There are few clues visible today that the white brick and vinyl-sided building with red doors at 1474 Copley Road in West Akron was once the home of Weathervane Playhouse.
The theater hosted 131 Weathervane productions there over nearly 20 years from 1952 to 1970.
Weathervane Playhouse was founded in 1935 by Grace Hower Crawford, Laurine Schwan, Helen Troesch and Muriel MacLachlan, four women who wanted Akron to have the best in theater.
The group got their start in a carriage house barn on Marshall Avenue in Highland Square that they initially rented from former U.S. Senator Charles Dick. With a volunteer cast and crew, they put on a variety of productions each season, from contemporary comedies and musicals to Shakespeare. The barn quickly became too small of a venue, with performances that regularly sold out. Neighbors also complained about the increased traffic and noise that the theater brought to the neighborhood.
Weathervane’s board of trustees spent several years looking for a new location and wanted to purchase land and build a theater that would fit their specifications. According to meeting minutes from November 1949, they brought on Akron architect Roy G. Firestone to design a theater for them. Firestone was a prolific architect in the Akron area and designed many homes and buildings from the 1920s to the mid-1960s.
Similar to issues encountered with the Marshall Avenue barn, plans for building a theater on a few different plots of land on Aqueduct Street and West Market Street fell through due to zoning restrictions and objections from neighbors.
The group was ultimately unable to find a suitable location to build a new theater, so they eventually purchased the one-story concrete block building and adjacent lot on Copley Road. A July 1951 article from the Akron Beacon Journal reported that Weathervane paid approximately $30,000 for the properties. The building previously belonged to building contractors Lindstrom & Swanson, Inc.
Existing Copley Road building is remodeled in 1951
Rather than build a new theater, Firestone remodeled the building to include an 18-by-26-foot stage, approximately 100 seats (not many more seats than the barn at Marshall Avenue), a backstage working room, restrooms, dressing rooms and a kitchen. The Green Room, painted forest green, was a reception area where guests and the cast and crew could meet over coffee and cigarettes after each show. This custom was first established at the Marshall Avenue location, although there it was called the Red Room.
“See How They Run” was the first play performed at the Copley Road theater, which opened on Jan. 10, 1952. The theater would host 130 additional productions before Weathervane Playhouse moved again due to space constraints. Despite the Copley Road location being slightly larger, Weathervane continued to sell out shows. “Weathervane: 40 Years of Memory and Dreams,” a booklet published to commemorate the organization’s 40th anniversary, recalled, “…literally thousands of would-be attendees were turned away from Weathervane’s doors.”
Weathervane board members revisited the idea of building their own theater in 1965. A year later they began a $400,000 fundraising campaign to build a 265-seat theater in the Merriman Valley. Weathervane’s new theater opened in June 1970 at Playhouse-in-the-Valley off Merriman Road, which is the theater’s current location at 1301 Weathervane Lane.
Building becomes a VFW post, bar
Less than a year after Weathervane’s move to Merriman Valley, 1474 Copley Road had become home to the VFW Rhine River Post 3618, which had been established in 1954. The VWF post hosted numerous events over the years and was active at the former theater for four decades. An Annual Senior Citizens Day hosted at the VFW post and advertised in The Reporter in 2011 may have been one of the last events. VFW Rhine River Post 3618’s nonprofit status expired in 2018.
In 2012 the building became the Blue Note Lounge. A 2016 Akron Beacon Journal article described the bar as an establishment frequented by an older crowd.
Summit County Fiscal Office records indicate that the VFW post owned the building until October 2019. The property was then transferred to the Summit County Land Bank, which acquires and distributes properties that are vacant, abandoned or tax-delinquent. The following year, the property was then transferred to the City of Akron.
Since 2020, the city and Progressive Alliance Community Development Corp. (PACDC), a neighborhood organization in West Akron, have been working to establish the Maple Valley Resource Center. According to the West Akron Neighborhood Plan published in 2024, the center would be a “full-service one-stop place for neighbors and entrepreneurs to gather, connect and access services” at 1474 Copley Road.
The West Akron Neighborhood Plan also provided a rendering of the new vision for the building, which has been proposed to offer programs such as workforce development, entrepreneurship development, financial literacy and empowerment, digital inclusion and literacy, family and parenting and more.
It’s unclear if or when the Maple Valley Resource Center will come to fruition.
Sources:
Akron Beacon Journal articles, accessed via newspapers.com.
The Reporter article, accessed via ohiomemory.org.
Ohio Secretary of State online business search database.
Summit County Fiscal Office online property database.
Weathervane Theater records, University of Akron Archives and Special Collections
“West Akron Neighborhood Plan”