AKRON CITY
MAGAZINE
January –
April 2008
History
The Legend
of Akron's Blue Santa
Rare St.
Nick figure dates to 1890s
by Dave
Lieberth
Like Harry
Truman's admonition, "There is nothing new in
the world except the history you do not know"
So, here's some history I'm sure you didn't
know: The story of Akron's very own Santa Claus,
the "Blue Santa."
Let's
begin with the story of Christmas in Akron,
which really wasn't the "Christmas" we know
today, until Akron's German immigrants brought
their traditions with them in the late 19th
century. They hung stockings by the fireplace,
brought an evergreen tree inside to be
decorated, and of course, they brought with them
the legend of St. Nicholas, or "Father
Christmas," or the elf we now call Santa Claus.
A
search for manufactured figures of Santa reveals
not much imagery before 1900 in the United
States. "The oldest figurines we could find were
from about 1900," says Michael Cohill, director
of the American Toy Marble Museum at Lock 3.
"These were paper-mache statues, and only later
were ceramic statues of St. Nicholas produced in
quantity"
So,
what was an earthenware figure in the
unmistakable shape of Santa Claus doing buried
in the ground at what is now Lock 3 Park?
Part
II of our story: During the winter of 2001, the
City of Akron demolished a strip of buildings
along South Main Street between O'Neil's and the
Civic Theatre to reopen a view of the Ohio-Erie
Canal that had not been previously seen by
anyone alive today. This 4.5-acre area of vacant
land became Lock 3 Park.
Excavation of the site in 2002 revealed
thousands of small ceramic toys and pottery
shards at the site of the American Marble & Toy
Manufacturing Co. whose owner Samuel C. Dyke was
truly the founder of the American toy industry,
and whose factory operated on Center Street at
Lock 3 for 20 years until it burned down in
1904.
Archaeologist Brian Graham excavated the site
and inventoried the materials found there. Among
the marbles, animal shapes, jugs, thimbles and
electric insulators were five shapes of Santa
Claus. The most intact of the Christmas objects
was covered with a blue glaze — hence, Akron's
Blue Santa. Cohill and Graham have dated the
object to the mid-1890's, certainly one of the
earliest representations of St. Nicholas to be
manufactured for mass distribution.
History has a way of doing 360 degree turns, and
ending up where it started. Today, the site of
the factory — Lock 3 — is the site of the
largest and most authentic German Christmas
Market in the eastern United States, featuring
craftsmen from Akron's sister city of Chemnitz,
Germany.
Cohill has engaged ceramic artist Stephen Bures
of Elements Gallery in Peninsula to recreate the
Blue Santa in porcelain, from a carving prepared
by Cohill himself, using the 19th century Akron
Blue Santa as a model. The statues are on sale
at the History Exhibit at Lock 3 Park.
www.ci.akron.oh.us