Jeff

Well...Dayton IS pleasant!

I've heard others mention the "Pleasantville" aspect of Dayton, too. Perhaps this could be a marketing angle? When people here say "Have a nice day!" they usually mean it. @@@@ Try Dorthoy Lane Market first for the beans before you head to Jungle Jims..

This isnt your alls area, but the MVRPC has an online site for bike trails now..and maps that can be downloaded... Miami Valley Recreational Trails ...two of these do go south into the Cincy area...

This thread elswehere at Urban Ohio is probably relevant: legislation against illegal immigrants @ the state and county level While economics is a pull factor, don't discount a conservative political climate that uses the police power of the state to discourage immigration...they say illegal immigration, but if this means police hassling anyone who looks illegal, well.... I wouldn't compare Escobar to Harvey Milk too much, as the political situations where pretty different.

Too bad. From an admittedly narrow historic preservation perspective I was sort of hoping Bohardt would win, as I knew he was comitted to doing something about the long-vacant Arcade.. Whaley is an assistant to Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith. Both were endorsed by the Montgomery County Democratic Party. Karl Keith should consider running for higher office as he comes across real good in public. I saw him in action at a benefit for that Lieberman woman who won a county commissioner seat (and who also worked in his office), and was impressed with his ability to work a crowd...

How "gay" is that neighborhood anyway? I know some bars have opened there, but is it really that gay in terms of other buisnesses and gay people actually living there? What I'm wondering is where is all this money coming from to restore old houses and such...this is not cheap to do. Is Cleveland gay- freindly or gay-tolerant enough as to where openly gay people can actually be in the kinds of proffessional & managerial jobs that pay enough to support restoring old houses?

I have yet to meet a single person with any ties to migrant workers. Most are Mexican families from Chicago or Cubans. They are not from Detroit and they are not from the farms of Northwest Ohio or Southeast Michigan Thats interesting as one might infer a cause and effect relationship between the latino farmworkers in Toledos' hinterland and the urban latino community in Toledo itself. Yet you seem to be saying there is a city-to-city migration going on in re Toledo...Chicago being the source. The Chicago area was probably the one first places the Latinos came to in the Midwest...the earliest communities where in the Calumet Region.... East Chicago and Indiana Harbor...they date from when these areas where steel mill districts...from the 1920s. In the 1950s/60s the Puerto Ricans came, and settled in Humbodlt Park and the Milwaulkee Avenue cooridor, and a bit on the N Side (before the area was gentrified). I think the earliest urban latino community in Ohio was in Lorain, as its mentioned in the 1930s WPA "Ohio Guide".

These immigrants do seem to be pretty entrepeneurial, which is a good thing as one of the engines of job growth is supposed to be small buisnesses and new buisinesses...

Excellent post. That Louis Escobar can get elect, and whats more stay elected (and move into positions of leadership) does say a lot about the political culture, and perhaps the level of tolerance and acceptance in Toledo. The city did get a bad press due to the recent riot, but beyond that, this political fact of someone like Escobar being able to survive politcally does provide an alternative impression of Toledo for me....

SaveOregonia.org Mission Statement: Save Oregonia.org exists to preserve the tradition, scenery, and heritage of Oregonia and the surrounding community by protecting the existing wildlife, waterways, historic sites, and farmlands. Our primary goal is to promote awareness among the citizens about developments in the area. I should post some of my Oregonia pix.

Im a big Oregonia fan, too. That place is really special in a difficult-to-describe way. I dont feel Im in Ohio there.

There was a massive skywalk system proposed for Dayton in the late 1960s....about the only thing to come of this plan was the skywalk to Couthouse Square and the ones at Fifth & Jefferson....

That area of the riverfront needs something. ...isnt that area part of that park or amphitheatre that was build via the "riverdesign" effort back in the 1970s/early 80s? Its really underutilized...i don't think anyone knows its there. great idea! didn't know the Mad flowed through downtown Dayton though. It meets the Miami just east of downtown (or the very eastern edge of downtown). Actually the Mad might be a good kayaking stream as it seems to have a pretty fast current and a good fall....thats why it was an early waterpower source for Dayton. "in the LONG range view, I see Kingsbury Run in Cleveland being daylighted and turned into a whitewater park too.... It's got incredible flow and some real nice drops, especially considering its location in Cleveland." Thats kind of an interesting concept, but I recall reading that this was the site of the first Standard Oil refinery....so perhaps environmental issues?

I say come to Cincinnati's West Side and enjoy good solid housing at good prices! LOL...no no...come to Dayton!!! Dayton needs all the people it can get!

I guess I should weigh in here as my partner is a latino (chicano, actually).... Dayton did not have a very large latino community here when he moved here in 1988. In fact people mistook him for Italian, and during the first Iraq war he was berated by someone on a bus for being an arab. What latino community that was here was probably proffessionals of various types, like the Indian community is now. That was our experience or impression when we went to a Hispanic awards dinner (at the invitation of a Urugayan coworker of his). The "immigrant" lower-wage latino in-migration seems to be a newer thing here... ...and it seems tied to migrant labor. Toledo has that latino barrio, but it is also the center of a big produce area (including a Campbells Soup plant in Naploeon), which uses migrant farm workers....I know latinos in Sacramento where aware of this because one asked my about "Napoleon" (I guess it sounded exotic). ....this migrant farm labor thing -->transitioning to urban jobs (like in construction) probably accounts for Kentuckly becomeing more and more latino...in the farm towns and now also in Louisville and Lexington. @@@@@ I do notice something, though, about Latinos in "El Norte" (the Midwest)...they seem to be gravitating to the upper Midwest. Even smaller cities like Kenosha, Michigan City and South Bend, the Quad Cities, and the Chicago sattelite cities (think "Hamilton") are getting latino neighborhoods. As are larger cities like Milwaulkee...which has a developing barrio on the south side. You really dont see a lot of latinos in SW Ohio the way you do up around the Great Lakes coast. @@@@ For an interesting discussion of Latinos in the cities (from a bit of marxist pespective, try this book...by the ever-controversial Mike Davis. ...a review here: Magical Urbanism "This demographic explosion has ongoing impact on the design of major U.S. cities. Davis contends that Hispanics (who prize home-owning and frequently merge mortgages across multiple owners to achieve it) are bringing redemptive energy to neglected and worn-out spaces in the core of our cities. Latinos “exult in playgrounds, parks, squares, libraries and other endangered species of U.S. space and, thus, form one of the most important constituencies for the preservation of our urban commons.” They glory in plazas and open mercados. Yet they face severe restrictions from zoning ordinances and building codes that favor developers more than individual homeowners and discourage street vendors. In several cities, revitalized by the Hispanic invasion, neighboring Anglos have complained of ‘Un-American hues’ in Hispanic homes and shops, with their tropical pastels and colorful murals." Probably the best Midwestern example of the latino transformation of a city is my own Chicago..it is a site to behold..how this immigration has impacted the city....Little Villiage and Pilsen are probably the best known examples (drive down Calle Veinteseises , 26th Street, on a Saturday to see how intense this is ).....and one can see this elsewhere in the city too. Though..Chicago has alot of immigration from all over, too. Even Europeans...the Poles have once again become a very big immigrant community..the city is probably more Polish now than it was when I was living there. Though there was immigratiion in dribs & drabs during the Communist era (with a spike during the Gierek era in the 1970s) Chicago's Polish community was on its way to assimilation before this big new influx after the fall of the iron curtain). @@@@ Yes,thats called chain migration, and thats how immigrant communities grow in the US. I know thats how my mother got here, via relatives of relatives who immigrated to Chicago after WWI. And thats probably how you will see the latino community grow in Ohio.

I dont think Eichlers where prefab, but they were really good designs. The fascinating thing about the Beverly Shores moderns is that they where actually shipped across Lake Michigan by boat!.....from the CofP. Beverly Shores also has a neat little spanish colonial RR station on the South Shore Line, part of which is used as a community art gallery. Ironically you can take the train from that station and end up going right by the CoP site.... @@@@@ (Stay tuned for some more Dayton goes Modern/Suburban pix from me in the near future)

In my late teens, I took care of a country churchyard and cemetery about three miles from home. It was the church my paternal grandparents attended with their families in their youth, and the cemetery where four generations of my family are buried Country cemeteries in Kentucky...at least near Louisville.... often were family cemetaries set back on some prominent location back on a farm. I recall a particularly melancholy one that was surrounded by these huge old cedars (brought to mind that Bocklin painting), set up on a rise..you could look out from it and see the Knobs and the Indiana bluffs on the Ohio. There are some old church cemetaries too that I used to visit...the idea was to spot the oldest gravestone, and where the person was born. Graveyard studies was big in the geneology field. Back in the 1970s the Kentucky Historical Society used to publish a quarterly newsletter (actually sort of a "zine") of graveyard rosters...people would visit those old familiy cemetaries and list who was buried there, and even unmarked or lost graves, send it the list and location/name of the cemetary and it would be published. Then there is that craft of doing gravestone rubbings....

No pix of that neat old movie theatre, too. Main Street in Fairborne, closer to Broad, is interesting as it looks like a typical main street except all the buildings are postwar (with parking in the rear). That strech of street resemebles parts of Chicago postwar suburia in DesPlaines and Skokie, with a conventional streetscape (sidewalks, stores fronting the street), but the architecture was all one- or two-story 'modern".

First some pix of "Fairfield" part of Fairborn...the oldest part of town. Some of the old houses around are actually log, not frame, but are clapboarded over. This one had the clapboards removed. The porportions on this one are a bit odd...maybe its got a log substructure? A nice little collection of brick 'I-Houses', built right up to the sidewalk. I think Ive read somewhere this way of siting..right on the street rather than set back on a lawn.... came from Pennsylvania. Not sure about that, but it does give this part of Fairborn a bit of a different feel. Halloween I suspect this one might be log, too, under the clapboards... Cute..."rose covered cottage" in Fairborn.... Fairborn rows and backstreets....this might have been the old interurban ROW, but maybe that was further east... A brief look at the Osborn part of Fairborn Downtown Fairborn Foys still has the old Five and Dime thing going on...wood floors, bins of candy, greeting cards, as well as some great costume stuff (which is their main buisness). This is the oldest store still operating in downtown Fairborn. vintage Cadillac hearse...judging by the fins, early 50s: ....even the Bookery comic book store people where getting in on the act....Fairborn is sort of odd. A neighbording store, News-Readers, is the only place in Dayton that I know of where you can get the Villiage Voice. I don't think the other big bookstores carry it (Wilkies used to). This "church" was a hoot... Halloween as a fall harvest festival of sorts.....it was one of those pagan festivals that was adopted into the Christian religous calendar....

My impression is the article is making an assumption a reason for Cincinnatis shift away from the GOP is that the "white middle class" is leaving the city...which implies a marginalization of the Democrats as a "minority party'. Thats the subtext I see. From what I know of Cincinnati, and Louisville, perhaps the story is more complex. I think that there is also some realignment of political affiliation of white middle class people who remain in the city...voting more Democratic and less GOP, which is contributing to GOP weakness in the city. I wonder if areas like Mnt Lookout, Hyde Park and that neighborhood around the observatory would have been more solid GOP a generation ago, and is now voting more Democratic. I know there has been such a realignment in similar neighborhoods in Louisville (the Cherokee Park/Highlands/Crescent Hill/Clifton areas).

The postwar era, mainly the 1950s, was sort of the heyday of modernism in suburbia. Two examples from Centerville of well-known modern icons (well, perhaps well known to architectural historians, not so much the public). First, Ohios own Lustron Homes. ..."The home everyone has been waiting for".... One of the attempts at prefabricaiton, manufactured at this a plant in Columbus ...shipped.... ..and erected on site. All steel, ...with a porcelin enamel skin...you can clean it by housing it down. ..even the roofs had metal tiles They came in two and three bedroom models. This is the two bedroom model.. ..with build-in kitchens. ... and shipped all over the US (including as housing at the Marine base at Quantico VA!). I briefly lived in a Chicago suburb, Lombard, that supposedly has the highest Lustron concentration in the US, so these are vaguely familar to me... One of the Lombard Lustron owners has a website on her experience living in one...Living in a Lunchbox According to an online registry there are (or were) number in the Dayton area...most in Dayton proper, but a few in suburbs. The one known to me is on a prominent location on OH 725, Franklin Street, at the edge of the old part of Centerville, before 725 turns into a big commercial strip. When this house was built (or "installed"?) this was the edge of town. It looks mostly intact, and probably a two bedroom model based on the facade and the floor plan upthread. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Another Centerville house is not famous itself, but is by a famous architect and his firm. Walter Gropius was a pioneer of modern architecture in Europe, and director of the Bauhaus, a pioneer modern design school in Germany before WWII (also the name of new wave band from the early 1980s) Gropius was moving toward a very stripped-down aesthetic even before WWI, contemporary with Frank Lloyd Wright in the USA....as illustrated by this 1911 factory design: He desgined the Bauhaus academic complex and masters houses in Dessau, which became an icon of modernism. ...and one of the masters houses. With the rise of the Nazis modernism fell out favor to large degree, and many of the German modernists fled to the USA in the 1930s. This emigration was a big boost of the USA as it fostered Americas replacement of Europe as a center of modern architecture (a similar thing happened in modern art, with New York replacing Paris). Gropius was one of these exiles, and became the director of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Gropius made GSD into a transplanted Bauhaus in terms of how it taught design. Gropius didnt confine himself to acadmia and did start a practice in the US; his early US buildings resembled his German buildings somewhat, as in the 1950 Harvard Graduate Center/Harkness Commons: Gropius also desgined houses. The most famous was his own house here in the US, designed in the 1930s shortly after he emigrated here. This design, along with some of the other transplanted Europeans like Marcel Breuer, are maybe more responsive to US ways of building...frame and wood construction... Gropius, along with some students from the GSD, formed "The Architects Collaborative" (TAC). TAC was more a "big building" practice working on institutional buildings and the occasional skyscraper, but they also designed houses. The largest collection of Gropius/TAC houses is Six Moon Hill in Lexington, Mass. Shortly after Six Moon Hill Gropius and TAC designed this house in (at that time) exurban Washington Township, west of the villiage of Centerville. This is the only Gropius house that I know of in the area. The nearest larger building by the firm (AFAIK) is the art galleries in Huntington, WVA ..the location is on a lane just off Miamisburg Centerville Road, adjacent to Oak Creek South (Carrabas is on the corner). @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ There are other examples of midcentury residential modernism in Dayton and suburbs. Given that we are in this overblown sprawl/McMansion era, its refreshing to look back on occasion at the very early days of suburbia to see these clean and simple houses and their green settings.

So one of the assumptions in the article is "white=Republican"?

I love it!...does anyone else find this ironic! Maybe he will get the Arcade demo. contract. Incidentally, driving around town the yard sign distribution is pretty predictable. Most of the McLin signs are in West Dayton and the Bonhardt signs in Belmont and East Dayton. ...however, doing a pub crawl after the Cityfolk concert last weekend I did notice two of the gay bars, DJs and Masque, had Mclin advertising. Masque also had the "Reform Ohio" adversting on their video screens.

"It's the safe choice." As for the editorial endoresment its been said the DDN is "in love with incumbency".

Deep Ohio