Hower House Victorian Mansion

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 and his wife, Susan Youngker Hower, moved from Doylestown, Ohio, to Akron 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.