Goodyear Heights History:
A neighborhood built for rubber workers
Rubber industry boom in Akron leads to a housing shortage
The housing crunch was so bad, workers slept in shifts. Imagine climbing into a bed to sleep while someone was just climbing out of it. Tired of losing workers and training new staff due to the housing crisis, in 1912 F.A. Seiberling, one of the founders of Goodyear Tire & Rubber, asked Goodyear’s Board of Directors to consider a housing project for their rubber workers. Given that the first planned worker community in the U.S., Pullman, IL, created by the Pullman Car Company, resulted in a workers strike when wages reduced but rents for company housing was not, Goodyear was reluctant to try its hand at a risky social experiment.
Seiberling purchases land with his own money to start Goodyear Heights, phase one, and has an opening ceremony on Nov 3, 1913
Convinced he had a good idea and believing that a healthy and stable workforce is a productive one, Seiberling purchased 400 acres of farmland to the east of Goodyear’s Middlebury factories. He hired his landscape architect at Stan Hywet, Warren Manning, to design the layout of the neighborhood. Prior to striking out on his own, Manning spent 8 years working with Frederick Law Olmsted, renowned designer of Central Park in NYC.
Manning created the Goodyear Heights neighborhood with curving, tree-lined streets that followed the lay of the land and was cut with pedestrian pathways and staircases so the rubber workers could take shortcuts to the Goodyear factories in Middlebury. Schools, churches, a business district, and even a town square - Public Square Triangle Park - were all in his design. Goodyear Blvd is extremely wide because it was designed to have a streetcar line running up & down the middle of it. Instead, years later, the second bus line in the entire United States was started right here on Goodyear Blvd in 1918 - running on Goodyear tires.
Goodyear’s board relents & thinks it is a good idea; corporate support begins in earnest for phase two, 1917
Phase 1 is roughly bounded by Bowmanville, Newton, Brittain, and small part of Pondview. Phase 2 was significantly larger, bounded by Brittain, Huguelet, Tonawanda/Malacca, and Hampton Rd. Phase 3 was smaller. By 1921, post-World War I economic depression resulted in tire sales slumping and Goodyear, then the largest tire company in the world, refinanced to avoid bankruptcy. As per terms of the refinancing, the brain-child of Goodyear Heights, F.A. Seiberling, resigned from Goodyear. He went on to found Seiberling Rubber Co. in Barberton, OH. Unlike the Pullman, IL, company town strike, Goodyear lowered mortgage payments on Goodyear Heights homes as hours and production were cut for their rubber workers at the Goodyear factories.
A neighborhood in a neighborhood, housing developments around the historic phase one, phase two, & phase three sections become collectively known as “Goodyear Heights”
Goodyear Heights now is far bigger than the original three phases. Multiple real estate developers built up around the core historic neighborhood and now it is one of the largest residential neighborhoods in Akron. North Hill is growing with the influx of new immigrants while Kenmore and Goodyear Heights remain steady as the top 3 neighborhoods population-wise in Akron.