Are you in the market for a papier-mache monkey playing a saxophone? How about one playing an accordion?
How about model trains, railroad memorabilia and actual train equipment that are memories of Akron’s past?
Or models and props handmade for a miniature circus and stained-glass windows?
Those are among the 500 or so items that will be available at the University of Akron’s May 20 auction of items that the university acquired when it bought Quaker Square, a onetime hotel/retail complex, in 2007.
UA turned the hotel — with its round rooms in former Quaker Oats silos — into a residence hall for students.
Auctioneer Bob Young is expecting the auction at Quaker Station, adjacent to the downtown Quaker Square, to attract upwards of 500 people.
“People will travel hundreds of miles to find these kind of items,” Young said. “Many are unique, they’re one-of-a-kind, many are not common.”
Unusual pieces
On Tuesday, at a media preview at Quaker Square, UA employees and Young showed off the auction items — including fairly common items such as reproductions of railroad signs to more unusual pieces, such as an old railroad luggage wagon.
“Those railroad lanterns over there, you can find those all over town. They’re typical,” Young said. “But something like the monkey collection ... to find seven of them [playing instruments] in a group, serious buyers will come from the other side of the country if that’s their thing.”
Most of the model trains were part of the collection of train enthusiast Mack Lowry, whose Railways of America museum was a popular spot off state Route 8 in Cuyahoga Falls.
Lowry moved his collection to Quaker Square in 1976, and some of his model trains became a big attraction at Quaker Square’s now-closed REA Express eatery, later called the Depot.
Lowry, who had a train shop at Quaker Square, “would literally run those trains every hour” in a room above the restaurant, said Becky Pete, who worked at Quaker Square for years.
Lowry’s widow eventually sold the collection to Quaker Square owner Jay Nusbaum, who in turn handed it over to UA.
Sharing memories
Pete, a resident of Springfield Township, was at Tuesday’s preview.
She and others reminisced about the model trains, as well as the miniature circus — the Greatest Little Show on Earth — that includes a lion tamer display, a circus tent, an elephant-parade display, a Ferris wheel that lights up and more.
It was created by Akron rubber worker Robert Harned starting in the 1920s.
Harned, who died in 1969, sold the circus to Lowry in the 1960s, and Lowry brought the circus to Quaker Square along with his trains.
“It’s hard to come down here,” Pete said, tearing up.
“People would come down here,” she said, “and they would say ‘I brought my kids here, and now I’m bringing my grandkids here.’ ”
Mike Szczukowski, director of materials handling for UA, who has been working with Young to put together the auction, chimed in: “You spend almost a quarter of a century here [as Pete did], it’s tough. Lots of good memories.
“It’s a magical place,” he said.
After the university bought Quaker Square in 2007, it continued to operate the complex’s General Store, and Pete worked there as UA retail manager.
In 2009, UA opened a museum in the General Store, featuring many of the items, including the circus.
Pete retired in 2015, and UA closed the General Store and the museum.
This isn’t the first auction of portions of the collections. In 2011, UA auctioned off pieces of the circus, as well as Lowry’s collection, that had been boxed up and put in storage.
Szczukowski said one of the bidders coming from out of town for the 11 a.m. May 20 auction may be Harned’s nephew, who bought many circus pieces in 2011.
The auction will be at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 20, at Quaker Station, 120 E. Mill St. People can preview the items beginning at 9 a.m. To see pictures of auction items go to http://bit.ly/2psPKRz.
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. You can follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or on Facebook at www.facebook.com.