Jeff

I'm reading a history of Germantown Ohio, and the subject of evolution has come up. Shows how this was an issue even way-back-when.... The book talks about a newspaper editor, Harkrider, confronting the issue in local school... "Perhaps, too, he served the villiage well when he upheld the right of teachers to lecture on Darwinism in their classes. A member of the board, hearing a rumor that a teacher had taken up the dread subject, proposed his dismissal if he had. Harkrider spoke for teaching Darwinism and teaching it as more than theory. Would it not be better, he asked, to teach Darwinism and the scientific truth that the human family was improving as the ages rolled on that to teach, as he heard from some pulpits, that man started in a perfect condition but was degenerating. Whether the or not he made a telling case the board took no action against the teacher and did no officially forbid the teaching of Darwinism in the school" ---The Villiage, A History of Germantown Ohio, by Carl M. Becker The above incident happened in the late 1870s. And we Buckeyes are still conflicted about the subject!

The houses on St. Anne's Hill are magnificent ...and some of the ones here also have magnificent views, as they are on Dutoit Street, which sits on a rise overlooking downtown.

Hope Street is a good metaphor....quite a bit of the city is on Hope Street. But some nice pix, iconic images of Old Dayton. ...liked the Wright Dunbar one of 3rd...such potential there!

Speaking of the Dayton dialect there is a sort of old way of pronouncing placenames I picked up...i think its from the German... Miamisburg, for example. I prononunce it My-am-eesburg. Old timers pronounce it "Mi-am-is-berk" (with a short i) or "My-am-is-berk".

Quite true. I had a secretary from New Boston, over near Portsmouth, and she had such a thick accent it was nearly unintelligible.

..and Chicago. Back in the early days of radio there was the "WLS Barn Dance". ...this is where Bill Monroe, the "father of bluegrass music" first peformed on the air..he was living in East Chicago at the time. And in the 1960s there was WJJD that played "Country/Western"... Among the musicians that had country connections to start in Chicago was John Prine, whos father was from Kentucky...western KY, same as Bill Monroe. (actually there was a whole neighborhood of appalachian people...hillbillies they where called... in Chicago back then, in the Uptown area) For Ohio, Dwight Yoakam, the country star, came from Columbus (tho he broke on the West Coast doing openers for punk acts). @@@@@@@@@@@@ They Dayton pronunciation..never thought on it... Thats how I say it, too...Datin', or Dayt'n @@@@@@ Speaking of Appalachians the Appalachian Studies Association, which is a group of academics, is going to have a conference here in Dayton this year in March, topic being urban appalachians....here is a link to their conf. website.... Both Ends of the Road

I dont know who Nick Spencer is, but surfed into his blog and did enjoy it a bit. Interesting reading the comments to his Killing a City post. My opinion is the rumors of Cincinnatis demise are greatly exaggerated. The place still looks pretty much alive to me when I go down to visit. (but read his post about Joeseph Beth wanting to move downtown but not doing so..hmmm).

...or Kittyhawk? @@@@@@ Yeah, aviation. Doesn't do anything for me, but that's just me. That Air Force Museum is supposed to be a major collection of military aircraft, so I would figure that's the big tourist draw.

The Queen City

Read about it here ...local TV news guy.... The Many Faces of Dayton....

"Dayton, two exits of fun".....Pretty good! I'm going to use that in my sig line over at SSC & SSP

Ongoing exploration of what urban renewal had wrought....This time the "Perry-Mead"/"Miami Maple" urban renewal areas, consolidated as "Center City West". The story really begins in the proposals for a civic center before WWI and early proposals for crosstown "parkways". An early proposal, the "Group Plan", proposed a Beaux-Arts civic center complex across the river from downtown...but also extended across the river via bridges, malls, and other featueres. The scheme worked on a series of interlocking axis, somewhat influenced by the French Baroque town planning. ...such as the Parisian ensemble Pont Royale/Place de la Concorde/Madeline, which is a cross-river concept focusing on a church.... In the Dayton Group Plan the focus across the river was acomplished via a bidge and mall ... ...which would have have had Westiminster Presbyterian church as the focal point. Other Ohio cities did execute a "group plan" (Cleveland, and, based on C-Dawgs old Toledo pix , it seems Toledo as well), but Daytons never did get off the ground. In the 1930s, as auto traffic and congestion became an issue, a bouelvard plan was developed to facilitated cross town & through town traffic. This plan was for "Marginal River Bouelvards"...four lane boulevards or parkways parelling the various rivers coming through town. Based on the cross-sections these roads would have been true bouelevards, at grade, with medians and regular tree plantings. The downtown portion of the plan is illustrated here, incorporating the already existing Robert Boulevard, and requiring the reloction of the Miami River northward. This plan is interesting as it attempted to insert a crosstown highway system with minimal disruption of existing neighborhoods. Yet the desire for a civic center did not go away. Another scheme involved another "group plan", this time on the downtown side of the river, but east of downtown, near the present site of the library and Cooper Park. This was probably the last pre WWII plan for a Civic Center. Both of the Civic Center plans where quite grand and probably unrealistic. After WWII the Dayton & Montgomery gave a serious look at a civic center. Their consultant, a local architect, came up with a preferred alternative, relocating to an area near the Telephone Building, in the residential area immediately east of downtown, in this plan from 1946 or 47 This plan was apparently adopted, property was aquired, and construction of some public buildings began, notably the Safety buidling (the current Juvenile Courts and the School Board where also built around the same time, 1954)... The plan apparently had some sort of plaza proposed for the area in front of the Telephone Building...but in reality it was a sunken parking lot! So what was this East Side neighborhood that was chosen as the site of the new civic center? Here is a snapshot of the neighborhood in the late 40s/early 50s... Dowtown Dayton and adjacent areas.... ..and a close-up of "Center City West"... ....The area was a mix, historically. The area north of Third around 1st, 2nd, Monument, and Perry and Wilkinson was sort of a villa district, home to Dayton's first generation of haute bourgouise as was parts of Robert Boulevard along the Miami River. The areas south of Third was orginally a German area (Sacred Heart was their parish), and in the 1910s & 1920s the streets south of Third and east of Robert was sort of Dayton's "Greektown"..the Greek orthodox church was on Robert, just south of Third. On Fifth was an African American community, an extension of the "Hells Half Acre" ghetto south of the railroad tracks. By the 1940s the area also became home to a large community of Southern Appalachians..this was one of Dayton's "port of entry" neighborhoods from the Southern mountains. Third Street was, according Jim Nichols', in his Dayton Album, Remembering Downtown, one of Dayton's "mean streets". "It was also mean along W. Third Street, from Proctor Street to the river. Once again the bars and the booze. Little Mickey had his club there for awhile, but Mick kept things under control, at least most of the time. That end of W. Third was as treet of paradoxes. On the corner of Third and Proctor was a good drug store that sold nectar sodas. Next door was the Midnight Market, and all night grocery....But on down there were some rough bars and well you just didnt want to walk in there" My barber used to live here as this is where his folks move to from Tennessee. He told me there was a little diner run by this Greek guy he used to go to a lot. Apparenlty this was also the part of Dayton where homosexuals lived, as some older gay guys told me they had sex in places over on Robert Boulevard..."Queens Row". In any case, this area was slated as a problem housing area in postwar planning studies. Some pix of the area to give you a feel of the texture of the neighborhood (images courtesy of the Wright State Archives and Special Collections). These are from before WWII. Note that Third Street actually narrowed a bit entering this area...and the tree lined side streets....an ideal close-in neighborhood. ..from the north, looking south. Perry Street is the diagonal ...from the west, looking east. Mostly along 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and Perry... Third Street, with its bars, "jot em down stores", "hot shops" (short order counters) etc.... Perry Street, w. the dome of Sacred Heart Even at this early date the neighborhood was starting to be eroded away by parking lots, colored in yellow in this pix. Parking was to continue to eat into the neighborhood during the course of the 1950s... The Harlan Barthlomew plans from the early 1950s basically proposed a reogranziation of this neighborhood...high density residential along the river, and commercial and parking close in. the big long north-south gap in the plan was the alingment of the proposed "US 25 Expressway" (apparenlty the decision had been made sometime in the late 40s/early 50s to route this limited access highway east of downtown...a critical decsion for this neighborhood). Interestingly, the plan recommended a sunken expressway, similar to Fort Washington Way in Cincinnait, or the Dan Ryan west of the Chicago Loop (the ramp arrangement really reminds of the Dan Ryan near the Spaghetti Bowl), which would have been somewhat less intrusive, yet probably a real bottleneck as traffic increased over the years.. @@@@@ As the 1950s wore on more properties where demolished for parking in the neighborhood, and for the Civic Center, leaving a big hole in the neighborhood. Also, probably sometime in the 1950s, the final alignment of the "US 25 Expressway" (AKA I-75) was decided on, which pretty much would obliterate the west side of the neighborhood. Deteriorated housng conditions and the ongoing pockmarking by parking lots also drove a decision to urban renewal. The neighborhood, particularly the northern part, was seeing encroachment by downtown and new office construction so the concept was that this was going to be logical area of expansion of downtown Dayton. The area was apparently slated for urban renewal in 1958 or 1959. After the sucess of the Haymarket urban renewal effort in east Dayton, the city apparently was ready to embark on something more ambitious "Dowtown Dayton, A Look at Tomorrow, Today!"..the title of a candy-colored large format planning publication...illustrated the urban planning vision for the neighborhood. Here are some B/W scans of the areal photomontage....a modernist "magic land" of New Frontier America. This was contemporary with the Seattle Space Needle.... The area north of Third Street was to be developed into a Civic Center and office uses with some hotels. A row of apartment slabs along the river (somewhat reminiscent of what St Louis did do) completes this part of the scheme. South of Third was to be a large arena/convention center and a vast parking lot, and a high-rise convention hotel. Commercial & industrial uses where proposed for south of the arena. Again, this plan sort of piggybacked on pre-existing planning decisions and real estate trends, such as ongoing commercial encroachment. This illustration shows new commercial and civic construction that occured during the 1950s..... The concept was actually somewhat integrated...tower blocks and low-rises arranged around a system of plazas, greenspace, and water features...particularly around the Civic Center area...perhaps conceptually more akin to things like Gateway Center in Pittsburgh or the Albany Mall in Albany, NY, than what was actually built. Finally, the execution. A plan for the disposition of urban renewal parcels. Land split into parcels for sale, and the arena still remains as a feature, from this graphic from a market analysis. Based on this, the idea of an integrated design seems to have been tossed out the window (if it ever was seriously considered outside of a public relations pitch). Land aquistion and demolition started with the interstate highway construction in the early 1960s and was complete around 1966/67. The following graphic (made for a future thread on Mid Town Mart..stay tuned for that thread) is provided to illustrate how clean the slate was wiped west of downtown. Not only where houses and buisness removed, entire streets where obliterated. Of course the arena was never built. The site was selected for Sinclair Community Colleges' new campus sometime in the mid 1960s (Sinclair was located in the YMCAs neo-spanish high rise tower on Monument Avenue at the time). And the high rise apartments where never built either. The Civic Center was never really a coherent planned complex. What was built was this: Starting with the "Civic Center"....the Safety Building was first, followed shortly by the Juvenile Courts. Then, a long gap in time, and then in the early sixties, the county courts near the Juvenile Court (now Famliy Court)...this would have been on the proposed site for a consolidated City-County Offices skyscraper ...with some landscaping working in context with Juvenile Court... Then a nice little commision for Edward Durrel Stone, the Montgomery County Building. Stone did have some experience doing civic complexes, with a very formalist design concept. His most famous one is Albany Mall... But as this is Dayton, a more scaled down version... Too bad Stone didnt design the entire complex, because instead of a integrated complex we get more of a back service alley thing going on... Some other civic center buildings..a big jail, appropriately carceral in form ...and even more courts, picking up the "Bureaucrat Deco" style of the Safety Building Between the Civic Center and Downtown is the Federal Building and its plaza. At least an attempt at urban design here, sort of. Federal Building is rather, well, blocky...riffing off the expressionist brutalist modernism of the 1960s (like the Boston City Hall).... Looking up Perry, which has been stripped of its houses and trees.... ..yet the plaza works well with the wondefull Art Deco Telephone Building.. ..yet not much relation to the areas nearby...instead of a treelined street of houses and shops, or at least some distinctive civic buildings we have ...open space....lots and lots of open space....one of the charactersitics of Center City West is its somewhat "suburban office park" feel....plenty of parking.... Some visuals of the parking lot world of Center City West.... Old alley from a past era of trees and carriage houses....no parking lot land.... Low rise suburan office park builidng with adjacent parking...expanding downtown Dayton via the suburban model.... @@@@ Taking a look at the "commerical" part of Center City West. Note that some of this predates (and forshadows) the urban renewal era... The change-over was driven by increases in property values due to accessibty via the opening in the 1940s of the Salem Avenue bridge. Although commecial encroachment was happening in the 20s, 30s, & 40s (the large lots of the old haute bourgouis mansions where good commerical development opportunities), the first big postwar building to go up was the school board, of 1954... ...followed closely by this big red brick band windowed building. In the late 50s/early 60s the Stratford House hotel went up....here they are.... Frist Street..the large band window building can be easily mis-dated as its mimimal design is more reminiscent of the 1970s, not 50s.... The earlier buildings in this district are more "of their time"...the SBC Building.... ..and this place, very 1960s with its "Breueresque" panelized curtain wall and funky little penthouse.. ..not particularly street-friendly.... ...and this baby, which I think was a moter-hotel at one time? ..and on the northmost edge of the commercial area, this very suburban set of office buildings....could be out off of Colonel Glenn or in Newmark or in Washington Township...again, expanding downtown via suburbanization... ....suburban office park or downtown, you decide.... ....truely the big missed opportunity...the Civic Center (really the Courts/Corrections Center) and commericial area developed as buildings in parking lots, no real coherent plan followed. Too bad. @@@@ South of Third Street, things are better. This was supposed to be a big arena surrounded by acres of parking. Instead we got Sinclair Community College. This complex was mostly desgined by Edward Durell Stone (or his firm), so there is a very consistent aesthetic and design followed until very recently. Possibly one of the most cohesive and consistent architectural ensembles in Dayton. Somwhat unfortunatly it is a internalized megastructure...a good consistent design, but not a particularly urban one. Sinclair, working with the Montogomery County builidng....not bad..... The original Sinclair "Quad". The "campinile" is really a venitlator. Though an attempt at the pictueresque modernist take on the town square, this space is really just decorative. More of the quad. Note the bubbles in the landscaped area..these are skylights over the library or cafetria...there is an internal subterreanean aspect that is not visible here, and a very internalized circulation system.... Although there is a bus stop on Third Street and a landscaped area facing Third. access to the megastructure is mostly via the massive parking structure to the south...via the "habitrail" (there are two access bridges) ..into the somewhat sci-fi world of indoor courts and passages and lightwells.... ..the megastructure is occasionally visible.... Outside the area is nicely landscaped though somewhat void. In this pix the megastructure opens up permitting passage underneath.... The parking garage....walkway follows one of the ghost streets of the pre-urban renewal neighborhood... Skywalk shooting over an older (maybe early 70s?) pre-Sinclair buidling. There was some commercial things built here as per the urban renewal parcel dispostion plan upthread...but they where eventually enveloped by Sinclair..."resistance is futile...you will be assimilated"..... Looking back towards downtown from Sinclair...dome of Sacred Heart (now a Vietnamese Catholic church) And, finally...the last house in its original location in Center City West..last survivor of the residential neighborhood that used to be here...this used to be the rectory for Sacred Heart... ...check out the neat arched window on the side... ...and another one bites the dust.

I'm just wondering if there is a point where income does match the economics of housing..where the rents would be to low for a landlord to maintain a property and turn somewhat of a profit or meet mortgages/taxes, ...or purchase price/carrying cost too high for a pooer or lower income person. I

^ that seemed somewhat evident when I lived in California, but they also had a lot of drifter/hobo types in Sacramento, too. Here in Ohio, or Dayton, perhaps there is more a mental health situation involved. Like all things human I doubt one will get to 100% no homeless...there will always be some small percentage. I think the goal should be to get to as low a % as possible. Given that Dayton has a problem with vacancies and abandonment, one thinks that homelessness could be solvable here. Another question is if there is a point where the economics of a house or apartment does not support it being on the market for either rental or purchase...people not making enough money to afford housing, and the housing can not be "made" cheap enough for people to afford as sort of a vicious cycle?

Dayton has, I think, a law that requires panhandlers to get liscensed, so there is some police action against the segement of the homeless community that begs, but doesn't have the liscense. Otherwise I think the various social services agencies here are teaming up to address the problem. I think the approach here is that this is a social problem not a law enforcement issue. Its a good question as to whether or not the problem can be "solved" with the local economy deteriorating. My hunch is that as more people drop into poverty or close to it into low-paying jobs, the demand for cheap housing is going to be high, and the poorest will be forced onto the street.

The rail yards and coal loading docks are indeed impressive. I also can recognize a glass factory I think. And there is even a steel mill in the set (one can recognize the stoves and the blast furnaces), which I never knew Toldeo had. Whats really impressive is how dense the downtown was. Dayton was dense, but nowheres near as built up as this. I could spend hours studying these pix. I really like the one of the ballfield set in the middle of the city neighborhoods, and the ones of the lakers and the area around Swan Creek, I think. Just really fascinating stuff to look at. This was a great find and a big thanks to C-Dawg for sharing these.

On the group pic..whos the old guy in blue on the right?

....another case of a WWII military airfield converted to civilian use. Two other examples that I'm aware of is Standiford Field in Louisville and OHare in Chicago, which both started as WWII military airfields (in these cases associated with bomber plants).

Some historical geographical trends courtesy of the Bruton Center @ the University of Texas @ Dallas. Windows on Urban Poverty for the purposes of these maps: "Based on the federal poverty line. For example, in 2002, the poverty level was $15,260 for a family of three and $18,400 for a family of four. Any person living in a family with income below the poverty threshold is designated as poor. The poverty rate for a neighborhood is determined by dividing the number of poor persons by the total population of the area, excluding some individuals who live in college dorms, nursing homes, and other group quarters" Starting in Daytons "last good year", 1970, at the end of the long postwar boom. Deindustrialization in Dayton began in 1971, with the shutdown of NCRs manufacturing operations here. Population started to plateau in the metro area too, after 1970.... Then 1980. There was a spatial expansion of poverty, and some areas became more concentrated as poverty pockets. Then 1990. The first wave of de-industrialization was over by this year, with large employers gone (Dayton Tire, McCall Printing), or downsized (NCR, GM). Poverty has also expanded and continued to concentrated A suprsing improvement in 2000. Poveryt pockets became "less poor". Why is that? Perhaps the 1990s was a really good economic time where people where being lifted out of poverty....I know the unemployment rate was fairly low in Montgomery County in the mid to late '90s. ....or, another theory, the neighborhoods that used to be poverty pockets where largly abandonded by 2000 and housing for poor folks demolished or condemned, and the remaining people left in these areas where pensioners or making enough to be over the poverty line....perhaps a bit of gentrification or redbuilding in some limited cases. Yet, the long term look is sobering...30 years of "Economic Structural Adjustment" (as the World Bank would call it), results in an increase in poverty across the board in Montgomery County ...poverty increased in many census tracts, including suburban areas like Fairborn, Kettering, Riverside, Trotwood, Harrison Twp, etc...as well as within Dayton...the increases where quite small in many suburbs but its suprsing to see any increase at all in some of these areas. So, perhaps not a good trend here. Long range, Dayton and its sububs has seen overall increases in poverty, probably due to the collapse of a living wage as the area de-industrialized and higher paying jobs are replaced with lower.

Rout

Yes, thats how I recall it...although sunday dinner was also midafternoon (roughly the same as lunch). Usually though it was supper in the late afternoon or evening. @@@@@@@@@@ Highway could mean a four lane highway....like US 31W The limited access highway is an expressway. In the Chicago area there are no turnpikes, they are "tollways"/

Thats pretty interesting about those Lucas County poverty numbers...they are worse than Mahoning County!

I really thank you for these pix...I always wondered what the Ironbound looked like.....liked those tile facades! very interesting to see that... ....the place is actually somewhat "known" in urbanist or urban affairs/urban history circles...one of the great US working class neighborhoods...sort of like Bridgeport or Pilsen in Chicago or the Mission in SF....I guess here in Ohio Over the Rhine? the folksinger Suzanne Vega even wrote a song about the place...or set there: Ironbound/Fancy Poultry In the ironbound section near Avenue L where the Portuguese women come to see what you sell the clouds so low the morning so slow as the wires cut through the sky The beams and bridges cut the light on the ground into little triangles and the rails run round through the rust and the heat the light and sweet coffee color of her skin Bound up in wire and fate watching her walk him up to the gate in front of the ironbound school yard. Kids will grow like weeds on a fence She says they look for the light they try to make sense. They come up through the cracks Like grass on the tracks She touches him goodbye. Steps off the curb and into the street the blood and feathers near her feet into the ironbound market In the ironbound section near Avenue L where the Portuguese women come to see what you sell the clouds so low the morning so slow as the wires cut through the sky She stops at the stall fingers the ring opens her purse feels a longing away from the ironbound border "Fancy poulty parts sold here. Breasts and thighs and hearts. Backs are cheap and wings are nearly free. Nearly free" The Ironbound at Wikipedia The Ironbound buisness association site

Dayton hasn't hit bottom yet...or transitioned to a new economic base.....at best things are plateaing here for awhile (or so implys the Dayton Buisness Journal headline for 2006 predictions) Manufacturing here has two big pillars..auto parts and precision machining and moldmaking.... The auto parts sector is dominated by Delphi, which could shed a signifigant # of jobs here. The machining industry is also declining as it has been targeted by overseas competitors...so a lot of that industry could go offshore...remains to be seen how this local industry will withstand this competition. Manufacturing in Dayton will not totally disappear, but it will be reduced or changed. The thing that will keep Dayton somewhat stable or break-even is defense spending and infotech.

The site for the intro info (one of them) is Evolution of Ohio (I have the map that RiverViewer mentioned...it comes with a small book explaining the various surveys and some of the peculiarities with them)