Where to Stay in Parma, Ohio

What is Parma known for?

Parma grew south of Cleveland into the largest suburb Ohio has, and the scale of that growth is what distinguishes it rather than any monument standing inside its own limits. Farms preceded the houses. Edmund Gleason Farm survives on the record from the older Cuyahoga County landscape, while Memphis Kiddie Park and its Little Dipper stand for the family suburb that replaced it.

What are the main landmarks in Parma?

Sort the list before trusting it. A Christmas Story House, the Greater Cleveland Aquarium, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Jacobs Pavilion, the Ukrainian Museum-Archives, the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist and the Shrine Church of Saint Stanislaus all belong to the wider Cleveland area rather than to Parma. What is left is quieter.

Edmund Gleason Farm, the John Wheeler House, the William Knapp House, the Abraham Ulyatt House and the Bomante House make a domestic record, with Memphis Kiddie Park and its Little Dipper as the nearest thing to an attraction.

What is the history of Parma?

Parma begins in 1816. That date belongs to a township of Cuyahoga County rather than to a city, and the Edmund Gleason Farm is the clearest surviving trace of what the place was through its first long stretch. Houses followed the farms.

The John Wheeler House, the Buehl House, the William Knapp House, the Abraham Ulyatt House and the Packard-Doubler House all carry family names from that period, which is how a farming township records itself when it has no downtown to build. Congregations arrived with the growth. Independence Presbyterian Church, Pilgrim Congregational Church and Archwood Congregational Church stand on the roster alongside Saint Michael the Archangel Church, and the mix of dedications points to arrivals coming from several directions at once.

Older ground predates all of it. South Park Site, the Terra Vista Archeological District and the Irishtown Bend Archeological District are archaeological rather than architectural, and they record occupation of this part of Cuyahoga County long before 1816 meant anything. The suburb arrived last.

Cleveland pushed south until Parma stopped being a township and became the largest suburb in Ohio, while Puritas Springs Park and Memphis Kiddie Park belong to the leisure that came with all those new streets.

Where is Parma?

Cuyahoga County, immediately south of the city. Parma occupies a block of ground close enough to Cleveland that the two run together on the map, and the municipal area is filled almost edge to edge with the housing that made its name. Open ground is scarce.

The South Park Site and the Terra Vista Archeological District survive on the record as exceptions, while the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo lies outside the boundary altogether.

What is the climate of Parma?

Parma's default sky is flat grey. Cuyahoga County hands Parma long overcast winters and short warm summers, and the level ground the suburb was laid out across does nothing to interrupt either, since nothing here catches weather or turns it aside. Snow is the working season.

Wide streets across flat ground give wind a clear run, which is why a cold morning in Parma reads harder than the same reading taken in Cleveland.

How do you get to Parma?

Cleveland is eight miles off. Parma sits directly south of it inside Cuyahoga County, near enough that an arrival into the larger city finishes the journey in minutes and far enough out that the address still has to be looked up properly. The pull runs one way.

Anything reached from here, whether the Greater Cleveland Aquarium, Jacobs Pavilion or the Ukrainian Museum-Archives, sits on the Cleveland side, so the road out of Parma matters rather more than the road in.