In 1925, George Washington Mathews opened a hotel on North Howard Street, right in the heart of Akron's jazz district. For decades, it was one of the only hotels in the Rubber City that catered to Black travelers.
Several years later, Mathews and his wife, Alberta, added a barber shop and beauty parlor to the hotel space.
Legends like Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald stayed at the Mathews Hotel after performing at nearby venues. By the late '70s as the city fell on hard times, the hotel closed and was later demolished to make way for the Innerbelt highway.
Mathews' legacy lives on through a monument designed by Akron artist Miller Horns in 2011, located on the corner of Howard Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard where the hotel once stood.
