Akron Has a Second Building Boom

By Karl Grismer

 Back in the days of World War I, Akronites thought they were establishing an all-time building record when they spent during a five-year period the grand total of $69,683,650 for new factories, new homes, new mercantile buildings, and other structures. 

They did, in fact, establish a one-year record which was not sur­passed for 30 years, building 6,894 structures in the glorious year of 1919 at a cost of $27,219,436. 

But for five-year periods, Akron really set a mark to shoot at from the beginning of 1925 to the end of 1929. During those lush years 28,417 structures were erected at the breath-taking cost of $93,078,903. 

Before the real building boom got under way the old business center at Main and Market got a new office building—the eight story United Building, on the southeast corner of the intersection. It was built by the Cleimner-Johnson Construction Co. for the United Cigar Store Co. at a reported cost of $1,000,000. The building was opened in February, 1924. 

The United Building soon was eclipsed by another structure which was added to the cluster close to the downtown Five Points—the 12-story Akron Savings Loan Building, on the southwest corner of Main and Bowery, on the site of the mob-destroyed City hall and later The Dobson Block. 

Designed by Alfred Hopkins, of New York, the structure was started late in 1923 and was completed on December 22, 1924. The formal opening was held the following day when Akron Savings Loan officials were hosts to seventy-five of Akron’s leading citizens at the Portage Country Club. During the 36 years the company had been in existence, its assets had increased from $44,582 to $6,309,412, convincing evidence of Akron’s remarkable growth during that period. 

With the completion of the Akron Savings Loan Building, the main building boom really started. In every part of town, every con­ceivable type of building began springing up. Contractors, lumber dealers and building material firms rolled in wealth. 

Included among the structures erected were two fine theatres, the Keith-Albee Palace and Loew’s Akron Theatre.

The Palace was financed by a group of Akron men headed by H.E. Andress and B. A. Polsky who formed the Main & High Realty Company and sold stock to more than two hundred businessmen. The building contract was awarded to the Carmichael Construction Co. Upon completion in 1926, the theatre was leased to the Keith-Albee Palace Company, an affiliate of Keith-Albee Enterprises, Inc. it was formally opened Monday night, April 26th, 1926, with a capacity crowd, every one of its 2200 seats having been sold days beforehand. 

Before the opening ceremonies began, Miss Katherine Bruot entertained the audience with a recital on the Skinner organ. Then came an interlude for the passing out of compliments. Keith Albee was warmly praised by Polsky, Mayor D. C. Rybolt and Edwin W. Brouse, president of the Chamber of Commerce. Not to be outdone, Keith Albee officials responded by lauding the city of Akron and its good citizens. Everyone got a few pats on the back.

The feature movie brought in specially for the opening was Cecil B. DeMille’s “Three Faces East,” starring Henry B. Walthall, Jetta Goudal and Robert Ames. The movie was followed by five vaudeville acts. Music was furnished by Ray Billings’ Orchestra. 

Loew's Theater

Almost exactly three years later, Akron got its second new theatre, Loew’s, built at a cost, including the site, of $2,000,000. It was opened on Saturday, April 20, 1929, and the newspapers estimated that at least 10,000    persons attended during the afternoon and evening, all the 3,400 seats being filled almost continuously. 

The high dome of the theatre with its starlit sky and drifting clouds pleased the theatre-goers almost as much as the 100 per cent all-talking movie, “‘The Voice of the City,” starring Robert Ames, Sylvia Field and Willard Mack. On the stage were three vaudeville acts. Edward C. Marquardt for fifteen years at Lakeside Casino and later with the Strand, was the orchestra leader. 

The erection of Loew’s south of the intersection of Main and Bowery provided a little more proof, if any more were needed, that Akron’s principal business district was undergoing another shift.

Southward Moves the Business Section 

O'Neil's Department Store

Back in 1889, two Irish-born Akron merchants, Michael O’Neil and Isaac Dyas, disregarded warnings of their fellow merchants and boldly moved their little dry goods store from F. Market Street to the west side of Main, several hundred feet south of Market, into a section where no retail store had ever thrived. 

Dire were the predictions of what would happen to the Irishmen’s concern—shoppers would never go to that shunned district and the firm of O’Neil & Dyas would soon go broke. 

The predictions, of course, did not come true. O’Neil & Dyas prospered and other merchants began opening stores in that once ­avoided section. Within a decade, the west side of Main between Mill and Market had become Akron’s principal shopping center, almost putting the old Howard-Market area in eclipse. 

in 1928, the M. O’Neil Company, successor of the O’Neil & Dyas firm of yesterday and then owned by the May Department Stores Com­pany, upset precedent again and took the lead in shifting the business center once more, this time far south to Main and State. 

The old business center was getting crowded and there was no room available for expansion. Moreover, a steadily increasing number of shoppers were coming to town in automobiles and to find a parking space in that part of town was next to impossible. And there were no parking lots nearby.Confident that their customers would follow them, company offi­cials bought the site of the old Merrill Pottery on the west side of Main between State and Center, razed the buildings on the land, and began constructing the finest mercantile building in the city. 

The structure, six stories high, covered the entire block and extended back over the Ohio Canal, the right to span the old canal bed having been secured from the state. Construction work was started early in 1 927 and the building was completed a year later, at a cost of $3,100,000. The store’s new home was thrown open for public in­spection on March 13, 1928. 

Polsky Department Store

O’Neil’s soon had a new neighbor—a very important neighbor; the equally famous department store, the A. Polsky Company. 

This concern was started in 1885 by Abraham Polsky, a native of Poland, who had come to America a few years after the Civil War and begun his business career with a pack of merchandise on his back, peddling from door to door. In a few years he was able to buy a horse and wagon and discard his pack. By the mid 1870s he had gotten enough capital to open a small store in Youngstown with Sam Myers as a partner. Shortly afterward Polsky and Myers moved their store to Orrwell, Ohio, near Ashtabula. 

Moving to Akron in ‘85, the partners opened a store at 165 S. Howard Street. In 1892, Myers sold his interest to Polsky and the firm name was changed to the A. Polsky Company. As the concern grew, it expanded its quarters and in 1913 acquired a Main Street location and opened a store which extended back over Bank Alley and had entrances on both Main and Howard. 

A. Polsky died on March 3. 1915, and the business was carried on by his two sons, Bert A. Polsky and Harry O. Polsky. 

Late in 1928 the company officials purchased the block across the street from O’Neil’s which nearly a decade before had been selected as a hotel site by a group of Akron men headed by F. A. Seiberling. Buildings on the land had been cleared and a basement blasted out of solid rock when the 1921 crash came. Work was then suspended and after a time the gaping hole was filled with cinders and made into a parking lot. Ground was broken for the new Polsky store on October 20, 1929, and the structure, reported to have cost $2,100,000, was completed in the late summer of ] 930, being opened for inspection on September 15th and for business on the following day. 

Many other merchants followed the lead of O’Neil’s and Polsky’s and by the early ‘30s the town’s business section extended on S. Main all the way from Market to Exchange, with no breaks in between. The C. H. Yeager Company, the city’s third largest department store, chose to remain at its old location. 54-70 S. Main.

Confidence Builds Buildings

Akron was supremely confident of its future in the halcyon year of 1929. Because of that confidence it got four fine buildings which undoubtedly will stand as landmarks for many years to come. They were the Central Tower, now known as the First National Tower; the YMCA, the YWCA, and the Mayflower Hotel. 

Central Tower

The Tower was built by the Akron Central Tower Company, an affiliate of the Central Savings & Trust Company. 

Central Savings liked the Mill-Main intersection—it had lived there all its life. Organized February 25, 1897, it was first located of the ground floor of the old Beacon Block, on the northeast corner. On January 2, 1905, it moved across the street to the building on the northwest corner, formerly occupied by the Akron Savings Bank. 

In 1918, it moved again, to the southwest corner, on the ground floor of the Hamilton Building which it had purchased four years before. 

By the late Twenties the bank officials decided that their institution needed a more imposing home than the six-story Hamilton and also that Akron needed an extra-special office building. So they organized the Akron Central Tower Company on July 30, 1929, and had plans drawn for a superb structure to cost about $3,000,000. The Hamilton was torn down and on October 22nd a construction contract was awarded to the Carmichael Construction Company. 

Almost simultaneously—to be exact, on October 30th—the Central Savings absorbed the Depositors Savings & Trust Company “due to the fact that a larger institution can be operated more profitably to its stockholders,” according to records of the Central Savings’ directors. Shortly thereafter, appalling changes in economic conditions throughout the country forced the bank officials to economize on their building plans— but construction work was continued. 

The Central-Depositors moved into quarters on the ground floor of the Tower on June 30, 1 930, while steel work on the upper floors was still being erected. More than a year later the building was completed. It was opened to the public for the first time on Thursday, July 23, 1931, and 40,000 persons went through it. Thousands ascended the tower to get a birds-eye view of the city. As part of the open house ceremonies, bank officials entertained 350 leading citizens at the newly completed Mayflower Hotel. 

For the record, here are a few facts about the Tower. It cost $2,573,333.19 in addition to the land. It is 330 Feet high and has 28 floors. Its roof is 1, 287 feet above sea level. The building has a total floor area, exclusive of basement, of 282,830 square feet and a total rentable area of 185,002 square feet. 

As for its exact location on the earth’s surface it is situated at latitude 40º 04’ and 30” North and longitude 81º 3l’ 20” West. 

Mayflower Hotel

The Mayflower Hotel was the realization of a long cherished dream of leading citizens to get a really first class hotel for Akron, one which would compare favorably with the best in any city. A half dozen attempts to get such a hotel had been made during the Big Boom but all had failed. Two reached the basement-digging stage—the one where Polsky’s was later built and another, which was to have been called the Commodore Perry, on the northeast corner of Market and Prospect. 

The Mayflower was conceived early in 1929 by Charles Herberich and Jerome Dauby who played a leading part in the organization of the Main-State Holding Company. Herberich was president, Theodore DeWitt, vice-president and general manager; I L. Kinsey, secretary, and Harry Williams, treasurer. 

An option—reportedly for $400,000—was secured on the old YMCA property, on the southeast corner of Main and State, then owned by the Akron Dry Goods Company, and a stock issue of approximately $1,100,000 was sold locally. The company secured $1,500,000 on a first mortgage from the Prudential Insurance Company of America but this financing failed to complete the project. Goodrich, Goodyear and Firestone then put in $100,000 each—later raised to $125,000—as a second mortgage loan with interest of 5 percent, if earned. 

Despite this assistance, it was necessary for concerns which furnished the hotel to take second mortgage notes in payment of their unpaid bills. This created a second mortgage slightly in excess of $800,000. 

The 16-story structure, containing 150 guest rooms, built by the Carmichael Construction Company, was completed in the spring of 1931 and was formally opened on May 18th. Eight hundred of the city’s prominent citizens attended the banquet. Lieut. Com. Charles E. Rosendahl, executive officer of the U.S.S. Akron, then almost ready to be launched, was the principal speaker. Fred Harpham was toastmaster. 

In the beginning, the hotel was leased to the Mayflower Hotel Company, an affiliate of the DeWitt Hotel Company. The first years were rugged, with not enough money being made to pay interest on the first mortgage, but the Prudential Insurance Company had the interest of Akron at heart and did not foreclose. 

In 1942 the hotel owners severed their connection with DeWitt and appointed an executive committee to employ a manager and supervise operations. Members of the committee were: Walter Herberich, Dudley Maxon, Harry Ulrich, L. L. Kinsey, and a representative of the insurance company. [By 1951, the hotel company had succeeded in paying the second mortgage in full plus interest and had reduced the first mortgage to less than $700,000.] 

YMCA & YWCA

The same general air of supreme confidence in the future which led to the construction of the Tower and the Mayflower, also gave Akron the new YMCA and YWCA buildings. 

The drab Y-M building at Main and State had been erected soon after the turn of the century. A drive for funds in 1902 resulted in $102,000 being pledged but only half the subscriptions were paid in. The exterior of the building was completed late in 1903 hut then the work stopped—the money had run out. Secretary R.U. Hooper early in 1905 succeeded in raising $30,000 more and the building was completed. It was opened early in 1906—and almost immediately was out grown. 

The YWCA had two establishments, both of which were inadequate. Its main home was the Grace House, on S. High a little south of Market, which it had received from the Union Charity Association in 1904. It also maintained the “Blue Triangle,’’ a girls’ dormitory, at 149 S. Union. 

A joint campaign to raise $2,400,000 to erect new homes for both organizations was started April 10, 1929, with H.B. Manton as chairman of the gift committee. Seven thousand persons subscribed and at the end of ten days, a total of $2,100,897 had been pledged. 

Plans for the new YMCA, a 16-story structure which was said to be the finest in Ohio, were announced on October 30th by Stacy G. Carkuff, president of the organization. The building was designed by Good & Wagner, Akron architects. Work on excavating for the basement was started at once by the Smyers & Rogers Excavation Company and on April 5^th, 1930, a construction contract was awarded to the Clemmer-Noah Construction Company. The cornerstone was laid on July 30th. 

The completed building, which cost $1,260,000, was opened March 10, 1 931, but was not officially dedicated until August 4^th, when a world conference of Y-M workers was being held in Cleveland. Two thousand delegates to the conference came to Akron for the dedication ceremonies, held in the gymnasium, the ceiling of which was covered with the flags of 76 nations. Congratulatory speeches were made by persons from all over the world. 

A construction contract for the YWCA building, which reportedly cost $857,000, was awarded to the Clenmmer-Noah Construction Company on January 1 7, 1 930, work was begun on February 7th, and the completed building, ten stories high, was dedicated Wednesday night, January 28, 1931. The actual ceremony of opening the doors was performed by Mrs. W. F. Voges, Y-W president. The prayer of dedication was given by Rabbi David Alexander and dedication speeches were made by the Rev. Richard A. Dowed and the Rev. Wilbur V. Mallalieu. Open house was held the following day and thousands inspected the new building. 

Despite the terrific setback of the 1920-21 depression, which caused at least 50,000 persons to leave the city, Akron did not lose in population during the decade. In fact, it showed a gain. 

When the federal census takers came around in early 1930 and counted heads, they learned that Akron had a population of 255,040, an increase of 46,605 over the 208,435 figure of 1920.

 Grismer, Karl H. Akron and Summit County. Akron, OH: Summit County Historical
     Society, n.d. pgs 428-435.