Corbin Conservatory (Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens)

The Stan Hywet estate was created from 1910 by F. A. Seiberling, co-founder of Goodyear, who commissioned architect Charles Schneider, landscape designer Warren Manning and decorator Hugo Huber. Construction began in 1912 and the family moved into the house in December 1915. The glasshouse dates from the same period: in 1915 the King Construction Company of North Tonawanda, New York, built it for $18,330.

The building did not last the century. A windstorm damaged it in 1947, and it is described as the only structure on the estate that did not survive in its original form. After F. A. Seiberling's death in 1955 the family gave the estate to the Akron community in 1957; it became a museum and, on 21 December 1981, a National Historic Landmark.

A faithful reconstruction, based on the original drawings, was completed in June 2005 so that visitors could see the building as the Seiberling family knew it.

The conservatory is credited to Charles Schneider, the estate's architect. The estate describes it as a curved-eave greenhouse whose look nonetheless recalls the Gothic style. The original scheme called for a rectangular Palm House, with a 24-foot-wide (about 7.3 m) greenhouse at the back and a wing on each side. The interior was divided into three parts: a general plant house, an orchid house and a vegetable house.

The 2005 reconstruction has 4,322 panes of laminated glass. The estate states that the Palm House held citrus and tropical plants, and that the attached production greenhouses now grow plants for the gardens. The sources consulted do not give the building's overall dimensions.

Originally the Seiberling family grew vegetables and plants here, in the spirit of a European orangery, and the building also served as a private retreat. The programme set aside space for orchids, vegetables and general plants, while the Palm House housed citrus and tropical specimens.

Today the conservatory offers rotating botanical exhibitions. The attached production greenhouses propagate plants for the estate's gardens; those gardens were laid out by Warren Manning between 1912 and 1915.

The conservatory is part of the Stan Hywet estate in Akron and can be seen during the estate's regular visiting hours; the estate is open from April to December. Allow half an hour for the conservatory, far more for the whole site.

A visit combines with the 64,500-square-foot Tudor Revival house and the gardens: the English Garden redesigned by Ellen Biddle Shipman in 1929, the birch allée, the lagoon made from an old quarry, the Great Garden and the Japanese Garden of 1916. At the end of the year the estate also stages the "Deck the Hall" event.