Lemko Hall

Lemko Hall (Reception scene from “The Deer Hunter”) Today, Lemko Hall is well-known as the location of the wedding reception in the 1978 film "The Deer Hunter." Not many people know the meaning of the word Lemko, however. Lemko describes a Slavic ethnic group whose homeland (Lemkovyna) is located in a region of the Carpathian mountain range between the Dunajec and San Rivers in southeastern Poland. Lemkos are a subset of the Rusin (not to be confused with Russian) peoples who inhabit areas around the Carpathians. While similar ethnically to Ukrainians, they maintain their own language, culture, and identity.  Lemkos began immigrating to Cleveland in the late 19th-century (around the same time as other Central and Eastern Europeans) and settled in Tremont in large numbers. A Lemko named Andrew Koreny constructed Lemko Hall in 1910, and it became a social hall with a saloon and a ballroom for special events and performances. In the meantime, Cleveland's Lemko population continued to grow and by the early 1930s it was the largest of any city in the nation. Until it moved to Yonkers, New York in 1939 the Lemko Association of the USA and Canada (founded in Cleveland in 1931) had its headquarters in Cleveland and published its newspaper in the city.