It’s fitting that the bottom floor of the new Akron History Center opens to Lock 4. Stepping inside the museum from that entrance, visitors are greeted by an 1899 downtown map, hand-drawn by canal engineer Charles Perkins. It depicts the routes of the Ohio & Erie Canal and the defunct Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal, which ran through what’s now Main Street.
With a grand opening set for April 5 during Akron's bicentennial celebration, the $2.2 million project — housed in a 1909 Main Street building — has over 60 exhibits spread throughout its 3,000-square-foot, three-story space. Akron History Center president and historian Dave Lieberth secured hundreds of artifacts. Contributions primarily came from the Summit County Historical Society of Akron, OH in collaboration with the Akron-Summit County Public Library. The Lighter-Than-Air Society and The University of Akron’s archives also contributed. The museum was thoughtfully built with materials that recall the city’s history — rubber tiles cover the second floor, while wooden display panels on the bottom floor are made from downed oak, maple, poplar and walnut trees from the properties of the Perkins Stone Mansion and John Brown House. Sandstone pillars salvaged from the Heisman Lodge at the former Rubber Bowl flank the Lock 4 entrance.
“Sandstone is what Akron is built on,” Lieberth says. “Berea sandstone.”
The museum tells Akron’s story starting in the Pleistocene epoch, about 20,000 years ago, when mastodons roamed. See a 3D model of a juvenile mastodon vertebrae, recovered from a site where Billow’s Fairlawn Chapel now sits. Indigenous people were first to live on this land. Peruse reproductions of their artifacts, such as a clay pot retrieved from the Cuyahoga Valley over 100 years ago and a flint knife uncovered near Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. Plus, view rare artifacts from Akron’s founder, Gen. Simon Perkins, including his 200-year-old flintlock pistols — dating back to the founding of Akron in 1825 — and the circumferentor compass he used to survey the land.
A portrait of abolitionist John Brown, who lived in Akron for a period of time starting in 1844, covers an entire inset wall. Behold a 7-foot iron pike, made to arm enslaved people in the raid Brown led at the federal arsenal and armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia — an event that the Smithsonian Institution acknowledges as the start of the Civil War. “John Brown may be the single most consequential person to ever live in Akron,” says Lieberth.
Also see a model of the new Sojourner Truth statue, which marks the abolitionist and women’s rights activist’s famous 1851 speech in Akron, and get a sense of the creation of our lock system with another Charles Perkins map.
“It would take a series of locks — it ended up being about 19 — to go from Exchange Street, where Lock 1 is, down to where Merriman Valley is, a drop of about 150 feet,” Lieberth says. “Each of those 19 locks would take about 45 minutes to go through. Each would use 100,000 gallons of water per lock. So the Portage Lakes were developed as reservoirs to fuel the hydraulics.”
The second floor rolls out Akron’s history as the Rubber Capital of the World. An aerial 1950 BF Goodrich photograph, from its heyday as the largest rubber factory, covers the floor. A lump of rubber, tire mold, tire-building machine and the Akron tire used by racer Art Arfons to set a mid-1960s land speed record are all displayed. Examine Akron rubber products. See a World War II-era Mickey Mouse child’s rubber gas mask, one of only four in the U.S. Peruse airship memorabilia, including a working pressed steel model of an early 1930s Goodyear zeppelin airdock — pushing a button reveals an airship. Finally, take in photos and a silent film about the U.S.S. Akron airship and the building of the Akron Airdock, along with a pull cord first lady Lou Hoover used to christen the U.S.S. Akron.
“You’ll see a picture of her pulling a rope — and that’s the rope she pulled — to reveal a panel in the top of the airship,” says Lieberth. “She pulled the rope, and a flock of homing pigeons flew out.”
Another big draw is the door to Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Dr. Bob Smith’s downtown Akron office, which visitors can touch.
On the museum’s Main Street level, get behind a NASCAR wheel with a virtual game in which you can customize your car, tire treads and more to race with Goodyear Akron-made NASCAR tires.
Next, read a timeline that shares Akron’s contributions to music, from the 1887 founding of classical concert presenter Tuesday Musical to Akron’s own Grammy Award-winning Black Keys rock duo. Historic Akron clothing is ondisplay throughout, including a sparkly pink ombre dress worn by Dolores Parker Morgan, who sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Rubber City Rebels singer Rod Firestone’s rubber pants — made from tires — and Devo’s iconic yellow jumpsuit and red energy dome hat. Experiment with music in a display about Akronbased EarthQuaker Devices, which allows you to manipulate guitar pedals.
A wall showcasing 64 influential Akronites tells the stories of newspaper giant John S. Knight, civil rights activist and singer Len Chandler, Olympic champion figure skaterCarol Heiss Jenkins and more.
As you explore, don’t miss the 20 steps of social justice. Key dates are printed on stairs. Those include when the destruction of Akron City Hall — following an attempted lynching in 1900 — led to the founding of Akron’s NAACP chapter in 1917, when Akron’s Deaf community became the largest in the U.S. in 1946 and when the Victim Assistance Program launched in 1972.
“These things were important to me — to make certain it was multidimensional and showed the diversity of our community,” Lieberth says. “People should know of that so that we have a better understanding of how we got to where we are today.” Previously, Akron was the only major Ohio city without a city museum. Lieberth is happy to finally fill that gap. He and Caitlyn Conley, the local history and museum specialist for the Akron library, which is operating the museum, aim for people to leave impacted. “I hope that people, when they come here, they’ll see the potential that we have,” says Conley.
“It makes the future less scary,” Lieberth adds, “When you look at our past and realize that we’ve always had difficult issues to overcome, and we’ve always overcome.”
172 S. Main St., Akron, akronhistorycenter.org
Summit County Historical Society
Summit County Historical Society
Akron-Summit County Public Library
BF Goodrich
