Surprises Await in the Rubber City

By Steven Rosen

(This originally ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer in April, 2009)

The tendency here in southwest Ohio – and in the nation as a whole – is to view Akron as a Rust Belt casualty, a crumbling northeast Ohio city filled with vacant factories, foreclosed homes and potholed streets.

Not to discount the very serious economic problems facing Akron – facing all urban centers – but the Rubber City is actually a lively, lovely place for a weekend visit, or even longer. Especially in spring or summer, when the flowers and trees are in bloom at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens – for this writer’s money the most beautiful country estate/historic-house museum in Ohio.

The former home of Goodyear Tire & Rubber founder Franklin Seiberling, Stan Hywet (Old English for “stone quarry”; pronounced Stan Hee-wit) was built in the Tudor Revival style from 1912-1915 and donated to the public in 1957. It is open April through December and admission is $12 per adult; $18 for a guided tour. It stretches for 70 acres on Akron’s north side.

The manor house, comparable to a British country estate, has more than 65 rooms and 25 bathrooms. These are in immaculate condition and showcase all sorts of unusual design features – a billiard room with an insulated humidor for cigars, a “plunge” or indoor swimming pool, and a bathroom shower with pipes around its sides to forcefully spray water at its occupant.

Were that all there is to Akron, it alone would be worth a trip. But the downtown, while comparatively small, shows the results of progressive urban planning, especially a dynamic public gathering space known as Lock 3. It’s located next to a tourist destination – the restored Akron Civic Theatre, a rare surviving example of a Moorish-influenced “atmospheric” movie palace whose ceiling evokes a star-lit sky and which now hosts live entertainment.

Lock 3 celebrates Akron’s canal-boat days with an indoor exhibit, while an outdoor stage and grassy lawn allow for weekend concerts, many with small admission fees. We visited on a weekend night last summer when nearby Main Street had been closed for the (admission-charged) annual National Hamburger Festival (this year’s fest is July 19-20; see www.hamburgerfestival.com). The Stone Pony Band was playing the songs of Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny on the Lock 3 stage.

Beyond burgers, Akron has one of the more sophisticated, cutting-edge restaurants in the state, one earning international attention. It’s rock musician Chrissie Hynde’s The VegiTerranean, featuring vegan cuisine in a sleek, modernist setting with a soothingly expansive outdoor patio. It’s on the first floor of a new residential loft building in Akron’s compact, renovated Northside District. (Northside also has a depot for the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, featuring vintage train cars traveling through Cuyahoga Valley National Park.)

Hynde, an Akron native who long ago left for England to find fame in England with the Pretenders, decided to help her hometown with this restaurant, which opened in 2007. She believes vegan food can be presented as artfully and deliciously as French, and dinner entrees like Gardein (a trademarked garden-grown protein) scaloppini picatta prove the point. Plus her Chrissie Fries may be the best French fried potatoes in the world. Our polite, enthusiastic server said Hynde might open branches in Columbus and Las Vegas; it’d be a great, progressive replacement for Pigall’s here.

The most important addition to Akron’s skyline is the new wing of the Akron Art Museum on South High Street, which opened in 2007 and connects to a more modest older (1899) structure. The first American public building designed by the Viennese firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, the dramatically cantilevered structure makes a startling post-modernist appearance to anyone driving down South High.

Divided into three sections – a warming glass-enclosed “crystal,” a windowless aluminum-paneled “gallery box” and a hovering aluminum-wrapped steel “roof cloud” – it seems like a radar station floating in space, busily tracking alien transmissions. The permanent collection features interesting examples of contemporary and American Impressionism, as well as work by Akron modernist painter William Sommer, who died in 1949. (Visit www.akronartmuseum.org for programming details.)

Downtown also has one of the earliest – and still oddest – examples of creative reuse of an industrial building, the hotel off South Broadway known as Quaker Square Inn. It was radical when it opened in 1975; all the rooms are round, carved out of 36 sturdy grain silos that once belonged to Quaker Oats Company and held 1.5 million bushels. The University of Akron bought the inn, on the National Register of Historic Places, in 2007.

When we stayed there, the public spaces (and the continental breakfast) both needed updating, but it definitely felt like a one-of-a-kind place. If you stay there, try to have oatmeal for breakfast – this is where it was introduced to America. Chrissie Hynde would approve of that Akron culinary contribution.

IF YOU GO:


Akron is an easy drive from Cincinnati. Just take Interstate 71 north, through Columbus, and then go east for not quite 22 miles on Interstate 76 until reaching Akron. It takes about four hours. To get to Stan Hywet, 714 N. Portage Path, from downtown, visit www.stanhywet.org or call 1-888-836-5533.

Akron Art Museum, www.akronartmuseum.com or call 1-330-376-9185, has hours from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday and Friday-Sunday; until 9 p.m. Thursday. Admission is $7 adults; $5 seniors.

For reservations at The VegiTerranean, at 21 Furnace St. in the Northside just north of downtown, visit www.thevegiterranean.com or call 1-330-374-5550.

For information about downtown hotels, including Quaker Square Inn, see www.visitakron-summit.org or call 1-800-245-4254.