Cathy Marquardt knew exactly what she wanted to show me when invited me on a photowalk in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood, where she’s lived for 30 years.
When we walked past neighbors’ homes and onto Detroit Avenue, her eyes lingered on all that had changed. In blooming gardens and curbside bags stuffed with debris from a recent street sweep, she saw local legends — residents who dedicated their lives to Detroit Shoreway. Chief among them, to Cathy, is Ray Pianka.
Ray helped found the Detroit Shoreway Development Organization in the ‘70s. He served on City Council from ‘85 to ‘95, then presided over the city’s housing court until his sudden death in 2017.
I don’t have the space here to go through Ray’s entire highlight reel, so I’ll follow the threads Cathy left me. She remembers Ray as a champion of the neighborhood’s history, but not for nostalgia’s sake.
He helped preserve old buildings — the Gordon Square Arcade, to name one — but he also preserved the neighborhood’s less tangible features.
“Not so much the place, but the attitude, the enthusiasm,” Cathy said. “And how accepting and welcoming the neighborhood is.”
I am still wondering now, weeks after our walk: How do you capture that in a picture?
We started our photowalk at Gypsy Beans, a coffee shop that Nicole Gillota-Brinchacek opened in 2007. At the time, it was the first new business in the area after the city officially designated it the “Gordon Square Arts District.”
That was a hard-earned title. It took decades.
Cathy first heard whispers of an arts district back in the mid-90’s. Shortly after she moved, she popped into a neighborhood meeting at the Arcade led by Tim Melena, who had just taken over the neighborhood’s City Council seat after Ray left for housing court.
“He presented his vision of what an arts and entertainment district could be. It wasn’t quite that refined,” Cathy said. “It was more like how to draw artists to the neighborhood, what to do to make it livable for them, and how to enhance the neighborhood through that.
“Looking at that presentation, I was like, yeah, this is where I want to live.”
Detroit Shoreway had been hit hard from the ‘70s through the ‘90s. The nation’s economy took multiple dives, residents started fleeing to the suburbs, and industry was moving out or downsizing.
But In the following decades, residents, business owners and government officials like Ray, Tim, and Matt Zone, who followed Tim as the neighborhood’s City Council rep, launched initiatives to revitalize the community.
The Near West Theatre sprang up along with the The Cleveland Public Theatre, which played a huge role in preserving the neighborhood’s history, Cathy said. The iconic Capitol Theatre in the Arcade also reopened. A tiny stretch of Detroit Avenue became a hub for Cleveland’s theatrical arts.
The neighborhood, once home to mostly European immigrants and their descendants, became much more racially diverse than it ever had been. That diversity became a point of strength, as Ray put it in a 2005 interview for Cleveland Voices (check that out for a more in-depth history of the neighborhood than I have space for here).
New apartment buildings and businesses started popping up. The neighborhood started attracting new residents from the suburbs. At the same time, it got a lot more expensive.
Cathy joined the local block club after she moved, and she’s been a part of it ever since. She’s seen it evolve over the years, the different ways it has functioned for residents almost mirroring shifts in the broader neighborhood.
“We do a lot of great things, and it really brings people closer together, but at one point, I remember the block club being the survival guide,” she said. “You went there to get help because you didn’t know what to do about things. And that’s really morphed into, like, parties for the kids, or let’s have an ice cream social, you know?”
That’s not a bad thing, she clarified, but part of why she admires Ray so much is that, amid rapid development, he helped ground the neighborhood in what came before. Again, the intangibles, a certain character or value system tied into Detroit Shoreway’s identity.
“I don’t want to sound like a boomer and, ‘Those were the good old days,’ because it’s not,” she said. “I really believe in the future, in younger people carrying on the legacy of what this neighborhood stands for.”
The last part of that quote has been my latest earworm. I’ve been wondering about how a neighborhood can collectively stand for something, how unity can almost organically bloom from shared needs and priorities.
Block clubs are beautiful incarnations of that idea — improvised structures that promote conversation and sometimes action around common causes. During a recent conversation, Signal Cleveland’s editor-in-chief Lila Mills summed up my thoughts better than I could with the phrase “gateways to community.”
A few weeks after our photowalk when I showed Cathy our pictures, she noted just how many pictures we took of houses.
“I wish we had run into more people because it’s the people that make the neighborhood,” she said. “It’s not the houses.”
Many of the homes on Cathy’s street go back to the early 1900s. Some are even older. In lieu of driveways, some homes have massive stepping stones so their original owners could more easily hop in and out of carriages.
When she first moved to Detroit Shoreway, a lot of young families rented those houses. Many have since been bought, rehabbed and lived in by new owners.
“I think that the renters were what made the neighborhood so lively and diversified,” she said. “I love that I had neighbors that had tons of kids, and they were great kids, and different cultures, and I see them kind of slipping away. I loved that part of the neighborhood. That’s why I moved there.”
It’s complicated.
Cathy glowed with praise for the owner of almost every home we walked past. She lauded the love they’ve poured into their homes and gardens. A young guy and his dog just moved onto the street. He’s living in his home while he fixes it up.
Cathy finds hope in that. At the same time, she recognizes that many can’t afford to do that in Detroit Shoreway anymore.
There’s another house on the street that got scooped up by an out-of-state investor. They slapped it together, defying zoning laws that regulate alterations in the historic district. Now the house is stuck, half finished, in legal disputes.
More information about the pictures
Cathy and I took all these pictures on Monday, April 13, 2026.
You can see who took each picture, along with some more details about the places and people in them, down below.
Thanks to CatchLight and Report for America for supporting my work as Signal Cleveland’s visual journalist. A few years back, they partnered to create a program that places photojournalists in local newsrooms throughout the country. Signal Cleveland and I joined that program last year.
- A plaque commemorating Ray Pianka in Labyrinth Park. West Clinton Avenue, where he grew up, is also honorarily named Judge Raymond L. Pianka Way. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- The Gordon Square Arcade. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Businesses across the street from the Gordon Square Arcade. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- A bench honoring Tim Melena in Labyrinth Park. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- A customer in Gypsy Beans. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Nicole Gillota-Brinchacek, the founder of Gypsy Beans. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Looking through the window of Toast CLE, a restaurant and wine bar that had been a staple in Detroit Shoreway for a decade until it closed this April. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Carla Brant, Cathy’s friend and neighbor, holds her dog Skyler in front of her garden. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Carla Brant rubs her dog Skyler’s belly. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Small figurines and decor Lake Erie inspired decor in Carla Brant’s garden. Detroit Shoreway was originally populated by dock workers, Cathy said. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- A statue of Mary holding Baby Jesus outside St. Helena Romanian Church. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Looking down Detroit Avenue. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Looking down the driveway of Toast CLE, a restaurant and wine bar that had been a staple in Detroit Shoreway for a decade until it closed this April. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Richie, a cat belonging to one of Cathy’s neighbors. He can often be seen wandering the neighborhood when he’s not stopped for a snack at someone’s home, Cathy said. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Labyrinth Park, a small patch of green space taken care of by residents nearby. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Gardening is popular in the neighborhood, Cathy said. Residents look forward to Cleveland’s annual garden walk. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Early spring blooms in a neighbor’s garden. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- A home with an Irish flag in Detroit Shoreway. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Details outside a home in Detroit Shoreway. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- A tree casting shadows on the street. Credit: Cathy Marquardt
- Detroit Avenue reflected in a storefront. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Bags of yard waste and debris left over after a community cleanup at Labyrinth Park. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Skyler the dog rolling in the grass. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Labyrinth Park, a small patch of green space taken care of by residents nearby. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- Plants begin blooming in Carla Brant’s garden. Credit: Michael Indriolo
- The facade of a home. Credit: Michael Indriolo
