St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church and Cleveland's Lower Buckeye Road Area

Cleveland's St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish is the oldest Hungarian Roman Catholic parish in the United States.  It was founded by Father Charles Boehm and the Hungarian immigrant community of Buckeye Road in 1892.  A first church (shown on the left) was built for the parish at the corner of East 90th Street and Buckeye Road in 1893.  It sat 700-800 parishioners at a mass.  By 1907, the Hungarian immigrant population in the Lower Buckeye Road area was so large that Father Szepessy, then pastor of St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church, wrote to the Bishop of the Cleveland Diocese that Hungarian immigrants were being turned away from services because of overcrowding in the church.

It took almost a decade of pleas before the Bishop of Cleveland gave St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish permission to build a new and larger church on the site at East 90th and Buckeye Road. The new church (shown on the left) was built with contributions from the Hungarian immigrants who resided in the Buckeye Road area Construction of the church began in 1918 and was  completed in 1922.  When completed, it could seat 1300 parishioners at a single mass. St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church is the largest Hungarian Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The Church has been designated as an historic landmark by the Cleveland Landmarks Commmission and also has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.