As in other old Cleveland neighborhoods like Detroit-Shoreway, Slavic Village, and Tremont, the St. Clair Superior neighborhood attracted many recent immigrants looking for a place to live close to nearby concentrations of industrial jobs. While the area had a mix of various working class immigrant groups, including Lithuanians, Poles, Italians, Germans, and Croatians, it was Slovenians that perhaps most defined the neighborhood.

In the first half of the 20th century, St. Clair Superior amassed the largest Slovenian population in the world outside Slovenia itself. As the population of Slovenians as other southern and eastern Europeans swelled, local businesses, churches, and social clubs emerged to help them assimilate to American life while also allowing them to retain their ethnic identity.

After World War II, the St. Clair Superior neighborhood, like so many other areas of Cleveland, began to experience a drastic shift in population as returning GIs and their families, many of them joining the growing middle class, began to move to the suburbs. Not everyone left, of course, and places like St. Vitus Church and the Slovenian National Home remained essential anchors.

In 1976 a new grassroots organization called the St. Clair Superior Coalition formed, combining Near Town from East 40th to East 55th Streets and the Slovenian-Croatian settlement from East 55th to 79th Streets with the intention of helping to prevent homes and businesses from falling into blight. In 1999 the organization merged with the St. Clair Business Association to form the present-day St. Clair Superior Development Corporation (SCSDC). SCSDC gradually expanded its coverage westward to East 30th Street, encompassing the growing Asiatown.

Today, there are still some local businesses, both large and small, and structures that help to showcase the diverse history of St. Clair Superior. There also remains an effort to preserve the neighborhood’s Slovenian roots, including Kurentovanje (a Slovenian festival designed to scare away winter), which takes place every year at the Slovenian National Home and allows local vendors the ability to showcase the sights, sounds, and smells of an ethnic neighborhood that made Cleveland their home. St. Clair Superior has grown to become one of Cleveland’s most diverse lakefront neighborhoods with residents representing Asian-American/Pacific Islander, Latinx, and African American communities.