Is the area of Jackass Hill still around? Was it destroyed by the 490 connection to E55th or has its name changed? Not many references to it--it was around E 49 and Praha.

 

Here's one reference---see Line 1 on the table here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Torso_Murderer

I don't know but I love the name. If it's not still around it should be.

from In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders

By James Jessen Badal (pg. 28-9)

 

""a sixty-foot slope on the south side of kingsbury run where short stretches of both east 49th and East 50th meet the gully. Neighborhood Youngsters used the steep hill for sled riding during the winter. (The terrain has been altered since then. Part of Jackass Hill has been cut away, and only one lone house remains on the small stretch of East 49th just of Praha Avenue. It remains a remarkably isolated region, and it is difficult to believe that such an empty and desolate place could exist in the midst of a large city."

 

East 49th near Praha no longer exists in 2013; perhaps it did in 2001, when the book was written?

It looks like there was a stub of a road going north right at the point where Praha dead ends- it has a curb rounding the corner, so it wasn't just a drive.  The brick for East 50th, north of Praha is still there, too.

Listening to American Demon and couldn't help but try and figure things out a little bit. Here's an aerial from 1951 and a Sanborn Map (1927-1937) of the area around Jackass Hill. Pretty much zero remains today with the Opportunity Corridor.

 

Praha in blue, 49th in yellow, 50th magenta. JA hill would be below this.

 

 

 

And additional context (before VS bros) a Sanborn from 1912.

 

 

And finally, present day (2022):

 

Lotta work for a thread that died ten years ago! lol

That was a bad neighborhood more than a century ago and had a large shantytown during the Great Depression that Eliot Ness burned down. 

 

In 1938, Cleveland safety director Eliot Ness conducted a police raid of the Kingsbury Run shantytown. 300 squatters were evicted and 100 shanty homes were burned during the raid.

https://clevelandhistorical.org/files/show/3497

I grew up right by jackass hill on the Praha end, and up until recently when she moved, my mom still lived in that house by there. Jackass hill technically no longer exists, as it's blocked off at the Praha end. It used to lead to side roads with houses all over each of the side roads, that eventually led out to Broadway. It was kind of a shortcut from that neighborhood to get to Broadway (and vice versa, with the fire department right by that part of Broadway). It got closed off way before Opportunity Corridor came into play.

Edited October 6, 20231 yr by LenK02

20 minutes ago, LenK02 said:

I grew up right by jackass hill on the Praha end, and up until recently, my mom still lived in that house by there.

 

When I first came across this neighborhood via the closed RR pedestrian bridge from Track to over there, I was kind of astounded that houses were still there, seems like the scrapyard has claimed a large part of it. Seems like a tight knit area w/so few houses remaining - I could feel the eyes on me as I was biking around the streets back here.