Jeff

I was really intrigued by that postcard view of League Park. That was a interestng building. From the street side it looks like a large commercial block at a busy intersection, but behind the impressive facade (did it house offices in the upper floors and stores at the base?) was grandstands and a ball diamond. I think Wrigly Field is another old-time ball park probably from the same era, but it doesnt relate to the street in the same way.

I agree with Xs comments about mis-IDing those old pix of the Hough...esp that arieal of "Little Hollywood" ...could be NYC or another east coast city. That was a pretty dense neighborhood at one time.

How do you pronounce "Hough"?

I think those rooftop forms are meant to echo long thin commercial buildings one typiclaly finds on a "main street". Design isnt as concious as you think. It could be that alot of things where playing into his concept, some of them more concious than others, which makes this a fairly rich desgin..

Dayton does have some good modern things floating around. I like the MetLife building down south off of Springboro Pike. Its a good "office park" builidng. The NCR HQ is also pretty good. Other favorite modern buildings: Beth Abramham synagogue at the corner of Salem and Cornell. I know it wasnt designed by Eric Mendelsohn, but the architects where influeced by his US synagogue designs, and produced a pretty good copy or influenced design. This would be one of the first modern buildings in Dayton, dating from 1949. The Centerville Library The Mont. County Library by the Dayton Mall

...yes those are nice. I miss Dale Smiths postmodern entry to the Art Museum, though. When you say the RTA Builiding, do you mean the one at 3rd & Main. That was a very sucessfull adpative re-use, especially the save and reuse of those historic 19th century commercial facades. That was a closley run thing, too, and a real Dayton sucess story when it comes to historic preservation. I recall Buddy LaChance telling me (back when he was part of Preservation Dayton) how he and someone else from the group went out to the lot where they where storing the disassembled facades and re-marking the stones so the buildings could be put back together again as the markings where washing or wearing away. But, by God, they did save those facades, and they are back up as part of that RTA complex!

Columbus is fortunate to have two of Eisenmans best builidngs. The Wexner was a masterpiece and I think Eisenmenas first non-house commission. Its altered now, but it was a major work for him, and you can tell he was having a lot of fun with that design, working postmodernism into his own aesthetic. The convention center is also a great design, especially the way Eisenmann activates the High Street facade. He is playing his gridded system game, but is also being contextual in his own way. The builiding is actually pretty sensitive to the urban context., and there are some interesting references to the building forms of those long narrow commerical builidng that used to be on High. The neat thing is he carries this through to the inside, and runs the circulation spine down the middle of the building, not on the peremeter, the way most convention centers do. As an alternative to that High Street facade, think about how monotonous and sterile High Street would look if there was a blocks-long wall of bland precast concrete or dryvit, or a glass curtain wall, instead of the facade Eisenmann designed. I am not a Ghery fan, so I won't say anything about the Ghery buildings here. Zaha Hadid, however, has provided a modern masterpiece for Cincinnati. Speaking of modern masters, there is a Frank Lloyd Wright/Taliesen Associates building in Dayton, in Kettering. Its a doctors office building off of Far Hills Ave. It is a small building, but is a nice gem-like design, somewhat marred by an oversize sign.

That 3rd Street corridor was one of Daytons early streetcar suburbs. "Drexel Park" was actually the first developement out there, platted prior to WWI...then later plats followed, like Residence Park, Ridgewood Heights, etc, through the "teens & 'twentys. The place probably looked like a promising new suburbia back then... Yet for some reason the real estate market out there just collapsed...it looks like it was frozen in some sort of time warp from the 1930s..as if the real estate market died in the Great Depression and never recovered. Almost no postwar suburban subdivisions at all (execept a few off of Germantown Rd) and minimal postwar commerical developement too (except for "West Town" in Residence Park). You drive in on US 35 through open country and boom you are in town. I really wonder what the history is of that area? One would have expected the real estate market to have revived there after WWII, as it did eslewhere in suburban Dayton.

U-92 is actually pretty good. Sort of a laid-back, mellow side to their evening mix. ..& I do find myself tuning in to MOJO down in Cincy. This area has some really offbeat public radio, actually, if you look for it. In Cincy there is WAIF, which is reminds me of a shoestring version of the Pacifica flagship station KPFA in Berkley due to its political content and sort of fringy programming, and WOBO, out of Batavia, which plays bluegrass, polkas, and even German schlager, amoung other things. Unfortunatly WAIF and WOBO dont reach Dayton. WDPS in Dayton, when its not Christian, plays some odd stuff. They have a German schlager show on Saturday morning, a Hungarian music show on Sunday, I think, and the British Isles folk/folk rock show "A Right Song and Dance" on Friday afternoon (hosted by the guys who used to do WYSOs "Lunch in the Pub". Also on Friday afternoon they have as sort of world music show from "Hippy & Scuz", and other days in the afternoon they'll play jazz and blues. WYSO has really went mainstream public radio (NPR, lots of talk, lots of canned shows), but you can also heare some good local music programming still, like the "Around the Fringe" show on Friday night (world beat, dance,local rock), and there are still some local DJs on doing their own thing (like the blues /R&B show on Sunday afternoon). And Fred Bartensteins "Banks of the Ohio" looks like its aspiring to be the "Thistle and Shamrock" of bluegrass...potentially a good syndicated "educational" show for the genre. I used to listen to WOXY alot before they changed ownership and format, now theres really not much out there in Dayton for alternative rock fans. Maybe the Wright State stundent station, but they are such low power their signal doesn't carry much beyond their campus.

Everytime I see those tunnel entrances I get pissed-off when I realize how close Cincy came to getting rapid transit. Its not like it died in the talking stage...they actually had the right-of-way aquired, tunnels constructued, trackbed graded and ballasted and stations built, before the project was killed, supposedly due to cost overruns? Heck, by that time the major construction costs had most likely already been incurred. The Cincy rapid transit, if built , opens alot of "what might have beens", like a rapid transit extension up to the GE Plant in Evendale via old canal r-o-w, rather than the constrution of a limited access highway (that became the Mill Creek Expressway), or completion of the loop to downtown from the Norwood end-of-the-line. Oh well. If theres any consolation Louisvilles light rail plan is also dead (which might be a good thing as the Louisville plan didnt make too much sense). Are there any plans to revive the light rail concept in Cincy?

C-Dawg, pretty good pix of downtown Toledo. For Dayton, some of the better buildings are churches and homes. I like two churches, one on east 2cnd near the old Delco Plant, the other this gothic-meets-art deco design in the Linden Avenue neighborhood a few blocks south of Linden. There are some nice mansions scattered around Dayton. ColDayMan posted some pix of two that I like, but there are some nice pre WWII ones in Washington Twp and the Cox Mansion in Kettering, I think. For public buildings the best are the old Courthouse, which is a classial revival building of national signifigance, and the Victoria Theatre, mostly for the excellent interior.

I guess Cincy had its chance for light rail, but the locals wont support it with tax money. So, I guess its Columbuses turn..I understand they are ror a light-rail line too.

Oh..ok, looks like they where running conventional streamlined coaches. I was thinking about something like this: I suspect there is a "hidden history" of commuter rail in Ohio. The old interuban lines, of course, but also mainline railroads providing these services.

I think Cleveland is pretty lucky to already have a rapid transit system they can encourage TODs around..and a system that could be expanded.

Wow! They had commuter passenger rail in Cleveland area as late as the 1970s? Did they use those Chicago-style bi-level gallery cars?

In fact, I've been on house tours of those first two mansions in the Unveristiy Row heading. They are as impressive inside as outside. The second one, the sort of French Neoclassical one with the huge hip roof, has a ballroom under the roof, that I was told was once used as a dance studio.

I recently helped a freind move from Five Oaks (he was relocating to Hartford, Connecticut), and got a closer look at the area after a few years (since the gates went up, mostly). Its almost a case of "good block/bad block"...some blocks or streets are in pretty good shape still, like Belmonte Park and Squirrel Avenue., are pretty nice. The way its looking if Five Oaks is that individual units become vacant, or decline, while neighborhing houses are still kept up. ++++++++++++ Some of the other neighborhoods in those pix, like McFarlane and Wright-Dunbar, pretty much are bottoming out and you are seeing more abandonments, vacant land, and demolitions. Though I bum-rap the Dayton area about its conservatism I have to say the City of Dayton has done some really heroic efforts in trying to arrest decline, and even rebuild a neigborhood, like they are doing at Wright-Dunbar (you can see some of the new construction in the pix) and starting to do in Lower Dayton View. ++++++ The sad thing is whats happening to the neighborhood retail buildings. Theres' already a thread here about that spanish revival commercial block at Wayne & Wyoming. Another one that i can see under threat in the future is the pix of that corner building with the small tower at the corner of Forest and Main, in the Riverside neighborhood. Its one of those urban set-pieces, local landmarks, that give a character to a city and a neigborhood. The building in the pix looks to be pretty vacant, and some interesting old apartments or rowhouses on Forest next door where demo'd (they formed this need zig-zag facade pattern). Dayton has a good example of a "save" of a neighborhood commercial landmark on a busy corner at Salem and Grand, where a fire damaged building was rebuilt as a post office, I think, but the original facade was kept. ++++++++ Yet, you can see some of the great housing stock thats still in the city.

^ In comparison, how much did the Freedom Center over on the Riverfront cost?

As an outsider who recently toured the rural Western Reserve I most certainly think this area should be recognized as a very distinctive cultural landscape. It really is that special, IMHO.

Aside from the theology, I'm thinking if the exhbits and FX are professional enough this could be a good tourist attraction for the region.

This should be pretty impressive. They are going to have a mock-up of the interior of Noahs Ark.

According to the British newspaper The Telegraph In the Beginning....Adam Walked With Dinosaurs he centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart. Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days. ... Looks like a great new tourist attraction for the Tri-State.

Ohio beer.....Miller and Budweiser have big plants here too....I accidentally ran across the Miller, I think, brewrey...located between Middletown and Hamilton..saw this big factory, wondered "what the heck is that..its huge!"...drove to it and it was a brewrey.

There where about four old time diners in downtown Dayton. The two White Towers, a Tasty Boy, and the Wympee. The Wympee is the last holdout, and is the real deal, too. Its not one of those old time prefab diners, but it does look to date from the pre WWII era. There is a pre-fab diner in Dayton, too, which I think had some ownership affiliation w. the Diner on Sycamore (the Dayton one opened in 1988 or 89)...yet it didn't last. It change menue, closed, reopened, closed, and I think may be reopened again (I lost track). The orignal incarnation, with its someone spicy menu, was alot of fun though...

....this would be a big change from when I was up there in the early 90s. Back then Toledo seemed pretty dead compared to Dayton in the area of nightlife and live music. I'm thinking a return visit might be in order.