History & Design:

First known as the Yugoslav Garden, this space represented the cultures of Slovenians, Croatians and Serbians. As Yugoslavia dissolved in the 1980s and 1990s, so too did the idea of a unified Yugoslavian Cultural Garden. In 1991, the garden was renamed the Slovenian Cultural Garden, and separate Serbian and Croatian Garden delegations emerged.

The bust of Bishop Frederik Baraga, a missionary to the Ottawa and Ojibway Native American tribes, was unveiled in 1935. In later years monuments were added for Ivan Cankar, a leader in the modernist movement in Slovenian literature; poet Simon Gregorcic; and Ivan Zorman, a poet and composer.

Slovenian immigrants began arriving in Cleveland in the 1880s, first in Newburgh Heights, then in an area that is now the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood. U.S. Census data for 1910 lists 14,332 Slovenians living in Cleveland. By 1970, the number had grown to 46,000 foreign-born or mixed-parentage Slovenians living in the Greater Cleveland area. In the 1990s, the community in the Cleveland area numbered well over 50,000.