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..

 

 

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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....

 

 

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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. 

 

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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.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellent work!  Can't say I like the way that part of downtown has turned out.

Brutalism at its finest.

 

There was also a proposal for Courthouse Square to be this multi-tiered water fountain/lightshow (think 1977) with gold-plated buildings surrounding it, thus calling it "Light & Water Plaze."  The gold-plated buildings would've been the Mead(Wesvaco) Tower(s).  The proposal still sits in City Hall, hanging on a wall.

Interesting. I haven't seen that part of the city yet.

 

Fort Wayne had its grand plans in the time just before World War I, too. There was to be a civic center at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Marys Rivers, headwaters of the Maumee, including government buildings, an arts complex and a union railroad station. None of it ever happened.

 

There have been subsequent grand visions for downtown, but all the vast plans get watered down to half-assed realities as toned-down single pieces of proposed complexes get planted here and there in a disjoint mishmash. The Grand Wayne Center, though not quite a match for Dayton's Schuster Center, is a very respectable convention center connected with the Hilton Hotel. It should have been built overlooking the three rivers, but it's between the two busiest downtown one-way thoroughfares, with its grand panoramic view encompassing a liquor store and three blocks of un-landscaped parking lots.

Jeff, where do you get your old diagrams of downtown Dayton?  Cool thread.