Akron Culture

Akron’s culture is shaped by industry, by Appalachian migration and by an art school.

Music

For a city of under 200,000 the output is extraordinary. Devo formed out of Kent State art students in the aftermath of the 1970 shootings there, and their deadpan critique of industrial conformity was made in and about this landscape. Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders grew up here and wrote about the city being paved over. The Black Keys formed in an Akron basement. The Rubber City scene of the late 1970s produced several bands on a single compilation that is still cited.

Stan Hywet

The Seiberling estate is a complete Arts and Crafts and Tudor Revival ensemble, designed by Charles Schneider with landscape by Warren Manning, and preserved with its original contents rather than furnished as a period display.

Soap Box Derby

A gravity-powered downhill race for children, run here since 1935, with a purpose-built track and a world championship every summer.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Founded here, and the annual Founders Day gathering brings thousands to the city.

Marbles and rubber

Akron was once the centre of American marble manufacture, using local clay, and the toy marble and the rubber industry overlapped in the city’s early industrial history. Both were displaced, but they explain why a city this size had such a concentration of materials expertise.

Appalachian inheritance

The migration from West Virginia and Kentucky to the rubber plants brought country and gospel music, storefront churches and a food tradition that is still visible in the city’s diners. It also gave Akron a cultural texture closer to the Upper South than to the rest of northern Ohio, which older residents will tell you about at length.