Barbara Hembury Heath still remembers her second grade field trip to the Akron factory where Wonder Bread was made. She also remembers the hot, miniature loaf each student took home and the third grader who stole her bread and ate it.
“It was so cool being in there and seeing how they made stuff,” the 63-year-old Arizona resident remembered. “We didn’t go on many field trips, so that was a special thing. I remember the smell.”
The smell of baking bread permeated the area for years, until baking stopped in 2010 and the University of Akron acquired the building in 2011. Now, the university plans to tear the factory down, saying it has outlived its usefulness.
The 1920s building at 178 S. Forge St. has mostly been used for storage in recent years. There’s still a three-story oven in the middle of the 78,000-square-foot structure, said Stephen Myers, the university’s chief planning and facilities officer. He said he expects demolition to begin soon and be completed in May.
The university doesn’t have a plan for building on the footprint at this time, and Myers said it will remain as greenspace “for the foreseeable future.”
That doesn’t sit well with Joey Logan, a Massillon resident who has been working across the street to rehabilitate the university’s Timken Foundation Center for Precision Manufacturing building. The smell of baking bread was long gone by the time he first encountered the warehouse, but Logan said he quickly appreciated the decorative brickwork and the look of the space.
“It looks like they put some pride into it,” he said. “You could not build that building again if you wanted to.”
When he saw a construction fence go up around the building earlier this month, Logan started asking around. When he learned the plan was to demolish the factory, he wrote in a Facebook post that it was a “sad misuse of money and extremely wasteful.” More than 100 comments poured in as people reminisced about what the bakery meant for them and the community.
“As you get rid of a lot of things that could be repurposed — and it’s been done plenty of other places — you lose your history,” Logan said. “You could save it or sell it. You could pick who the buyer would be.”
‘Never significant’
Across the country, other former bakery buildings have been reused for living spaces and other purposes, from the Wonder Lofts in Hoboken, New Jersey. to the Lofts at WB in Toledo to Bakery Lofts in Emeryville, California. But there hasn’t been a local push to repurpose the building that started as the Akron Baking Company. Preservationists said that’s because there are more important buildings in Akron that should be saved, including some owned by the university.
“Nobody’s going to miss it,” said Dave Lieberth, president of the soon-to-open Akron History Center. “As a preservationist, you try to pick and choose. … I don’t think anything is lost by not keeping this building, specifically.”
More important, he said, is Quaker Square, also owned by the university and at risk of falling into disrepair. Aaron Uhl, a Progress Through Preservation advocacy committee member, said ensuring the preservation of the Central Hower High School auditorium and the Martin University Center are priorities, as well.
“There are just so many on Akron’s campus that need our utmost attention,” Uhl said. “We’re trying to marshal our efforts.”
The Wonder Bread building, he said, has bricked-in windows and plenty of blemishes and is in poor condition. It doesn’t have a lot of historical significance. The Akron Baking Company eventually was purchased by Continental Baking Co., the maker of Wonder Bread. Interstate Bakeries Corp. later merged with that company and owned the Akron bakery. Under the name Hostess Brands, it filed for bankruptcy in 2004. When the bakery was shut down in 2010, 100 people were laid off, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
Lieberth said the building’s significance is largely tied to its era, as the country turned toward automation and the food industry shifted as well. In Akron, where the scents of rubber and cooking oats permeated, there was something particularly notable about the sweeter fragrance from that building that sticks in people’s memories.
“It’s the smell of baking bread people remember,” he said. “The building was never significant.”
What makes a city special?
Lloyd Kenneth Bowers, who now lives in the Philippines, said in a message that he remembered employees occasionally passing out small loaves of bread to children from the factory store.
A graduate of Central Hower, Bowers said he used to go to the store a couple times a month to buy bread. The lower cost made it easier to stretch money for a family on a budget, he said. He wishes the building wouldn’t be torn down.
“The smell of fresh-baking bread filled the air around that neighborhood for years while the bakery was in operation,” he said. “There wasn’t a day that you didn’t smell the bread while attending school.”
To Bowers, the demolition of the building feels as though part of the city’s past is being erased. He suggested the university might turn the building into an on-campus store or build a scale model of places in Akron to keep in a museum. Otherwise, he said, the city is at risk of losing what makes it special.
“I know change is going to happen, but a person or place should never forget its past as well,” he said. “I feel that some places are worth keeping to preserve the history of the city.”
Logan agreed, saying he likes to see old buildings preserved. He knows the factory wasn’t significant when it was built, but he said it has come to be significant for Akron.
“You lose the uniqueness of the city,” he said. “You lose your history once these things go.”
Heath, who remembers her school field trip, said she thinks it would be “a very sad thing” if Akron lost buildings like this one, or Quaker Square. But she said it might be better for the city if old buildings come down and new ones take their place.
“It’s a memory that’s gone, but my memory of the aroma and the smell of the factory is still going to be there,” she said. “It’s just a building.”
The land underneath
Uhl said most people’s memories of Wonder Bread are tied to that smell, not the structure. When so many buildings are at risk, he said, “some nuance has to be applied.”
John Miller, a former director of archival services at the university and a former Progress Through Preservation president, said an old survey of historic buildings didn’t include Wonder Bread. He said it would have been interesting to see it renovated, but “you have to somewhat pick your battles.”
Myers, with the university, said the building was purchased during a period of expansion. The university anticipated growing to 40,000 students, but fall 2023 enrollment was fewer than 14,000. He said the university wants to make sure it’s putting resources into the “right spots,” most notably, core parts of the campus.
By tearing down the Wonder Bread building for a cost of $857,000, Myers said he expects to save about $200,000 a year on heating, maintenance and electrical costs for the building. ProQuality, which was the lowest bidder of eight firms that applied to do the work, may recoup some costs by scrapping the stove or other metal found at the site.
Abatement has already begun, he said, and demolition work will follow.
“We’re not going to salvage anything for ourselves,” Myers said. “There’s nothing of architectural significance, and it’s not in a condition worth salvaging.”
The demolition is part of a broader university plan to reduce operating costs by shrinking the overall building footprint. The university is looking to sell some properties — like Quaker Square — and will likely demolish others. The goal is to eliminate 1 million square feet of space, something Myers said could take a decade to accomplish.
In fact, it’s not the first time the university considered demolishing the Wonder Bread building. Vic Fleischer, the university archivist, said the University of Akron talked about acquiring the building as far back as 1989, when minutes from the Board of Trustees show the conversation centered around adding “much needed” parking.
Minutes from a 1995 Board of Trustees meeting suggest a $5 million cost to buy and tear down the building to create more parking and “an attractive north entry to the campus.”
Choosing to get rid of this building was easy, Myers said. After all, the university had long wanted the Wonder Bread building for the property it was on.
“It’s not even that interesting when you get into it,” Myers said. “It’s just a warehouse.”
