by Avery Bishop
In our UnClass’s efforts to explore the story of Howard Street, one of the most important factors in our journey is to figure out what was exactly there. Businesses, offices, stores, apartments, hotels: all of these buildings and their owners represent an important piece of history for the block and all of Akron.
By using the old city directories, as pictured above, alongside and maps of the area, a curious connoisseur of the history of Howard Street will be able to get a somewhat solid view of how the neighborhood looked and what was within it. These city directories, available at the University of Akron Archives and Special Collections and online via the Akron Public Library, list the occupants of all the buildings on a given street. However, despite useful tools like the maps, it can be hard to picture just how the street was and changed throughout its development.
This is where our ongoing Howard Street Directory Project comes in! In an effort to simplify and create on unifying document that showcases the changes that the historic street went through, we have started developing a singular spreadsheet that lists every address on downtown portions of Howard Street (including North E/W and South) and how they have changed in a thirty-year timespan, from 1930-1961.
Transferring information from the old directories into this modern spreadsheet is a difficult task, which is still a work in progress within our group. Either by utilizing OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or just manually going building-by-building, we are slowly piecing together a simpler way to view the evolution of Howard Street.
No matter how we decided to tackle a certain timeframe, it has been a time consuming feat that we all have different ways of maneuvering. Emily Price, one of the heads of the Media Group of our ongoing mission, describes her experience working on the directory and importance of it. “It was a bit tedious since I entered the info manually, but it is important to chart the changes and development of the street in Akron,” said Price.
However, using the OCR was an equally effective way to extract the information from the directory. Zak Harper used the tool to transfer it from PDF to the spreadsheet. “Once you get everything organized and find the right sections of a 900-page city directory, finding and documenting what each address was occupied by is a breeze. Having multiple years side by side to see the businesses coming and going is a cool thing that takes a little bit of time but worth the results in the end,” said Harper.
Creating a venue like this is extremely important, not just for the preservation of Howard Street, but to also ease access for others in the future. In time, this directory spreadsheet will be polished and ready for public viewing, so make sure to stay tuned with future updates. If you have not already, you can also check us out and look at our progress on social media – follow us at @roundhowardstreetunclass on Instagram!
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