attorney General file a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the city and owners/developers of Cityview due to improper maintenance and methane gas leaks. Construction of Bridgeview is halted as a direct result. Several retailers pull out of CityView. Joann Fabrics closed their store earlier in the year, citing poor sales and the failure to complete the extension of Transportation Blvd. to Rockside; Wal-Mart abruptly closes its store in late September citing an independent contractor's report listing several potential "safety issues", although Wal-Mart owned the building and had it built to its own specifications; in October Petsmart announces that it is closing the CityView store because of lease issues. On October 14, the State of Ohio's auditor office declares the city to be in fiscal emergency. This is only the third city in Cuyahoga County to ever have this designation since Ohio adopted fiscal rankings in 1979. Cleveland and East Cleveland have been the only other cities in the county under fiscal emergency, but both have since returned to solvency.
• 2009: Mayor Thomas J. Longo announces his retirement as mayor after 26 years.

City View goes into receivership with new owners, as the Klein Interest of Monsey, New York default on their loan.

On October 22, the Ohio EPA and the ForeSite Realty Trust who owns CityView agree to place a methane gas mitigation system at CityView by late in the year or early in 2010. Once this system is in place, the EPA will permit CityView to grow. All new construction at CityView will be required to have mitigation systems.

On November 3, Garfield Heights elects its first new mayor in 26 years. The victor is Victor (Vic) Collova.

Garfield Heights police begin phasing out the Ford Crown Vics in favor of the Dodge Charger due to economic factors dealing with the Chargers' six cylinder fuel economy. The Garfield Heights Historical Society elects former councilman Vince Liotta as its new president beginning December 1st.

• 2010: Giant Eagle blocks efforts by the city to establish a convention center at City View in the former and vacant WalMart. The city begins using camera vans to monitor speed and issue citations to violators. The city also begins charging forty-five dollars per household per quarter (and half that for seniors) for trash collection. Citizens of Garfield Heights vote to remove the speed cameras by eighty votes (but not the trash pickup charge, which was upheld by an exact vote of 4,606 for and against).
• 2011: On February 25, G.H.P.D. responds to the Marathon Gas Station on Broadway Ave./McCracken Rd. after a call was placed by an employee stating that a man had entered the store carrying weapons, including a nightstick and a knife, and that he had begun drinking an alcoholic beverage and eating candy from the store shelves. Upon arrival, Sylvester Gavin, 50, of Garfield Heights, was ordered to drop his weapon and fall to the ground. Gavin complied, but as officers approached to arrest him, he grabbed the weapon and lunged at the officers, which resulted in both officers firing and striking Gavin, who was pronounced dead at Marymount Hospital a short time later.

On May 2 the Ohio Supreme Court reverses a lower court decision and sends Don "Harry" Mits back to death row for the 1994 murder of Police Sargeant Dennis Glivar.

July 15 Mayor Vic Collova Announces that Transportation Blvd will be expanded after years of meeting EPA rules of adding methane gas control and monitoring systems. Construction will resume in fall 2011 and will be completed by middle to late 2012.

2011 the Cuyahoga County Public Library announced that Garfield Heights will be having a new 30,000 sqft2 branch library which will be built on the site of current 1965 library. Garfield Hts has one of smallest branches at 12,500 sqft2. The new Garfield Library will be completed in late 2012 or early 2013. Vincent Liotta resigns as president of the Historical Society in disgust. Robert Sackett is promoted to Police Chief, he is the city's fifth Chief. In August City Council votes down a bill to approve a billboard that will bring the city a much needed $476.000 on the premis that a few residents object to the placing of the billboard. As a result scores of residents are outraged and vow to elect several new members through the November election. This years City Council meetings will be televised and broadcast on a local cable station. This proves questionable as it allows for grandstanding citizens as well as to provide a stage for the city Council President to turn the meetings into her own personal variety show.

February 2012, Garfield hts receives a grant to repave Turney Road. Turney was repaved in 1992.

March 2012 Marymount Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic open Marymount's new surgical center and lobby. It is a glass enclosed structure.

April 2012, ForeSite Realty the owners of CityView put store and space up for leasing as Transportation Blvd gets ready for expansion.

May 2012, Most citizens are baffled by the fact that The Cuyahoga County Public Library breaks ground on a new $11,000,000 30,000 sqft Library, as the shelves in the current Library are partially filled. The Library will be LEED certified and almost all glass. The Library should be completed by late-Spring 2013. Garfield Heights Hosts its first International Festival.

June 2012, St. Monica School graduates its last class as in the 2012-13 it becomes Saint Benedict School, a joint venture between Saint Monica Church and Saint Martin of Tours Church.

July 2012, Terrance Olszewski becames the new Superintendent of Schools of Garfield Heights. He was the principal of Garfield Hts High School.

August 2012, Saint Monica Church will celebrate 60 years with a mass by Bishop Richard Lennon. Overdrive, Inc., a leading full-service digital distributor of eBooks, audiobooks, and other digital content, announces that they will move from Valley View to their new "Blue Sky" campus in October 2012.