INSIDE AKRON: Akron Documenters are fanning out across the city’s 24 neighborhoods to elevate places, faces, voices and vibes — as shared by the people who live there. Expect a new profile every day through October.
In a 1939 analysis of Akron neighborhoods, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation gushed of the “highly restricted” and “very desirable residential area” of Merriman Hills. The neighborhood’s exclusively white and exclusively American-born population was made up of many business executives and their families who lived in “large estates” near an exclusive country club and park systems and the best schools in the city.
The HOLC, responsible for shameful widespread government-sponsored racial and economic segregation that still impacts the city today, gave Merriman Hills an “A” rating for its desirability.
Neighborhood considered a highly desirable location
While Merriman Hills is now slightly more diverse — nearly a quarter of its residents aren’t white — Akron’s official bicentennial magazine this year described (some of) the elements that made the HOLC view the neighborhood so desirably.
“In the early decades of the 20th Century, Merriman Hills was the most desired address among the upper-class executives of rubber companies and allied industry,” the magazine wrote, highlighting Goodyear founder F.A. Seiberling’s massive home on North Portage Path, but omitting the segregation part. “A century later, it has stood the test of time. It remains one of Akron’s wealthiest, most desirable neighborhoods.”…