Akron
— — the city the rubber century built.
Not only on a wall.
“Akron sits on the long ridge of the Continental Divide that separates the Cuyahoga from the Tuscarawas, the old portage path the Lenape carried canoes across. The brick smokestacks of the rubber companies still mark the south end of downtown; the Ohio & Erie Canal runs north out of town through the Cuyahoga Valley. Stan Hywet's tall chimneys, the Goodyear blimp on the horizon, the smell of rain on warm asphalt. from the studio
Akron, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Akron is the seat of Summit County in northeast Ohio, about 60 kilometres south of Cleveland, set on the ridge where the Cuyahoga River flowing north meets the headwaters of the Tuscarawas flowing south. The name comes from the Greek akros, high point, chosen by the city's 1825 founders for the ridge that gives the county its name. City population sits near 188,000; the metropolitan area holds about 700,000. The Ohio & Erie Canal, completed through the town in 1827, was the first reason for the place. Rubber, after 1898, was the second.
For most of the twentieth century Akron was the rubber capital of the world. Goodyear, founded in 1898, B.F. Goodrich, Firestone, and General Tire all ran their head offices and main mills here, and at the 1920s peak the city was the fastest-growing in the United States. The factories largely closed by the 1980s, but Goodyear's headquarters remains; the Goodyear Airdock, built in 1929, is still one of the largest buildings without interior supports on the continent. The first sustained meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, in June 1935, also began in Akron, at Dr. Bob's house on Ardmore Avenue.
Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, the 65-room 1915 Tudor Revival estate of Goodyear co-founder F.A. Seiberling, opens to the public from April through December on 70 landscaped acres. The Akron Art Museum downtown sits inside a 1899 post office shell with a Coop Himmelb(l)au glass addition. North of the city, Cuyahoga Valley National Park follows the river for 53 kilometres toward Cleveland with a heritage railroad along the old canal. Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) sits sixteen kilometres south. Cleveland Hopkins is forty-five minutes north on I-77 in normal traffic.