Akron Discovery Guide
Why Visit Akron the Smart Way
Akron made most of the world’s tyres for most of the twentieth century, and the city that built is more interesting than the phrase suggests.
Stan Hywet Hall, the Goodyear founder’s sixty-five-room Tudor Revival house with gardens by Warren Manning, is among the finest country estates in the United States and is open to the public.
The Cuyahoga Valley National Park begins at the city’s northern edge — waterfalls, canal towpath, a scenic railway and a great deal of forest, all free to enter, and the only national park in Ohio.
Akron also invented a surprising amount: Alcoholics Anonymous was founded here in 1935, the Soap Box Derby has been run here since 1935, and the city has a musical lineage running from Devo to The Black Keys.
How to Experience Akron
Stan Hywet
F. A. Seiberling’s 1915 estate: a sixty-five-room Tudor Revival house with its original furnishings, a conservatory, a birch allee and formal gardens laid out by Warren Manning, an Olmsted associate. It is among the largest and best-preserved houses of its period open to the public in the United States.
Cuyahoga Valley
The national park runs north from Akron toward Cleveland: Brandywine Falls, the Ohio and Erie Canal towpath trail, the Ledges with their sandstone outcrops, and a scenic railway that will carry your bicycle one way and bring you back.
Downtown
The Akron Art Museum, in a Victorian post office with a cantilevered addition by Coop Himmelblau; Lock 3 park; and the canal locks stepping down through the centre.
Rubber history
The Goodyear airdock, an enormous airship hangar visible from the road, and the company’s heritage displays.
Music and sport
The Blossom Music Center in the valley, and the Soap Box Derby hill.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
Akron is a company town that outlived its companies and has a wry, unglamorous sense of itself.
Rubber City
At its height Akron produced a very large share of the world’s tyres, with Goodyear, Firestone, General Tire and B. F. Goodrich all headquartered here, and the city smelled of it. The industry drew workers from Appalachia in enormous numbers in the 1910s and 1920s — West Virginia in particular — and that migration shaped the accent, the churches and the food.
After the factories
Production moved south and overseas from the 1970s and the population fell by around a third. Goodyear still has its headquarters here and the university’s polymer science programme is world-leading, so the materials expertise stayed even as the manufacturing went.
Unpretentious
Akron does not oversell itself, and visitors find the city easier and friendlier than they expect.
Music
An improbable output for a city this size, from Devo’s art-school conceptualism to Chrissie Hynde and The Black Keys.
Responsible Travel Tips
Akron lost roughly a third of its population when the tyre industry left, and the effects are visible in parts of the city. That is context rather than spectacle.
Spend downtown and in Highland Square, where independent businesses are rebuilding the commercial streets, rather than only at the suburban retail strips.
The Cuyahoga Valley park is free and heavily used; stay on the towpath and marked trails, take out what you bring, and note that the river is recovering from a century of industrial use.
The canal and the locks through the city are a restored heritage corridor and are fragile.
Buy local: the Northside Marketplace and the downtown makers put money directly into small businesses.
When to Visit Akron
May, September and October are the best months: comfortable temperatures, and the Cuyahoga Valley at its best — wildflowers in spring, colour from mid-October.
June to August is warm and humid, with the Blossom Music Center season and the Soap Box Derby in July.
Late July brings the All-American Soap Box Derby world championship, which has run since 1935.
December to March is cold with substantial snow — Akron sits at the southern edge of the lake-effect snowbelt and gets more than Columbus or Cincinnati. The valley is good for winter walking and the museums carry the season.
April is wet and unreliable, and the start of severe weather season.
Travel Cost Levels in Akron
What a day costs, by how you travel
Relative cost across the city
Lowest — the outer neighbourhoods and much of the east side
Average — downtown, Highland Square and the university district
Highest — Fairlawn, Hudson and the northern suburbs
Akron is one of the more affordable cities in the American Midwest, and the national park, the towpath and much of what there is to do cost nothing. Sales tax is added at the till and tipping of 18 to 20 per cent is expected.
