Akron, OH Historic Property Preservation
Certificate of Appropriateness Work on Akron's Rubber-Era and Downtown Landmarks
Preservation Work on Akron, OH Historic Buildings
Most of what carries a historic designation in Akron went up inside a single generation. The rubber industry roughly tripled the city between 1910 and 1920, and the plants, headquarters buildings and company neighborhoods that boom left behind are now the market’s landmark stock: the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company Headquarters building and Goodyear Hall on East Market Street, the B.F. Goodrich complex on South Main, the Quaker Oats silos, the Akron Civic Theatre. An older layer survives underneath it, including the Commerce Block-Hermes Building of 1870, the Second Empire Everett Building of 1871, the 1899 post office that now houses the Akron Art Museum, the Carnegie Library, the United Building of 1924, and the six-story white glazed terra cotta of the Northern Ohio Traction and Light Building. On stock of that age and construction, two things go wrong. The first is a mortar problem. A mill wall is several wythes of brick over soft lime, and once a previous owner has repointed it in hard Portland the freeze expansion gets relieved through the brick face instead of through the joint, so the pointing looks crisp while the face comes off in flakes. The second is a concrete problem. Reinforced frames of the same decades sit their reinforcement close to the surface, and once carbonation has worked in that far the steel begins to rust, occupying more room than it did as bar and pushing the face off a column, a spandrel or a slab edge. Neither one is a storm event. Both are what a wall does when it is wet more often than it is dry, and Akron leaves a wall only 68 clear days in the year to recover.
Presto Restoration works on designated and landmark property nationwide, and on a historic building the material question is settled before the schedule is. Our technical basis is the National Park Service’s Preservation Briefs, still the most respected reference in the field, and the Akron review process then gives that work a particular shape. The Urban Design and Historic Preservation Commission, seven members appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by Council with at least one architect required among them, sits under Chapter 31, Article 2 of the Codified Ordinances and issues the Certificate of Appropriateness. Section 31.395(A) puts it ahead of everything else: the Superintendent of Building Inspection shall not issue a building permit until that Certificate has been issued, so the preservation submission is not a parallel track, it is the gate. Section 31.395(B) sets the outside limits on the wait, 60 days for an alteration or an environmental change and 90 days where demolition is proposed, with deemed approval if the deadline passes without a decision. The standard being applied is the Federal Conservation Regulations and the rehabilitation guidelines at 36 C.F.R. Part 67.7, the same body of guidance the rubber-era tax-credit conversions had to satisfy. Whether your property holds a local Akron designation or stands in one of the city’s seven National Register districts, what we put in front of the Commission is written to be approvable as submitted.
HISTORIC PRESERVATION SERVICES FOR AKRON, OH BUILDINGS
Presto handles the whole span of preservation work on Akron’s designated buildings, on the rubber-era plants now being converted and on the older downtown blocks, whether the job in front of you is one failing elevation or a complete envelope program.
An Akron mill wall is thicker than it looks and softer than it looks. Rubber-era plants and the commercial blocks around them were laid up several wythes deep in lime mortar, and the original specification put the weakness in the joint deliberately: the joint absorbs the movement, and the joint is the route water takes out as vapor. Hard Portland pointing inverts that arrangement in a single season of work. Once the joint is stronger than the unit beside it, freeze expansion has to be relieved somewhere, and it is relieved through the brick face. That is why a badly repointed Akron building reads the way it does, tight new joints standing proud of brick shedding in flakes and popped faces. We analyze the existing mortar before a replacement is specified, mix to match it on strength, color, aggregate and joint profile, and remove no more depth than the failed material occupies so the brick edges stay unscarred. On a building under review that finished profile is part of what gets approved.
Ornament on Akron’s historic buildings is concentrated in small pieces set high up: a coping here, a cast stone belt course there, sandstone heads and sills, the occasional glazed unit. Because they project, they catch the runoff coming off everything above them, which is why they are usually the first elements to look tired and the first ones somebody proposes to clean hard. That is the expensive mistake. Cleaning takes material away, and on a soft or a fired surface it takes away more than was intended. Opened pores on a sandstone sill will hold water where the original surface shed it, and a crazed glaze admits water the unit can then no longer release. Presto works the other way round. A mock-up on a concealed area establishes the mildest method that will actually shift the soiling, and only then does anything reach a visible elevation, whether that turns out to be micro-abrasion, a preservation-grade chemical cleaner or water at low pressure. Damaged units are made good with a mix matched for color and texture and formulated to move with the piece it is bonded to, and wherever an original sill or coping is still doing its job it gets reset rather than replaced.
Glazing is not a detail on an Akron mill building, it is a large fraction of the elevation. Daylight was the design brief on a rubber-era plant floor, so steel sash runs in banks and monitor and clerestory glazing carries on across the roof, and every opening in that arrangement is one more perimeter that has to stay sealed. That is where water gets into this stock, at surrounds and transitions rather than through the field of a wall. Replacing the sash wholesale is the wrong answer twice over: it can end a building’s standing on the very elevation under review, and a stock aluminum unit rarely outlasts the frame it displaced. Presto repairs sash instead, and on Akron steel the repair list is predictable. Glazing compound gone hard and shrunk back, muntins corroding from the weather side, operators seized, a perimeter joint that lost adhesion years ago. Original glass, frames and ironmongery stay in the opening. Reglazed and repainted on a cycle, that sash will still be there long after the replacement somebody wanted to fit has been fitted twice.
Stucco turns up in Akron in two forms and both fail from the inside. On the older downtown blocks it is usually a render applied over masonry long after the building went up. In the rubber-era planned neighborhoods, Goodyear Heights and Firestone Park among them, it appears as an original finish on period-revival commercial frontages. Lime render is a multi-coat, lath-backed system, and every one of those coats was mixed to let water travel back out through the finish. Close the finish with an acrylic or a cement-rich patch and the water still arrives, it simply has no exit, and in a market offering 68 clear days against 160 days of precipitation it is unlikely to have dried before the next freeze delaminates the sound render around the patch. Our repairs go back in lime-based formulations, lath is replaced where it has rusted or rotted through, and the surface is worked by hand to the original texture rather than floated flat. That texture is the part a reviewer recognizes first, so we match it by hand and record the mix that produced it.
Akron’s historic metalwork is mostly working metal rather than ornament. Bank after bank of steel sash frame. A marquee or a canopy reaching out over the pavement. Fire escapes, shopfront surrounds, the painted iron of a theater frontage, copper on the downtown civic buildings. What eats it here is not anything in the air but water that will not leave. Paint films open up, meltwater runs down the same line of an elevation on each of 45.3 snow days, and with 68 clear days in the year the metal behind the failure spends more of the season damp than dry. Our work removes only the corrosion that is consuming metal, stops short of the patina that makes bronze and copper worth keeping, and refinishes in a system chosen for the alloy and for how exposed the piece actually is. Taking an assembly back to bare metal is something we argue against, and where a piece genuinely has to come off the building it is templated, tagged and photographed before it moves.
A century-old Akron wall and a modern curtain wall want opposite things from a waterproofing specification. The mill walls, lime-bedded brick and lime render on this stock were assembled to pass water back out through the face, so the water a thaw pushes in is supposed to walk back out the same way. Cover that with an impermeable film and the water keeps arriving through joints, cracks and surrounds while the exit disappears, so it gathers behind the coating and takes brick or render with it when it freezes. Presto’s specifications for this stock run to breathable repellents and to sealants that will sit against lime without attacking it. Closed systems are held to the few details that were detailed as closed in the first place, and nothing impermeable goes over a glazed face. On a converted plant the real work sits at the perimeters, the wall-to-roof transitions and the enormous run of steel sash surrounds, because that is where the water is getting in. Every part of this scope sits above grade, on the wall you can see and reach.
Our Five Phases on an Akron Historic Building
A historic scope in Akron has to be built backwards from the Certificate of Appropriateness, because no building permit is issued until that Certificate exists. So these five phases are ordered to get the material questions answered and documented early, in a form the Urban Design and Historic Preservation Commission can act on, and to leave enough of the year for field work that lime mortar, render and sealant will only accept inside a workable window.
Original Fabric Recorded
Deterioration is drawn, photographed and located elevation by elevation, and original fabric is logged separately from everything later owners added over the top of it. Which of those two categories a piece falls into decides whether repair or replacement is even on the table, so that call is made before a tool touches the wall.
Mortar & Material Testing
Mortar samples come off the wall and are analyzed for strength, binder and aggregate, because the replacement has to end up softer than the brick rather than harder. Cast stone, render, glazing compound and metal alloys are identified the same way, and lab work is recommended wherever a material is genuinely uncertain.
Scope & the COA Package
What the survey and the testing produce is a line-item scope, quantified, with the actual products named. It is drafted in the form the Commission expects to receive, so the owner's consultant can file it rather than rewrite it and the 60-day clock starts as early as it can.
Work to 36 C.F.R. 67.7
Approved work is carried out by crews trained on traditional technique, to the rehabilitation guidelines at 36 C.F.R. Part 67.7 that the Commission applies, and held under continuous inspection. A mistake on original fabric is not a rework item, it is a permanent loss.
Closeout & Mix Records
Handover includes elevation-by-elevation photography from before and after, the mortar and render mix designs that actually went into the wall, product data, warranty documents and the maintenance schedule that goes with them. Owners keep that file because the next Certificate application on the building starts from it.
Working on a Designated Building in Akron?
Whether the brick on your Akron building has started to shed its face or you are getting the mortar question settled before it does, tell our historic team what you are looking at and they will tell you what the repair involves and where the Certificate of Appropriateness sits in the schedule.
Call 1-800-785-9927 or Request A Free Quote.
Why a Designated Akron Building Ends Up With Presto
Our Akron, OH Support Network
Akron’s historic buildings are not concentrated in one block. The National Register districts alone run from Main-Market and Main Exchange downtown out to South Main Street, Cascade Locks on the old canal line, the B.F. Goodrich complex, Hall Park Allotment and Kenmore Boulevard, and the largest reuse projects sit further out again along East Market Street. Keeping one standard across a footprint that size takes more than one trade, which is why Presto keeps several specialist divisions in the same group rather than one crew moving between jobs.
Routine upkeep that falls outside a preservation scope is better handled by the division that specializes in it:
Building Restoration Akron: Structural repair and exterior work on the jobs where the elevation is the whole project.
Building Maintenance Akron: Scheduled upkeep. The drain clearing, sealant checks and paint cycles that decide how an old elevation looks in ten years.
Building Services Akron: General commercial building support, for the routine calls that do not need a preservation specification.
Recent Historic Preservation Projects in Ohio
OHIO PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHTS
Historic and landmark buildings across Ohio that Presto has repaired, repointed and kept in service.
Akron Historic Preservation FAQs
Why does a designated Akron building cost more to restore than a comparable one?
Because two obligations have to be met at the same time. An ordinary scope is finished when the building is watertight and functional, and any modern product that achieves it is a legitimate answer. On a designated building the original material, detail and workmanship also have to come through the repair intact, which removes most of the fast options from the table. On site that means lime mortar rather than Portland cement, a cleaning method proved on a hidden panel rather than a blast rig, and repairs a later owner can undo instead of inherit. The bill is larger and the program is longer. What it buys is a building that still answers to the designation it holds, and an owner who is not explaining a lost cornice to the Commission a year later.
What happens to an Akron mill wall repointed in the wrong mortar?
The damage moves out of the joint and into the brick, and that is the one direction there is no way back from. A rubber-era wall is several wythes of brick over soft lime. In that build the joint is the component intended to give way: it yields when the wall moves, and it is the route water takes back out as vapor. Bring in a hard Portland mix and the joint becomes the strongest thing in the wall, so the freeze has to find its relief through the face of the brick instead. The signature is unmistakable once you know it. Pointing that looks new and sharp, standing proud of brick losing its face in flakes and popped patches. Nobody manufactures replacement units for that brick, so the price of the wrong mix is paid in original fabric rather than in mortar.
Can a rubber-era building be made to perform without gutting what it is?
Usually, and the original construction does more of the work than owners expect. Reglaze a steel sash, renew its perimeter seal and weatherstrip it properly, and the performance gap against a stock replacement window narrows to the point where swapping it is hard to justify on numbers alone, with the approved elevation left exactly as it is. Multi-wythe masonry carries real thermal mass through a long Ohio heating season. Breathable repellents tend to last longer on this stock than sealed coatings, for the plain reason that a slow-drying wall is allowed to dry. Our side of it is the envelope. Mechanical plant, lighting and insulation inside a designated building are a separate discipline, and owners generally bring in a firm specializing in historic-rated systems for that half of the job.
How far ahead should an Akron historic project be scheduled?
Further ahead than most owners plan for, and the reason is the order of the approvals rather than the length of the construction. Section 31.395(A) is explicit: the Superintendent of Building Inspection shall not issue a building permit until the Certificate of Appropriateness has been issued, so the preservation submission goes first and everything else queues behind it. Section 31.395(B) sets the outside limits on that stage, 60 days for an alteration or an environmental change, 90 days where demolition is proposed, and deemed approval if the deadline passes without a decision. Field time sits on top. A single elevation of repointing and repair on a smaller designated building often runs two to four months, while a full envelope program on a converted plant runs considerably longer because the wall area is measured in acres. Then leave room for the material window, since lime mortar and render will not go on into a hard freeze.
Will Presto work on a building with only a National Register listing?
Yes, and on a locally designated one, and it is worth settling which of the two you actually hold. Seven Akron historic districts appear on the National Register: Main-Market, South Main Street, Main Exchange, Cascade Locks, B.F. Goodrich Company, Hall Park Allotment and Kenmore Boulevard. A federal listing and an Akron designation are separate instruments carrying separate obligations, so the opening question on any scope is which one attaches to your property and which parts of the proposed work would trigger a review at all. Designation is its own process too, with its own filing fee under section 31.394(A), 75 dollars for a structure or a site and 250 dollars for a district. We get that picture straight with the owner and the owner’s consultant before a specification is drafted.
Who files with the Urban Design and Historic Preservation Commission?
The application belongs to the owner and is normally assembled with a preservation architect or consultant. The Commission receiving it has seven members, appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by Council under Chapter 31, Article 2 of the Codified Ordinances, with at least one architect required among them and standing seats held by the Director of the Summit County Historical Society and a representative of the Akron Area Board of Realtors. A submission is therefore read by people who know the buildings and the market both. Presto supplies the technical half: a scope that is accurate, products identified by name, the mortar and render mix designs behind them, and drawings detailed enough that a reviewer does not have to guess. We stay available to that team for the whole of the process, and the work is delivered inside the local and state rules that govern it.
Which technical standard is the work actually written against?
Section 31.395(D)(1) names it directly: the Federal Conservation Regulations and the rehabilitation guidelines at 36 C.F.R. Part 67.7. That is the test a proposal is measured by in Akron, so it is the frame the specification is drafted in, and it is the same body of guidance the rubber-era tax-credit conversions had to satisfy. National Park Service Preservation Briefs sit underneath it and carry the method this particular stock needs: mortar formulation, masonry cleaning, steel sash repair, render work, and concrete repair on early reinforced frames. Owners who want their preservation architect to read our scope against the relevant Brief before anything is ordered are encouraged to do exactly that.
More Presto Restoration Services in Akron
Keep Your Akron Building's Fabric Intact
A spalled brick face and a lost cornice do not come back, and there is no modern product that undoes either one. Send Presto Restoration a description of what is happening on your Akron building and we will price the repair that protects the original fabric, keeps the wall performing, and stands up to a Certificate of Appropriateness review.
Call 1-800-785-9927 or Request A Historic Building Quote online.