Jeff

I used to be a Democrat many years ago in Kentucky, but have been a Republican since the mid 1980s. As you can tell by my pix threads my interests in cities are as historical hobby of sorts , as sort of a "heritage tourism" thing.

^ well, the place was booming with work from the auto industry, Frigidaire, NCR, and such. Maybe a better example would be Chicago suburbia from that time, which must have had a hundred square miles at least of platted land, streets, infrastructure, but nearly no houses, when the crash hit. These ghost suburbs stayed that way until finally being built-out in the late 1950s...there was that much land available. The most famous one was Skokie.

Great shots of Akron! This place has to be a competitor for the "most underrated city" title. I actually stayed in that Quaker Square hotel, as part of a trip to Youngstown (I used Akron as a base to go to Youngstown)...my experience was similar to Robs...Akron seemed pretty dead..but that was in the early or mid 90s, over 10 years ago. But then I drove through there last December on my way to Cleveland and was more impressed as the place seemed busier than I recalled. Based on that trip and these pix Akron sure is worth a second look from me. Finding time for a road trip up there is tough, though. It would be fun to give Akron the same pix/analyses treatment that I give Dayton...particularly some shots of the "company town" neighborhoods around Goodyear and Firestone. And Id like to check out that Maiden Lane place.

I went to elementary school at St Stanislaus B&M in Chicago, and Jesse Stuart Jr High and High School in Valley Station, KY (jr and sr high schools shared the same library, gym, and cafeteria and music and shop rooms..basically it was one big school), and I'm a file clerk.

This pre-built sprawl is the result of land speculation in a booming region. There was a bit of this in the Dayton area during the Roaring 20s....areas where platted, infrastructure laid in, but never built on until late 1940s and 1950s. I posted a bit on this with those "Kettering" pix threads last fall.

That was my experience too, here in Dayton. My grocery shopping is usually at Miejer and Cub, amd Meijer for sundrys. I wasn't too impressed with Wal-Mart. I'd say Miejer is sort of between Wal-Mart and Target in range. Meijer has moved into the Louisville market, too, and seems to be popular there. They are also in suburban Chicago. Interestingly, the Dayton Meijers are all unionized, which is sort of unusual for big box retail (though Cub is union too, here).

Coming from Dayton, I find this Columbus inferiority complex a bit odd since Cols seems pretty much a big city to me...it just feels big, (as well as having that dramatic skyline and those spread out suburbs)...and it has a sort of funky, "outside-the-box" side, with things like a pro soccer team, hosting Ameriflora, and building that replica of the Santa Maria. And things like COSI and the Wexner and such.

I was thinking about Shusters remarks about regionalism and Louisville. What happened with Louisville is that some of the foundations of regionalism where laid early-on..in the 1940s and early 1950s, with the establishment of a city-county planning commission, and city-county parks dept., as well as countywide water and sewer systems (Louisville Water Company and MSD). And, the public library was also countywide. I think for Dayton and Montgomery County, a lot of this would never happen due to the suburban jurisdictions gaurding their turf and wanting to have local control I do think some baby steps to regionalism would be to have a countywide water and sewer district, seperate from local governments, as a countywide authority like RTA, perhaps. This is a mundane concept, but try to imagine Daytonians (and their suburban counterparts) getting their heads around the idea of "no more water department".....which goes to show how far away this community is from any real regional thinking.

^ ooooh....not good.

Owenton isn't hillbilly. You have to travel to places like Irvine or Hazard or Salyersville for that real Appalachian vibe. Owenton is more of a backwoods or isolated county seat. In Kentucky the largest town in the county is usually the county seat. But some county seats are more isolated and rural than others, for various reasons. In Owentons case it is the Eden Shale belt, which is this hill country surrounding the Inner Bluegrass area around Lexington. This is broken country not suited for large scale farming, so and some of the county seats in the area are smallish...places like Brookville and Mount Olivet and Carlisle. You can also see this in Central Kentucky in the Green River country, where county seats up in the so-called "Shawnee Hills" ...this broken plateau countr beyond Mammoth Cave... are smaller than the ones down in the good flat limestone farmland of the Pennyrile.

I should bump my Fairborn @ Halloween thread

No, this one is in the old part of Fairborn. The barber is also a sort of trader or pawnbroker and he sometimes has to take a break from cutting my hair when someone comes in wanting to sell something or buy something. He does a good job though, so he gets a lot of buisness.

Didn't Grasscat say he was in a band at one time? The Grass Cats

I'm going through a manic phase.

I'm waiting a bit before checking this place out, until the crowds die down a bit. ...in old downtown D8N you could see homeless, bag people, street preachers, the marginally insane, etc ...downtown Dayton as a destination was before my time, but probably there were enough regular people downtown in the olden days so the all the above didn't dominate the street scene.

Commication problems aside, I think McLin is a scapegoat for some deeper problems here. Schusters' comments where a hoot: "....We have so many empty buildings that really need to be torn down....We could devastate four blocks of buildings and give them adequate parking..... Shall I repost my modest proposal for the Arcade and DDN blocks? Seriously, the whole parking thing is that parking isn't free downtown, so suburbia will always be more appealing to auto-dependent suburbanites, where one can park for free, pretty close to ones destination. Anyway, it is sort of neat that Shuster moved downtown as well as having given the money to build the performing arts center and that condo tower. If it wasn't for him there still would be a big vacant department store at 2nd and Main.

I wonder if there is some connection with the Crawford McGregor and Canby company. This was one of the oldest companies in the city, starting out making shoe lasts and wooden pegs. Since they where good at forming and working wood they got into golf clubs and bowling things (this when McGregor joined the company)(the factory was at first near Wyandotte and Fourth, then moving to a big plant in Edgemont in the 1880s). So there is that local connection with golf and the surname "McGregor". The propertywas a golf course back in the 1920s and 30s, so I bet DP&L took it over as a recreation park for its employees, similar to the NCR Country Club

Exploring some more the area between Main and Warren, walking the busy streets mostly. Starting out with the delightfully populist-deco Goody's. Whats this ?!? Mircocars where popular in postwar Europe, particularly Germany. This was sort of an American version of the kleinwagen...I guess Powell Crosely thought of the car as an appliance like his radios and refrigerators. The small car does make sense for an dense urban environment..... Multifamily on Warren.... This is Marvin Gardens. It is a good example of a sort of row house or town house building that used to be scattered around Dayton (and still can be found in the older neighborhoods). Marvin Gardens is on Preservation Dayton's most endangered list, or used to be. Apartments and a apartment house made to look like a house. (i have to say that second floor balcony looks like it would be a great place to hang-out on a Friday evening, watching the passersby and the sunset) We are in the "zone of destruction" so there is a lot of open space around, with buildings standing isolated surrounded by open lots... Another view of this rowhouse with that sort of Dutch/Flemish styling, which was somewhat popular in Dayton (see the Arcade and the old fire station on W. Third for two examples).... And all the open space...Marvin Gardens visible in the backround across the vacant lots. Some surviving houses on a side street connecting Warren with Main. Looking south at Miami Valley Hospital over the rooftops and backyards Nice old house on Main Street Spanish revival commercial block (now vacant and boarded up) on Main Heading up the hill to Miami Valley Hospital The old mansion on the corner dates to the 1880s or 90s. I recall taking a tour of it many years ago during the "Mothers Day House Tour" which was sponsored by the Historic Society or Preservation Dayton (I forget which). Massive Miami Valley Hospital looms over the neighborhood. As its on a hill it looks even taller. Heading back into the city on Warren Some old Warren Street houses, some with their original iron fences Rescue Mission. There is some social service stuff here for the poor and homeless. I guess if you end up living here in this poor neighborhood and something goes wrong in your life the next step could be the street. The zone of destruction....another isolated houses surrounded by open space ...heading closer to downtown things become more parking lot and low density commercial.... Sunset in Dayton A cold winter walk....Time to pop in to warm-up, for some music on the juke box and a beer....

Ault Park is one of the most European of American urban parks (or the ones I've seen). The landscaping concept seems right out of one of the German princely towns, with their palace and formal garden (Wurzburg Residenz, Schoss Wilhelmshohe and the the Herkules monument at Kassel, etc) surrounded by a sort of naturalistic park. That pavillion at the end of Ault, end the end of a garden and lawn, seems right right out of that German baroque garden planning tradition.....it reminds me a lot of Shoenbrunn Palace and the Gloriette terminating the garden axis...

Exploring South Park...how it was becoming more dense, via alley houses and minimal lot line development....prior to streetcar or even contemporary with it.... Picturesque quirky street angles....the bulidng at the distance is the "Orleans House", whch was an antique dealership) Minimal yards/zero lot line development South Park Alley Houses Funky South Park...another example of Dayton city people getting creative with yard decorations...I could probably do a thread of "The Folk Art Yards of Dayton"

Some adjustments to the thread header. ...and to answer Convovercourt: A big portion of South Park is a "historic disrtrict" (Dayton's largest) and there has been gentrification going on here. Most of what I'm showing isn't in that district, though, and isn't focused around the highlight of the district, which is parkway or boulevard a few block to the south of the area I'm featuring. You can probably see pix of that elsewhere on this board. My interest here is sort of "archeological"..the continuatation and evolution and appearance of certain forms of vernacular working class architecture in Dayton, as well as the urban fabric or morphology of the pre-mass transit city. This isn't really"historic" as this type of building doesn't really have artistic signifigance.

You know, I've been through Owenton once and dont recall it being this large. I seem to recall it was on a high ridge in some hill country..Owen county being quite rolling.. The brick columns...there is another good Kentucky example of this in Georgetown in Scott County, in Georgetown Colleges main hall. This is only one county away, so I wonder if there is some archictectural connection between the Owen County Courthouse and the Geoergtown building. I also notice some neat things happening with balconys and bay windows here....as well as the building with the big opening in the front for the stairs.

I see they redid the Lanier Mansion. Madison was really popular in the 1970s for Louisvillians for day trips..we would go there and ride bikes, I remember. It became sort of an antique center, too. As much as I like Madison their riverfront is a bit snaggletooth. I sort of like Ripleys riverfront better. One of the interesting facts about Madison is that it had either the first or second railroad in Indiana, as a way to connect the inland parts of the state with the Ohio (this was the impetus for a number of early lines in the Ohio valley...to connect inland areas with the river). The Madison railroad used a stationary engine to pull trains up to the top of the bluffs, where they could be hitched to a locomotive. This was used in early railroads in England for steep grades, like the Liverpool and Manchester and one of the early lines out of London. The Madison example would be one of the few in the US. I think Madison was the largest city in Indiana until Indianapolis took over. It certainly is frozen in time...I guess this is a bit what Louisville or Cincinnati looked like before they became much larger and replaced their older buildings with newer. For other neat river towns...in Indiana there is Vevay, between Madison and Rising Sun. It also has very nice old buildings. I wasnt too impressed with the rivertowns downriver from Louisville (Tell City and Cannellton, except for that huge mill in Tell City). On the Kentucky side the largest between Louisville and Cincinnati is Carrollton, but it isn't as big or quite as nice as Madison. The better Kentucky towns seem to be upriver from Cincinnati: Augusta and Maysville. Maysville in particular is really neat as the town actually climbis the bluffs behind, and the downtown is rather dense and intact...actually a bit more dense than Madisons'...but more later 19th/20th century (though there are quite a bit of antebellum things in town, too).

It’s not really called that, that’s what I call it since this area is sort of lower down in elevation than the rest of the South Park neighborhood (though I will be looking at a bit of “upper South Park” too)…what I will show you is basically the area north of Hickory and also between Main and Warren south to Miami Valley Hospital. Starting out with the early plats of Dayton. Daniel Cooper platted this area out by 1812 as out-lots. As in the Oregon and elsewhere in east Dayton the Cooper out-lots are the palimpsest of the modern street grid. What is interesting is Brown Street, which originally ran off at an angle as it left what was to become the Oregon. It was eventually cut through to connect with Warren Street, thus the original alignment became “Old Brown Street”, today’s Morton Street. What drove this odd out-lot configuration, which ran off at an angle along Hickory Street? I think this line of out-lots followed the low bluff or rise that curves through east Dayton. More noticeable at places like Fairground Hill or St Anne Hill /Dutoit Street it passes through South Park, too. Daniel Cooper was, according to early accounts, very aware of the possibilies of water power, and perhaps saw this location as an opportunity for mill sites if water could be brought to the rise. This didn’t happen at this location, but Seely’s Ditch was cut through just below the bluff, which kicked off the first plats of townlots in the area (from the 1830s). Portions of Lower South Park where platted by 1839 The line of Seely’s Ditch as it passes through Lower South Park: By 1868/69 much of the area had been platted, but actual construction lagged the platting a bit. As one can see by this map Lower South Park was sort of an extension of the Oregon District as the city grew to the south. Here is a map showing lots that where built on by 1868/69, illustrating the physical growth of Dayton up to that time. This is not really a figure-ground map but just shows build-out up to that time. This is the old 19th century antebellum and Civil-War era city, Dayton before the horse car and streetcar: And the pattern without the base map, as a diagram of urban growth …which represents some of the oldest housing in Dayton. Incidentally one of the first horse car lines in Dayton passed through here on Brown Street (the Oakwood Street Railway). By the 1930s Downtown and its fringe was impinging on both the Oregon and Lower South Park as part of the urban recycling process, replacing housing with buisiness, especially in the area along Main and Warren along the old canal…later Patterson Blvd. Older houses where also being replaced by apartments and sort of rowhouses. Brown Street remained a main route into the city, which would have been experienced as traveling through increasingly dense neighborhoods as one got closer to downtown. The big hit came with the postwar urban renewal and expressway construction, which decimated the early and mid-19th century neighborhoods of Dayton. A close-up of how this affected Lower South Park. Brown Street as the route connecting South Park with the Oregon was severed, and the US 35 Expressway formed a barrier between the neighborhoods, or perhaps created a barrier as Lower South Park might be considered to have been an extension of the Oregon. The Expressway voiding urban space and breaking the city, on Buckeye Street, which was itself made to conform to highway engineering via widening and curving… The 1950s planners’ future for the Oregon and Lower South Park: public housing. This and a project in the Oregon where to be the start of the replacement of these neighborhoods via urban renewal Lower South Park as of 1980. Some historic features overplayed on the map, showing how Seely’s ditch remains in ghost form as the Burns Street parkway, and how Brown Street was obliterated by public housing and the expressway. A big block was also removed to form a park next to & behind the old Emerson School on Hickory Street. Dayton’s great neighborhood market (our West Side Market) on Wayne Avenue was right in the path of the expressway so was razed. The same neighborhood in 1868/69 ..and a modern tour of oldest South Park, of some houses on Hickory, Bonner and other parts… Hickory Street A lot of this street is somewhat “newer”, dating from the later 19th century and later, but a few oldies remain…. Perhaps one of the oldest houses in South Park? It sits on an 1845 plat, and bears a family resemblance to certain Oregon houses …the Oregon twins, of which the above house is a cousin: Hickory Street streetscape: What one sees here is sort of the Dayton version of the “workingman’s cottage” one finds in Chicago. In early Chicago these where built on the outskirts of the city, just like these in Dayton. Another way of looking at these is as the Dayton version of the shotgun house. If these are the original houses on the lots we can say this house form had appeared in Dayton by 1868… perhaps these are some of the earliest examples. . Bonner Street Platted in 1851. On the 1869 map this block of Bonner shows as mostly built-out. But I think there is some urban recycling going on there. Two probably original houses on Bonner And an example of recycling. What is probably an old house from the original plat (and one that looks a lot like samples in the Oregon) next to what is probably a later 19th century foursquare that replaced earlier housing. More Bonner Street. The one on the far left is post WWII. Two more Bonner Street houses as examples of the Dayton working class cottage. These are probably what was originally on this street, probably the one on the left is older and the one on the right was infill as an example of “doubling up” on one lot. Taking a look at two other clusters as an example of the genesis of South Park…this further down on Hickory. On set is perhaps older than the other. Old Brown/Morton & Hickory The heavily modified “1840 House”. Very possibly the oldest in South Park, the heavy front porch and window modifications obscure a family resemblance to old Oregon houses. Oregon Houses: 1840 House The 1840s House’s neighbors: blue house pix On the alley…. Across the street (and this one is between 1860 and 1869..Civil War era) Hickory and Brown and Alberta Street. All of these are between 1860 and 1869 ..the brick porch is probably a lot later than the house. …I think this one has been heavily remodeled. Taking a walk in Lower South Park So far its been Urban Analysis on Hickory Street. Lets just walk down the bluff and wander around this Lower South Park. Burns Street…route of the Seely’s Ditch canal Big houses on the rise overlooking Burns… Funky angles here as Brown meets “Old Brown” streets Dense Urban Dayton On Buckeye Street…. Large vacant lot. We are in one of Dayton’s “zones of destruction”, where there is housing abandonment and demolition going on. As the expressway wall blocks us from the Oregon, we turn back into Lower South Park “The Zone of Destruction” Dayton Sawed-Off Shotguns… Crossing Warren: side streets between Warren and Main in the shadow of Miami Valley Hospital The little house in the foreground is probably original to this street Funky staircase Early doubles from the 1860s Dayton vernacular Maybe one of the last of its type to be built in Dayton And back across Warren to Burns, showing what urban renewal had in mind The Wayne Street Market building would have been straight ahead, exactly where the freeway is now The urban renewal vision….towers in a park, ringed by freeways…..(but a nice little walkway across the expressway to the Oregon) What we’d rather have….(or maybe not?)

To be honest the convienience of suburbia (& lack of a city income tax) is why I moved to suburban Dayton...though I live in a fairly busy "edge city" part of suburbia... And there is a lot of peer pressure to live in suburbia by coworkers and bosses...one is "steered" away from the city. I recall my boss telling me, when he found out I was at first looking to live in Dayton city: "Why do you want to live in Dayton? No one lives in Dayton." ..it is considered sort of an oddball thing to do, to live in the city. I have to say I enjoyed city living when I was in California (in the heart of Sacramento) and in inner-city Lexington. Not all suburban people are city-hostile, though it does seem to be often the case.