Have you ever looked around your city and wondered what it looked like before you knew it? I’ve spent over a year doing just that as a graduate student in Applied History and Public Humanities at the University of Akron. The work I’ve done in that time has made me view the city I’ve called home my whole life differently, and I want to share what I found. There’s no better way to see a city differently than on a bike, so join me for History on Two Wheels: Lost Entertainment of Akron on October 12, 2024 (free registration required). We’ll explore some of Akron’s bygone past, from the thriving jazz clubs on Howard Street to the “Million Dollar Playground” at Summit Lake. The ride will be about 7 miles on mostly flat terrain, and almost entirely on the Towpath Trail and Main Street cycle track.
This tour came together as a culmination of projects I’ve been working on while in graduate school. Our class had the opportunity to work on the Cleveland Green Book project, a restorative history project of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University and Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This project is based on Victor H. Green’s Green Book guides, published between 1936 and 1966 to help Black motorists find courteous service and avoid harassment or the embarrassment of rejection in their travels.
Green Book Cleveland documents Black entertainment, leisure, and recreation in Northeast Ohio, from restaurants, taverns, and nightclubs to beauty and barber shops and more that were in the published guides as well as those that were not. One of the sites I was assigned was the Mathews Hotel, beauty shoppe and barbershop. The hotel was located on Howard Street, which was the center of a Black business and entertainment district in Akron from the 1920s - 1960s. A robust and vibrant community made up the neighborhood surrounding this district and was home to a significant percentage of Akron’s African American population.
I got to dive further into this history later in “Round Howard Street: Telling the Story of Akron Jazz” taught by Dr. Hillary Nunn and Theron Brown. This was a project-based “unclass” sponsored by UA’s EX[L] Center that aimed to study jazz culture in connection with the city of Akron and bring about a fuller understanding and interpretation of Black history in Akron, Ohio. We dove into archival research and mapped out what Howard Street would have looked like. Our class found dozens of businesses: clubs, record shops, music stores, and more in the decades between 1930 and 1960.
The Ohio Informer, Akron’s short lived Black newspaper that ran in the 1950s, referred to the many jazz clubs along Howard Street as “Rhythm Row”. You could always find music and dancing at the Cosmopolitan, the Hi-Hat Club, or Benny Rivers, just to name a few. The Akronite Jazz Society met on Sunday, the Akron Jazz Club met on Mondays, and “Battles of the Bands” and jam sessions were frequent. Beyond this local scene, Akron also hosted some of the biggest names in jazz, including Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong. This thriving district and neighborhood were eventually dubbed Akron’s “Little Harlem.”
All of these entertainers and their bands stayed at the Mathews Hotel when they traveled through Akron. The Mathews Hotel was listed in the Green Book every year it was published, and was Akron’s premier Black hotel for 50 years. The only indication that this hotel, along with the rest of this historic district, ever existed is an Ohio Historical Marker and the Hotel Mathews monument on the corner of Howard Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Downtown Akron looks like a much different place today than it did in 1960, thanks to several large and disruptive “urban renewal” projects. The Innerbelt highway, first proposed in 1962, was envisioned to connect the west (I-76/77) and north (State Route 8) legs of the Akron expressway system. This was part of other urban renewal projects already underway, including Opportunity Park and Cascade Plaza. Hundreds of families lost their homes and businesses, which were demolished to make way for the Innerbelt. This project devastated a community and robbed people of their livelihoods, the impacts of which are still being felt today. The highway was never completed to its original design and is now partially abandoned.
The Reconnecting Our Community Initiative was started in 2020 to develop a community-centered vision for the future of the stretch of the Innerbelt that is permanently closed to traffic. This project is currently being overseen by a 15-person Advisory Group of stakeholders, including nonprofit leaders, downtown and business community representatives, and several members who once lived in or have strong family ties to the neighborhoods displaced by the Innerbelt. As they work to determine what comes next, they are committed to acknowledging the history of the land, which includes the thriving community that the highway displaced and the enduring legacy of the harmful impacts of that displacement.
The jazz clubs on Howard Street weren’t the only recreation and entertainment sites in Akron that have been lost to time. The Palace Theatre, where Duke Ellington played five nights of shows in 1945 to promote war bond sales, was demolished in 1970. Akron’s “Million Dollar Playground”, Summit Beach Park, at one point the highest grossing amusement park in eastern Ohio, closed in 1958. East Market Gardens, once a popular spot to dance the “Charleston” or roller skate, is now a parking lot.
After those classes ended, I had the opportunity to continue this research through UA EX[L] Center’s Akron Community Internship Program. I was matched with the Downtown Akron Partnership where I have been able to continue this research and share it in a community bike tour. I will be guiding the tour on October 12th, and an online guide will also be available on DAP’s website.
Bio: Rose Vance-Grom is finishing up her graduate studies in Applied History and Public Humanities at the University of Akron. She completed her bachelor’s in history and certificate in museums and archives at UA in 2019. As a fourth generation, life-long Akronite, she is passionate about local history and hopes to continue researching and writing about it.
By: Rose Vance-Grom