Uneven floors, disintegrating brick and a half-missing first floor greeted project manager Dave Pyott when he stepped across the threshold to restore the 1836
Richard Howe House in Akron. Man, what a challenge this is going to be, he thought.
Although Pyott had worked on other building restorations, none were nearly as intense, partly because of the high expectations.
The house, which originally belonged to Richard Howe, the primary engineer of the Ohio & Erie Canal in the 1820s and ’30s, had been home to many different things in the past 174 years. “We thought it was important to save this building,” says Dan Rice, president and CEO of the
Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition, which supports the preservation and development of the canal.
Symbolic of that effort, the renovated Howe House would serve as headquarters for the organization and a visitor information center for the 2.5 million people who use the Towpath Trail that runs along the canalway in Cuyahoga, Summit, Stark and Tuscarawas counties.
So Pyott dealt with the challenges that came up. In 2007, a developer bought the original Howe property to build a $23 million student housing development. “It was move it or lose it,” Pyott says. So the city moved it.
In 2008, Pyott and about 1,000 others watched nervously for four hours, hoping the house would stay in one piece as it moved 2 1/2 blocks down to West Exchange Street.
Once the house reached its new location, Pyott and his workers began fixing more problems, including a cracked floor beam that ran through the house
And when the $2.2 million budget was tight, Pyott switched out the thermostats for less fancy options and used a simpler HV/AC system to accommodate.
“It’s hard to tell the difference between the old building and the new portion,” he says. But it’s easy to see the impact: The revitalization of the Howe House makes the area more attractive to business and housing development.
In 2009, an investor bought and renovated the historic Kaiser Building on Main Street, which now houses a Pita Pit restaurant and a coffee shop on the first floor and businesses and apartments on the second and third floors.
That same year, volunteers started the final phase of the Richard Howe House by bringing in soil and planting more than 1,000 plants and trees. Throughout 2010, workers and volunteers continued beautifying the house by planting more bushes and building an informational kiosk and an amphitheater for visitors. In October, Project Evergreen planted more than 100 trees and perennials.
“It really has helped to revitalize the entire region,” Rice says.