41.2568° N, 81.8815° W
CLEVELAND
Most Famous People Born in Cleveland, United States
- Notable people
- 2,168
- Peak decade
- 1950s
- Median birth year
- 1942
- Most distinctive
- Baseball 6.3×
A Great Lakes industrial city whose distinctive professions are baseball at six times the global rate, novelists, screenwriters, music, and basketball — the shape of a postwar industrial city that built a deep entertainment-and-letters bench out of its working-class neighbourhoods. Halle Berry, Henry Mancini, Jerry Siegel (who invented Superman here with Joe Shuster), and Tracy Chapman all belong to this bench. The 19th-century tail is thin; the city was essentially built by the oil and steel booms of the 1890s.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Cleveland during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1950s with 303 notable births.
What Cleveland Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Football is Cleveland's biggest profession — 10% of all notables (226).
Cleveland over-indexes on baseball — 6.3× the global rate.
Cleveland under-produces politician — only 0.6× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Cleveland's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Sports
- Film & TV
- Politics & Law
- Music
- Writing
- Science
- Other
- Field: Novelist Clear ×
Anthony Doerr
Born 1973
David Weber
Born 1952
George Alec Effinger
1947 - 2002
Robert L. Fish
1912 - 1981
R. A. MacAvoy
Born 1949
Alice Muriel Williamson
1869 - 1933
Alix Kates Shulman
Born 1932
Alfred Henry Lewis
1855 - 1914
Elwood Reid
Born 1966
Vance Bourjaily
1922 - 2010
S. Andrew Swann
Born 1966
Herbert Gold
Born 1924
Kevin O'Donnell Jr.
1950 - 2012
Brian McClellan
Born 1986
Barbara Seranella
1956 - 2007
Jonathan Miles (novelist)
Born 1971
Barbara Faith
1921 - 1995
Marcia Talley
Born 1943
Salvatore Scibona
Born 1975
Evan Fallenberg
Born 1961
Beatrice Burton
1894 - 1983
Fiona Maazel
Born 1975
Russell Potter
Born 1960
Patricia Grossman
Born 1951
Barbara Corrado Pope
Born 1941
Charles Mathes
Born 1949
J. Everett Prewitt
Born 1942
Joyce Burditt
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David Hoenigman
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