Rowwrrr! Lions get a makeover at Summit County Courthouse

How do you brush a lion’s teeth? Very carefully.

With fangs bared and manes flowing, the jungle beasts recently received a gentle cleaning outside the Summit County Courthouse in downtown Akron. A two-man crew brushed away years of grime from the two giant cats perched atop a retaining wall along South High Street.

The century-old statues haven’t looked this good in decades.

“If you’re somebody who drives past all the time, you may not have even realized it,” said Greta Johnson, director of communications and assistant chief of staff for Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro. “But if you’re seeing it for the first time, you’re going to be like 'Wow, that’s so nice.'”

County Councilman John Schmidt, a local history buff, said he has been working with the administration for a couple years to get the stone figures cleaned.

“I’ve thought that the lions are an iconic symbol of Akron for years,” he said. “I can remember when I was a kid going to downtown Akron on the bus with my mom and we’d drive by those lions. They were just absolutely amazing and fascinating to me.”

Akron company AmeriSeal & Restoration, the masonry restoration division of Unified Construction Systems, won a $16,000 bid to clean the lions and the two human figures of “Law” and “Justice” flanking the former main entrance of the courthouse. The crew also scrubbed the sidewalks and granite stairs atop the hill.

“We wanted to make it pretty,” AmeriSeal project manager Bob Blandford said. “It was very green and dark. Those steps were pretty gross.”

The statues have witnessed plenty of history in their 115-year existence.

The Summit County Courthouse opened Jan. 21, 1908, replacing an 1843 building that had stood on the same site. Designed in the Renaissance Revival style of architecture, the new courthouse featured more than 50 wide steps leading from High Street to the front entrance.

Denmark native Herman N. Matzen (1861-1938), head of the sculpture department at the Cleveland School of Art, won a $5,000 bid (more than $161,000 today) to create “Law” and “Justice” for the top of the steps.

Carved from Indiana limestone, “Justice” is a bare-chested fellow, wrapped in cloth at the waist, clutching a sword between his left knee and right ankle, while “Law” is more reflective, resting his chin on one hand and holding a scroll in the other, while sporting a laced-up shirt and hiding his legs under folds of fabric.

The nearly 8-foot-tall figures made their public debut March 4, 1908, as workers hoisted them into place with a block-and-tackle system.

Their feline friends arrived a few weeks later. The county paid $1,160 (about $37,000 today) for the 8-ton lions to guard the bottom of the steps.

While some sources indicate Matzen carved the limestone lions, the descendants of August Blepp (1858-1933) insist he was the creator. The German-born stonecutter worked decades later on the Cleveland Guardians of Traffic on the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, now known as Hope Memorial Bridge.

The courthouse cats arrived on rollers March 31, 1908.

“The position and nature of the job made it impossible for the contractors to use a derrick to lower the lions into place,” the Beacon Journal reported at the time. “The lions were jacked into position above their resting place, and then lowered on the jacks to within a few inches of the stone base.

“Chunks of ice were then placed under the mammoth statues and then melted away by the use of hot water. As the ice melted slowly, the lions settled down onto the base and were cemented.”

For decades, courthouse visitors huffed-and-puffed their way up the steep stairs, passing between both sets of statues. Akron’s older residents might recall when county workers used to decorate the lions every Christmas with wreaths around their necks, a tradition that continued until the late 1980s.

In 1970, the county hired a contractor to demolish the bottom steps and replace them with terraces. Today, the original entrance is chained off. Court visitors bypass “Law” and “Justice” and enter a $20 million wing built in 2005. Although the lions remain highly visible on High Street, the human figures are easy to overlook on the hill.

Unless you’re hired to clean them.

“I enjoyed going up there and jumping over the fence and checking all of that out,” Blandford said.

AmeriSeal’s Matt Gress and his son Javin worked for nearly a week on the project. For the flat surfaces, they used a surface cleaner and Prosoco Enviro Klean ReVive, a biological soiling remover.

“It’s kind of like you hook a pressure washer to a push mower, but it’s got a spinning arm,” Blandford explained. “It spins and cleans the sidewalks.”

The crew used hand brushes, ReVive and gentle pressure-washing to restore the statues to their former glory.

“Everything there turned out really well,” Blandford said.

AmeriSeal previously worked on local landmarks such as Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, McKinley National Memorial, Cleveland Clinic Akron General, Summa Akron City Hospital, Cuyahoga Falls Fire Department, St. Sebastian Parish, Lichtenwalter School House  and Wolf Creek Dam.

Summit County officials are pleased with the company’s work at the courthouse. Be sure to check out the newly cleaned statues the next time you’re downtown.

“They look fantastic,” Schmidt said. “They pop now.”

“It looks great,” Johnson said.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Lions outside Summit County Courthouse in Akron shine after deep clean