"Hermes," the Olympian messenger of the gods, rolls off the tongue of Tony Troppe. The swashbuckling realestate developer evokes the spirits to his urban playground, his burgeoning arts and entertainment district, his red brick road to the wizardry and the reinvention of downtown Akron .
"This is a story that hasn’t been told," he says, eyes sweeping his domain, Maiden Lane , nestled in a confluence of his stellarly refurbished buildings – Hermes, Everett, Castle Hall, and others around the corner. The bordering concrete hums with green space, wafts with the scent of a seductive brew.
The pungent coffee is a powerful lure to the elegant alley where Mocha Maiden and Musica are perched at the intersection of commerce and culture. They are the artist-driven twin engines of the neighborhood, Troppe’s babies, halves of a singular establishment, a wellspring of art and inspiration, music and momentum.
"With a little hubris, you can call it the portal to downtown," he says. He rhapsodizes, erupting in paragraphs of colorful language, leaving note-takers breathless in the dust, stunning them with his selfdescribed Captain Zeal persona, his "attention deficit advantage." |
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As the setting sun glances off the tabletops in Musica, just inside an open industrial glass garage door, it is open mic night, held the first and third Wednesdays of the month.
Eric Bernhardt, a Kenmore troubadour with guitar in hand, plans to unleash an acoustical tune or two. "I just had a baby," he beams. He’s been away from the sound scene for a year.
He does not realize he will be engaging the eager audience in an arena occupied by the 19th century Academy of Music, which made its home in the Everett building. It’s where his namesake, the Divine Sarah Bernhardt unfurled her own considerable vocal chords. She is muse, the maiden in Maiden Lane, the untold story, Troppe says.
The ravishing Parisian diva, who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was a captain of industry in her own right. She’s an operatic, burlesque and silent film performer and courtesan who flowered despite scandal and prevailed despite the loss of her right leg. She is the perfect metaphor for the crippled city block that had also lost its youthful charm, her image immortalized in the organic flourishes of another of the alley’s muses, Alphonse Mucha .
Mucha’s influence is felt on the outdoor banners and the composite of the luxuriant looking woman sniffing coffee on the side of Mocha Maiden’s two-tone drivet finish exterior. He was an aspiring artist in gay Paree, giving impromptu art lessons and living off lentils, until he reinvented himself, unfurling his new visual panache in a poster for Bernhardt’s play Gismonda.
He caught fire.
While the starving artist was at long last lifted from soup and obscurity, he had earmarked the era of "New Art" or Art Nouveau, his imprint to be felt two decades later in Akron, in the artist enclave enveloping Maiden Lane and by extension, nearby Northside.
"Soon as the dust settled, we needed art," said Troppe, who commissioned a great deal of it.
The dust to which he was referring was new facades and windows on the backs of the buildings, which essentially turned them around, in order to establish a Maiden Lane address in the historic district.
"We use the building to celebrate art and architecture, rather than the bottom line," he says frequently."It’s all under the power of positive thinking." Indeed, commerce without culture is tantamount to bricks and mortar without heart, unthinkable in the shadow of the monumental metamorphosis of the Akron Art Museum.
Get out your walking shoes – or stilettos. When you amble into Maiden Lane, you tap the epicenter of the city. Ground zero. The hot point. The continental north - south divide.
Your stroll down the colorlaced red brick alley, which can be gated off for legal drinking under the stars, will be short, but important. The courtyard and patio garden flanking the three M’s – Mocha Maiden and Musica – will be short, but important, for every inch you travel will infuse you with a sense of possibility.
Inside you’ll find an art gallery and gift shop and libations of every description (house coffee, $1.45; signature lattes, around $4; domestic beer, $3). "We showcase area artists that may not be known just yet," in the boutique and upstairs gallery, says Troppe’s wife and muse, Jill, an accomplished painter.
Adjacent to the inlet is the trendy restaurant Crave, where divine soup is served in wonderful lopsided bowls and the affable co-owners, Aaron Hervey and Deanna Akers, describe their innovative cuisine as slightly eccentric, yet down to earth.
You are unaware, perhaps, of the businesses tucked in and around you. One such is Keathley Advertising, nestled in a spacious light-filled loft that is attracting talent from across the country. Gone is Jacob Good restaurant, but something Italian may soon noodle its way in.
Meanwhile, back at Musica’s mic night, an attraction still in its infancy, Eric Bernhardt strums his guitar and lifts his voice in the name of love while the sun glances off the metal rims of several in the audience of perhaps 40. They are intensely interested, many of them performers or visual artists, comfortably tucked into booths rescued from Frenchy’s in Pittsburgh, a restaurant that once lived next to the Andy Warhol Museum. Troppe is sure Warhol’s spirit, if not cheek prints, is still attached.
A woman in a cowgirl hat, one of nine or 10 early evening acts, a member of the Summit County Songwriter’s Circle, thumps out an original country tune. John and James Hollis of Hudson, brothers who play mandolin and guitar, and Mike Guanciale of Stow, also guitar, heard through the grapevine that their talent will receive a warm welcome and are testing the waters.
They are warmly received. Established entertainers occupy the space on Fridays (jazz) and Saturdays (mixed bag). Be sure to log onto www.1akron.com for the particulars.
No one seems surprised when Troppe himself takes the stage. A consummate showman who has performed Shakespeare, he delivers with aplomb.
"It takes a sense of humor to bring these buildings back to life," he says.
He introduces Andrew Birch, a comic talent who had just graduated from St. Sebastian Elementary School in Akron. "How can you order a club sandwich and not be a member? That’s what I want to know," the teenager said.
Rimshot.
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