Akron, Ohio
Akron is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is located in Northeast Ohio along the Little Cuyahoga River, approximately south of Cleveland. Akron had a population of 190,469 at the 2020 census, making it the fifth-most populous city in Ohio. The Akron metropolitan area has an estimated 702,000 residents.
Akron was founded in 1825 by Simon Perkins and Paul Williams at the summit of the Ohio and Erie Canal. Its name is derived from the Greek word ἄκρον, meaning summit. The canal facilitated early growth by connecting the city to regional and national markets. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Akron became a center of rubber and tire manufacturing; it was the headquarters of B.F. Goodrich, Firestone, General Tire, and Goodyear and was nicknamed the "Rubber Capital of the World". It was also known as a center of airship development.
Today, Akron's economy includes manufacturing, education, healthcare, and biomedical research. The city is home to the University of Akron, which has a focus on polymer science based in the region's industrial legacy. Akron also serves as a regional center for medical services, anchored by Akron Children's Hospital and Summa Health. Cultural and civic institutions include the Akron Art Museum, Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, and a network of parks integrated into the Ohio & Erie Canalway National Heritage Area.
Notable historic events in Akron include the passage of the Akron School Law of 1847, which created the K–12 system; the popularization of the church architectural Akron Plan, the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 1983 Supreme Court case City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, and portions of the 2014 Gay Games. The city was the site of notable speeches on race and civil rights, including the Ain't I A Woman? speech by Sojourner Truth in 1851, W. E. B. Du Bois in 1920, and President Bill Clinton in 1997. Periods of civil unrest have included the riot of 1900, the rubber strike of 1936, the Wooster Avenue riots of 1968, and the 2022 protests surrounding the killing of Jayland Walker.
History
The first settler in the Akron area was Major Miner Spicer, who came from Groton, Connecticut. He built a log cabin in the forest in 1810, and became the region's first citizen. In June 1811, Spicer sent for his family, who came that same year by ox teams accompanied by Capt. Amos Spicer and Paul Williams.In 1811, Paul Williams settled near the corner of what is now Buchtel Avenue and Broadway. He suggested to General Simon Perkins, who was surveyor of the Connecticut Land Company's Connecticut Western Reserve, that they found a town at the summit of the developing Ohio and Erie Canal. The name is adapted from the Greek word ἄκρον, meaning summit or high point. It was laid out in December 1825, where the south part of the downtown Akron neighborhood sits today. Irish laborers working on the Ohio Canal built about 100 cabins nearby.
After Eliakim Crosby founded "North Akron" in the northern portion of what is now downtown Akron in 1833, "South" was added to Akron's name until about three years later, when the two were merged and became an incorporated village in 1836. In 1840, Summit County formed from portions of Portage, Medina, and Stark Counties. Akron replaced Cuyahoga Falls as its county seat a year later and opened a canal connecting to Beaver, Pennsylvania, helping give birth to the stoneware, sewer pipe, fishing tackle, and farming equipment industries. In 1844, abolitionist John Brown moved into the John Brown House across the street from business partner Colonel Simon Perkins, who lived in the Perkins Stone Mansion. The Akron School Law of 1847 founded the city's public schools and created the K–12 grade school system, which currently is used in every U.S. state. The city's first school is now a museum on Broadway Street near the corner of Exchange.
1850s–1890s: Summit City
When the Ohio Women's Rights Convention came to Akron in 1851, Sojourner Truth extemporaneously delivered her speech named "Ain't I A Woman?", at the Universalist Old Stone Church. In 1870, a local businessman associated with the church, John R. Buchtel, founded Buchtel College, which became the University of Akron in 1913.Ferdinand Schumacher bought a mill in 1856, and the following decade mass-produced oat bars for the Union Army during the American Civil War; these continued to sell well after the war. Akron incorporated as a city in 1865. Philanthropist Lewis Miller, Walter Blythe, and architect Jacob Snyder designed the widely used Akron Plan, debuting it on Akron's First Methodist Episcopal Church in 1872. Numerous Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches built between the 1870s and World War I use it. In 1883, a local journalist began the modern toy industry by founding the Akron Toy Company. A year later, the first popular toy was mass-produced clay marbles made by Samuel C. Dyke at his shop where Lock 3 Park is now. Other popular inventions include rubber balloons, ducks, dolls, balls, baby buggy bumpers, and little brown jugs. In 1895, the first long-distance electric railway, the Akron, Bedford and Cleveland Railroad, began service. On August 25, 1889, the Boston Daily Globe referred to Akron with the nickname "Summit City". To help local police, the city deployed the first police car in the U.S. that ran on electricity.
1900s–1990s: Rubber Capital of the World
The Riot of 1900 saw assaults on city officials, two deaths, and the destruction by fire of Columbia Hall and the Downtown Fire Station. The American trucking industry was birthed through Akron's Rubber Capital of the World era when the four major tire companies B.F. Goodrich, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, and General Tire & Rubber Company were headquartered in the city. The numerous jobs the rubber factories provided for deaf people led to Akron being nicknamed the "Crossroads of the Deaf". On Easter Sunday 1913, of rain fell, causing floods that killed five people and destroyed the Ohio and Erie Canal system. From 1916 to 1920, 10,000 schoolgirls took part in the successful Akron Experiment, testing iodized salt to prevent goiter in what was known as the "Goiter Belt".In 1914, Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Kingston, Jamaica; its Akron branch opened in 1921.
Rubber companies responded to housing crunches by building affordable housing for workers. Goodyear's president, Frank A. Seiberling, built the Goodyear Heights neighborhood for employees. Likewise, Harvey S. Firestone built the Firestone Park neighborhood for his employees. During the 1910–1920 decade, Akron became a boomtown, being America's fastest growing city with a 201.8% increase in population. Of the 208,000 citizens, almost one-third were immigrants and their children from places including Europe and West Virginia. In 1929 and 1931, Goodyear's subsidiary Goodyear-Zeppelin Company manufactured two airships for the United States Navy, USS Akron and USS Macon. Goodyear built a number of blimps for the Navy during WWII and later for advertising purposes.
Akron again grew when Kenmore was annexed by voter approval on November 6, 1928. Found hiding under a bed at one of his hideouts in the city, notorious bank robber Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd was arrested under the name "Frank Mitchell" in March 1930. Goodyear became America's top tire manufacturer after merging with the Kelly-Springfield Tire Company in 1935. Lasting five weeks and consisting of roughly 5,000 strikers including union sympathizers from other factories and neighboring states, the Akron Rubber Strike of 1936 successfully used the "sit-down" tactic to force recognition of the United Rubber Workers. During the 1950s–60s Akron surged as use of the automobile did. The historic Rubber Bowl was used by the National Guard of the United States as a base during the racial Wooster Avenue Riots of 1968. Like many other industries of the Rust Belt, both the tire and rubber industries experienced major decline. By the early 1990s, Goodyear was the last major tire manufacturer based in Akron.
2000s: City of Invention
Despite the number of rubber workers decreasing by roughly half from 2000 to 2007, Akron's research in polymers gained an international reputation. It now centers on the Polymer Valley which consists of 400 polymer-related companies, of which 94 were located in the city itself. Research is focused at the University of Akron, which is home to the Goodyear Polymer Center and the National Polymer Innovation Center, and the College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering. Because of its contributions to the Information Age, Newsweek listed Akron fifth of ten high-tech havens in 2001. In 2008 "City of Invention" was added to the seal when the All-America City Award was received for the third time. Akron received the award again in 2025. Some events of the 2014 Gay Games used the city as a venue. In 2013, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company opened its new global headquarters on Innovation Way, further cementing the company's relationship with the city. Bridgestone built a new technical center with state-of-the-art R&D labs, and moved its product development operations to the new facility in early 2012.The city also continues to deal with the effects of air and soil pollution from its industrial past. In the southwestern part of the city, soil was contaminated and noxious PCB-laden fumes were put into the air by an electrical transformer deconstruction operation that existed from the 1930s to the 1960s. Cleanup of the site, designated as a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency, began in 1987 and concluded in 2000. The area remains restricted with regular reviews of the site and its underground aquifer.