Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens

At a glance

Overview

Stan Hywet Hall is the Tudor Revival country estate of Frank A. Seiberling, who co-founded the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in 1898 and built it into the world's largest tire maker. Seiberling began buying farmland in Portage Township on Akron's west side in 1910, and Cleveland architect Charles S. Schneider, Boston landscape architect Warren H. Manning and New York decorator Hugo Huber built the 64,500-square-foot manor between 1912 and 1915, modeled on three English houses the family toured in 1912. Manning set the house on the rim of an old stone quarry, which gave the estate its name, overlooking the Cuyahoga Valley. The Seiberlings lived there from December 1915 until F. A. Seiberling's death in 1955; in 1935 a meeting in its Gate Lodge helped start Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1957 the six surviving Seiberling children gave the 70-acre estate to a nonprofit foundation, and it is now a house museum and a National Historic Landmark (1981).

The name

The Seiberlings named the estate Stan Hywet, which the museum translates from Old English as 'stone quarry', after the property's most prominent natural feature. Wikipedia gives 'stone quarry' or 'stone hewn' and says the name reflects abandoned stone quarries on the grounds of the earlier Averill Dairy estate. (source)

Native American history

Nothing site-specific is recorded for the estate grounds. The estate's street, North Portage Path, recalls the Native canoe carry of a little more than eight miles between the Cuyahoga and the Tuscarawas, which let travelers go by water from Lake Erie to the Ohio; the 1881 county history says Indian villages stood along the portage path in the county and that Delaware bands lived at Cuyahoga Falls and in Coventry. The Portage Path was the boundary line of the 1785 Treaty of Fort McIntosh and of the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, with the Delaware and Wyandot confined to lands west of it, and the land west of the line, on which the estate stands, was ceded at the Treaty of Fort Industry on July 4, 1805. Summit Metro Parks' Sand Run park, built partly on 500 acres Seiberling gave, has a Treaty Line Area and is described by the park district as a link to the historic Portage Path.

• Portage Path: trail, Between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers through present Akron; the estate's address is 714 North Portage Path, precontact to early 1800s
• Fort McIntosh and Greenville treaty line along the Portage Path: treaty, Cuyahoga River, Portage Path and Tuscarawas River, 1785; 1795
• Treaty of Fort Industry cession of Western Reserve lands west of the Portage Path: treaty, West of the Cuyahoga, Portage Path and Tuscarawas, including western Portage Township, July 4, 1805

Stories

A house that looks 300 years old

The architects traveled to England with the Seiberlings in search of designs, and Haddon Hall, Compton Wynyates and Ockwells Manor became the chief inspirations. The foundation's former executive director explained that the interior was meant to look like an English manor improved generation after generation, so that a house built from 1911 to 1915 appears to have been built between 1400 and 1750: the Great Hall is late Gothic, the master bedroom and breakfast room Tudor, the music room, dining room and library Jacobean. Hand-carved oak, walnut, sandalwood and chestnut were used lavishly, and many rooms have molded plaster ceilings in Tudor and Jacobean designs. The 1981 landmark nomination found no significant changes to the house since it was built. (source)

Two strangers at the Gate Lodge

On Mother's Day, 1935, Henrietta Buckler Seiberling, daughter-in-law of F. A. and Gertrude, brought together Bill W. and Dr. Bob at the estate's Gate Lodge so they could talk to each other about their drinking problems. The conversation lasted well into the evening. The museum counts it as the discussion that led to the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. (source)

The Little Napoleon

In 1898 Frank Seiberling was nearly 40 and looking for a new business after the 1890s depression brought down his father's farm-machinery firm. On a trip to Chicago he learned that an abandoned plant in East Akron could be had cheaply and bought it before he knew what to do with it; with his brother Charles he chose rubber tires and named the company for Charles Goodyear, who had discovered vulcanization in 1839. Standing five feet three inches, Seiberling was called the 'Little Napoleon' of the rubber industry, and under him Goodyear became the largest carriage-tire maker by 1905 and the world's largest automobile-tire maker by 1915. The postwar slump of 1920-1921 left the company with unsold tires and no cash, and Wall Street bankers made his resignation a condition of their rescue; he started the Seiberling Rubber Company within months. (source)

Gertrude Seiberling, singer and painter

Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, born in Willoughby in 1866, befriended his younger sister Harriet at Lasell Seminary in Massachusetts. She was an accomplished opera singer who performed at the White House for President Taft in 1910. As president of the National Federation of Music Clubs from 1919 to 1921 she traveled more than 25,000 miles through 21 states, and member clubs grew from 400 to 1,000. She was a charter member of Akron's Tuesday Musical Club and a founding member of the Akron Garden Club and spent long hours in the estate gardens. Late in life she returned to painting; in 1933 the first work she submitted to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, a street scene called 'Closing In', won honors from the judges. (source)

Land for a park district

The Akron Metropolitan Park District, now Summit Metro Parks, was established in 1921 under Seiberling's leadership. He persuaded Harold S. Wagner, a young Boston landscape architect who had come to Akron in 1917 to design Seiberling's Fairlawn Heights neighborhood, to become the district's first director-secretary. Seiberling made the first large-scale gift of land, 500 acres stretching from Merriman Road to Ghent Road, and Wagner's staff then asked the remaining owners along the future Sand Run Parkway to donate or sell. When Sand Run park opened in 1929 it covered close to 700 acres with a 12-mile perimeter, and the park district says it preserved a link to the historic Portage Path. (source)

Timeline

• 1785: The Treaty of Fort McIntosh makes the Cuyahoga, the Portage Path and the Tuscarawas the boundary between the United States and the Delaware and Wyandot nations. (source)
• 1795: The Treaty of Greenville confirms the same Cuyahoga-portage-Tuscarawas boundary line. (source)
• 1805: At Fort Industry on July 4, Native nations cede the Western Reserve lands west of the Portage Path, where the estate now stands. (source)
• 1859: Frank Augustus Seiberling is born in Norton, Ohio, the second of nine children of John F. and Catherine Seiberling. (source)
• 1887: F. A. Seiberling marries Gertrude Penfield of Willoughby on October 12. (source)
• 1898: On a business trip to Chicago, Seiberling becomes the owner of two empty factories on Market Street in Akron and founds the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company with his brother Charles. (source)
• 1901: Goodyear introduces a straight-sided automobile tire held on by a braided wire bead. (source)
• 1906: Seiberling becomes president of Goodyear. (source)
• 1910: Seiberling begins buying farmland in Portage Township on Akron's west side for a family estate. (source)
• 1912: In April the Seiberlings, daughter Irene and architect Charles Schneider tour about 20 English manor houses; construction begins the same year. (source)
• 1912: The airship Akron, whose transatlantic attempt Seiberling financed, explodes in July, killing Melvin Vaniman and his crew. (source)
• 1915: The Seiberling family moves into Stan Hywet Hall in December. (source)
• 1916: T. R. Otsuka of Chicago builds the Japanese Garden to Warren Manning's overall layout. (source)
• 1916: Goodyear becomes the world's largest tire producer. (source)
• 1919: Gertrude Seiberling becomes president of the National Federation of Music Clubs, serving to 1921. (source)
• 1921: After Goodyear nearly goes bankrupt in the postwar recession, bankers make Seiberling's resignation a condition of a rescue; he founds the Seiberling Rubber Company. (source)
• 1921: The Akron Metropolitan Park District, now Summit Metro Parks, is established under Seiberling's leadership. (source)
• 1929: Sand Run park, begun with Seiberling's 500-acre gift, opens to the public with close to 700 acres. (source)
• 1929: Landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman redesigns the estate's English Garden. (source)
• 1935: On Mother's Day, Henrietta Seiberling brings Bill W. and Dr. Bob together at the Gate Lodge, the meeting that led to Alcoholics Anonymous. (source)
• 1946: Gertrude Seiberling dies at Stan Hywet Hall on January 8. (source)
• 1947: A windstorm damages the original 1915 conservatory. (source)
• 1950: Seiberling retires in February as chairman of the Seiberling Rubber Company. (source)
• 1955: F. A. Seiberling dies of pneumonia in August at The Peoples Hospital in Akron. (source)
• 1957: The six surviving Seiberling children give the estate to the new Stan Hywet Hall Foundation, which opens it as a museum. (source)
• 1975: Stan Hywet Hall is added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 17. (source)
• 1981: The house is designated a National Historic Landmark on December 21 as the home of F. A. Seiberling. (source)
• 2005: A new conservatory and greenhouses are built from the original historic designs. (source)
• 2015-2021: The manor house is restored room by room under the 2nd Century Campaign. (source)
• 2020: The Lagoon, a series of five man-made ponds, becomes the last historic garden space restored. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens
• en.wikipedia.org: Frank Seiberling
• npgallery.nps.gov: 75002058 text
• stanhywet.org: history
• stanhywet.org: seiberling family
• stanhywet.org: Bio FA Seiberling
• stanhywet.org: Bio Gertrude Seiberling
• corporate.goodyear.com: history
• summitmetroparks.org: history
• archive.org: historyofsummitc00perr djvu.txt
• avalon.law.yale.edu: greenvil