CLEVELAND — It’s easy to miss the old village square nestled on Cleveland’s Southeast Side.
But from his front steps, Derrick White-Childs can see everything that’s left of the Miles Park Historic District. The central green space, framed by one-way streets. The former Carnegie Library, now partially filled by a daycare center. The hushed Presbyterian church.
And the vacant lots, where stately homes and another landmark church once stood.
“We have this big grand porch,” said White-Childs, a carpenter who bought a house on Miles Park Avenue 14 years ago and renovated it for his family. “I think we’ve been on it three times. ‘Cause I hate looking at the sadness. The sadness.”
The small historic district – just shy of 6 acres – sits at the western end of the Union-Miles neighborhood, near Slavic Village. In the 1970s, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It's also a local landmark district, a neighborhood deemed worthy decades ago of preservation and extra city oversight.
But that history is slipping away. Last year, the former Miles Park United Methodist Church at East 91st Street and Miles Park Avenue burned down. The 150-year-old building was one of the few remaining anchors on the block.
Neighborhood leaders say the fire was a blow. It was also a wake-up call – a reminder that some buildings, once they’re gone, can never be replaced.
“Eyes are on the historic district, and we’re doing whatever we can do to retain and promote the future vitality of the district,” said Donald Woodruff, the director of real estate development for NuPoint Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization focused on improving quality of life in the city’s Union-Miles and Mt. Pleasant neighborhoods.
NuPoint is working on a broader master plan for Union-Miles, an area where African-American families flocked in the 1960s to buy homes. The neighborhood, now 95% Black, is part of the target footprint for Mayor Justin Bibb’s Southeast Side Promise, a push to reinvigorate a stretch of the city where private investment is scarce.
The city has earmarked millions of dollars for fixing up homes, bringing more life to struggling business districts and luring developers to large sites, including former public schools.
“I think this area will – and should – receive some spinoff,” Woodruff said.
'We need to tell the history'
The historic district started out as the public square for Newburgh, a once-bustling village near Mill Creek Falls. Driven by water, the onetime farming community became an industrial powerhouse, home to immigrant laborers who toiled at nearby mills.
Cleveland annexed the heart of the village in 1873. Now it’s hidden in plain sight just off Broadway Avenue. So is the waterfall, Cuyahoga County’s tallest, which cascades down a hillside at the north end of the Cleveland Metroparks’ Garfield Park Reservation.
“We do have some things there that we could build upon,” said Councilman Kevin Bishop, pointing to that urban oasis and the Miles Park School, which regularly brings children and families to the block.
He wants to see more activity, including gatherings on the district's central green.
“We need to tell the history of the square, the public square that was there,” he said. “We need to tell the history of how immigrants, when they came to America, they settled in. And they went to church there. And they worked just a few miles from there. And that – that history in itself – should gather enough attention so we can have some reinvestment.”
The listing on the National Register of Historic Places doesn't protect any of the significant buildings there from demolition. But it does make them eligible for tax credits for historic preservation, if the right developer comes along.
The city landmark designation does add a layer of protection, making it harder to tear down or alter a building. But it can't prevent demolition by neglect - or tragedy.
Bishop was on his way to City Hall last March, when the old Methodist Church went up in flames. He lives nearby and smelled the fire before he heard the news.
RELATED: Cleveland will demolish church after fire, city says
The building, last occupied by the Pentecostal Determine Church of God, had been empty and deteriorating for several years. The roof had already caved in. Now the land, across from White-Childs’ house, is an empty field.
The remaining historic church, on the south side of the park, has been hushed since the pandemic. It was built between 1869 and 1872, according to city records.
NuPoint owns the former library, which was built with a donation from businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. In the 1990s, the building housed a museum devoted to abolitionist Harriet Tubman and African-American history and culture. It later served as office space for the neighborhood development group.
“Every day it was almost like … you’re walking through history,” Woodruff said.
Mary Rody, manager of the inventory and registration department at the state's historic preservation office, said the recent loss of the old Methodist church doesn't put the tiny district's honorary status on the National Register of Historic Places at risk.
"That's a very rare thing," she said.
But places like the Miles Park Historic District need champions.
"In these moments, it's really that grassroots approach of having active community, people who are living in the neighborhood ... and can put the effort and brain power in there," she said. "Sometimes it's harder for people to come in and find the solution. It tends to work better when it's the local advocates who are pushing the cart up the hill."
'God will make a way'
Down the street from White-Childs' house, an empty Masonic temple is decaying. Public records show it recently went through property-tax foreclosure and state forfeiture, selling last year for just $10,090 to a buyer in Garfield Heights.
“That building needs to come down,” he said.
A homebuilder, he’s focused on the future – not replicating the past.
“If you hate looking at it,” he said, “then you gotta figure out, OK, how do we make a difference?”
He and his wife have a business, Container Homes USA, that makes structures out of shipping containers. And he’s leading a joint venture that’s vying to build modular homes in Cleveland – a construction method city leaders and economic-development groups view as a faster and more affordable way to fill empty lots.
He wants to start with all the gaps on his own street.
“This is what Tremont used to look like. I used to live in Tremont. Just nothing but abandos,” he said, using his slang term for blighted and abandoned homes. “And they took that and turned it into one of the most prestigious neighborhoods.”
He knows that doing something similar around Miles Park will require a lot of money. A lot of prayers. And a lot of collaboration with neighborhood leaders and government.
“These houses are going up,” White-Childs said. “They’re gonna go up. If they don’t help us, they’re still going up. God will make a way.”
Woodruff said scrappiness is just as much a part of the neighborhood’s story as the historic buildings that once surrounded the square.
“It’s really the story of the Southeast Side,” he added. “How individuals came from meager beginnings, you know? Looked to start businesses and own homes. Raise families. And move on to other things.”
White-Childs said that as his business grows, he and his wife might have to follow it. But they’ll never sell their house – or give up on their street.
“In my lifetime, if I can revitalize this whole block … I would be happy,” he said.
