Landmark Akron Interurban Train Shed to be Razed

An archival photo of the trains shed at Akron Terminal when it was still served by interurban railway cars. (Photo courtesy of Alex Bruchac)

The century old train shed at the former interurban railway terminal in downtown Akron will be razed to make way for the new headquarters of a specialty tire company.

The shed was the boarding area for interurban cars of the Northern Ohio Traction & Light Company that fanned out from Akron to Cleveland, Canton, Massillon, New Philadelphia, Uhrichville, Wadsworth, Alliance and Warren as well as points in between.

The shed and two adjacent structures will fall to make way for the headquarters of Smithers, which is bringing 200 jobs, many of them high paying, to downtown Akron.

Smithers will establish on the location a 25,000-square foot research and development center that will wrap around the adjacent former Akron Terminal building.

It must be built and opened within three years of the closing date of the deal that is bringing the new headquarters to downtown Akron.

The two upper floors of the former NOTLC terminal building adjacent to the shed will be used as the Smithers global headquarters.

The train shed, which in recent years has been used as a parking lot and, on occasion, for beer festivals, dance performances, art displays and fashion shows, must go.

A city official said the shed does not lend itself to reuse or redevelopment.

The shed and its station were built in 1918 at a cost of $800,000 at the intersection of North Main and Federal streets. The latter was later renamed Perkins and now is known as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The four-story terminal building of white granite was designed by Cleveland architect Franz C. Warner.

The train shed was built of structural steel over an area measuring 161 feet by 230 feet.

The shed held eight tracks and could hold 24 cars at one time. In its glory years in the early 20^th century, an average of 32 interurban cars per hour would come and go at the shed to and from NOTLC’s 300-mile network.

Trains arrived at Akron Terminal from the south by running down Main Street and entering the shed through an alley.

Cars departed northward onto Federal Street and then turned onto Main Street.

To board a car, a passenger walked out of the waiting room through a tunnel before climbing stairs to the boarding platforms.

To avoid crowding on the platforms and passengers boarding the wrong cars, passengers had to show their tickets to a gate agent before being admitted to the boarding area.

The tracks were dedicated to specific routes. For example, Track 4 was for Cleveland-bound locals while Track 5 was used by Cleveland-bound limited.

At time of its completion, Akron Terminal was billed as one of the largest and finest electric railway terminals in the nation.

In 1932 the tracks were paved over for use by buses. Greyhound used the facility for a time before moving to a new terminal in 1948 on South Broadway that was linked by a concourse with the new Akron Union Depot.

The station building has been used as offices by various companies and public agencies, including Ohio Edison, a successor company of NOTLC.

The Summit County Welfare Department, now known as Summit County Job & Family Services, had offices at the former Akron Terminal for 40 years until moving in 2016 to the Triangle Building on South Main Street.

The Austen BioInnovation Institute moved into the building in 2012 but has since moved out.

The former Akron Terminal is owned by the Summit County Development Finance Authority and the Smithers headquarters move is part of a $16.9 million public-private project.

Smithers, which was founded in 1925, will begin moving employee into the new headquarters facility in the middle of 2020 after renovations to the office space in the former Akron Terminal are completed.

Autumn in the Gorge Metropark

I went out to do some non-train fall photo stuff one afternoon. Here is a shot looking toward Cuyahoga Falls from Akron in the Gorge Metropark area.

The railroad connection would be those old bridge supports in the river. While many of us remember the “high” bridge and “low” bridge at this location, the high one started out as an interurban bridge (Northern Ohio Traction & Light), built about 1903 and converted to a road about 1938. The link below has some neat old postcard views of this area.

With the removal of the gorge dam coming in the future, this scene will change a lot once again. For more background on this site, click on the link below.

http://www.summitmemory.org/cdm/search/field/subjec/searchterm/Gorge%20Bridge/mode/exact

Article and Photograph by Roger Durfee

Touching the Past in the Akron NOT&L Terminal

Have you ever seen a building and stepped into it and felt the past almost could be touched? Thankfully, in 1966-1967 (almost 50 years ago) I had an opportunity to visit the Northern Ohio Traction & Light Akron Terminal train shed.

While I only took a few photos, this was about 34 or 35 five years after the NOT&L had been abandoned.

By this time the train shed was customer parking for Ohio Edison and a Russell Harp parking lot.

Yet if you look closely, you can almost step into the very early 1930s. The top photo looks south and conveys how massive the front of the train shed was where its eight tracks entered.

The middle photo looks east at the entrance and shows the open side of the shed.

The bottom photo looks toward the north from within the shed itself. The concrete passenger loading platforms were still uncovered.

Here and there a small section of track lay uncovered, but these photos don’t show that.

How I wish I had reached down and touched a rail and made the terminal and NOT&L a part of me.

Yes, the shed may still be there, but the links to the past these photos show have been severed by modernization.

As of last year, there was still one block of uncovered NOT&L trackage running down the center of Sycamore Street in Ravenna.

May the city of Ravenna keep this untouched as a memory of the great NOT&L.

Article and Photographs by Robert Farkas

Last of the Active NOT&L Tracks in Akron

In 1967 or 1968, there was still a small piece of Northern Ohio Traction and Light Company trackage in Akron. Located outside the Gorge powerhouse at the intersection of Howe Avenue and Front Street, it had been kept to serve the powerhouse’s lower level and had to my knowledge been kept electrified after the Northern Ohio Power & Light interurban system (ex-NOT&L) was abandoned. At some point prior to these photos being taken, the remaining segment of the route was dieselized. The first three images are taken from outside the powerhouse fence while the fourth image was taken through the fence.

Article and Photographs by Robert Farkas

University Plans to Raze Akron Union Depot

This is what the remnants of Akron Union Depot looked like in late 2009. But the days of the platform canopy and the former station building are numbered. (Photograph by Steve McMullen)

The University of Akron is planning to raze the former Akron Union Depot to make way for a new law school building. The university trustees agreed on December 16 to begin design work on the new law school facility, which is expected to cost $23.6 million.

Now known as the Buckingham Building, the former station houses the university’s Pan-African Center for Community Studies, Office of Multicultural Development, the Strive Toward Excellence Program and classrooms.

Demolition of the depot, which was dedicated on April 28, 1950, would begin in 18 to 24 months. The university must still raise the funds needed for the new building and the city of Akron must pay for a realignment of Wolf Ledges Parkway, which is also part of the law school building proposal.

The former depot has 120,000 square feet and university officials told the trustees that the building is inefficient and outdated. The station concourse used to connect to a bus station as well as contain stairways leading down to track level. The concourse now connects to UA’s West Hall and the bus station is gone.

The Buckingham Building is the last steam and streamliner era railroad station left in Akron. Two predecessor union stations were torn down shortly after the railroads ceased using them. Also gone is are two stations used by the Valley Line Railway (later the Baltimore & Ohio), two stations built by the Erie Railroad and the former Northern Ohio Railway station (later Akron, Canton & Youngstown).

Still standing is the terminal used by the Northern Ohio Traction and Light Company and the modular station used by Amtrak until it ceased serving Akron in 2005. The former is now owned by Summit County while the latter remains vacant. The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad station in Akron was built on the site of the former B&O Valley Line station at Howard Street.

In a related development, Akron Railroad Club member Steve McMullen reported that CSX crews have been dismantling the remnants of signals bridges and signal stands in downtown Akron. As of Monday (December 21, 2009), only the eastbound home signal bridge for the former JO interlocking was still standing.

McMullen reported that crews are poised to remove the last platform canopy of Akron Union Depot. One platform still remains from the station and it is unclear if it, too, will be removed.

The B&O was the primary user of the third Akron Union Depot. Although the Erie used the second Union Depot, it elected to build its own station rather than use the third union depot. The Pennsylvania Railroad used the Union Depot until removing its last passenger train to Akron, the Akronite, on April 26, 1958.

B&O passenger trains continued to call at Akron Union Depot until the coming of Amtrak on May 1, 1971, when the service was discontinued. Amtrak began serving Akron on November 12, 1990. Amtrak never used the Union Depot per se, but its trains did stop at the east end of the station’s sole remaining platform, which was renovated for Amtrak use.

The former signal bridge lies on the ground on December 15, 2009. (Photograph by Steve McMullen)

It had been years since this signal bridge had working signal heads. (Photograph by Steve McMullen)

An eastbound CSX freight passes through the Exchange Street signals in 2006. The unused signal stands seen here were removed by CSX work crews in December 2009. (Photograph by Steve McMullen)