Organizer says new Akron history museum will partner, not compete, with city's institutions

Akron is approaching its 200th birthday, and a museum celebrating the city’s history is slated to launch Downtown in fall of 2023.

"We have 16 different history organizations," said Dave Lieberth, executive secretary of the Bicentennial Commission. "There is no one place where visitors or residents can see the entire 200-year history of Akron."

Lieberth has been working on the idea since 1983, when he chaired a committee for the Summit County Historical Society on whether the city needed a museum about rubber. After a year, he says the consensus was that any museum had to be broader than just one industry.

"Forty years later and finally the stars have aligned," he said.

Those stars include a rent-free lease on a building in the Bowery project, which received federal and state historic tax credits and cannot be used for retail. Instead, it will house the three-story museum and act as a corridor from Main Street to Lock 4. The museum will partner with sources including the historical society and Akron-Summit County Public Library. The library will operate the museum once it opens.

Lieberth calls it an “umbrella” for the city’s other history institutions, such as Stan Hywet, Hower House, Perkins Mansion, John Brown House and the Cascade Locks Park association. He’s planning to highlight Akron’s spirit of innovation: the construction of the canal, lighter-than-air aviation and even Akron-native astronaut Judith Resnik, who perished on the Space Shuttle Challenger. The museum will also include artifacts from the city’s cultural history.

"There's no place else where African American history is being told," he said. "Or the stories of the immigrants that have come through Akron and found it a place to start a new life. Those stories will be told in this center, including some of the stories that aren't so pleasant, but [are] part of our history."

That includes the construction of the Innerbelt. The remnants of that "urban renewal" project will be visible from the new museum.

"When 3,000 Akron households were relocated... [it was] usually without enough money to build a new house, and there wasn't new housing being built. That's one of the stories that needs to be told. It may be the kind of thing where people don't get everything in one visit,” he said.

Lieberth has written extensively on the city's history and served as Mayor Don Plusquellic’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2012. He hopes to announce a major sponsor for the project later this year. Akron City Council last week approved a $450,000 grant toward the project's $2 million goal.

The museum is being designed by Barrie Projects of Cleveland Heights. Dennis Barrie was founding director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Kathy Barrie led Cleveland's LAND Studio.

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