Quarrying was a major industry from roughly 1850 to 1950 in Berea, attracting large numbers of immigrants in search of work. Baldwin Institute and University (1846) and German Wallace College (1863) created an academic atmosphere, and Berea's citizens became an eclectic and resilient mix of academics, business people, and immigrants. Eventually, quarrying ended, and the downtown business district, the Triangle, was nearly destroyed by fire three times. Each time the determined residents of Berea rebuilt. Today, Berea is a unique Cleveland suburb.

Beginning in the mid-1800s, the beer-brewing industry in Cleveland experienced its most extensive growth due to the rapidly increasing immigrant population of mostly Germans, Czechs, and Irish. The breweries enjoyed great success until the Prohibition era closed all brewing operations down for 14 dry years. In 1933, the industry started anew, and Clevelanders were able to enjoy locally made beer for 50 more years before business conditions led to the industry's second demise. Today the industry has once again experienced a rebirth, this time on a smaller scale with the emergence of a number of popular brewpubs and microbreweries.

At the beginning of the last century, there were just over 11,000 Italians in Ohio. While many of the earliest immigrants settled along Lake Erie, a growing number ventured south to the state capital, a city located at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers and named for a famed Italian explorer. Importing the rich traditions of the old country, Columbus Italian families stayed close to each other, living in great concentrations on St. Clair Avenue and in the Flytown and Bottoms neighborhoods, Grandview Heights, Marble Cliff, and San Margherita. The generations of families who once called these Italian enclaves home have now largely dispersed but still form a community—colorful, hardworking, and fiercely loyal—bonded by the three most basic principles of Italian culture and the theme of the Columbus Italian Festival: "Faith, Family, and Friends."

Located north of Cincinnati in the Mill Creek Valley, Lincoln Heights was the first African American self-governing community north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The development of Lincoln Heights began in 1923 when the Haley-Livingston Land Company of Chicago sold lots to black families in an unincorporated area called the Cincinnati Industrial Subdivision, now the southern section of Lincoln Heights. Water and sewerage were provided by special assessment through the Works Progress Administration, there were no building and zoning code services, fire and police protection were virtually nonexistent, and street maintenance and lighting were extremely inadequate. In 1939, residents of the area began efforts to incorporate so they could provide safety and necessary services for their growing community. Several of the original petitioners for incorporation lived in the Valley View subdivision, which later became the Wright Aeronautical plant, where many black migrants from the South came to help manufacture the famous B-29 bomber .