National Register of Historic Places Standout: Stan Hywet Hall
- Mark Belloni
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Both of my parents are from northeastern Ohio, so I’ve been making trips to the area my entire life. Despite that, I had never heard of Akron’s Stan Hywet Hall until just a year ago. When I finally visited, I was floored. The house is a breathtaking Tudor Revival mansion nestled at the heart of a sprawling estate. It was built between 1912 and 1915 by F. A. Seiberling, co-founder of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, and his wife, Gertrude.
There are ten thousand things to say about Stan Hywet and its history—entire books could be written about it. But what strikes me most isn’t just its grandeur or architectural pedigree. It’s the fact that it still stands.
American history is more often a record of destruction than preservation when it comes to magnificent estate homes like Stan Hywet. The list of lost homes is long, and their stories are often similar: after the original owners pass on, no one else can afford to keep the place going. The houses become too expensive to maintain, and slowly (or suddenly), they’re gone.
In 1957, after F. A. and Gertrude Seiberling had passed, their six children made the remarkable decision to donate their cherished childhood home to the newly established Stan Hywet Hall Foundation—a nonprofit formed by Akron residents with the sole purpose of preserving the estate. At that time, the preservation movement in the United States was still in its infancy. The National Historic Preservation Act and National Register of Historic Places were still a decade away.
Although George Washington’s Mount Vernon had been saved by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association nearly a century earlier, and Colonial Williamsburg began to take shape in the 1920s, widespread, organized preservation efforts didn’t gain real momentum until the 1950s and 1960s. Fueled largely by postwar development and urban renewal, there was a cultural shift that put the country’s built heritage into the spotlight.
Stan Hywet Hall was one of the first of America’s grand 20th-century estates to be preserved. What makes it especially noteworthy is that it was saved not because it belonged to a colonial hero or founding father, but because it reflected the legacy of one of the nation’s great industrialists.
My wife and I fell so in love with the estate that we became members and make a point to visit every time we're in town. If you ever find yourself in Akron, don't miss it.
