A piece of Akron aviation history is on the market.
The Akron Fulton Airport terminal sits at the south end of the traffic circle on Triplett Boulevard. A large roundabout takes visitors past the statue of Christopher Columbus and up to the front of the building with its massive solid bronze doors.
“Back in the day, if you were a passenger, you would come in through the front door and this was the waiting area," Randy Theken said, making his way through the large first floor.
Theken bought the terminal almost 20 years ago and spent two years restoring it to its 1929 glory.
This is where Theken moved his medical implant company. He flew in physicians so they could demo products right there at the airport.
The large central room inside the terminal where Theken installed handcrafted wooden desks once served as the waiting room for passengers with benches and ticketing counters.
On either side, wide staircases lead up to the next floor.
“You could climb one of these two towers and go to an observation deck outside," Theken said. "And they had a dumbwaiter that would serve hot dogs, hamburgers and soda, while you were on the roof.”
On the first floor, Theken recreated the airport manager’s office, where he displays model airplanes and maps. A massive window at the front of the room looks out onto the tarmac.
Back when the terminal was built, the focus wasn’t airplanes – it was dirigibles.
After World War I, the superintendent of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company developed a fascination with airships and began recruiting engineers from Germany to help design and build them.
But they needed an airfield. According to Akron History Center President David Lieberth, that's where Bain "Shorty" Fulton comes in. He owned property where he flew airplanes.
“And the city of Akron ended up buying his land, and then buying additional land, to create the airfield that’s there today," Lieberth said.
After the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, airplanes began to replace dirigibles in the air for passenger travel.
“The city of Akron and the airport, they sort of had to transform this from a terminal building being used for dirigibles to a terminal building be used for airplanes," Theken said.
Throughout the 1930s, the airport was also a hub of entertainment and a place to gather, not just for people in Akron but for visitors from around the country.
“Amelia Earhardt flew into the Akron Municipal Airport at one point on her round-the-country tour," Lieberth said.
Theken has a stack of photos in the map room on the second floor. He flips through them, landing on one showing hundreds of people gathered at the terminal, in the parking lot and spilling out onto the observation decks on the roof.
"It's got a ton of history," he said. "It was a central place that people came."
Enclosed spiral staircases lead from the main floor to the next.
“Yeah be careful you don’t want to do this when your drunk," Theken cautioned while providing a tour of the building.
On the next floor sits the old airport beacon. Theken said he had planned to scrap the light, but his construction manager started researching it and came across an expert on beacon lights in Seattle, Washington.
"Calls the guy up and says 'hey, I've got a sperry, model number, blah blah blah,'" Theken recalled. "The guy goes 'oh my gosh! That's one of three that I know that's even left in the country. You can't throw it away.'"
A few weeks later, Theken and his construction manager came to the terminal in the morning to find the historian waiting for them on the doorstep to plead his case.
Theken had the casing rebuilt and replaced the carbon arc rod originally used to generate the intense light for the beacon with a carbon arc bulb that matched the original wavelength and color.
"And for the first time, I think in, like, 55 years, it was the first time that this light got fired up," he said.
It’s hard to look anywhere inside the building and not find a detail that feels like it's from a bygone era. When Theken decided to restore the building, he received the original blueprints from the city as well as photos from its heyday.
And, meticulously, he restored every bit he could. From the massive chandelier that hangs on the main floor to the small details like doorknobs and plumbing.
“Even the mechanisms on the back of a urinal or a toilet are all brushed nickel, because brushed nickel would have been the theme back in the day. So, the entire facility, everything is solid brushed nickel.”
Every metal staircase was lifted out by a crane, dipped in acid, powder coated and craned back into place. Theken took samples of terrazzo flooring and spent months hunting down the original contractor. He hired a father and son team from New York to spend a year installing plaster on the ceiling.
"I was at the right place at the right time. I was lucky enough that my business was making money, or I think this place would have been torn down by now."
Theken said he’s trying to “wind down” his life and that means moving on from this passion project. He hopes to find a buyer who's as committed to preserving this slice of Akron history as he has been.
“We don’t have control of it, right? Realistically, you have to use it. You can’t spend all the tax that you do on this a year and just keep it as a museum.”
If you share Theken’s passion for history, it will only cost you $4 million to make it your own.
