Description: The photograph shows a portion of a large silo complex. Six joined circular concrete silos can be seen in the photograph. The silos belonged to the Quaker Oats Company and are located in downtown Akron. The Quaker Oats Company Plant was located at the southwest corner of Mill and Howard Streets. A second plant, housed in a 10-story brick building at Mill Street and South Broadway, receives the grain, which was washed and then whisked through underground tubes beneath three downtown streets to the Howard Street plant, where it was processed and packed. The company's expansion program, under way in 1939, included the construction of an elevator with a capacity of 400,000 bushels. The Howard Street plant stood on the site of the Old Stone Mill, completed in 1833 and operated by power from a race that brought water from the Little Cuyahoga River. Quaker Oats built 36 grain silos in 1932. Each silo was 120 feet tall and 24 feet in diameter, and together they housed 1,500,000 bushels of grain. Quaker Oats terminated production in Akron in 1970. The facility was repurposed in March 1973, and reopened 1 April 1975 with four shops and an ice cream parlor. The entire complex is listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The silos were converted into a Hilton Hotel which opened in 1980. Later it became a Crowne Plaza hotel. The hotel is built into the suite of silos and is famed for its 196 completely round rooms. In mid-June 2007 the University of Akron bought the complex for $22,679,000 with plans to convert it into student housing and office space. The university planned to house more than 400 students in the converted hotel starting with the 2008 spring semester. As of January 2008, the university has begun to use the upper floors of the hotel as a residence hall. Under contract with UA, RDA Management of Fairlawn will operate 95 hotel rooms on the four bottom floors of the silos for the next two years. The university agreed to keep those rooms available to the public for that period to give the city an opportunity to secure more hotel space for downtown visitors and tourists. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B07F08_022_1
Subjects: Quaker Oats Company; Silos;
Places: Akron (Ohio); Summit County (Ohio)