Editor's note: Signal Akron will be profiling each of the city's 24 neighborhoods. We're starting this week with Goodyear Heights and Kenmore.

“What the neighborhood means to me and how long [I’ve] been here is: forever and everything,” said Goodyear Heights resident David Schweyer.

Schweyer was born in Goodyear Heights in 1983 and lived on nearly a dozen different neighborhood streets growing up, including Honodle and Sparhawk avenues and Pioneer Street. Before his teenage years, he found himself moving away and traveling the world, landing back in the neighborhood in 2013. 

Now, he co-owns the Linda Theatre – a hallmark of the neighborhood since it opened in 1948  – and the newly opened Cafe Rewind in the former post office at 1763 Goodyear Blvd. Nostalgia and the excitement of what’s to come drives Schweyer, along with the roots he holds so dear in Goodyear Heights. 

David Schweyer at Cafe Rewind in Goodyear Heights
David Schweyer sits for a portrait in Cafe Rewind Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023, in Goodyear Heights. Credit: Kassi Filkins / Signal Akron

“I used to joke with Grandma – her name was Linda – that I was going to buy the Linda and name it after her,” Schweyer said. “She believed in everything we did.”

While some neighbors in Goodyear Heights, like Schweyer, have a lifetime of roots in the community, others found their way to the area more recently. Jon Ashley, lead pastor of Wingfoot Church, moved there in 2019.

“Everyone that I meet in the neighborhood is trying to do something with their lives,” Ashley said. “Everyone’s got their nine to five, and they’re also working on their house [or] they also have a big kind of dream of a side business that they’re trying to build.”

“It’s kind of like an island,” Ashley said of the neighborhood’s borders. “As I think about it, it’s anything south of Tallmadge Avenue, west of 91, east of the Freedom Trail and north of 76.”

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Brick and stucco help build a factory neighborhood

Goodyear Heights was laid out in 1912-13 by Warren Manning, on farmland located outside the city plat maps of 1910, to provide housing for workers at the booming Goodyear plants in East Akron. Manning also designed the grounds at Stan Hywet for Goodyear co-founder Frank Seiberling.

The neighborhood is cited as an example of the Garden City Movement, a concept where quality architecture, original street layouts and the integration of parks and other public spaces into the overall design make for a healthy and happy living environment for workers.  

Goodyear Heights house plans were featured in The Architectural Forum magazine in 1918.

That sensibility remains today. “It’s kind of weird, to some extent, like an oasis,” Ashley said. “You’ve got parks, you’ve got trails. You don’t have to go downtown unless you want to go downtown; if you do want to go downtown, it’s right there.”

Goodyear helped finance the purchases of the homes with an intricate, two-mortgage finance plan that encouraged employer loyalty. But Goodyear Heights Realty had an explicit policy against selling to Black workers, so only white families benefited. 

Phase Two of the development was written up in The Architectural Forum in 1918 (free on Google Books). The free-standing, brick or stucco single-family homes, designed by Pittsburgh architect George Schwann, were built with either five or six rooms and cost between $2,400 and $4,450 to purchase. 

Known for:
Reservoir Park, the Linda Theatre and Goodyear Heights Metro Park

More about Goodyear Heights:

Signal background

Goodyear Heights by the numbers

Ward: 10

City Council member: Sharon Connor

Borders these neighborhoods: Chapel Hill, North Hill, Middlebury, East Akron and Ellet

Area: 4.799 square miles

Residents: 19,669 

Median age: Males, 40.9 years; Females: 42.7 years

Races (2021): White, 55.6%; Black, 18%; 2+ races, 8.8%; Asian, 8.1%; Hispanic, 6.6%; American Indian, 1.7%; Native Hawaiian, 0.5% 

Housing: Average estimated value of detached houses in 2021 (85.6% of all units): Goodyear Heights: $84,582 Ohio: $228,722

Schools: Barber Community Learning Center, Seiberling CLC, East CLC, East High School, Betty Jane CLC 

Source: https://www.city-data.com/nbmaps/neigh-Akron-Ohio.html#N6

Multimedia reporter/producer (she/her)
Kassi Filkins strives to be an active part of whatever community she finds herself in and joins Signal Akron in its mission to bring accessible and community-focused news to all Akronites.

Kassi was born and raised in Central Ohio and is a photojournalism graduate of Kent State University. She was a staff member at the Southeast Missourian and the Hartford Courant before working in non-profit communications.

Kassi lives in Highland Square and enjoys local coffee shops, walking along trails in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and hanging out with her dogs, cat and husband.

Editor-in-Chief (she/her)
Zake has deep roots in Northeast Ohio journalism. She was the managing editor for multimedia and special projects at the Akron Beacon Journal, where she began work as a staff photographer in 1986. Over a 20-year career, Zake worked in a variety of roles across departments that all help inform her current role as Signal Akron's editor in chief. Most recently, she was a journalism professor and student media adviser at Kent State University, where she worked with the next generation of journalists to understand public policy, environmental reporting, data and solutions reporting. Among her accomplishments was the launch of the Kent State NewsLab, an experiential and collaborative news commons that connects student reporters with outside professional partners.