Field Notes Ohio

Ohio's parks, forests and wildlife areas with camping, the ancient mounds beside them, and the Buckeye Trail that links them. Stories, trails, wildlife, and where to eat and fuel up nearby. Book campsites on ReserveOhio.

Try:

Explore Ohio

One map for every park, mound, historic site, beach, cave, waterfall and oddity in the app.

Tap a symbol for a preview, or search for a place. Open the key to show or hide categories.

117 parks in 7 regions

Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens

Akron · Summit County · Northeast Ohio

A 65-room Tudor Revival mansion built by a Goodyear co-founder

National Historic LandmarkAkron's first National Historic Landmark

Visiting information you can trust

Check before driving — this site is seasonal, approximate, privately run, or otherwise uncertain. Confirm hours and access with the official source above.

Content last reviewed: September 2026 — this is when Field Notes Ohio's content was last checked, not a live status.
Primary official source: Official page
Location confidence: Verified entrance or visitor center
Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, 714 N Portage Path, Akron
Seasonal access: An older listing gives April through November, Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (last admission 4:30 p.m.), closed Monday, and closed in winter except the holiday 'Deck the Hall' tours. Confirm current hours.
Check current conditions: Official conditions or closures
Reservations or tickets: Tickets or admission info

Prices, hours, closures, campsite availability and trail conditions shown elsewhere on this page are not live — always confirm with the official source before you go.

The Seiberling family's Tudor Revival estate in Akron, the sixth-largest historic home open to the public in the United States.

House: A 65-room, 64,500-square-foot Tudor Revival manor with 23 bathrooms and 23 fireplaces, built 1912 to 1915
Family: F. A. Seiberling, co-founder of Goodyear Tire & Rubber, his wife Gertrude and their children lived there for 40 years
Name: 'Stan Hywet' is Old English for stone quarry, after a sandstone quarry on the land
Grounds: 70 acres of gardens and grounds, out of an estate once more than 3,000 acres
Museum: Opened in 1957 after the Seiberling children gifted it to the community
Landmark: National Historic Landmark since December 21, 1981

The story

In 1898 the brothers F. A. and C. W. Seiberling founded the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, and Akron became known as the Rubber Capital of the World. F. A. Seiberling and his wife Gertrude built their country estate between 1912 and 1915, with architect Charles Schneider designing the house and Warren Manning the grounds, and the family moved in in 1915. They named it Stan Hywet, 'stone quarry,' for the sandstone quarry on the land, and they lived there for about 40 years, hosting business and political figures and arts and music events. The house is one of the largest private homes ever built in the United States.

After Seiberling died in 1955, the children gave the estate to the community in 1957, and a group of West Akron women formed a nonprofit to save it and opened it for tours the same year. The estate's Gate Lodge is known as the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous. On Mother's Day, May 12, 1935 (one source says May 13), Henrietta Buckler Seiberling, F. A. Seiberling's daughter-in-law, brought Bill Wilson of New York and Dr. Bob Smith of Akron together in the Gate Lodge. A meeting meant to last 15 minutes became a six-hour conversation, and June 10, 1935, the day Dr. Bob took his last drink, is regarded as the start of AA. The Gate Lodge remains unrestored and is off the public tour path.

The wealth that built the house came from a rubber industry whose workers organized in the 1930s. In February 1936 workers at Goodyear, whose Akron factory employed about 14,000 people, sat down over plans to cut wages and lengthen the six-hour day, and a month-long strike followed that spread across the city's tire plants. The United Rubber Workers won recognition and a settlement on March 22, 1936, one of the earliest successes of the Committee for Industrial Organization. The Buckeye Trail's Akron Section passes through the city.

Related sites

The Mansion Rubber Built

Akron was a small canal town until the automobile. Then it made the tires, and its rubber barons built houses to match. F. A. Seiberling's was the biggest, a Tudor manor on a quarry hill that took three years to build and had a swimming pool, a gate lodge and a private lake.

In 1957 the family gave it away, and the neighbors saved it.

Behind the legend

The dates, room and fireplace counts, the Goodyear founding, the 1957 gift and the nonprofit's rescue are from Wikipedia, WKYC, Compass Ohio and Virtual Akron. The Gate Lodge's role in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous comes from an Ohio historical marker, Stan Hywet's own history page, Akron Life and the University of Akron's women's history site. Sources give the date as May 12 or 13, 1935, and Seiberling's children as five or six. The 1936 strike is from the Ohio historical marker, the APWU, Encyclopedia.com and Wikipedia, which give the sit-down date as February 14 to 18, 1936 depending on the account.

If you go

Tour the manor, walk the gardens and the Gate Lodge, and pair it with Hale Farm or a day in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Visiting

Status

Open seasonally

Managed by

Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, a nonprofit

Hours

An older listing gives April through November, Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (last admission 4:30 p.m.), closed Monday, and closed in winter except the holiday 'Deck the Hall' tours. Confirm current hours.

Admission

An older listing gives adults $15 and youth 6 to 17 $6; members free.

Phone

330-836-5533

Please note

Tickets are timed; check for events.

Address

714 N Portage Path, Akron, OH 44303

Official information →Directions Find trails nearby on AllTrails →

Hours and prices change. Confirm with the site before you go.