We’re back in business. The nostalgia business.
Akron Beacon Journal readers continue to reminisce about some of the corporate chains they miss in Northeast Ohio.
Ready to look back?
Here are more lost brands that people fondly remember in the Akron-Canton area. Well, for the most part.
Nobil, Thom McAn and Richman Brothers
Rick Brown spent a lot of his youth in clothing stores. You can tell by the list of long-gone businesses that he shared.
“Some we miss, some not so much,” he explained.
Indeed. Bet you remember these.
Nobil Shoe Co. “A local company, mid-level prices, not always the highest quality and, yes, some of their ‘leather’ shoes squeaked.”
Thom McAn. “Once you graduated from Nobil’s, these were decent shoes. The stores were mostly located in malls as I recall.”
Robert Hall. “A clothing store for economy-minded families raising kids whose sizes jumped seemingly overnight.”
Richman Brothers. “An upscale men’s clothier once you had graduated from Robert Hall and J.C. Penney.”
W.T. Grant. “Prevalent in many shopping centers, it offered a variety of things including clothing. It typically had a lunch counter and, of course, their mascot Bucky Bradford.”
W.E. Wright. “The local hardware stores offered hard-to-find things (before the Lowe’s and Home Depots of the world) usually at above-average prices.”
Zayre. “Sort of like Click without the groceries. They were known for big splashy ads in Sunday’s Beacon Journal, but buyer beware. They advertised a child’s swing set on sale, so I was there when they opened that Sunday and was told they were out of stock. Huh? Word spread that these ‘door buster’ specials were often out of stock. Good riddance.”
Borden Burger. “Last but not least, it’s hard to believe that Elsie the Cow was promoting burgers made from her cousins.”
Robert Hall and Lang’s
Hey, Rick Brown, meet Len Shwartz.
He remembers clothing stores, too. In fact, he may have sold you some apparel in the 1970s.
These brands may jog your memory.
Robert Hall. “I remember a standalone building in what I thought as a kid was a rural stretch of Copley Road,” Shwartz wrote. “My mother and father took my brother and me there at least once a year during the 1960s to buy our Sunday school suits.
“I remember being measured and waited on by the staff. I don’t remember exactly when that store disappeared or what now occupies the space where it stood.”
Established in 1940, the Connecticut-based chain opened an Akron store in 1952 at 283 W. Exchange St. and added locations at 74 West Ave., Tallmadge (1957), 3755 Copley Road, Copley Township (1967), 2765 S. Arlington Road, Springfield Township (1969) and 3845 Akron-Cleveland Road, Northampton Township (1971).
After filing for bankruptcy in 1977, the company closed all 366 of its U.S. stores. The Copley Road building is now Kids Academy of Copley.
Lang’s Men’s Clothing. “I worked there from 1973-1976,” Shwartz wrote. “It was an upper-price-point men’s store. They added a women’s department later. My first stint was at the downtown Akron location at 187 S. Main St. We were neighbors of Koch’s and Carlton’s, other men’s specialty stores.
“Lang’s carried Hart Schaffner & Marx suits. Lang’s also had Summit Mall and Chapel Hill stores. I worked the longest overall time at Summit, but did a shift or two at Chapel Hill. After the name changed to Walkers, they had a store at Belden Village.”
Lang’s opened its first local store in 1908 at 18 E. Market St. in downtown Akron, moved to 35 S. Main St. in 1913 and relocated to 187 S. Main in 1935. The Summit Mall store opened in 1965 and the Chapel Hill store arrived in 1967. The chain became Walkers in 1980.
A list of lost place
Hinckley resident Larry R. Arnold, 83, who grew up in Kenmore, has seen a lot of places come and go during his lifetime.
He sent us a four-page list of lost businesses — both local and national — that he remembers in Akron.
Four pages! What a memory.
We can’t publish the entire list, but here are some chains that stood out:
First National Bank, Woolworth’s, Scotts 5 and 10, Clarkins, Miracle Mart, Richman Brothers, Thom McAn, Lawson’s, A&P, Apples, Fazio’s, Sparkle Market …
S&H Green Stamps, Isaly’s, Red Barn, Kippy’s, Lujan’s, Flag Pole Drive-In, Ponderosa, Ground Round, Dutch Pantry, Pure Oil, Red Head Gasoline, Kmart …
Gold Circle, S.S. Kresge, Peoples Drug, Rexall, Rite Aid, Ames, Forest City, Zayre, JoAnn Fabrics, Montgomery Ward, Sears, O’Neil’s and Polsky’s.
If you’re of a certain age, you went to most of them.
Hills, A&P and Pick-N-Pay
Robert Perry reminisced about some places that no one else has mentioned.
“One business I miss is Hills department stores,” he wrote. “As a kid, the toy department was bigger than many other stores including Sears. I remember Hills had a layaway program, too.
“I miss the grocery store chains A&P and Pick-N-Pay. It seems they had products that other stores did not carry.
“Other stores that I miss are the Strouss department store in Youngstown, Woolworth’s and their diners, A&W’s and their root beer floats. I remember Frankenstein advertisements they had around Halloween. Also, Children’s Palace was the biggest toy store I had ever seen in Mentor, Ohio.”
Hills was a Youngstown-based discount chain that operated from 1957 to 1999. Strouss, also headquartered in Youngstown, was in business from 1875 to 1986.
The Cleveland grocery chain Pick-N-Pay served the region from 1938 to the mid-1990s. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., a New York grocer better known as A&P, opened in 1859 and shut down in 2015.
Columbus-based Children’s Palace, founded in 1968, went bankrupt in 1992 and liquidated all 71 of its stores, including 17 in Ohio.
Back to Barnhill’s
Finally, we return to Barnhill’s Ice Cream Parlor, a Victorian-themed confectionery that scooped its last sweets in the 1980s.
Medina County native Patrick Kelly, who now lives in Englewood, Florida, vividly remembers the flagship restaurant, which opened in 1966 at 2855 W. Market St. in Fairlawn.
“Located on West Market near Skyway (in the location where Panera sits today), they served great sandwiches and dinners, sure, but you went to Barnhill’s for the ice cream,” Kelly recalled.
“On Friday nights, Barnhill’s was packed with people who had been to a high school football or basketball game and rivalries on the field were set aside as everyone celebrated (or commiserated) at Barnhill’s. Many times, I remember driving from as far away as Avon to Fairlawn just to go to Barnhill’s after a game.”
Barnhill’s added a location in 1969 at 437 Portage Trail in Cuyahoga Falls and then opened an emporium at Quaker Square in 1975 at 120 E. Mill St. in Akron. The chain had a dozen or so franchises in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
“Their most amazing sundae was a monster served in a half-barrel laid on its side,” Kelly wrote. “It had several gallons of various flavors of ice cream all smothered in sauces, bananas, whipped cream, nuts, and (I’m sure) an entire jar of maraschino cherries on top!
“Owner Bob Barnhill got huge crowds from Revere and Highland (my alma mater) by giving a free one of these monster sundaes to whichever school won the annual football matchup (he probably did this with other local school rivalries, too, I wouldn’t doubt). And the losing team was always there to cheer on the winner as they ate that massive concoction.”
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Readers remember lost retailers from A&P to Zayre | Local history
Reporting by Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal | USA TODAY Network
