Akron Life February 2023

HISTORICAL 330

own more. … A group of very well-educated and well-traveled women … wanted a club just for women. … They started with 100 members. Their goal was to make 1,000 members, and they did that in a few years. Suzanne Shriber ( joined in 2019 and president since 2022) : They met, … a very smart group of women that just didn’t want to stay home. They wanted to learn, provide arts for children and other people, and use their skills in the community. Charlotte Buzzelli ( joined in 1980) : We had movers and shakers. Mrs. Graham started the Akron Symphony Orchestra. We had all sorts of women that were leaders in the com munity. And also, they were the wives of CEOs of rubber companies. By 1946, World War II had ended, and the club became a nonprofit. Members were dedicated to it surviving the recession. They began searching for a clubhouse they could purchase to avoid renting as they did at their previous Akron locations, the Mason House and the Pythian Temple. Known as the Grey Lodge, the Italian Renaissance Revival building they picked is as full of history as the club itself. Built in 1901, it was formerly owned by Bertram G. Work and then George M. Stadelman, the presidents of B.F. Goodrich Co. and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. respectively. The club purchased it for about $30,000. “The economy was not that great,” Brown says. “That was a pretty daring thing for the women to do.” The leap of faith was worth it — the Grey Lodge remains the club’s home. Social clubs gained popularity that peaked in the ’50s and ’60s, Lieberth says. Throughout the country, nearly every major industrial city had a social club. He added that there were dozens of social clubs in Akron for men and women, often of prominent social status. A common choice for men was Akron City Club, which operated from the ’20s through the late ’80s.

At a table bathed in natural light inside the Akron Woman’s City Club, Patricia Brown, Suzanne Shriber, Charlotte Buzzelli and Julie Randall munch on pancakes, eggs and bacon and sip coffee, reminiscing on the combined decades they’ve spent as members. The club is known for having persevered when others haven’t and for its status as one of the oldest social dining clubs for women in the country. It’s fighting to continue for 100 more years. It got its start in 1923, just a few years after women gained the right to vote. Women were becoming more independent, and their roles were changing. With the addition of electricity to homes, household tasks took less time, so they had opportunities to embrace their education and interests. “When you look at the women who were prominent in the ’20s, most of them had college degrees, but they had no place to exercise their education,” says Akron historian Dave Lieberth. “They did that through women’s clubs.” In 1923, the club was formed when about 50 women met at the home of Helen Wolle, who was F.A. Seiberling’s niece and the club’s first president. Supported by the women-led Tuesday Musical, the Woman’s City Club spent its early years focused on the arts, educating members about current events and community fundraising for food for children, camp opportunities for girls, wheelchairs for polio patients and more. Influential members included Ethel Seiberling, who was on the board, and Mabel Graham, who was president. Patricia Brown ( joined in 1960 and became president in 2013 and 2018) : It was at a good time in history. Because in ’22, women were starting to get out, do things and be on their

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