It all began with a meeting in Akron in 1935 between two men struggling with alcoholism. Bill Wilson, a New York businessman, met with Dr. Robert Smith, an Akron surgeon known as Dr. Bob, at 855 Ardmore Ave. in Highland Square.
Their conversation helped lay the foundation for Alcoholics Anonymous, a recovery program that would eventually spread around the world.
Nearly 90 years later, 12 steps, reminiscent of AA’s 12-step program, lead to the entrance of Dr. Bob’s two-and-a-half-story wooden house.
Now, Dr. Bob’s Home and Museum plans to build a 16-by-28-foot pavilion connecting its properties at 855 and 859 Ardmore Ave. and 122 Everett Ave. — which house the museum, gift shop, archive and welcome and education center. The covered space will provide a place for visitors to gather, sit and reflect while visiting the historic site.
The organization, which received approval for the pavilion from Akron City Council Nov. 9, hopes to begin construction in early 2027, weather permitting, and complete the project before its Founders’ Day celebration. It typically draws about 5,000 people near June 10, the date Dr. Bob achieved sobriety.
The Akron Community Foundation is providing a $7,500 grant toward the building of the pavilion, which will cost more than $100,000 to complete. An anonymous construction company in Stark County is donating the materials and labor, said Ryan Graham, 58, board chair of Dr. Bob’s home.
“Everybody that comes through the door gets a welcome home,” said Graham.
“We get people from all over the world,” he continued. “It could be China, it could be Berlin. It doesn’t matter. They come here just to see the home, and we want to give them a place where they can sit and talk to others.”
A look inside Dr. Bob’s home
“There’s a story behind everything,” Graham said of the furnishings inside Dr. Bob’s Home.
Many of the house’s furniture and keepsakes are original, while others were recreated to reflect how the house looked when Dr. Bob and his family lived there.
The Bible belonging to his wife, Annie Smith, sits open to the passage “faith without works is dead.”
“That’s probably my favorite piece,” Graham said.
Family photographs show the Smith’s two children, Smitty and Sue. The Smiths adopted Sue when Smitty was 5, Graham said.
The home also reflects Annie’s role in the early recovery movement. In the dining room, where nearly 80 people once gathered for AA meetings before moving to nearby King School in 1939, an original table and a chair beside a telephone help tell the story of how she supported families affected by alcoholism. While Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson worked with people struggling with alcoholism, Annie supported their families, including the wives of men seeking recovery.
A typewriter used by Sue Smith typed many of the stories included in the first edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous,” commonly known as the “Big Book,” Graham said.
An original manuscript of the book returned to the home about three years ago after Akron Intergroup helped preserve it, he said.
The kitchen was another important gathering place. Wilson lived with Dr. Bob and Annie for three months, spending hours talking with Dr. Bob and drinking Annie’s coffee to keep the conversations going. Those discussions helped shape the ideas that became the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2012.
Keeping the legacy alive
Dolly Abbott, the vice chair of Dr. Bob’s Home, first learned about it after getting sober in 2002. Don Casini, a former board chair, took her under his wing and encouraged her to volunteer. She spent her first five years of sobriety helping at the home.
Abbott, who is now 75, didn’t realize Casini was prepping her for a larger role, she said. “Now I’m entrusted with being a part of carrying on this legacy.”
Abbott said the spirit of love visitors tell her that they feel inside the house reminds her of Wilson’s quote after Annie died.
“The love that came out of 855 Ardmore Avenue will never find equal in any place on the face of this earth,” she recited.
“I believe that we are still living in the spirit of their love,” she said.
A sense of belonging is what Ken Heaton, a volunteer and part-time gift shop employee, found when he first arrived. After several stays in rehabilitation, Heaton learned about the home while recovering at the now-closed St. Thomas Hospital, which had the first hospital-based unit in the country dedicated to the treatment of alcoholism.
He arrived at Dr. Bob’s Home feeling that he had reached his lowest point.
Then he found a space where he felt welcome.
“I was able to slow down my brain here,” Heaton, 61, said, “meditate and pray, and I just found a home here.”
