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Construction Began: 1927
Building Completed: Early 1928
Opened: March 13, 1928
Cost: $3.1 Million
Design: Limestone and terra cotta facade, high plaster
ceilings with decorative beams and column capitals, and a concrete
foundation. |
The M. O'Neil Company was Akron's largest
department store chain and was the first company to build a
major department store in downtown Akron. At one time, it
served as an anchor for the southern end of Akron's Central
Business District.
The beginning of the M. O'Neil Company
dates back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century when
Akron's business center was concentrated in the Howard-Market
Street area. In 1877, Michael O'Neil and Isaac J. Dyas opened
a small dry goods store, known as O'Neil and Dyas, on the
southwest corner of Market and Main Streets. After ten years
of successful operation, they had outgrown their original
store, and in 1889 they moved their business south of Market
Street to Main Street. Their dry goods business
continued to prosper at its new location, helping to establish
Main Street as a viable business section of downtown.
In 1890, Mr. Dyas died and the name of the firm was changed to M.
O'Neil & Company. The scope of the business was also rapidly expanded
until O'Neil's became the largest department store in Ohio. In 1912,
O'Neil's was sold to the May Department Stores Company of St. Louis,
Missouri. Michael O'Neil served the store in an advisory capacity for
one year before leaving the firm. Thereafter, Mr. O'Neil remained a
prominent member of the Akron community, serving as president of The
General Tire and Rubber Company and taking an active role in business,
civic, religious, and charitable associations.
Fifteen years after the sale of O'Neil's to the May Company, the M.
O'Neil Company was in need of a larger store.
Company officials
purchased property for a new building several blocks south of the
established business district. Construction of the new building began
in 1927, and O'Neil's six story, $3.1 million dollar department store
opened to the public on March 13, 1928.
The new O'Neil's store attracted other businesses
to the southern end of Main Street and included Polsky's department
store, which remained O'Neil's major competition from its opening in
1930 to its closing in 1978. By the early 1930s, the new Main Street
businesses spurred by O'Neil's had extended Akron's business district
south to Exchange Street, more than one-half mile from the Market-Main
location of O'Neil and Dyas' original dry goods store.
The O'Neil's building was designed in the
Renaissance Revival style by the prominent Chicago firm of Graham,
Anderson, Probst & White, architects of Cleveland's Terminal Tower.
O'Neil's Main Street and State Street facades are accented by
classical motifs detailed in glazed terra cotta, string and belt
courses, shallow balconies, and a deep cornice.
After the department store shut down in 1988, the
building was donated to the city of Akron and then refurbished in
1999. It now houses businesses - Roetzel & Andress, Ernst & Young,
McDonald Financial Group, and Harry Buffalo.
