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A Real Event Akron Topics August 1931 Formal opening of the Central Depositors 28-story building and an informal house-warming for the bank in its spacious new quarters assumed every aspect of an outstanding community event on July 23. Throngs visited the banking rooms and explored the impressive building throughout the day and until nine at night. Uniformed guides, chiefly university students, conducted visitors to the roof for the extended view of the city and surrounding country there afforded. The banking rooms were trimmed with gorgeous floral pieces representing the congratulations of banking and other friends. A number of prominent bankers of other cities were among the visitors. G. Carl Dietz, chairman of the board; George H. Dunn, president and W. J. Ruof and George Merz, executive vice presidents, with the bank directors entertained visitors and Akron business leaders at lunch at the Mayflower. A complete description of the imposing new bank structure was printed in The Akron Topics for May.
"A Real Event." Akron Topics Aug.
1931: p5. Akron-Summit County Library:
Someday in this month of June – maybe at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon – a few finishing carpenters and painters high up on the monumental Central Depositors building will gather up their tools and go. Cleaning women will promptly sweep and scrub where the men have worked. Then they, too, will carry their equipment elsewhere and Akron’s newest skyscraper will stand completed – a finished structure. The date for the formal opening of the spacious new banking rooms and the building as a whole has not been definitely fixed. It will be not far from July first. Meantime the bank is steadily extending its occupancy of the finished banking quarters, and more and more of the offices are being occupied by representative firms, corporation and individuals of the professional and business ranks of the city. Flowing in and out, the busy stream of humanity seems endless. It is greatest during banking hours, but early is in motion. In the main structure, fronting on Main Street, six elevators – three of them express – are noiselessly receiving and discharging passengers. The service is rapid. It is automatically controlled. Similarly, two elevators provide service at the Howard Street entrance. The plan of the building provides for light, airy offices. Its equipment provides for utmost sanitation, cleanliness and comfort. The Hamilton building was razed and the greater structure erected all within a little more than 20 months. Yet it was by stages that Akron saw the new building rise higher and higher, so becoming familiar with its majestic proportions by degrees. But the Akron man who has been long absent and returns to find this impressive edifice in the heart of things must be profoundly impressed. The formal opening will probably be not the event of a day but of a week. The bank will provide special departments to welcome and assist visitors. The main banking room will win interest and admiration. It is 140 feet in length and 98 feet in width. The decorated ceiling is 30 feet above the floor. Twin rows of massive marble columns and high cathedral-like windows add impressiveness and certain friendliness to the picture. The excellent natural lighting is supplemented by fixtures of striking, modernistic design affording semi-indirect illumination. Walls, ceilings and banking screens are treated to provide the best acoustics and eliminate noise both from within and from the streets. There are conference rooms, coupon rooms and every convenience for patrons. Other special rooms include the president’s office, directors’ room and the like but, in general, executives and their departments are all pleasantly accessible, adjacent to the wide lobby. Great structures of recent years have changed the general aspect of downtown Akron as completely as when, more than 50 years ago, Main Street was turned into a broad and important business thoroughfare by the conduiting of the canal which flowed through it, and paving the dirt road and erstwhile tow-path. In the eighties came Akron’s first building rising up to five stories. It was the Beacon building on the northeast corner of Main and Mill, erected by the late George W. Crouse. After the newspaper and its general printing business were merged and sold this became the Central Office building. The erection of the Hamilton building which after thirty years gave way to the present skyscraper, wholly changed the aspect of the Main and Mill corner, for it took the place of a decrepit frame structure which housed a junk shop of decrepit things of every sort – a second-hand store of the worst sort. Also, a row of frame shacks on the south side of Mill Street was torn down. There was a similar transformation when the Masonic Temple at Mill and High replaced at one stroke a bunch of dingy, dinky frame structures. Although the Hamilton building was Akron’s first modern office structure, the Second National building and Ohio building came a very few years later. The latter were of the type known as all-steel construction. The Hamilton building was of the period when steel was first being used in a considerable way, forming the entire framework except as to outer walls.
"The Skyscraper." Akron Topics
June.
1931: p15, 16. Akron-Summit County Library:
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