Inside the tiled walls of Amelia Flats, the cycle of life was in full rotation. Newlywed couples moved in, welcomed babies, raised families, entered middle age, retired from jobs and ultimately died there.
The five-story building, which stood on Park Street across from picturesque Grace Park, was one of the city’s earliest apartment houses when it opened in 1901.
Houses were nearly impossible to find as laborers flooded Akron for jobs at the city’s bustling rubber factories in the early 20th century. Newcomers had to rent rooms, live in boarding houses or stay at hotels.
Businessman Horace B. Camp (1838-1907) saw an opportunity to develop upscale suites in a desirable neighborhood where prominent families such as the Barbers, Buchtels, Bierces, Firestones, Howers, Seiberlings and Schumachers maintained beautiful homes. Camp and his wife, Amelia (1852-1938), lived in a 10-room home at North Union and Park streets.
“Mr. Camp is a very unobtrusive man, of quiet and retiring habits and dislikes any notoriety or publicity very much,” the Beacon Journal noted in a 1902 profile. “He is not at all desirous of parading the fact that he has risen to the position of trust, confidence and esteem he now holds, from a comparatively lowly and meager beginning. He is very reticent about talking concerning his early life or his various business interests.”
The Tuscarawas County native owned the H.B. Camp Co., which manufactured vitrified clay conduits for underground wires for telephones, telegraphs and electric lights.
Camp was president of the Akron Fire-Proof Construction Co., Akron Clutch Co., Akron Coal Co. and Faultless Rubber Co. He built the Ashland & Western Railroad and Lake Erie Terminal Railroad, organized Colonial Sign & Insulator Co. and helped build the Colonial Theater on Mill Street in downtown Akron.
Despite all of those interests, he still found time to develop housing.
Camp purchased “a considerable block” of real estate on Park Street near the railroad tracks and chose a site overlooking Union Depot off East Market Street for his “flats.” Cleveland architects Frank B. Meade and Abram Garfield submitted plans in January 1900 for “a thoroughly equipped, up-to-date apartment house built upon metropolitan principles.”
“The building will be made of hollow brick, such as are manufactured in Mr. Camp’s plants, and the interior will be handsomely finished,” the Akron Daily Democrat reported. “The structure will be provided with an automatic elevator, which does away with the use of the old time elevator boy.”
Building rises
Excavation began in January 1901 on a five-story building 85 feet long and 60 feet wide. Each floor would be divided into two suites of rooms, allowing 10 families to occupy the building. Camp named the complex Amelia Flats after his wife, the former Amelia Babb of Cuyahoga Falls.
The fireproof structure’s exterior walls were built with “hard-burned vitrified tile” and its floors were composed of Sandusky cement and ground wood “troweled down smooth and level.” In addition to ceramic tiling, the building’s most notable characteristic was its bright red awnings over every window.
As Amelia Flats arose, anonymous critics began a whisper campaign that Camp’s building was unsafe. The Akron Fire-Proof Construction Co. derided the “untrue and malicious stories in circulation,” and offered a $100 reward for information leading to the conviction of anyone “guilty of promulgating such reports.”
The apartment house at 218 Park St. began to fill with well-heeled tenants by February 1902. Camp was so pleased that he announced plans in 1903 for a twin five-story building, Campania Flats, at 279 Park St. The sister complex, which featured four suites per floor for a total of 20, was named after a British ocean liner but it also was a play on the family’s surname. The Campania opened in 1904.
After battling heart disease for five years, Horace B. Camp died Nov. 21, 1907, in his North Union Street home with his family at his bedside. The 69-year-old businessman was survived by his wife, Amelia, daughters Grace Armstrong and Laura Mosher, and sons Louis W. Camp and Henry H. Camp. He was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Cuyahoga Falls.
Properties deteriorate
In 1920, real estate developer A.F. Stuhldreher took a 99-year lease on the Amelia and Campania along with the Camp estate at the northwest corner of Park and Union streets. Amelia Camp sold the property in 1926.
Generations of families lived there. For more than 40 years, vacancies were quickly filled at the apartments, but the buildings fell into disrepair in the 1950s amid changing ownership. Longtime residents began to move out, and many of those who remained were on relief or had criminal records.
The Campania’s owner went to prison in the 1960s for receiving stolen goods and selling marijuana. In 1961, a man leaped to his death from a third-floor window. In 1963, the city evicted 14 families, including 30 kids, “in the interest of saving lives.”
“I could go on all day about that place,” city building inspector Ott Salzwimmer told the Beacon Journal. “It is a menace and a fire hazard. The wiring and plumbing are bad. It is filthy.”
The Campania stood for another 20 years, even serving as the Haunted Apartment House in October 1975. The city condemned the complex four times, citing more than 50 building code violations. Finally, the Akron Wrecking Co. leveled the vacant building in 1981.
The Amelia, renamed Grace Park Apartments, was divided into efficiency apartments and also endured problems. There were stabbings, shootings and muggings. Two men beat and robbed the manager in his office in 1969.
The former Amelia lingered until the late 1980s. Vandals stripped plumbing and wiring, smashed windows and punched holes in walls. Wreckers eventually put the building out of its misery, showering the ground in glass and vitrified tile.
Today, empty lots are all that is left of Horace B. Camp’s dream of upscale suites on Park Street.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.