A geocache inspired by the Akron Beacon Journal
articles by Mark Price highlighting Akron's history of yesteryear.
This cache contains a small photo of Hotel Buchtel. Hold the
picture up and imagine the hotel in it's heyday across the street
from you on that vacant green lot. The information below is from
the article published April 19, 2010
On the corner of S. Main Street and Mill Street
you'll see a fenced patch of lush grass, which seems like a prime
location in downtown Akron. The five-story stood at the southeast
corner of Main and Mill streets from 1884 to 1947.
Once it was home to a landmark, but that was
long ago, when the corner was considered a bad spot to conduct
business. Fortunately, William Buchtel (1822-1914) didn't listen to
critics.
Buchtel, brother of Buchtel College founder John
R. Buchtel, owned a lumberyard at Main and Mill in the early 1880s.
In those days, the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal bisected Main
Street.
Many Akron citizens doubted Buchtel when he
announced he would build a hotel on his lumberyard. The site seemed
too far from the business district at Howard and Market
streets.
As the city's population approached 17,000,
Buchtel recognized a need for a first-class hotel. The city's top
inn, Empire House, which was built in 1847 at the northwest corner
of Main and Market streets, had fallen woefully behind the
times.
Buchtel hired Akron architect Frank O. Weary to
draw plans for a five-story, brick-and-stone building. It cost
$100,000 — about $2.8 million in today's money.
The Hotel Buchtel, which billed itself as ''The
Model Hotel of Ohio,'' featured the latest amenities, including
incandescent lights, a hydraulic elevator, bathrooms on each floor
and call
bells in each room. Rates were $2 to $2.50 per night.
More than 400 guests attended the grand-opening
gala in April 1884. Fancy carriages dropped off richly dressed
ladies and gentlemen at the red-carpet entrance on Mill Street.
Flowers, palms, ferns and tropical plants
decorated the marble and tile corridors. The Germania Orchestra of
Cleveland entertained guests.
In a 140-seat dining room, waiters served a
feast in three shifts. The exotic menu included beef tenderloins,
chicken croquets, French peas, Blue Point oysters, shrimp salad,
pickled lamb's tongue, maraschino jelly and frozen champagne
punch.
Akron businessman J. Park Alexander saluted
William Buchtel in a brief speech to diners: ''The world admires
brave men. Was it not a brave man who undertook to build a hotel in
the city of Akron, and was it not a good and brave man who built
such a magnificent place? In the ordinary term of life, the world
would call him a hero.''
Summit County Common Pleas Judge Newell D.
Tibbals added: ''We can now go forth to the world and say that we
have the best educational institutions, unexcelled manufacturing
establishments and hotel accommodations equal to any in the
country.
''We can also say, bring on your ladies and put
them in the parlors of our hotel and we will certainly carry off
the prize.''
Bridge across Mill
Buchtel constructed a temporary wooden bridge
across Mill Street to the new Ayliff Building, which was rented for
the ball. Decorated in red, white and blue, the three-arched bridge
was 20 feet above the street.
Dressed in gowns and tailcoats, Akron's
wealthiest citizens danced waltzes, schottisches, quadrilles and
polkas until 3 a.m.
''Many of the ladies appeared in the richest
silks and satins of the most delicate shades, while there was a
great profusion of the most costly laces and beautiful trimmings,''
the Akron Daily Beacon reported. ''There was such a display of
diamonds and sparkling jewelry that the figures appeared to be
fairly ablaze, as the merry dancers skimmed lightly over the
floor.''
The Buchtel welcomed 16,793 guests in its first
year and remained Akron's leading hotel for three decades. Paving
the way for development on Main Street, it was a center for
banquets, meetings, lectures, conventions and occasionally
funerals.
The bar, which had gleaming mahogany, frosted
mirrors and white-clad bartenders, was a famous watering hole,
where movers mingled with shakers.
Adam Ranck's Great Western Band and Billy
Palmer's Eighth Regiment Band performed on alternate Wednesday
nights atop a balcony above the Mill entrance. During elections,
voters gathered outside the hotel to see results posted on a giant
screen.
Over the years, the Buchtel's famous guests
included Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt,
heavyweight boxers Jim Jeffries and Bob Fitzsimmons, thespians
Lillian Russell and Richard Mansfield, minstrel singer George
''Honey Boy'' Evans, female impersonator Julian Eltinge and
magician Herrmann the Great.
National infamy
The hotel gained national infamy in 1909, when
it turned away educator Booker T. Washington, who was in Akron to
give a speech. Proprietor Don Goodwin instructed chief clerk John
Sieber to refuse accommodations to the black man.
''When the delegation arrived, I frankly told
Dr. Washington that the hotel could not entertain him,'' Sieber
recalled years later. ''Washington smiled, turned without saying a
word and sauntered out.''
Sieber received about 500 letters from all parts
of the country. Southerners praised him and Northerners threatened
him.
''Personally, I would have been as willing to
accept Dr. Washington as any other guest,'' he admitted.
Instead, Washington stayed at the Empire House,
which was in its final years of operation.
It wasn't much longer before the Buchtel fell
from eminence. The Empire was razed to make way for the 250-room
Portage Hotel, which opened in 1912. Other hotels followed: the
112-room Howe (1915), 175-room Akron (1917), 140-room Bond (1918)
and 175-room Marne (1919).
As proof of the Buchtel's fall, Akron vice
officers raided it in 1916 and arrested eight couples in bed. Mayor
William J. Laub blasted the hotel as a place where ''women of
disrepute were housed without question.''
Remarkably, the hotel stood for another 30
years, gradually converting to apartments.
When the opulent, 450-room Mayflower Hotel
opened in 1931, all other Akron hotels might as well have waved a
white flag.
In 1945, Akron Law Director Roy E. Browne fought
to evict Hotel Buchtel's occupants and tear down the building,
citing its ''unsafe, unhealthful and hazardous condition.'' Owned
by Citizens Savings & Loan Co. of Mansfield, the hotel had
faulty wiring, defective plumbing, broken beams and crawling
vermin.
In a farewell column, Beacon Journal scribe
Harry B. ''Doc'' Kerr, noted sadly: ''Throughout the years, the
Buchtel has hung on — like a toothless old man with thick
white hair and blue veins — drinking in the sun and looking
back to days that were.''
The Cuyahoga Wrecking Co. began demolishing the
building in April 1947.
Hotel Buchtel made way for WADC's two-story
building, which opened in 1949. The radio station changed its call
letters to WSLR in the 1960s and moved to South Portage Path in the
1970s.
The former radio building was razed in 1991 to
make room for Main Place.
Developer David Brennan proposed building an
18-story office tower with an adjacent 300-room hotel. He
eventually scaled back the plan to the five-story complex that
stands today.
The adjacent empty lot at Main and Mill remains
a green oasis in a desert of concrete.
Now there's always a vacancy at William
Buchtel's hotel.