Jeffery

Wow. I'm late to this game. Just checked this thread to see what's up. I see I have 13 pages of posts to go through....

This was on the front page of the Dayton Daily News, including a big graph showing Ohio vs US wages, since 1979.

The city itself is having major problems with abandonments and vacancy, and now vandalism via tagging. Things have always been run-down and shabby but they seem to be getting worse. As I've mentioned Ive been snapshooting in the city since 2005, and have noticed things get more and more dicey. As for the economy I suspect the employment situation here has been tight since the 1970s, but in the past ten years thousands of blue-collar jobs have been lost with the disappearance of GM and Delphi. This was not a dramatic Youngstown-style collapse, but more of a slowmotion one. Make no mistake, the loss of these jobs is a big blow as they paid a living wage and had health benefits. Dayton had managed to keep a blue collar middle class into modern times, and now it is gone, at least for the less skilled assembly workers. This is a painful thing to see and it means downward economic mobility for thousands. The recent loss of NCR to Georgia is now bringing the job scarcity issue to management/professional types.

Oh! @@@@@@ It's funny reading this because I've been posting pix here under various "Jeff" handles since 2005, and some of those posts had pix of various live music things, art shows, and festivals. Part of the reason I did that is to show that things do happen in Dayton. And here I read a post like this. I might as well be talking to a stove.

^ Stadt Luft Mact Frei versus Wohnen im Grune. Yet. German cities, even the provincial ones, are pretty lively compared to the US. Perhaps not the same degree of hostility or rejection there than here.

Some of this sounds like another poster here, who also used to comment at my blog: "TheDonald". Interesting to read the similar observations. @@@ Being a history buff and interested in business and economic history what happened with Dayton was that this was a fairly entrepeneurial city, where there was early-on an interest in manufacturing. It may be difficult to believe this but Dayton was more of a manufacturing center than Louisville during the antebellum era. The dominance of NCR and Delco obscures this as they were such huge employers (and probably drove the 20th century population growth). There was a dominant employer in the 19th century, too, the Barney & Smith railroad car company. But there was always a robust ecosystem of smaller firms making and processing things. This continued into the 20th century, with new firms sprining up working in newer lines of business and new technologies (like electrical machinery) There must have been a local network of angel investors and venture capitalists to fund these start-ups, too. There had to be at least some access to start up capital to get these firms off the ground. The modern problem is that though the local economy was robust enough to shift between different types of manufacturing through history, it was always about "making things". The end of or diminishing of manufacturing in the US Midwest means Dayton has lost its raison d' etre. And people are wondering what, if anything, will replace it. Personally, I think if that entrepeneurial culture is still out there and some sort of informal network of startup finance is in-place, one will conitinue to see start ups of various sorts in the local economy, and some of them may become sucessful, turn a profit, grow, maybe turn into "gazelles", creating employment (there is some evidence this was happening). So the economy will be more diversified, but made up of smaller and mid sized firms, not the giant mass-employers like NCR or GM. BTW, there is a good documentary coming on HBO tonight, "The Last Truck", about the closure of the Moraine assembly plant. Might be worth watching. It gives the end of this chapter in local economic history national exposure.

^ Yes that is correct, for between the I-70 interchange and the traffic circle (Wagner Ford Road exit). You can see the Needmore Road interchange construction in the 1970 aeriel, with completion either in 1970 or 1971. This stretch of I-75 predated the interstate system. Here is a history of that stretch of highway: Dixie Bee-Line....

Very few Americans would want to live in a Changmai. It's too dense and close together. Ultimately this does get down to cultural values in that the US is not an urban culture or does not value urbanity. The trope is "urban=ghetto", or "urban = racial minority", or "urban= crime", or "urban = congestion/pollution", or "urban=bad schools", or "urban = vice"...one can go on and one. City-->bad. Country--> good. America values the small town and rural as a cultural model, not the city, although there are moments when one can see a different narrative in the culture. I say America...but there is a reader coming out that takes a cross-cultural look at the phenomena. From the publishers website: Fleeing the City Studies in the Culture and Politics of Antiurbanism Edited by Michael J. Thompson This collection of essays explores the phenomenon of antiurbanism: the antipathy, fear, and hatred of the city. Antiurbanism has been a pervasive counter-discourse to modernity and urbanization especially since the beginning of industrialism and the dawning of modern life. Most of the attention on modernity has been focused on urbanization and its consequences. But as the essays collected here demonstrate, antiurbanism is an equally important reality as it can be seen as playing a crucial role in cultural identity, in the formation of the self within the context of modernity, as well as in the root of many forms of conservative politics and cultural movements. @@@ Introduction PART I: THEORIZING ANTIURBANISM * What is Antiurbanism? A Theoretical Perspective / Michael J. Thompson * Antiurbanism in the United States, England, and China / Robert A. Beauregard * The Origins of Antiurbanism / James A. Clapp * PART II: ANTIURBANISM IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE * Pastoral Ideals and City Troubles / Leo Marx * Boys in the City: Homoerotic Desire and the Urban Refuge in Early-Twentieth-Century Germany / Elena Mancini * Antiurbanism, New York, and the Early-Twentieth-Century American National Imagination / Angela M. Blake * PART III: ANTIURBANISM IN SOCIETY AND POLITICS * Imagining the Urban Poor / Roger Salerno * Americans, Urbanism, and Sprawl: An Exploration of Living Preferences / Emily Talen * Fundamentalism and Antiurbanism: The Frontier Myth, the Christian Nation, and the Heartland / Eduardo Mendieta * Against Safety, Against Security: Reinvigorating Urban Life / Don Mitchell

The 1930 Wagner Map of Dayton shows the development north of the city along the Dixie Highway. Development was also extending east along Needmore Road. Though the map shows these eastern streets as par of the suburb of Needmore…. .,..they were really their own plat; Outing Park. …which conjures up images of taking an outing to the country in ones Model A or Chevy or Maxwell, perhaps to a picnic grove. Or to this new plat, to build your small bungalow out in the open spaces, away from the crowded smoky city. This was one of the last plats in the Northridge era before the Depression, and one of the first auto-suburbs of Dayton. And in the 1940s it was partly destroyed by the needs of the auto, as the new US 25 Super Highway bisected it. A blow-up of the plat, showing the original blocks shaded in yellow. It looks like the new super-highway took the east side of of Bangor Avenue, which became a sort of frontage road. Outing Park in 1954. By this time the plat was mostly built-out with a mix of housing types. Probably a few pre-war things, but mostly in wartime housing and early postwar styles of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Outing Park in 1962. This excellent USDA Soil Survey aeriel provides a snapshot of Outing Park pretty much as it was in the early postwar era, showing the plenty of housing and a somewhat wooded area on Outing Park Avenue. The north-south streets are labeled, and one can see some new churches and a gas station at the Needmore/I-75 intersection. Recall that this stretch of the interstate was not true limited access until later. One can also see the early commercialization of Needmore Road. Outing Park in 1965. Not much has changed since the early 1960s. One can still a collection of houses on the southern part of the eastern half of the plat. Things where about to drastically change. Outing Park in 1970 The stretch of I-75 from the I-70 interchange and the traffic circle had the dubious distinction of being the only segment with traffic lights and unsignalized cross-traffic. This led to national notoriety as one of the US’s “die-ways” due to fatal accidents as high speed interstate traffic entered this quasi-limited access suburban environment. The result was the conversion of this segment to true limited access, with grade-separated interchanges and no cross traffic. The work was underway in 1970, which meant big changes to Outing Park. Houses were taken for the Needmore interchange ramps (including what was left of Bangor Avenue) and the plat was chopped up by frontage road extensions. Commercial & industrial encroachment was whittling away the housing stock. All shown on this fuzzy 1970 USDA soil survey ariel: …& around this time Outing Park Avenue was probably changed to Wadsworth Road, obliterating any indication that this place was once a “place” Outing Park in 1974 ..this USGS topo pretty much confirms the changes in the 1970 USDA aerial, showing the disappearance of houses and ongoing commercial encroachment. Outing Park in 1982 The 1970s did their work via continued commercial and industrial encroachment from Needmore Road and in the plat itself, and ongoing house removals. One can also see large scale industrial development to the south, as this part of suburbia was evolving into an industrial/logistics zone. One can see the areas between the frontage roads and the interstate evolving into a commercial/industrial belt. Outing Park in 2000 Things get bigger and more parking. Business and church expansions, especially extensive parking, making things less park like (and somewhat denser). By this time Forest Hill Ave. is nearly obliterated. Outing Park Today Our work is done The plat is all but obliterated by ongoing transformation to commercial/industrial use and parking. The last trees are being cleared, and only a handful of houses are left. Some of the last houses, on Oak Grove Avenue… ..and Outing Park Avenue (now renamed Wadsworth Road). A postwar transition to the ranch: And a 1940s cape cod and 1950s blue collar ranch side-by-side. These might be taken by the Invasion of the Plat Snatchers; though they appear as single family houses the aeriels don’t show backyards, instead they have parking & utility buildings. Next door is the industrial big box that one finds all over around here. The last of Forest Hill Avenue. Two houses left… …then came Tim Horton and his expanding parking lot …and then there was one. The oak grove of Oak Grove Avenue in the background: Outing Park to Outing Parking Lot.

This was probably a lot rougher than a sitcom suburb if it was considered a problem area ripe for urban (suburban?) renewal. Lucy was, I think, set in a city apartment, which is interesting if you think about it. It and the Honeymooners were the two urban sitcoms that I recall. There's a subtext to this post, and that is "flight from the city"...but for factories. Dayton lost a lot of people to suburbia, but it seems it lost a lot of industry, too....not to "the South", but to nearby suburbs.

Im thinking Garden Station is or was a project of the Circus Creative Collective. They had a great thing going on during the last Urban Nights, taking over that old tavern and restaruant at 3rd & Jeff.

Oh Well.

Continuing the prehistory of sprawl north of Dayton, I’ve posted on on pre-Depression auto plats and the US 25 superhighway of the 1940s. This is a joine between the two..a farmette development next to US 25. The site in 1931. Per this real estate map the site was not a subdivision yet. Owned by John & Lucy Pierce. Maybe Marianne was the daughter? In 1942-43 the super-highway was built through the area, skirting the site of the plat. ….which apparently was platted in the very late 1930s or early to mid 1940s, because it appears on this mid/late 1940s map as a new plat among the pre-war/pre-Depression developments north of the city, north of Needmore Road and east of US 25: Interestingly enough the plat as shown here had an access from the ostensibly limited access highway, and one from Needmore Road on a small strip of land (this was named Wadsworth Road) Notably there was no frontage road. The subdivision was laid out with narrow street frontage but with exceptionally deep lots; the “country estates”. This was pretty common out in California for ranchette and mini-farm developments. The Louisville suburb of Fairdale has a lot of this, too. But maybe not so much here in Ohio. The modern parcelization from the auditors website: Marianne Country Estates wasn’t a paper plat. It was built-on during the 1940s, because it appears in a late 1940s planning study as a housing problem area, which probably means this: 1. Wartime jerry building 2. Lack of sewers and perhaps lack of plumbing (outhouses) 3. No water supply: wells and cisterns. This was probably cleaned up as there was 1950s-era housing visible on the plat today. So it became a place to build during the postwar boom. In fact it was largely built-out by the mid 1950s, as per this 1954-55 USGS topo: To the south, Needmore Road was still, at this time, a two lane road lined with houses. By the mid 1950s property north of the plat was subdivided as a frontage road development, connecting Marianne Country Estates (hearafter referred to MCE) north to Stop Eight Road. Note the plat died out into open country to the east; there was no northward extension of Webster Street yet. Note that the connection to US 25 via Ashcraft Road never happened. And the frontage road development never continued south into MCE. After 1955 the US 25 Super Highway was incorporated into the interstate system as I-75, but it didn’t yet recieve true limited access and grade separation, having the distinction of being the only segment of I-75 to have traffic lights & cross traffic. After the interstate opened commercial development started up on Needmore Road, including a motel. Yet MCE remained mostly unchanged, as one can see on this 1962 aerial: One can see light industrial development entering the area along Webster Street. Just a few years later, in 1965, not much has changed. The motel has expanded a bit, and there is now a small church in the middle of MCE. In 1970 construction was underway converting this stretch of I-75 into a true limited access expressway. And industrial/commercial encroachment was accelerating, with ongoing conversion of Needmore into a commercial strip. Development was jumping north of Needmore via the northward extension of Webster Street to Stop Eight, and the expansion of industry along Webster via individual buildings and industrial parks. One starts to see encroachment into MCE. 1974. A portentious year. The year of the first big postwar recession and the oil price shock. But there was continuing industrial/commercial development in this area, between 1970-1974. During this era manufacturing was in full flight from Dayton, but apparently this was not hitting suburban development, since a small industrial park west of Webster, under development in 1970, was substantially built out by 1974. And industry continued to encroach on MCE. 1982. The era of the early 1980s double-dip recession. The 1970s was a decade of substantial industrial/commercial encroachment into MCE. Mini-storage developments appear on the northwest near I-75. By 1983 industrial development has expanded into the open country north of MCE. For an era of economic and industrial stagnation for Dayton this area seemed to sucking up what growth there still was in the region. 2000. The new millennium. Nearly 20 years after the Reagan era, the pattern continued, with ongoing commercial and industrial encroachment. By this time Needmore Road lost whatever residential character it gad, and the industrial development was filling in empty fields and dead land in MCM, as well as encroaching via ongoing farmette conversions. Marianne Country Estates today. Aint country no mo So lets take a look. Heading north on Wadsworth from Needmore. & the intersection of Longines. One your left, little house and little factory next door. This will repeat throughout the plat. Wadsworth and Aschcraft. Coming up..a closer look at the left (north) side of Ashcraft. The central block of Marianne Country Estates…. Before and after. The block in 1962 and today. Some interesting features labeled, but one can do ones own visual comparison on how things changed. And today, with the plat book showing the “obvious” industrial conversions. There are some not-so-obvious ones, too. The north side of Ashcraft, with three examples noted. How to tranform a farmette…. 1. Sliver Building Industrial Park: Take the entire lot and turn it into an industrial site, with hardscaping (gravel or pavment) and Butler buildings. 2. Crankster Gangster: Let the property go to seed, the house go to ruin, and run a junkyard or some other shady deal. What you cant see in the thumbnail is the Cat tearing down the house. Don’t know what this is today. 3. Blue-Collar Live-Work: Live in the house in front, have a little machine shop or auto repair business in back (with its own driveway), and pasture your horse in the back forty. Another approach is to acquire entire ranchettes and portions of adjoining lots and turn them into larger “industrial park sized” properties Well, that was interesting, huh? What’s not shown is the Invasion of the Farmette Snatchers, where existing houses remain but become the “front office”, with the industrial stuff happening in a pole barn or prefab in the back. The front yard becomes a parking lot. Here’s a good one. Urban Planning for Libertarians: Look, Ma, no zoning… …sort of a pink flamingos meets to punch presses thing going on. 1950’s ranch flanked by two job-shops. This might have been the original idea. Country Estate. But behind this is some sort of semi parking area: Street scene. Like any other large lot plat, except ever other building is a factory (or something) New Yorkers have those narrow skyscrapers they call sliver buildings. Marianne Country Estates has horizontal sliver buildings, like this one. Though narrow, they’re long. And the aren’t low…(look in the back) (for sale by Miller Valentine, per the sign in front) Remember that access point to the old US 25 from the 1940s upthread? Here it is today. Looks like it survives via those paired drives. But this is a neat illustration on how they dealt with the highway frontage…they stuck the houses deep on the lots closer to the freeway(!)… but then as time went on, things were filled in on some of the lots…more houses and prefab stuff. ..this place is just weird. Washed out google streetview, but this could be one of those WWII emergency housing shacks: Longines Symphonette. This is the last house on Longines Road. Almost literally, but it is geographically the last on this dead end. Looks nice. All green and wooded. It looks like a country estate. But note the road to the right heading to something in the background …what’s back there? Why, its some sort of truck/junk thing. And how about that wasteland next door to the right? So, the exurban dream gone dystopian?

So whats' Grand Rapids' secret sauce. An economy not based on manufacturing? It used to be. When did they make the shift to divesify? Are was seeing a smaller Pittsburgh here...move from factory work to something else. What is that something else? Im really fascinated by this city doing as well as it apparently does. That downtown looks great. And fairly intact without being chopped up by a lot of parking and empty plazas. Maybe its the angled streets. But the buildings are in good condition, too.

I think the whole city was like this at one time? I made a special point of going here since my partner is a chicano and he wanted to see it (and do some food shopping). Turns out this area starts close in, near that Mich Central ruin, as you see here, but extends out to near the city limits. Springwells neighborhood, I think its called further out. It actually IS a lot like Chicago....

Maybe suburbia, or sprawl, the modern form of it, has been around for so long and we take it for granted, not seeing it they way people of the time saw it, as this new modern way of living.

I can speak from experience on this since I am a child of the 1960s, when the move to suburbia was in full flow. And the metro area I recall was Chicagoland. Suburbia was indeed seen as fresh and new. The old city as congested and crowded, houses too close together. Parking was a pain. So you got into the car and headed out to the postwar suburbs, those big long low new shopping centers like Winston Hills and Harlem & Irving Plaza, with the bright lights and lots of parking. And take the Northwest Super-Highway (later renamed the Kennedy) out to the wide opens spaces..the exileration of speed, no stop & go, out to places like Randhurst (early mall) or Hoffman Estates and the new subdivisions out past the Forest Preserves, out beyond the bunglow belt and the two-flats and congestion. It was fresh, new, the Jetsons.... fast, modern, sunny days.... I guess, for Chicagoland, the tollway Oasis was sort of a symbol of suburbias modern life: (photo taken the year and month of my birth, wow..)

I just work here. I unfortunatly have a tendancy to keep comparing this place to Louisville, and it's just not a fair comparison. Except for one thing. Dayton has the better suburbs. Suburbia here is less trashy and ill-planned and the suburbs often are real "places", with a small town or village at their core. I think that is the best thing about Dayton, really, is the suburbia/small town "modern Mayberry" thing. And some of the countryside around, like along the rivers or creeks (say, Bellbrook/Spring Valley, Germantown, Englewood, etc) is nice, not your stereotypical midwest deadening flatness. In some ways and in some places you forget you are in the Midwest and think you migt be further east somewhere. The sad and infuriating thing for me is how the old city is being trashed and abandonded. I just can't watch this urban trainwreck anymore! I am over it. This old building stock in irreplacable and Dayton has so much of it. The old Dayton neighborhoods could be SO cool if there was a change in heart somehow and a return to the city. Then you'd have more of a Louisville and less than a wannabe Detroit. Do they? I didnt know the place figured in their music. GbV apparently is or was located here but they stopped performing locally back in the 1980s, aside from the very occasional show. There is a local music scene and that is, ironically, how I first heard about Dayton (via promos for rock shows at Hara Arena on the FM rock radio in 1970s Louisville, and again via a bluegrass radio show fron San Mateo CA, that dedicated an entire afternoon to the Dayton & vicinity bluegrass scene of yore). I am, or used to be, a music fan, and that was what made Dayton bearable. The local public radio (and the old WOXY) did a lot featuring of local music scenes, which meant trad music, blues, etc as well as the alt/indy stuff. And there are at least two excellent live music venues at Canal Street Tavern and Gillys, supplmented by a few more now, like OE and the Dirt Collective, and the "house scene" that is quasi-underground (live shows in houses, not house music). Used to be the "donut shop scene", where people would get up bluegrass and gospel jam sessions later at night. And there are some bar-based jam session going on too, for the trad/old-time styles. This musical thang is really Dayton's strong suite, but that only works if yr a fan, or play.

The Guardian Angles seem to be sort of a way of doing community policing... So, yeah, the GA's are OK in my book. I see them as a positive force.

Wow, cant believe they are still around. Curtis Silwa or Siwla or whatever his name was gave a speech at UofK while I was there. He sounded ...intense. The red berets. I figured they got some sort of discount from the boy scouts, becuase back in the early/mid 70s the boy scouts had red berets as part of their uniform.... This is certainly the case for Dayton....Cleveland too, huh?

Imteresting they are pumping water as far as Mason. Groundwater is a source for the Dayton/Hamilton/Middletown areas. I was suprised to read that the Feds built a water pipeline from Hamilton to Evendale (to the GE plant) during WWII to provide a water supply, tapping into the Hamilton system. I think that was proposed as the source for Union Twp water. So that aquifer along the Great Miami is a poetential source for southern Butler County. I think the extension of infrastructure is the untold story of sprawl, and has played into some sprawl fights in the past since it is a limiting factor in development, or its density. This was the case here in Dayton for the suburb of Beavercreek, where the locals resisted the exetnsion/development of comprehensive utility systems to preserve the large lot low density quality of the suburb. Developers got around that by using "plat water systems".

I was in our new Super Wal-Mart today, and noticed they've pretty much copied Meijers food sales concept, right down to how they lay out the aisles, produce, and bakery dept. BTW, Meijer, here in Dayton, is union, as is Cub Foods and Kroger, Wal-Marts competetitor. Recycling big boxes is the new commericial real-estate/adaptive re-use design problem.

For me this is one of the more memorable buildings in Dayton. The market used to be called the Midnight Market, and there was a painting of the owner on the sign in front of the market, over the door. It has since been covered up. Down the street (west on Third) there was a nice sign/mural for Dafflers Pharmacy, which also closed and the sign repainted. I think there was sign painter here that specialized in these old style painted signs and murals. I'm not sure he's in businnss. Midnight Market was called that for years (it appears as such in old city directories), but it closed in the early 1990s or very late 1980s, and the space was briefly a used record shop. I dont know what happeed after that, but the building is vacant/abandoned and iwas deteriorating the last time I went by. I can see it was a victime of the tagging wave that's swept east Dayton, as one can see the gray paint patches covering up the scrawls....so someone is keeping it up a bit. Yet, I wouldn't be suprised to see it eventually get torn down .. If so it would be another lost landmark. becuase its location on a prominent corner makes it a memorable part of the cityscape. Now though, it has probably moved from landmark to eyesore and hazard.

A good example of a failed (or fading) historic district. Hurry! I hear the bulldozers revving up.