Inside Akron’s impossible mansion: 65 rooms, a secret library door, and a rubber empire behind it all

The Goodyear founder’s English dream home

You don’t expect to find an English manor in Akron, Ohio, but here one sits on 70 acres.

Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens runs 64,500 square feet across 65 rooms, often counted as the sixth-largest home in the country open to the public.

F.A. Seiberling, who co-founded the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, built it for his family between 1912 and 1915. The name comes from Old English for “stone quarry.”

What waits inside goes far beyond the size.

The family who toured 20 English manors

Before a single stone went down, F.A. Seiberling and his wife, Gertrude, sailed to England in 1912. They toured about 20 manor houses, collecting ideas, and three English country homes ended up shaping the final design.

The Seiberlings raised their family in this house and lived here for 40 years.

In 1957, the surviving Seiberling children handed the estate to a nonprofit, so the public could walk the same halls. You can thank them for the door being open at all.

Stand under the three-story Great Hall

Walk through the front door and the Great Hall opens up in the middle of the house, rising three full stories. You look up at a beamed ceiling, around at wood paneling, and down at a huge Oriental rug under your feet.

Tapestries that date to the 1500s hang on the walls. The interiors run dark and moody, true to the Tudor Revival style.

Wide hallways branch off in different directions, each one furnished and packed with detail. You could spend an hour here alone.

A pipe organ built into the walls

The Music Room runs about 2,700 square feet, one of the largest rooms in the whole house.

The Seiberlings built it for concerts, parties, and family gatherings, and a large pipe organ sits built right into the walls. Someone could play it by hand, or let automatic music rolls do the work.

Their daughter Irene was married in this room. Stand in the middle and picture the sound filling three stories of stone and wood.

That organ still anchors the space today.

Find the secret door among the books

About 95 percent of the furnishings here are original to the estate, so what you see is what the family used.

In the library, a secret door hides among the leather-bound books, and the passageway behind it quietly connects to the Great Hall.

The domed Round Room carries unusual acoustics, letting guests across the space hear each other with ease. The Solarium, paneled in sandalwood, holds a running water fountain.

The family played games in there on slow afternoons.

Walk the 550-foot birch tree corridor

A covered porch leads off the main hallway and points you straight toward the Birch Tree Allée.

This path runs 550 feet, lined with more than 100 gray birch trees that arch overhead into a corridor of dappled light and shadow. Stepping stones scatter along the walk under your feet.

Follow it to the end and you reach an overlook with views out toward the Cuyahoga Valley. On a sunny day, the light through those trees shifts with every step.

Rest at the stone tea houses by the lagoon

A pair of stone tea houses stands at the end of the Birch Tree Allée. They gave the family shelter when the weather turned and a quiet spot to sit and rest.

Nearby, the Lagoon fills the basin of the estate’s old stone quarry, the same quarry that gave the place its name. Waterways slip under bridges, threading through trees and open lawns.

Crews recently restored the Lagoon area, and it ranks among the most peaceful corners on the whole estate.

Step inside Gertrude’s walled English garden

Gertrude Seiberling slipped away to the walled English Garden when she wanted a retreat of her own. Stone walls rise 8 feet around it, giving the space the feel of a private world cut off from everything else.

The garden first took shape in 1915, then got a full replanting in 1929 by Ellen Biddle Shipman, a pioneering female landscape architect of her time.

Few intact Shipman gardens stay open to the public today, so when you stand here, you’re looking at something rare.

A small Mount Fuji behind the manor

Behind the Manor House, the Japanese Garden was built in 1916.

Warren Manning designed it alongside Japanese landscape architect T.R. Otsuka, and together they laid out streams, bridges, stone lanterns, and even a small Mount Fuji.

Beneath your feet, two large underground cisterns once supplied water for the entire estate. The whole garden works as a calm, contemplative space, built to slow you down.

Take your time on the bridges and let the running water set the pace.

Wander through gardens that change by season

The Breakfast Room Garden picks up the blue, white, and gold colors you find inside the house. The Dell runs as a woodland garden, with a stone underpass you walk beneath.

The three-acre Great Garden once grew fresh flowers and roses to fill the rooms. A grape arbor, its vines climbing brick columns, leads you toward the conservatory.

Time your visit right and the color shifts with the calendar, from spring tulips all the way into October. No two months look quite the same.

Step into a glass house full of citrus

The glass Corbin Conservatory started out growing produce for the family table.

A 1947 windstorm wrecked the original 1915 structure, and crews built a new conservatory in 2005 from the historic designs. Thousands of panes of glass make up the walls and roof.

Step inside and you find citrus and tropical plantings filling the space. Attached greenhouses hold changing exhibits and grow plant material for the gardens outside.

On a cold Ohio day, the warm air hits you the moment you walk in.

A landmark saved room by room

Stan Hywet joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, then earned National Historic Landmark status in 1981.

From 2015 to 2021, crews restored the Manor House one room at a time, and every historic garden returned to its original design.

Look up as you pass through the front door and you’ll spot a stone carving that reads “Non nobis solum,” Latin for “Not for us alone.”

The Seiberlings meant that, and it explains why you can walk through any of this at all.

Visiting Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens in Ohio

You can find Stan Hywet at 714 North Portage Path in Akron, Ohio.

Daily tours run Tuesday through Sunday from April 1 to Nov. 25, and the place closes Mondays, listed holidays, and Dec. 31 through March 31.

You can pick a self-guided or guided Manor House tour, plus garden and behind-the-scenes options. Come in late November or December for Deck the Hall, when they light the grounds and decorate the rooms.

Check the official website for current hours, admission, and event details.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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