The Hower House was completed in 1871 and was built by John Henry Hower, a leading Akron industrialist who was active in the milling, reaping, and cereal industries. Hower would become known as the “Father of Akron Industry.” 

Hower and his wife, Susan Youngker Hower, moved their family to Akron from Doylestown, Ohio in 1865. Hower, along with Jacob Snyder, a well-known Akron architect, designed this house in the Second Empire Italianate style. This 28-room mansion is capped with a distinctive mansard roof and soaring tower. The unusual floor plan was based on the “Akron Plan,” developed by Jacob Snyder and widely used in church constructions as part of the “Sunday School movement” across the United States between 1870 and 1917. The mansion is filled with hundreds of treasures and furnishings the Hower family collected from around the world. 

In 1901, John Henry’s middle son, Milton Otis Hower, his wife Blanche Bruot Hower, along with their two children, Grace and John, came to live in the home, relocating from Chicago where they had lived for several years. The elder Mr. Hower and his second wife, Rebecca, planned to move to a smaller home nearby. Blanche Bruot Hower continued to live in the house long after John Henry and Milton Otis Hower both died in May 1916.  

John Henry Hower