When Beth Piwkowski reached out to set up a photowalk, she described a regular route she took down Lorain Avenue in Cleveland’s Jefferson neighborhood.

“I think you’d enjoy the store windows and the signage,” she wrote.

I was curious, but skeptical. I want to, as much as possible, dig a little bit beneath the surface with these photowalks. Could we do that through pictures of store windows?

Well, Beth was right. She saw things that I didn’t.

As we windowshopped down Lorain Avenue, Beth pointed out details in the storefront displays, each like a thread weaving together a street of stories. 

Jefferson is one of several far West Side neighborhoods that meld into each other along Lorain Avenue. The commercial stretch of Lorain that runs through Jefferson, with video stores, restaurants, barbershops, mechanics and clothing stores, felt like a patchwork of time periods and cultures.

There’s an Irish pub that, according to local legend, was once a hangout for Irish Republican Army sympathizers in Cleveland. There’s a Syrian restaurant across the street, a German spot a few blocks down and a taqueria in between. 

When I asked Beth why she was interested in the storefronts of those restaurants and the businesses between them, she said they reflect the many different parts of the neighborhood she’s come to know throughout her time living here. 

Beth has lived in Jefferson for six years. She rediscovered her spirituality in the neighborhood. She joined a Catholic church after her friend, an agnostic who volunteers at the parish, vouched for the church’s focus on community service over dogma. For her job in the special collections department of Cleveland State’s library, she’s been cataloguing old Plain Press articles, poring over both ordinary and notable moments in Cleveland’s history. 

Studying English in college made her start seeing “stories everywhere all the time,” she joked. 

“Like, oh, here’s the adult video store next to the modest clothes store,” Beth said, referencing a nearby shopping plaza. “Those things are existing, coexisting, together.”

There’s something that felt very Cleveland about that plaza. Maybe it was the Tim Misny billboard looming overhead? 

Walking through Jefferson felt like the streetscape version of an archaeological dig. Historically, the neighborhood was home to Irish, Hungarian, German, Slovenian and Italian immigrants. Today, it’s still home for people from countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. You can see the neighborhood’s diversity and the waves of migration that characterize its history in the local businesses that dot its landscape.

I spotted only a few franchise stores as Beth and I walked around Jefferson’s commercial corridor. Down any of the side streets, it’s densely packed homes. It felt like the kind of neighborhood where you almost don’t need a car. 

“There’s still regular mom-and-pop businesses,” Beth said. “There’s still a hardware store, there’s still a laundromat. I’m able to walk to the auto parts store. That was part of why I moved over here. I thought, well, I have everything right here.”

Signal Cleveland’s photowalks are conversations about the city’s neighborhoods, guided by the people who live here and reflected in the photos they capture.

Want to take me on a photowalk around your neighborhood? Sign up here. You can also reach out to me by email and phone: michael@signalcleveland.org / (216) 704-0295

– Michael Indriolo, Signal Cleveland’s Visual Journalist

Some of the businesses don’t last very long, she said, so the storefronts often change. Something closes, new people move in, set up their decorations, and eventually take them down and close. The cycle repeats. One dance hall became a mixed martial arts gym, then a church, then some kind of esoteric religious hall, Beth recalled. 

Maybe one of the neighborhood’s defining characteristics is its constant flux. Still, in a way, seeing so many locally owned shops and restaurants in such a dense area felt hopeful. It was almost like their signs were not just advertising food and clothes, but inviting people to build lives here. 

“So many of our family members and ancestors, whether they’re distant or not so distant, I mean, people came here to do this,” Beth said. “It’s been a neighborhood where that has continued to happen. I like seeing people be able to have their own places of community, their own ways of making things work.”

More information about the pictures

Beth and I took all of these pictures on Thursday, July 24, 2025.

You can see who took each picture, along with some more details about the places and people in them, down below.

Really quick, I want to thank 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 in July.

1. A man walks crosses Lorain Avenue at the intersection at West 117th Street. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
2. The sign for a video store in a shopping plaza off Lorain Avenue reads “Cheaper than going to the movies.” Credit: Michael Indriolo
3. Cowboy boots arranged in a store window. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
4. Dresses, rugs and other accessories hang in a store window. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
5. Tile patterns adorn the entrance of the Durk building, built in 1925, on Lorain Avenue. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
6. A picture of a man in the window of a barbershop. Credit: Michael Indriolo
7. American flags on display in a closed storefront. Credit: Michael Indriolo
8. The Variety Theatre, built in 1927, on Lorain Avenue. The theatre was in use in a few different ways until the ’90s. Since then, its changed hands a few times, but none of its owners have been able to redevelop it. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
9. A home on one of the residential streets off Lorain Avenue. Credit: Michael Indriolo
10. A pickup basketball game at Halloran Park. Credit: Michael Indriolo
11. A family fires up a grill for a birthday party at Halloran Park. Credit: Michael Indriolo
12. A skeleton dressed for the Fourth of July stands on the porch outside a home on one of the residential streets off Lorain Avenue. Credit: Michael Indriolo
13. The waterslide at the Halloran Park swimming pool. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
14. Snacks and beverages in a grocery store window. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
15. A mural painted on the Variety Theatre. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
16. A church on Lorain Avenue. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
17. A Tim Misny billboard and another billboard loom over a shopping plaza off Lorain Avenue. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
18. A clover engraved in the entrance to an Irish pub. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
19. A row of homes on the edge of Halloran Park. Credit: Michael Indriolo
20. A tree casts a shadow onto an apartment building. Credit: Michael Indriolo
21. The sun sets on the homes next to Jefferson Park. Credit: Beth Piwkowski
22. Dresses, rugs and other accessories hang in a store window. Credit: Michael Indriolo
23. Religious figures in a store window. Credit: Michael Indriolo
24. Pink ski masks pulled over carseat headrests. Credit: Michael Indriolo
25. A motorcyclist drives toward Lorain Avenue from a residential street. Credit: Beth Piwkowski