Chuck Ayers design, assembled at Burkhardt Metal Fabricating Sculpture

Water-wheel sculpture rises at Cascade Locks

Artwork marks site of Ferdinand Schumacher's old mill

Akron has a new landmark.

The red-painted steel shape of half a water wheel with eight spokes was installed at midday Friday at Akron's expanding Cascade Locks Park.

The outdoor sculpture - 35 feet in length and about 20 feet high - stands on the site of cereal magnate Ferdinand Schumacher's Cascade Mills that once stood next to the Ohio & Erie Canal.

The 11,400-pound structure was designed by Akron cartoonist Chuck Ayers, assembled at Burkhardt Metal Fabricating and lifted into place at Howard and West North streets by a crane from Canton's Selinsky Force Industrial Services.

The artwork had been built as one piece, was cut into five pieces to be moved to the site near downtown Akron and then was welded back into place.

"It went just as planned and everything fit," said an obviously pleased project superintendent Chad Davidson of Akron's Cavanaugh Building Corp.

Those involved in the project were pleased with the installation.

"It's just amazing," said Ayers, who draws the comic strip Crankshaft. "It looks so much bigger than I had anticipated. . . . We're very happy and very thrilled."

The artwork will mark the entrance to the Cascade Locks Park with its historic Mustill Store and five old canal locks and will be "the focal point to bring people into our park," said Andrea Victor, executive director of the grass-roots Cascade Locks Park Association. "It's just amazing."

The water wheel will be "the new icon of Akron," said Akron's Virginia Wojno-Forney, who founded the Cascade Locks Park group in 1987.

Work on completing the base under the steel water wheel is scheduled for early next week.

The replica water wheel sits east of the canal and the Towpath Trail and west of Howard Street on an under-construction plaza marking the old mill site.

The $708,000 project is scheduled for completion by late November.

Schumacher came to Akron in 1851 and opened a grocery store and entered the oatmeal business.

In the 1880s, Schumacher, whose operations became part of Quaker Oats Co., had about 200 employees at his four Akron mills. He purchased the Cascade Mills in 1866.

He combined his operations into F. Schumacher Milling Co., later into American Cereal Co., and eventually into Quaker Oats Co. in 1901.

In 2003, University of Akron archaeologists searched unsuccessfully for Schumacher's original 40-ton water wheel, which reportedly was buried.