A large brick building with a massive arched window once occupied the corner of South High and East Bowery streets in Downtown Akron. For decades, the Akron Armory was the city鈥檚 epicenter of entertainment.
In 1918, the Armory opened as a training site for the Ohio National Guard. That same year, it served as an emergency hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic.
However, the 2,500-seat auditorium was also perfect for concerts. Among the first to perform there was American composer and conductor John Philip Sousa, writer of 鈥淭he Stars and Stripes Forever.鈥� Tickets cost 75 cents for the matinee and $1 for the evening show, according to a 1918 advertisement in the Akron Beacon Journal.
The following year, the newly formed Cleveland Orchestra performed under its first director, Nikolai Sokoloff 鈥� kicking off five decades of visits by 鈥渢he best band in the land.鈥�
The Akron Armory was a welcoming stage for both Black and white musicians, including vocalist (and later Akronite) Dolores Parker when she toured with jazz legend Duke Ellington.
Other big names to take the stage included Chubby Checker, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash.
The versatile space would also host wrestling and boxing matches, conventions, theater, the circus and even political rallies.
By the late 1960s, the building was showing signs of wear and Summit County began eyeing the property as a potential site for a new administration building. When Akron鈥檚 E.J. Thomas Hall opened in 1973, the new venue stole the spotlight 鈥� and the world-class acts 鈥� from the old Armory.
It took more than a decade of negotiations before the building was finally demolished in 1982, making way for a new government office building named for Ohio state Sen. Oliver Ocasek.
Today the building is home to the Akron Municipal Court.
