Jeffery

^ The war + Katrina. It was a competence issue around the GOP. Then the economy started to decline. This was probably unfair to blame Bush, but it happened under Bushes' watch and the GOP paid the political price Strickland is having the same issue. He is "owning" the bad Ohio economy, which will be why he is having political problems.

There's some residual Browns loyalty in Dayton. Ive had coworkers who were Browns fans, native Daytonians.

I didnt know GE was into that line of work. I knew about that big engine plant, but this is a different type of system. Erlanger KY is ok as its still in Cin-Day (more on the Cin side, but a net add to the region).

Louisville is different. It's so unlike Cincy and Pittsburgh. I am going to do a few more of these explainer posts...

Looking at this I realized an interesting differnce. The top was planned and built in the 1960s, the bottom in the late 1930s. ...you can tell the different approaches to parking. The bottom project had less of it, and it was on-street parallel parking on internal streets" The top project had more parking and it was developed as cul-de-sacs, akin to suburban apartment complexes, with no intnernal streets. Maybe the older project assumed less automobility among the tenants?

The comments about parking was interesting, that it would be impossible to duplicate the surface parking as parking garages and the assumptions about future downtown residents having to be carless. From what I've seen from downtown there is an interesting little area between the Library and the State House that looks like it was sort of resdential at one time and could be developed as a in-town neighborhood. Sort of like Garfield Place in Cincinnati. Those sequence of overviews showing city erosion where interesting. I see what ColDayMan was saying about German Village extending all the way into downtown at one time.

I did a blog post on this: Russsell Partnership: The Alternative to the Hollow City Louisville Housing Authority did do a lot of demolitions. and was really agressive with HOPE redevelopments, but they saved stuff too, or converted into co-ops. I think thats what happened to College Court, which is the oldest project in the city. This Village West project was an architectural dog. I can appreciate it as being of its time, but it sucked...look at the facades...it is like a mimimum security prison. They had to do things with it to make it work better, like the fencing, roofs, etc. Fortunatly it did have fairly good site planning and the landscaping which softens the place.

^ Yeah, Parkside had good site planning too, integrated into that park with the ball fields, and when it was first built it was walkable to shopping (that little McCook shopping center). Russell Partnership was more than this specific project. It involved the neighborhood to the west of here, and was a mix of things. There is a book on it at the WSU library, by John(?) Gilderbloom, who was the UofL academic involved in it. From the EPA smart growth page: In 1992, a progressive collaboration involving the University of Louisville; local businesses; federal, state, and city governments; foundations; philanthropic groups; local unions; and non-profit organizations began to revitalize the neighborhood. With the help of $3.5 million in federal grants and a matching donation of $1 million from local organizations, the partnership has supported the construction or refurbishing of more than 600 homes, with hundreds more in the pipeline. They have also supplied a wide range of critical services, including child care and health care. These efforts have improved the commercial areas of the community as pawnshops, liquor stores, and taverns have been replaced by a new bookstore, a movie theater, and an African-American museum. The partnership has been successful thanks to community empowerment. For example, when the initiative began, community leaders intended to provide a range of services along with a minimal number of rental units. However, when local residents expressed the desire to own their own homes, the partnership helped establish low-interest loans and other creative financing to provide former rental tenants with affordable 30-year mortgages.

This post finishes- up this West Downtown story. Most of what I’ve posted was on the area closer to downtown, east of 9th Street. The bulk of the West Downtown urban renewal area was west of 9th, an area that had long been a black neighborhood. This area already had seen some slum clearance with the Beecher Terrace public housing built around the old Baxter Square park (Baxter Square was the original Louisville graveyard) The area also had a large new high school, Central High School, probably built in the 1950s. The urban renewal concept would be to replace what was mostly a residential area with industrial and commercial things along the railroad embankment on the western, northern, and southern edges (more commercial along Broadway to the south) and industrial along the railroad to the west. The 34 acre residential component was called Village West. Village West The urban renewal agency approached this differently than most public housing. They held a national design competition juried by architects and planners, led by modernist architect Ralph Rapson. Some of the competition models, showing state of the art urban planning circa 1965-1966, the heyday of urban renewal. The winning design was by McCullogh and Gibson (?) partnering with local firm DEGA (Design Environmental Group Architects). The project was conceived in multiple phases. Phase I of the project (1966-70) provided 263 central courtyard apartments and was awarded a citation for excellence in Community Architecture by the AIA in 1966. Phase II (1968-1971) consisted of another 250 apartments. Phase III (1970-72) consisted of another 102 units, an elementary school, and broad tree lined walkways that link to a shopping center and central plaza and playground, the focal point of the complex.. (Louisville Guide) The shopping center was done-up in the New Brutalism style, with a lot of brick and concrete. This was a popular aesthetic in Louisville at the time, used in the contemporaneous expansion of UofL. Floor plans of the housing units. …blow-up (…looks a bit like something from those UK new towns or council housing estates) Enlargement of the Village West site plan …compare with a modern aeriel: And the northern part, which I think was the award winning Phase I, with a modern aeriel and the key central features…the school and shopping center…noted So what does it look like today? Let’s visit modern Village West, with a little help from Google & Bing. First off, we are in Project Land. Blocks and blocks of projects. The red brick Village West to the north, and the older darker red brick Beecher Terrace to the south. Driving through Project Land on Muhammed Ali Blvd (AKA Walnut Street), Beecher Terrace to the right, Village West to the left. Lets make a left turn into Village West…the shopping center lies ahead As we approach we notice an EMS van with flashers going…. ….oh my…. ….never a dull day in the projects. (note the old church in the background. Individual landmark buildings were saved so it wasn’t a total urban clearcutting here) Looking around we see a barren spot where the shopping center used to be (with one store surviving to the far left. This was opened with great fanfare in the early 1970s but failed and was torn down Across the street is Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School (now a Montessori school) ”…the first in Louisville to present the new educational concept of an open classroom. This project reflected the educational planning of the time, including a circular amphitheatre around which classroom open”(Louisville Guide) …and the empty center of Village West from the air. One can see how the housing blocks are arranged around parking cul-de-sacs, but there is a lot of lawns and open space weaving through the complex. On the ground it isn’t too bad with the landscaping. The units are all in this extreme minimalist modern style, a style usually rendered in white stucco or white painted wood (a la “New York Five”), but done here in good old Louisville red brick (apparently a conscious design choice) Looking at this and knowing it won a design award one has to ask “what where they thinking?” Maybe about the site planning, not the architecture, which does, in retrospect, seem inspired. By now, 40 years after construction, the landscaping has matured, giving a true parklike feel to the generous interior spaces of complex. Looking south, the Pythian Temple popping above the roofs and Union Station towers in the far distance. The wooden stockade fences to create yards were installed in a recent renovation project Layering the east side of the complex are these three-stories. Ah yes, Place Rouge. One should note the street names for the parking cul-de-sacs are all French: Place Rouge, Place Vert, and, of course, Place Noir. (roofs are new, original design was flat roofs) Back of a three-story, one can see the little patio yards created by the fencing The View from Village West; the apotheosis of urban renewal, towers in a park, the Radiant City made real: A few more interior pix, this one showing more of the stockade fences, in this case with little gates to get to the parking lots Three-stories developed as longer zielenbau And another example of sun and shade and open space weaving through the complex Driving through here one does lose the sense of being “in the city” due to the greenery and low density. In this case, looking west out of downtown, a low rise nursing home is to the left: Looking east towards downtown. One of the old landmarks saved from the wrecking ball, the Pythian Temple: ”…built as the state headquarters of the African-American Knights of Pythias Lodge…the building was a multi-use facility with a drugstore, movie theatre, and restaurant located on the ground floor. A portion of the building contained hotel rooms and apartments…”(Louisville Guide) In the foreground perhaps a Carnegie library? South of the Pythian Temple was the final phase of Village West, this time in a less severe style (but equally generous landscaping). The sloped roofs making it seem more village-y vs barrack-y. The church in the aeriel is Quinn Chapel AME, once home to the oldest black congregation in the city; the church itself dates to the 1880s. The former L&N office tower visible behind these units Could be suburbia… At the start of this post I mentioned there was a newer high school already on-site. This was Central High School, the old black high school from Jim Crow days. As part of the 1970s integration plan this school was grouped with relatively new schools from the affluent, upper-middle class eastern suburbs, essentially transforming this inner city black ghetto school into a majority white “suburban” one (+/-80% white) So there was a big enhancement of programs here. A quick look at how urban renewal tried to suburbanize the city when it came to retail. Broadway, the very wide street running east/west across the city, was lined with auto-oriented retail and commercial here, like fast food places. Looking back toward downtown. High rises of the “Magic Corner” of 4th & Broadway in the distance. Admittedly this Broadway streetscape is pretty desolate. Yet Village West does seem to be check the boxes. School and shopping within walking distance? Check. Work close at hand? Check (if one worked in the industrial part of the project) Churches, playgrounds, and community facilities walkable? Check. East-west bus lines cut across the project on Muhammed Ali, Chestnut, Jefferson, and Broadway, all leading into downtown. The landscaping was nice, lots of open space, more than one finds in modern suburban apartment complexes. In short this was not that bad of a development. Which might be why it was saved. Village West eventually deteriorated into a horizontal Pruitt Igoe. In fact parts of it were being abandoned and boarded up. The usual fate of such a place would be that the tenants would have been vouchered out via Section 8 and the place torn down. This didn’t happen. Instead this place was included in the Russell Partnership (this is part of the Russell neighborhood) and saved. Village West was renamed City Park Vew, remodeled, and turned into a mix of market rate and affordable housing, which is what you see today. So that wraps up the West Downtown urban renewal story. Sort of “The Great Society comes to the New Frontier” or something like that….a bricks (a lot of bricks) and mortar monument to 1960s idealism and modernism.

Here are some links for yr history requests: Okolona Fairdale

^ Uh huh...I'm likin' this town!

This town (or towns, including St Paul) is great, at least what we are seeing here. They did a great job with those old mill buildings and stuff. I think there is an island in the river, too...

^^ Hmm..a big Lima? No, I dont think so. Dayton is a big Lima. Mobile is something other than that...not truley outstanding but not the empty asphalt wasteland, either, due to the scale of those streets

Thanks for the infomation! I really appreciate it.

Consolidated county high schools could have more course offerings, and consolidated elemetary schools meant you could have graded instructon vs all the grades in a one-room school. I guess what they ended up with in Kentucky was countywide school districts, or a county district for the rural areas and a city district for the county seat, if the county seat was large enough. In places like Northern KY and Ashland they followed the Ohio pattern of smaller districts.

Here is a great downtown infill building from Cincinnati that has me pumped as a possibility for Dayton. This would be maybe an “updated” version of the Eva Feldman Apartments and could work on a vacant corner site in downtown Dayton, say at Jefferson and 1st on part of the old Patterson School site, as a way of getting more residential downtown. Besides being an excellent bit of generic urban architecture.... A mix of small French doors and railings and large balconies at the corners. Close-up showing the detail on the brickwork. Big Walgreens on the ground floor and apartment entrances via secure lobby to the right. Not sure if retail would work on the ground floor in Dayton, though. The side facing the alley, with I guess the elevator shaft & fire stair, but also some balconies for more apartments. Now my question is to the Cincinnati forumers…what is the story behind this building? Who are the renters or rental market? Who developed it? How much did it cost? EDIT: Fixed all the Cincinnati misspellings.

Me Three! From what i recall that cathederal is one a square right in downtown, or on the very edge of it. Very neat city Mobile is! And I see they added another skyscraper, too (that pointy thang). If you take Government Street out of downtown you'd enter this world of tree shaded leafy neighborhoods....

Well, that was interesting! Adding Machine at the Know Theatre, Sunday Matinee on the way back from Louisville. Turns out the theatre itself is upstairs, and small, and sort of "temporary" looking. The lounge/waiting area is a lot of fun I'll bet, when they have those cabaret things (they had a little stage and a baby grand there, and the barkeep told me they have events down there, including, recently, a cabaret thing. The play was actually rather well acted ...or should I say, sung, since it was sort of this avant garde musical using 1920s/1930s lingo and music styles a bit, too. Next theatre to see: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. And maybe that Shakespear one. I guess Playhouse in the Park is the granddaddy of them all. Also, I notice they are having playwright workshops and readings in town, at UC, based on a flyer I picked up. So it seems there is a lot of this going on, people writing and staging original things ???

The more I look at this stuff the more I see what Dayton could be if the locals wherent a bunch of racist city-hating pig-fookers and the economy here was booming. This stuff is just great, and its not even the dominant city the metro area.

St Paul seems to have this image as the blah, blue collar "Fort Worth" of the Twin Cities, but man it looks sweet in these pix...considerably more urban than one would expect given the reputation. St Paul's sphere of influence extended well into northern Wisconsin...my grandfather ended up working there for awhile back when my grandparents had a farm/resort in Wisconsin. They got St Paul radio and newspapers, and vacationers from St Paul to their cabins.

That Brookings report has some gee-whiz numbers, and not just about schools. Ohio has the ninth highest local government tax burden in the US and 34th highest state tax burden. This seems pretty high. Big Government appears to be only an issue if it's the Feds. If its local, tax away!

Jesse Stuart was a Kentucky local color writer a generation before Berry. He was an agrarian in spirit (actually a student of the Vanderbilt Agrarians), but he was also a teacher and educator. Unlike Berry Stuart supported school consolidation as a way to improve education in rural Kentucky (Stuart started out teaching in one-room schools). As much as I like Berrys fiction I am finding him more and more reactionary and moralistic about rustic virtue. He has little to say about urban life. Little postive, that is.

^ Mostly negative comments, I might add.

The Dayton Daily News editorializes on 3C: Train Questions fare, but there are answers The editorial closes with this: The questions being raised by the skeptics are a legitimate part of the democratic process. The 3C project should not be shoved down anybody’s throat. And it need not be. ...followed by 45 comments.

I guess what really pisses me off about this is the way Minneapolis managed to save those old mills...even the ruins..while Dayton couldn't manage to save the old Frigidaire loft building over at "Tech Town".