I told you I have collected many early Akron postcards over the years, and I thought you might like to see some of them. Akron was founded in 1825 on the banks of the Ohio and Erie Canal. It is on one of the high points in Ohio, and in 1835 Summit County was created with Akron as it’s county seat. Akron remained primarily a canal town until the railroads took over much of the shipping and passenger traffic in the 1880’s. Then we became a factory town, manufacturing ceramic tile, agricultural machines and then, rubber products, primarily tires. By 1908, the postmark date of the first postcard, we had a bustling town. You can see that in the downtown scene. My Grandmother was 7 years old when this postcard was mailed, and lived not too far north of this location. As she grew up over the next decade, Akron changed from a bustling town to a boom town. The population in 1910 was 69,000. By the time Gram married in 1921, the population had exploded to over 200,000. This is another view of downtown around this time . The skinny building there was the Flat Iron building, built in 1907. The postcard is unused, but dates from about 1912-1915. That building was still there when I was a child in the 1950’s, but was demolished in the early 60’s, I think.

I hop you’ve enjoyed seeing just a couple views of my home town. I’ll be posting more as I go along. I’ll also be adding some more modern postcrossing cards–views from around the world.

Until next time.