Jeff

That intersection in Middletown is sort of a small skyscraper museum as there is the deco building, and also a modern and a "beaux-arts" "or "classical high rise on the other two corners. But yes, deco is probably the quintessential skyscraper style..it's tough to screw up with a deco design, where even "average" examples, like the Middletown one, work well ... You should search around here for the Steubenville thread, as that city has some pretty impressive "small" skyscrapers.

Well, here is an issue for the "Ohio Restoration Project" to cut their teeth on.

City Center was pretty sucessfull when it opened, had some fairly upscale stores, if I recall right, on the very top floor, as well as a Marshall Fields as an anchor dept store (paired w. that old Lazarus).

I could swear I saw alot of strip centers around the intersection of Sawmill Rd & Rt 161, which, if not technically in Dublin may as well be.

I remember driving up Parsons Aveneu from that big foundry or steel mill on the south end of town...the area looked pretty rough. That map upthread...I didn't know Columbus' south side had that many identifiable neighborhoods...Hungarian Villiage? Shumacher Place? Cols is getting more and more interesting...I can see I need to explore more over there....

Interesting! A very "urban-canyon-like" Horton Plaza....as the mall is about three levels...

If you are like me you like to read books about cities and urban affairs. Here are some that I like, or that influenced me, over the years. Lewis Mumford, The City in History Paul Zucker, Town and Square Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of American Citys (its been years since I read the above, but at the time I really liked them) Myers & Wade, Chicago, Growth of a Metropolis (probably the most influential book for me...a mix of architecture, history, and geography, looking at the urban fabric of neighborhoods and factorys and commercial, as well as "downtown" & landmark buildings.) Sam Bass Warner, The Urban Wilderness, and Streetcar Suburbs. Gritty Cities (it came out in the 1970s..dont know the author). Reyner Banham, Los Angeles, The Architecture of the Four Ecologys Mike Davis, City of Quartz (two books that compliment each other) Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regonal Mall (another Los Angeles book..theres been alot of interesting stuff on LA).

Has anyone seen these at night...do they put out much light? That orangish "lampshade" looks like it would direct the light just directly below..the throw would be pretty minimal. ....thats why I'm wondering if they really are a form of lighting?

...then it can be renamed th Roy G Biv Memorial Bridge.

Take a look at the one in the pix. Its on what looks like a fairly modern "Walk/Dont Walk" sign...so maybe not streetcars? At first I thought it was some form of street light, but how can this even be a light? It looks too small to be a proper streetlight, even for pedestrians....

I know what he's talking about and they have always puzzled me.

Well, I did stop off at WSU today to pick up some books from Ohiolink, and stopped off in the special collections department. Box 1 is a failry extensive set of clippings, studys, legal stuff, etct, from the Burns Jackson Corporation. And it was an eye-opening journey into the past.... What had happened was that the urban renewal plan was to tear down 70% of the neighborhood and probably replace w. public housing (and they started to do that, as there is a pocket of public housing off of Wayne Street near US 35). Then, apparently some private citizens (with connections..one of them was the wife of the head of the DAI) got together and decided to try to save the neighborhood as it dawned on them that this was a particularly unique place, so they incorporated and got Bertrand Goldberg to do this plan. I think there was sort of the idea that this neighborhood could be another German Villiage. So the plan. Goldberg did save all the houses, but totally tore down everything along Wayne, Patterson, and Fifth (the Armory, Jays, all the commercial buildings on 5th..all gone), basically surrounding this housing "core" a pedesrian/park zone scattered with new stuff, including, between Patterson and Tecumseh, "marina city" towers on top of a shopping center plinth (with underground parking, it looks like), a "theater", an "Arts and Crafts Villiage" on Fifth (new housing, I think). The idea was to open up the neighborhood and make it visible as a "living museum" to passing traffic. The execution plan was to totally vacate the neighborhood and remodel it at one time, plus build the new stuff. There was a sort of creative finacining package put together, requiring special legislation in Columbus, but a part of it was found unconstitutional in the Ohio courts, and the city had an economics consultant do a study, which pretty much deep-sixed the plan. The plan was released in 1966, and finally died in 1971, I think. One of the last clippings from 1972 said that "Burns Jackson" might have deterioriated too far to be saved. Its interesting to read the newspaper clippings on this. It seems the papers where editorializing for it, and that there was a four part special series on "The Oregon" history, too (the local history buffs called it the Oregon, while the "official name" was Burns-Jackson). Anyway, we are fortunate that the Golberg scheme didn't get built as we would have lost Fifth Street, as well as some older buildings on Wayne and Patterson. I guess during the 1970s the neighborhood was restored one house at a time, rather than all at once, as was orginally proposed. Since this thread is about the Dayton Towers, I noticed in the clippings that this was already built by the mid-1960s.

Actually this is a legitimate use of the TIF concept..this is what it was intended for (vs that shopping center at Indian Ripple, which is a real scam, IMO).

^ Ha...believe me, I will be looking for it! I'm doing some other research right now into Dayton history, but thats on the agenda.

....yeah, it was going to be like Queensgate, and they did execute alot of the plan, too. A lot of what was proposed in a concept in the 1930s did come to pass. For example, everything east of Wayne is mostly gone, and the residential area south of downtown is also gone, too, mostly. The Oregon is the only survivor. Interestingly enough the architectural firm that prepared the initial Oregon urban renewal plan was Bertrand Goldberg from Chicago, famous for the Marina City project..those twin "corncob" apartment skyscrapers on the Chicago River. I would be interested to see what he had proposed for Dayton.

The Dayton Towers is on the site of a proposed urban renewal project, from the 1930s. This would have been Daytons very first attempt at large-scale slum clearance, to remove the Haymarket District with its "unsavory reputation" (according to the report) and replace with low-rize public housing. This "demonstration project" was part of a larger plan to clear everything between Dutoit Street and downtown, including the Oregon District. The Haymarket District was eventually razed, Keowee Street cut through, and the area turned into a local take on Le Corbusiers "Ville Radieuse" concept...residential towers set in wooded parkland (so the "horrible shot" upthread is actually a pretty good illustration of the design concept)......except in this case there was only one residential tower..the Dayton Towers. Dayton had a reallly agressive urban renewal effort...another concept would have been to build a row of high rises like the Dayton Tower along the Miami River, between say, Ludlow and the interstate.

^ Yeah, thats right! Thanks for that reminder about Warren County. Northern Warren certainly is a suburban area to Dayton and I do agree that if the northern tier of townships and villiages where counted in with Dayton one would see overall growth from 1990 & 2000. Perhaps even Lebanon to some extent is suburban to Dayton now, too (tho shared w. Cincy).

I was in Louisville over the weekend, and read in the local papers' buisness section that the Dayton operations are going to be consolidated into the UPS Louisville operation. I wasn't sure about that based on the above DDN article, but it looks like the Dayton operation isnt going to the other cities listed. This is good news for Louisville. UPS just keeps expanding operations there. The place is a real node in the logistics end of the global economy. As for Dayton, this MSA was the only one other than Youngstown/Warren to actually lose population between 1990 and 2000....and these ten years should have been relatively prosperous ones.

OK, as some of you have figured out I'm a history buff w. an interest in the history of industrial & economic developement, so I was fooling around a bit with some old census data, comparing county populations (using the county as a proxy for the city..yes, I know, not particularly accurate), and seeing what the points of "takeoff" where, and what countys/cities lagged/grew and if comparsions can be made. I was looking first at the antebellum period at the Miami Valley, but then decided to look at the whole middle Ohio Valley, which meant including Columbus, Lexington, Indianapolis, and Louisville. So here is the antebellum population growth graph, with some key points in transportation developement marked. ...as you can see Cincinnati/Hamilton County reaches takeoff pretty quick right out the gate, (and look at the the decade between 1840/1850!)...easily besting Louisville/Jefferson County, the other river city in the region. Then I decided to see the trends all the way to 1950, the first postwar census. Some interesting patterns here...particularly the growth of Columbus/Franklin County and Indianapolis/Marion County, and the continued lag of Louisville. Cincinnati/Hamilton County continued to maintain a hefty regional population lead throughout this time period, tho the rate of climb never exceeded the 1840-1850 jump (except for the "Roaring 20s") ...not sure what this tells us for modern times, just some "gee whiz" historical stuff.

I was using counties as I wasnt to comfortable with just city numbers...but, yeah, this is pretty good.... actually better. I didnt know someone had done this...thank you for this link!

Ohios flag is, technically, a burgee..it's a boat flag! Speaking of population numbers I was doing a little study into regional population growth in the Ohio Valley from 1790 to 1950...the numbers are interesting. Cincinnati really pulls away from the pack in the years prior to the Civil War. I'll post a graph later

during my visit to Cleveland back last year i made a point of driving through Hudson and was impresed on how they tried to blend this into the existing town. Its probably the best attempt Ive seen to do this type of integration of new & old....

So cool..thats one of those industrial piers isnt it?...they are turning it into "lofts on the water"......wow..way to go Sandusky!

Good pix...liked the views east towards the Appallachians (technically the "glaciated Allegheny Plateau"...or whatever). Also, interesting "side" view of potential BRAC candidate DESCC (just kidding)...it looks taller somehow by the narrow profile.... That "edge of Appalachia" gets more defined around Chillicothe (maybe Lancaster, too?..never been there) as it wasnt glaciated..you get more of a sharper, escaprment effect. But yes, these are neat pix of Cols. Never been up the Rhodes Tower...it was always closed when I was in town.

Public Square works great in setting off the Terminal Tower....the quadrant closets to the TT is sort of like the "front yard" for it...mainly becuase the masss of the bulidng sort of enframes and defines that quadrant. The other ones are sort of "loose". If there was a solid line of fairly massive buildings around it it would read more like a traditional European square, but at a huge scale. But then again the wasn't the orginal plan, was it? Wasn't the original concept for Public Square a "villiage green" or "commons" like it the other Western Reserve towns? If so thats long gone. That type of space is more naturalistic or parklike. I guess the square in Elyria would be an example...from the pix Ive seen it looks like a wooeded park? Was the "four quadrants" in the original plan, or did that happen later?