Historic Neighborhood Tours: Goodyear Heights

One of the more gratifying things one can do is to be able to put knowledge to good use, and I was able to do exactly this last weekend as I was able to lead a historic neighborhood tour of Akron’s Goodyear Heights through @Akron2Akron, a local group that helps organized and promote city neighborhood tours in an effort to help residents discover and appreciate the places where they live.

This pedestrian pathway and steps was dedicated to Clara Bingham,  a 47-year Goodyear employee who was popularly knows as "The First Lady of Goodyear."

I won’t go into a lot of detail in this post—there is a downloadable brochure I prepared; a PDF Dropbox link is HERE if you’d like to read more about it. In short, Goodyear Heights is one of the better American examples of the Garden City Movement as it was transformed into a high quality community for industrial employees of Frank Seiberling’s Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Planning began in 1912, when Seiberling used his master landscape designer, Warren Manning (who had already designed the grounds at his landmark Tudor-Revival mansion, Stan Hywet) to layout a small town for his workers.

Beautiful Overview of Cotswolds Architecture: Where Five Valleys Meet

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PHOTO CREDIT: Toneshots.com

The perfect thing to enjoy with your morning coffee can he found on Rosemary's Where Five Valleys Meet blog, where she shares a brief glimpse into some of the beautiful architecture to be found in the Cotswolds. Long known for its picturesque beauty, the region features many of England's finest stone houses, and one of the best -- Stanway - is featured here. I've always been particularly fond of the gatehouse, and there is a beautiful photo of that to accompany the post as well.

PHOTO CREDIT: Where Five Valleys Meet

Owned by Tewkesbury Abbey for 800 years, then for 500 years by the Tracy family and their descendants, the Earls of Wemyss, Stanway House is currently the home of Lord and Lady Neidpath.  Thanks to its location, at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment, Stanway has been protected from many changes of the 20th century, but the last decade has seen the gradual restoration to its former glory of the 18th century watergarden, probably designed by the greatest of British landscape gardeners, Charles Bridgeman.