COURTESY OF HALE FARM AND VILLAGE
The property’s Gate Lodge is the site of the first meeting of Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson, founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Hale Farm and Village Hale Farm and Village in Bath Township is an outdoor living history museum. The 1810 homestead of one of the area’s first white settlers, Connecticut farmer Jonathan Hale, is now the site of an interactive attraction that preserves and interprets the culture of the daily 19th century life. Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens Like the Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens stands as an example of the American Country Estate period when Industrial Age barons built their extravagant mansions. The Manor House, constructed in 1912-15, is in the Tudor Revival style. Renowned American landscape architect Warren Manning designed the extensive gardens. The English garden was redesigned in 1929 by pioneering female landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman,
COURTESY OF STAN HYWET HALL & GARDENS
Stan Hywet’s Great Room
The 65-room home, historic gardens on 70 acres, a 5,000-square-foot Playgarden and the Corbin Conservatory are open to the public. Guided tours are available. USA Today called it the best historic home tour in America. Stan Hywet hosts events throughout the year, including Ohio Mart, an outdoor marketplace with Elizabethan flair, and Deck the Hall, one of the largest light experiences in Ohio. Perkins Stone Mansion and John Brown House Colonel Simon Perkins, Jr., the son of Akron’s founder, built a Greek revival home in west Akron in 1837 that is known today as the Perkins Stone Mansion. It is open for self-guided and full-guided tours from April to December. Across the street from the mansion is the 1830s home of abolitionist John Brown, who helped touch off the Civil War with his raid on Harper’s Ferry. Perkins farmed 1,300 head of Merino sheep with Brown’s assistance. (Perkins hired expert shepherd Brown to tend the flock.) The home thus earned the nickname Mutton Hill. The John Brown house is undergoing extensive renovations and is currently closed to the public. Lowrie-Beatty Museum Ravenna’s John Lowrie and Mary Helen Beatty Museum sits on the grounds of the Portage County Historical
Society. It showcases the area’s history from the days of Native Americans to modern life. In additions to the museum, the grounds contain several other historic structures and displays. The society’s collection includes: ¢ A horse-drawn hearse ¢ An 1810 Yankee barn ¢ The 1835 Greek Revival Salmon Carter House ¢ An early 19th century outhouse ¢ Surgical instruments from the 18th and 19th centuries
Medina Medina’s Public Square district is a picturesque preservation of a small town on the Western Reserve. Although Medina is one of the fastest growing areas in Greater Akron, its leaders have worked hard to maintain its late 19th century character.
COURTESY OF MAIN STREET MEDINA
and is one of the only Shipman gardens open to the public.
Main Street Medina
The city is celebrating its 200th birthday in 2018, but the current public square dates only to the 1870s. On the night of April 14, 1870, fire destroyed dozens of wooden buildings on the square. City leaders met the next morning and decided to rebuild Medina—out of brick. These Victorian era commercial buildings and those that came soon after give Medina’s square its unique historic character.
greaterakroncham ber.org
89