So I have been reading up on a lot of local history regarding UA and it’s surrounding vicinity. Forgive me, but I actually find this so interesting! Here are some random facts y’all might enjoy as well:
- The site of the current Student Union, Zook Hall etc. used to be a cemetery in the 1800s. They built Buchtel Hall on top of it and when it flooded bones used to wash up. There are probably still bodies under there!
- Nearly all of the buildings on campus are not the original buildings with those names—when a building was torn down the replacement building was named the exact same thing.
- NONE of the buildings on campus are original structures from when the university was founded. Buchtel Hall burned down twice before it became what it is today, and it is the oldest building on campus.
- Many of the city’s early settlers were from the mountains of West Virginia and are actually described in historical accounts as “hillbillies”.
- In the 1930s a group of ministers tried to get all the city’s clubs to shut down at midnight on Saturday, so that there would be absolutely NO dancing on the Sabbath. Yeah, that didn’t work out at all.
- Quaker Oats, the Diamond Match Company, Goodyear (including the blimp!), Firestone, and B.F. Goodrich tires were all founded here.
- The city’s water used to be supplied from Summit Lake, which contained the raw sewage from all of the houses around it. The water was unsanitary and smelled horrific.
- When the rubber business was booming, the entire city smelled “like a rubber band smoldering in an ashtray.”
- Race relations here have always been better than in other major cities.
- The streets of the neighborhood Firestone Park are built in the shape of the Firestone logo
- Alcoholics Anonymous and the infamous John Brown were both made here.
(Photos courtesy of www.ci.akron.oh.us)