Street Stories: Main Street

The Delaware Building in downtown Akron was paid for in blood.
You're not expected to know that. The stains of the tragedy were washed away nearly 90 years ago, and no one has reported nine ghosts haunting the corner of South Main and Bowery streets.

But it's a little slice of history that reminds us our downtown belonged to many generations before us, and pieces of their world still mingle with our own.

Local history hobbyists Chuck Ayers and Ron Syroid contributed their notes and memories to this second installment in a series of walking guides to downtown Akron.

So slip on your mental tennis shoes and come along on a trip down South Main between East Market and Cedar streets.

The Delaware

In the spring of 1916, the Franklin Bros. Co. was blasting rock to make room for the foundation of the Delaware Building (137 S. Main).

At the peak of dinner hour, Gust Serris, who owned the Crystal Restaurant at Bowery adjacent to the construction site, complained to crews that the explosions were rattling his dishes and his customers.

His cries were ignored. Five minutes later, two more explosions shook his building, and it fell like a house of cards onto patrons and servers.

Nine people died and 30 were injured in the tangle of glass, brick and steel.

As the smoke cleared, heartbreaking tales circulated.

The victims included a newly employed waitress who had just moved to Akron in search of a better life, and a diner who stepped outside for fresh air, only to see the building collapse behind her, crushing her husband and 5-year-old daughter still seated at their table.

Main Street trivia

There's old. And then there's old. Much of Main Street went up between 1910 and 1930. But the red-brick Kaiser Building (325 S. Main) predates that building boom by half a century. The ornate Victorian Gothic structure was built in 1871 as a hardware store, just six years after the Civil War ended.

For a decade, the entrance to the Akron Civic Theatre (182 S. Main) was the gateway to nowhere. It was built for the Hippodrome, a theater that never happened. Construction ended at the double doors to the grand lobby when the owners ran out of money.

But Marcus Loew saw opportunity in the growing city and came to finish the job. His Akron Loews opened in 1929, just as talkies were overtaking their silent counterparts. Reportedly, the building design was altered during construction, giving Akron the first movie house in America built with sound equipment originally installed. Loews became the Civic in 1965.

Thousands visit Akron each year to celebrate the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, and many of them swing by Mayflower Manor (263 S. Main). The subsidized apartment building was a fashionable hotel in 1935 when a New York businessman named Bill Wilson stood in its lobby, fighting the temptation to drink. He grabbed a pay phone and started a chain of phone calls that led to a meeting with Akron physician Bob Smith. The two men, better known as Bill W. and Dr. Bob, formed A.A.

Other famous guests of the Mayflower: Shirley Temple, Katharine Hepburn, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and Ronald Reagan.

The Evans Building (333-337 S. Main) has been home to a succession of financial institutions since 1915. But the property is most important for what's no longer here. It was the site of Henry Clark's Tavern, where the election of Akron's first mayor, Seth Iredell, occurred on June 14, 1836. Look for the commemorative plaque facing Exchange Street.

Lombardo's big break

Guy Lombardo was a 21-year-old band leader when his nine-piece jazz group from Ontario, Canada, landed its first U.S. appearance ` a 15-minute set sandwiched between acrobats and trained seals during a vaudeville show in Cleveland in 1923.

Lombardo begged his agent not to send him home without a real American gig. He found his break in Akron, according to his 1975 autobiography, Auld Acquaintance.

The buildings associated with Lombardo's visit are gone. He stayed at the Howe Hotel (formerly at 11 S. Main), played at the Winton Dance Palace (formerly at 708 S. Main) and negotiated a deal with the Orpheum Theater (near the Howe).

Lombardo parlayed his last-minute booking into a two-week stay. Within months, he was playing on radios from New York to Chicago.

Before Main

Main Street wasn't always Akron's main street.

It used to be the old Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal, an east-west waterway that brought in machinery, provisions and people and took away wheat, wool and wood.

The canal opened in 1840, but railroads made it obsolete within four decades, and it was filled in.

That canal is buried beneath the pavement, but you can see another from Main Street: the more historically important Ohio & Erie Canal, which fueled Akron's growth when it opened in 1827.
The locks of the Ohio & Erie (sections that lifted or lowered boats through the various water levels) functioned until the Great Flood of 1913. City workers had to dynamite the locks to relieve a torrent of water that threatened downtown.

The debris from that 92-year-old disaster still rests where the canal runs alongside the Civic Theatre. Look for the chunks of concrete below the large, colorful “Akron” sign on the brick wall overlooking Lock 3 Park.

Eye candy

It's polite to stare at these buildings:

The Metropolitan Building (39 S. Main) features cast metal ornamentation. The Roman Neo-classic Revival structure went up in 1918.

Akron's skyscraper is FirstMerit Tower (106 S. Main.) The 28-story art deco building went up in 1929 at a cost of $2.6 million. Look for the clock, eagle and robed figure symbolizing wealth over the entry.

The art deco architecture of the Polsky building (225 S. Main) features a gray and yellow terra cotta exterior with curved chevrons. It was built in 1929 for the former department store.

The former Akron National Bank building (328 S. Main) is small, but its two-story Corinthian columns make it one of downtown's most eye-popping visual treats. Built in 1916, it looks more like a Roman temple than its current incarnation as a bar and band venue. Notice the black soot that remains from Akron's Rubber City days.
Across the street (331 S. Main) sits one of downtown's few Greek Neo-Classical structures. The narrow 1916 building is home to Boxes Plus, which ships packages around the world ` which is only appropriate because the building's first owner was steamship travel agent Joseph Ivory, who shipped people around the world.

For the most historically authentic Main Street block, stroll the sidewalk between Exchange and Cedar. The buildings here “in bricks of red, brown, orange and beige” went up in the building boom of the early 20th century. Look for names and date stones.

Mobs and mayhem

Local residents saw red on Aug. 23, 1900.

That was the color of the headline in the Akron Democrat on a story reporting that officials were holding a 36-year-old black man for raping a 6-year-old white girl.

A lynch mob formed within hours.

By 6 p.m., nearly 800 people had gathered at the City Building at Main and Bowery.

With a ladder as a battering ram, they tried to break through the building's locked doors, believing suspect Louis Peck was inside. Police fired into the crowd. Two children fell dead.

The crowd grew angrier. Some returned to the City Building with dynamite. Explosions rocked the block.

By the time the fires were put out, the City Building and the adjacent Columbia Hall were charred skeletons, and the city was under martial law.

And through it all, the suspect wasn't even in town. At the first hint of trouble, the quick-thinking sheriff had sent him to Cleveland.

The site of the riot is now occupied by US Bank, although ornamentation on the building clearly explains it was built for the Akron Savings & Loan Company in 1923.

Columbia Hall had this claim to fame: It's where the first significant motion picture played in Akron. A film of the boxing match between “Gentleman Jim” Corbett and “Ruby Bob” debuted there on Aug. 3, 1897.

All gone

In the near future, a handful of vacant old buildings next to the Civic, including the 1895 Whitelaw building, are to be torn down. An entertainment complex is proposed to take their places.

When they fall, they'll join a long list of other structures and businesses that exist only in the Main Street of our memories.

Shopping attractions of bygone eras include Yeager's, Federman's, Woolworth, Scott's, Akron Dry Goods and Block Brothers.

And of course, what baby boomer can pass the storefront windows of the former O'Neil's department store (222 S. Main) without recalling the annual Christmas displays?

Popular eateries included Gareri's, Garden Grille, Pewter Mug, Kippy's Restaurant, Tea House Inn, Mr. Bilbo's and Mijo's House of Paprikash.

Clark's Restaurant was another, operating for 40 years before a strange demise. Its staff of 39 went on strike in 1964 after a supervisor threatened to lay off a veteran worker. The company locked the doors and never reopened.

Also gone is the Anthony Wayne Hotel, razed in 1996 to make way for Canal Park stadium. The hotel was opened in 1917 as the Bond Hotel, but many more will remember when it was home to The Bank nightclub.

Main Street has hosted at least a dozen theaters since 1905, when The Unique (formerly at 115 S. Main) was converted from a vaudeville stage into Akron's first real motion picture theater. The National, Dreamland, Waldorf, Orpheum and Forum quickly followed.

The Palace, which opened in 1926 at 41 S. Main St., was a beautiful 2,200-seat theater with a domed ceiling decorated in ivory and gold. It closed in 1966 on the site where the Akron-Summit County Public Library is today.

The Strand Theatre (formerly at 129 S. Main) was built in 1915 as Akron's first deluxe movie house. In 1990, the Strand was being razed to make way for the Main Place office building when the work was temporarily halted. The owners of the adjacent building had filed suit, complaining that the demolition was causing its parking deck to collapse.

Only a history lover would have recognized the irony: The neighbor was the Delaware Building.
Copyright (c) 2005, Beacon Journal Publishing Co.
Publication date: Saturday, August 6, 2005
By Paula Schleis, Beacon Journal staff writer