Address:
1008 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Cleveland, OH 44108Sponsoring Organization:
Dedication Date:
1940Contacts:
History & Design:
Ukrainians first arrived in Cleveland in the mid-1880s and settled in the Tremont neighborhood just west of the Cuyahoga River. More than a century later, Northeast Ohio is home to more than 35,000 Ukrainian-Americans. The United Ukrainian Organization of Ohio, established in 1928, played a pivotal role in the creation of the Ukrainian Cultural Garden, and Mayor Harold H. Burton formally dedicated it June 2, 1940.
Statuary/Busts/Reliefs/Monuments:
| This garden has four sections, three of which feature sculptures by Kiev-born artist Alexander Archipenko, who immigrated to the United States in the 1920s. He was a part of the Cubist movement and pioneered abstract sculpture.
Nearby are three busts of significant leaders in Ukraine’s history: poet and writer Ivan Franko (1856-1916), a tireless advocate for social justice and Ukrainian nationhood; St. Volodymyr the Great (c. 956-1015), who introduced Christianity to Ukraine in 988 AD; and Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (1814-1861), a poet whose art shaped national identity in the mid-1800s. The St. Volodymyr the Great statue was a gift of the Ukrainian National Association – the oldest Ukrainian fraternal organization in the United States and headquartered in New Jersey.
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The center of the garden features a statue of poet Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka, pseudonym Lesya Ukrainka, (1871-1913). The statue was commissioned by the Ohio regional council of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, created by acclaimed New Yor