Small frame houses on a bluff above the Cuyahoga's industrial valley, and the house used as the exterior in A Christmas Story.
What Tremont looks like
Small frame and brick houses line the side streets around , one and two storeys. Some are resided in aluminum, others still in their original wood clapboard. Utility poles and overhead wires run the length of most blocks. Streets on the neighborhood's west side end at a bluff over the Cuyahoga's industrial valley. From the Abbey Avenue bridge, the view opens onto a steel lift bridge and the downtown skyline beyond warehouse roofs.
Lemko Hall's rounded brick corner tower and green dome mark West 11th Street at Literary Avenue, a block from the park. On Professor Avenue nearby, a Romanesque brick school has two names, ST JOHN CANTIVS SCHOOL carved over the arched entrance and a banner for underneath. Thirteen copper onion domes rise over on Starkweather Avenue, and a red brick Gothic tower marks on Scranton Road.
Farther south on West 11th Street, the house restored as the A Christmas Story House Museum sits behind a black iron fence, its brick paver walkway newer than the wood frame houses around it. Chelsea Manor, a five storey brick apartment building on West 14th Street, rises over the surrounding houses with a rounded corner bay and iron fire escapes.
Interstate 71 cuts a wedge between West 14th Street and Scranton Road, and Interstate 490 subdivides Clark Fields on the neighborhood's eastern edge with on-ramps and overpasses among the residential blocks. A few corner stores remain in painted brick storefronts, ivy climbing one's upper wall, hand lettered signs over the doors and iron bars across the windows.
Shot in Tremont
The house used as the exterior in A Christmas Story stands on West 11th Street, its black iron museum fence and brick walkway added since filming. The Deer Hunter used two real Tremont buildings for its wedding, the reception at Lemko Hall's domed corner and the ceremony a few blocks away at St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Starkweather Avenue.
A Christmas Story, 1983
Played the Parker family's house, Hohman, Indiana, 1940s
The production filmed the exterior of the house and the surrounding block for the Parker family's home. Most of the interiors seen in the film were built on a soundstage in Toronto rather than shot inside this house. Street View
The Deer Hunter, 1978
Played the wedding reception hall, Clairton, Pennsylvania, late 1960s
The reception after the wedding was filmed inside Lemko Hall, the rounded brick corner building with its own green dome at West 11th Street and Literary Avenue. The ceremony itself was filmed a few blocks away at St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Starkweather Avenue. Street View
What Tremont can double for
East Price Hill in Cincinnati, Ohio
East Price Hill sits on a bluff above the Mill Creek's industrial valley the same way Tremont sits above the Cuyahoga flats, with rowhouses and frame houses built for the same kind of factory workers and St. Lawrence Church holding the same anchor role as a Tremont parish tower. Price Hill's rowhouses run in longer unbroken blocks than Tremont's mixed frame houses, so a single house reads truer than a full block in a wide shot. Try searching bluff above an industrial valley now.
Narrow streets of small frame and brick worker houses climb Polish Hill above Pittsburgh's river valley, and Immaculate Heart of Mary's triple dome rises over the skyline the way Tremont's own church towers do. Polish Hill's grades run steeper than Tremont's bluff. Its dome is a wide Renaissance triple dome rather than an onion dome, so keep church and street out of the same wide frame. Try searching small frame worker houses now.
Northeast Minneapolis in Minneapolis, Minnesota
St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral's onion dome rises over the same kind of small worker houses that surround Tremont's own domed churches, both raised by the same wave of East Slavic immigrants. Northeast Minneapolis is flat where Tremont drops into a valley, so keep any establishing wide shot below the roofline and off the horizon. Try searching onion dome cathedral houses now.
