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Street Stories: Market Street

Market Street was once the exclusive domain of millionaires.

A slice of that historical era still survives: a 19th-century alley whose bricks were scuffed by horse-drawn carriages of the rich and famous.

It's just one of many fun details busy 21st-century motorists overlook as they scurry through downtown.

The streets that whisk past your car window at a 30 mph blur become an entirely different world when you slip on tennis shoes and take along some knowledgeable company.

Historians Jim Pahlau, John Miller and Steve Kelleher recently strolled a section of downtown Akron, pointing out architectural details, sharing trivia and dusting off stories.

For this walking guide, the first in an occasional series, they woke up the ghosts of East Market between Main and Union.

Millionaires' Row

Picture the Haven of Rest, gone. The Hermes and Everett buildings, gone. Summit ArtSpace, gone.

Now imagine in their place a collection of elaborate homes populated by folks who built multinational corporations, founded towns and had schools and streets named for them.

In the 19th century, this was Millionaires' Row.

The south side of East Market featured the homes of F.A. Seiberling (Goodyear) and Ferdinand Schumacher (Quaker Oats). Their neighbors to the north included O.C. Barber (founded Barberton) and Gen. Lucius Bierce (uncle to famed author Ambrose).

They lived in tall, narrow homes that fell to commercial development a century ago.

But progress did not obliterate the access road that led to their carriage houses.

According to city records, the aged brick pavers on what is now called Journal Alley may have been laid when the road was built in 1873, making it one of the oldest original-material roads in Akron.

The road to Hollywood

In the early 1920s, worshippers flocked to the First Congregational Church of Akron at Union Street to hear the inspiring sermons of the Rev. Lloyd C. Douglas.

A few years later, people around the country flocked to theaters to see his movies.

Douglas loved to write, and penned three books in Akron before leaving. He relocated to Los Angeles, where he wrote Magnificent Obsession, a novel that went through 51 printings in two years before being turned into a hit movie.

But the area had one more significant contribution to make to Douglas' famed career.

In 1940, a fan from Canton wrote to him and asked if he'd ever heard what became of the robe Jesus wore that soldiers gambled for at the cross.

He credited her letter for motivating his 1942 book The Robe. After Douglas' death, the book was turned into a now-classic movie that is a staple on television every Easter.

Architectural details

It's hard to miss the enormous lions with sharp teeth.

But can you spot the torch that was hung upside down? Or find the image of the ancient god Mercury? Or notice the building whose front door announces it is “OPEN TO ALL”?

Here's some of the architectural eye candy on East Market, starting at the corner of Main:

The Everett Building features two huge lion heads and an eagle. Originally built in 1869, the building was remodeled after an 1897 fire ravaged the Academy of Music there.
The lions and eagle survived. William Shakespeare did not. A statue of the playwright toppled onto the sidewalk as flames consumed the mansard roof.

Today, the Everett is easily identified by a rather classic-looking clock mounted on its side. The clock is new.

If you wondered who the new Jacob Good restaurant was named for, wonder no more. He was a merchant and owner of the 1871 Hermes Building, where the restaurant is located.

At the corner of High, Castle Hall is a Victorian Gothic Revival built in 1878. Back then it served as the clubhouse for the Knights of Pythias. Its third floor features a once-popular ballroom.

The 1899 Italian Renaissance Revival building that houses the Akron Art Museum features two protruding eagles resting above flashy iron lanterns. The eagles are original. The lanterns are replicas, created when the museum moved in.

U.S. industrialist Andrew Carnegie built free public libraries all over the world. In 1904, he gave one to Akron. While the sandstone building at High Street hasn't been a library for decades, its original intention is obvious.

Details include open books; the names Shakespeare, Chaucer, Socrates and Herodotus etched into the stone; and the words “OPEN TO ALL” above the front door.

There has been one significant exterior alteration. When Market Street was widened, the front stairs were rebuilt so visitors exited down the sides instead of directly into traffic.

Take a short side trip north on High and look for the tall Northern Ohio Traction and Light building. You'll know it by the massive front door that allowed trolleys to enter.

Way up, you'll spot the NOT&L sign with a cartouche of a torch with wings.

At least, you will if you're standing on your head. One can only wonder what happened to the workers who hung it upside down.

In 1928, Akron built its first terra cotta building at the corner of Summit Street.

The white Neo-Classical Revival now serves as home to the Western Fruit Basket Co. Age has given the building a marbled look as the once-smooth porcelain filled with hairline cracks.

Cater-corner across Summit is the city's first Art Deco building, a beige brick structure with terra cotta trim, a ring of lion heads and panels showing the wing-helmeted god Mercury.

Home to Summit ArtSpace, the building was originally built for the Beacon Journal. The presses were started here in 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge, who activated them via a special telegraph line from Washington, D.C.

The bigger they are ...

One day in the mid-1880s, O.C. Barber and his daughter Anna were sleigh riding when another sleigh tried to pass them on East Market near Main.

The sleighs entangled, and O.C. and Anna were toppled into a snowdrift.

When Barber noticed Anna's new sealskin coat had torn, he demanded the hired driver of the other sleigh, John Wetzel, pay for it. Bowing to the powerful industrialist, Wetzel borrowed the money from his friends, but demanded the coat in return.

Wetzel sought to recoup the loss by raffling off the coat; the $1 tickets were a hot item.

An enraged Barber stormed down to the livery where Wetzel worked. Wetzel agreed to stop the raffle after Barber reimbursed him for the coat and the printing costs.

Wetzel converted the money into one-dollar bills, which he used to refund ticket buyers with this statement: ‘Here is a Barber dollar. You will probably never see another.‘ Reportedly, Akronites enjoyed the joke at Barber's expense.

Musical chairs

As the Beacon Journal, the post office, the library and the art museum outgrew their spaces, they recycled each other's buildings here.

The newspaper was located in the soot-stained red brick building now home to Akron Pregnancy Services (apparently inspiring the name Journal Alley behind it). Then it moved to the beige building at Summit.

The library dwelled on the second floor of the Everett Building before the grand opening of the Carnegie.

The Italian Renaissance building at Main was built as a post office.

After the Beacon Journal moved to the southern end of downtown, the library jumped into its beige Summit building.

That left the Carnegie building available for an art museum, which was founded in 1922.

The post office eventually moved down the street to a new home at Prospect. The art museum bounced around to a few different locations before finally leap-frogging into the abandoned post office in 1981.

The library later built a new home on Main Street and the post office moved yet again to Wolf Ledges, leaving the two Beacon buildings, the Carnegie and the former post office on Prospect for office space.

All gone

The memories live on, even if these buildings are now dust:

The Portage Hotel at the corner of Main came down in the 1990s. Its claim to fame: Here is where the United Rubber Workers of America formed in 1935.

The Taylor Hotel at the corner of Broadway served as headquarters for federal agent Eliot Ness when he came to town in the 1930s to root out corruption.

In the winter of 1934, Ness “whose ‘Untouchables’ had brought down Chicago crime boss Al Capone “ hauled a stream of witnesses into the Taylor for interrogation.

His investigation led to the indictment of 33 people, including the former Summit County sheriff.

The East Market Gardens, formerly at 264 E. Market, was a popular dance hall in the 1920s and '30s. Among the greats to play there: Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Harry James.

Akron's main train station, Union Depot, opened across from College Street in 1891. It was a key stop between Chicago and New York until its closing in 1950.

During its 59-year reign, it carried thousands of people who came to live in Akron and work in the rubber factories. It was the departure point for Akron soldiers in the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II. And Presidents Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman gave whistle-stop campaign speeches there.


AKRON BEACON JOURNAL
Copyright (c) 2005, Beacon Journal Publishing Co.
Publication date: Saturday, June 4, 2005
By Paula Schleis, Beacon Journal staff writer