March 31, 20169 yr Great set ink! Especially good job with the one pic that has people milling outside on a downtown street, a rare occurrence there! lol I can tell you went past the Art Deco Home Depot but did not indulge us with a photo! Also several changes since. They don't have a lot of development happening, but the City Hall complex ("closed for renovations" banner in your pics) was sold and turned into a really cool mid-century Aloft Hotel. That cool 1-story white and blue faded brick building is now a bike shop. Aaaand that's about it.
March 31, 20169 yr Tulsa has some outstanding architecture, some nice neighborhoods, and some fascinating African-American history --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood,_Tulsa But no photos of...the incomparable...the magical...the ICONIC... Let us pray... ...to THIS! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
March 31, 20169 yr Very nice photo-essay. I would not have imagined such impressive, diverse architecture and walkable areas for small/mid-sized city in the heart of Cowpoke country. It looks more like a northeast or Midwest city (... btw, I've never bought into the idea that Oklahoma is Midwestern, as some people have). Frankly Tulsa looks more desirable than OKC, ... to me, anyway. Downtown is Art Deco par-excellence and, obviously, there's solid, established residential areas.... Good job.
April 7, 20169 yr Very nice photo-essay. I would not have imagined such impressive, diverse architecture and walkable areas for small/mid-sized city in the heart of Cowpoke country. It looks more like a northeast or Midwest city (... btw, I've never bought into the idea that Oklahoma is Midwestern, as some people have). Frankly Tulsa looks more desirable than OKC, ... to me, anyway. Downtown is Art Deco par-excellence and, obviously, there's solid, established residential areas.... Good job. Yeah, Tulsa is a Great Plains city. There is a big difference between the Great Plains and the rest of the "Midwest". Omaha, Lincoln, Kansas City, etc. are similar. Iowa feels like the crossover to me. The eastern Iowa city of Davenport feels like an inland Midwestern river city, while the western part of Iowa feels more Great Plains (Des Moines feels Great Plains). There is a desolate feeling in that part of the country...Nebraska seems to capture it best, but I've never been to Oklahoma. I bet it's comparable, just warmer. Though surprisingly, more historic architecture than expected is found in these cities. They're not as old as Great Lakes or Ohio River cities, but they did experience a boom in the early part of the 20th century. They are much different from modern boomtown sprawlers like Phoenix or Charlotte. Tusla seems to have more early 20th century building stock than most middle American cities (I will never consider Great Lakes states to be "Middle America"). The Great Plains cities differ from the Great Lakes and Northeastern cities since they lack large collections of late 1800s architecture (or even mid-1800s in the case of East Coast ports and the two early river ports of St. Louis and Cincinnati). *It's pretty amazing how much technology influenced the early booms of different cities. Our earliest cities were built as deep draft shipping ports, which is why Northeastern and Great Lakes cities boomed early (with many of them peaking early too). Cincinnati and St. Louis boomed early due to having good locations on the nation's two most important navigable rivers, so even though we don't think of them as shipping ports, they were very busy river ports. West of the Mississippi, nothing really boomed until railroads worked their way out there. Pretty much the only West Coast city with a large quantity of late 1800s building stock is San Francisco. Seattle and Oakland also have some late 1800s stock (a lot more than Portland, Los Angeles, Long Beach, or San Diego). The reason San Francisco and Seattle boomed first is because they had excellent deepwater shipping harbors. Even to this day, they are two of the best harbors on earth. Despite being just five miles away from San Francisco, Oakland didn't even start to grow until the completion of the first transcontinental railroad (and then it boomed after the 1906 earthquake, which hit SF much harder). Anything between the Mississippi and the Pacific needed a railroad to really boom. You'll notice that most cities in Middle America (which I consider everything between the Mississippi and West Coast) were built on key transcontinental rail lines. These rail towns tend to have more historic urban stock than cities that didn't boom until the invention of the freeway. By 1930, Tulsa had 141,258 people, so that's a large enough pre-depression urban core to be impressive. All of those people came in just three decades, so a true boom. Contrast this with Phoenix, which only had 48,118 people by 1930. Charlotte only had 82,675 people by 1930. Pretty much all of our best urban stock in America was built from the Civil War era until the Great Depression. We like to make WW2 the cutoff, but the 1930s were mostly a lost decade. :| If it wasn't for the Works Progress Administration, our cities would have hardly seen any good quality construction. What changed the most in the Great Depression was the construction quality. Cheaper materials started being used, and ornamentation was reduced throughout the Great Depression and 1940s. Even though some of the stuff built from 1930-1950 followed a dense urban form, it was cheaper construction. A good example of this is what happened to Carew Tower in Cincinnati. I believe that building underwent design changes to cheapen the facade. Thankfully, it still worked out well since it has great Art Deco form. The Great Depression killed fancy Art Deco. Art Deco kept getting built, but with continual downgrades. I think the Main Branch of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library also ended up with a cheaper design since it was built in the late 30s. Toledo's Streamline Moderne Amtrak station would be another good example since it was the last major station built by the New York Central Railroad (1950). The effects the Great Depression had on construction were incredible... And then after WW2, we got the double whammy of the freeway era- cheap materials and poor form. Though we don't think of Great Plains cities as being historic, most of them did have early 20th century booms. Omaha had 214,006 people by 1930. Kansas City had 399,746 people by 1930, which is why it's the urban king of the Great Plains. I think Tulsa falls somewhere in the middle, but no doubt it has some impressive Art Deco. That Art Deco church is pretty amazing! Is there anything else like that in America?
April 8, 20169 yr Brimingham Alabama is another pretty good example of early 20th century urban form which is enhanced by the hills/mountains around it if you look in the right parts of town its more impressive than you think it would be with many early skyscrapers nestled in valleys. Sadly its not in such good shape/pretty run down almost rust belt because they tried to capitalize on the late 1800s industrial boom without adapting to a post industrial world the way Atlanta did. As to the 1930s-1950 I'd argue they were a transition time, not as much got built in that era (though Cincinnati did well during the depression and has more of it than most cities do) - there are plenty of parts of town with brick boxes that are built to an urban form some of which with great art deco/moderne detailing while other areas like much of Roselawn are built to a more suburban/bungalow kind of feel. Some of the oddest neighborhoods in Chicago are ones that were built ~1950 but were plotted out in the 1920s so they have a very similar mix of large apartment buildings and small bungalows but built to a much less ornate form than would have been built pre-depression (prectically nothing was built in the 30s in Chicago). See Skokie IL for a good example of that. Even a good chunk of Mariemont was built in the 1930s-1950s though it was planned in the 20s and it more reflects that era than the ones that followed it with some plainer but still fairly ornate tudor style apartments built in the 50s believe it or not! Probably the most interwar architecture you'll find is in LA which never really stopped growing during the depression - there are a lot of really great art deco era apartment buildings in and around Santa Monica for instance which were built in the 1930s and 1940s. Even the outer areas like outer sunset/richmond of San Francisco have this eras architecture built to an especially urban form - rowhouse style - I think the only other area in the US that has architecture of that era to this density is Queens, though I could be mistaken. I do wonder if not for the depression / war would suburbanization happened like 15 year earlier?
April 8, 20169 yr During the late 90s one of my plants was in Sapulpa and I spent a lot of time there. It really is a great town, especially downtown and south. I could have moved there in early 1999 and that’s the only time I’ve been really tempted. The only real annoyances were the apparent love of disappearing lanes and not being able to buy full strength beer cold. I stayed right by Cityplex/ORU. That stubby space needle is about 180 feet tall and that’s where Oral heard God say “raise XX million dollars or I’m calling you home”. I wondered if he had gone across the street to the top of 600’ CityPlex he would have heard “quit bilking your followers or just go home”.
April 8, 20169 yr I do wonder if not for the depression / war would suburbanization happened like 15 year earlier? Possibly, but nothing like it happened. Much more slowly. Between the rural migration to the cities for war industries and the deferred spending and a few other factors, the war was a huge factor in triggering the explosive nature of it. Most likely the biggest factor.
April 8, 20169 yr Very nice photo-essay. I would not have imagined such impressive, diverse architecture and walkable areas for small/mid-sized city in the heart of Cowpoke country. It looks more like a northeast or Midwest city (... btw, I've never bought into the idea that Oklahoma is Midwestern, as some people have). Frankly Tulsa looks more desirable than OKC, ... to me, anyway. Downtown is Art Deco par-excellence and, obviously, there's solid, established residential areas.... Good job. Yeah, Tulsa is a Great Plains city. There is a big difference between the Great Plains and the rest of the "Midwest". Omaha, Lincoln, Kansas City, etc. are similar. Iowa feels like the crossover to me. The eastern Iowa city of Davenport feels like an inland Midwestern river city, while the western part of Iowa feels more Great Plains (Des Moines feels Great Plains). There is a desolate feeling in that part of the country...Nebraska seems to capture it best, but I've never been to Oklahoma. I bet it's comparable, just warmer. Not sure the purpose of this very long post, but this is the problem you get into when you define regions qualitatively and not objectively, and then admit you've never been there. Also - the "Great Plains" is not a region. Oklahoma is either Midwestern, Southern, or Southwestern. You can't just create a junk drawer for it and Nebraska - no geographer does this. Anything between the Mississippi and the Pacific needed a railroad to really boom. You'll notice that most cities in Middle America (which I consider everything between the Mississippi and West Coast) were built on key transcontinental rail lines. These rail towns tend to have more historic urban stock than cities that didn't boom until the invention of the freeway. By 1930, Tulsa had 141,258 people, so that's a large enough pre-depression urban core to be impressive. All of those people came in just three decades, so a true boom. Contrast this with Phoenix, which only had 48,118 people by 1930. Charlotte only had 82,675 people by 1930. Pretty much all of our best urban stock in America was built from the Civil War era until the Great Depression. We like to make WW2 the cutoff, but the 1930s were mostly a lost decade. :| If it wasn't for the Works Progress Administration, our cities would have hardly seen any good quality construction. However, very salient point here. I have always thought you could easily just take a city's population today, divide it by its 1940 population, and that's the portion of that city that is "urban core." I can see 1930, I could also see 1950, although that's getting pretty borderline. I think even in the 40s these cities were building interesting communities - a lot of late Art Deco, prime mid-century, and early modernism. And then after WW2, we got the double whammy of the freeway era- cheap materials and poor form. Though we don't think of Great Plains cities as being historic, most of them did have early 20th century booms. Omaha had 214,006 people by 1930. Kansas City had 399,746 people by 1930, which is why it's the urban king of the Great Plains. Never knew that, but I guess that's why they're called the Royals... :roll: Don't tell that to Dallas or Minneapolis.
April 8, 20169 yr This is interesting. Being from Iowa, I can attest to a bit of the part moving from Eastern Iowa where Davenport is, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, then going west 120 miles to Des Moines and then another 100 miles West or so to Omaha from there. Cincinnati feels a lot more dense to me on foot than say St. Louis, but that may be entirely because St. Louis has lost half a million people from it's peak while Cincinnati has lost around 200k from it's peak. But either way, the urban form is a bit denser and taller in Cincy than St. Louis. My friends who visited who also spent time in St. Louis, and also my aunt who lived in St. Louis for 15 years and visited me in Cincy, all said they thought Cincy was bigger. I honestly feel St. Louis is bigger and edgier than Cincinnati, when you are there you just get the feeling you are in a city that used to be a lot more thriving and is emptied out a ton, it feels with the Mississippi and the huge flat watershed area that it is bigger overall, but Cincinnati definitely is "tighter" in it's urban form. You move West to Indianapolis from Cincy and this has more of a Des Moines feel to it. Wide streets and avenues, on a grid for the most part, houses further set back. I don't know if it's a fair comparison because I know Indy has lost a ton of it's old urban core. You can see remnants of the old core in Indy going south towards downtown on Meridian. It must have been impressive in it's day but I think they cleared a ton out of the city for urban renewal. I would agree Davenport has that old city river feel. So does Dubuque, IA, which is on a tiny scale similar to Cincinnati in a way, where the old downtown is pretty much level but then the rest of the city is on high bluffs above the Mississippi river. You go west some more to Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, then you still kind of get an urban feel, but it is getting more spread out. Cedar Rapids to me is a tiny version of Indy. They are quite similar in urban form just on a much smaller scale. Des Moines really feels a lot more spread out and a lot more "western" or "great plains" than the east side of Iowa. Omaha and Des Moines are quite similar but Omaha is quite a bit bigger, around 30%. There definitely is a difference in urban form moving from East to West.
April 8, 20169 yr Cincinnati feels a lot more dense to me on foot than say St. Louis, but that may be entirely because St. Louis has lost half a million people from it's peak while Cincinnati has lost around 200k from it's peak. But either way, the urban form is a bit denser and taller in Cincy than St. Louis. My friends who visited who also spent time in St. Louis, and also my aunt who lived in St. Louis for 15 years and visited me in Cincy, all said they thought Cincy was bigger. I honestly feel St. Louis is bigger and edgier than Cincinnati, when you are there you just get the feeling you are in a city that used to be a lot more thriving and is emptied out a ton, it feels with the Mississippi and the huge flat watershed area that it is bigger overall, but Cincinnati definitely is "tighter" in it's urban form. Generally agree. Looking at what the city is like now (I took a weekend trip a few months ago) versus what it was historically (the Missouri History museum did an excellent exhibit on what STL was like in its peak year of 1875 with plenty of photos and illustrations) I'd argue St Louis is like if Chicago and Cincinnati had a kid. Areas like the Central West End had the large 1920s-1950s apatment towers of Chicago's lakefront mixed with smaller buildings that felt a lot like Clifton's gaslight district (more ornate than Chicago's low rise stuff). Also I feel that beyond all the Louis Sullivan designed buildings (Chicago School architecture) of Washington Ave where there are currently parking lots, previously there were tenements like you'd find in OTR - sadly there is none of that left, urban decay is a big issue in STL but I also feel the city was absolutely ravaged by midcentry urban renewal large empty swaths of the city with occaisional clusters to remind you of what used to be there. Its one of the saddest cities in the United States considering what it was and what it now is - sadder than Detroit because Detroit besides downtown never had the kind of architectural treasure that is literally crumbling to the ground like whats happening in STL. I do feel Cincinnati in 1930 was denser than STL (I use that year because that's before the arch grounds were cleared). Soulard's architecture is like all the smaller older buildings in OTR with the stars on the sides and the sloped roofs minus all the later large tenement buildings. The two cities I'd argue are cousins though, but culturally STL felt more Great Lakes than isolated river town like Cincy does. (Though the beer scene in STL really reminded me of Cincinnati's - very German focused and STL had German named streets that were renamed in WWI just like Cincinnati). Its a fascinating place. Soulard: http://www.stlouiscitytalk.com/2010/06/soulard-neighborhood.html Older buildings (long gone) from Cincinnati - lower Mt Adams really looked like Soulard on a slope: http://s3.amazonaws.com/ghostsofdc/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/05/27223621/4a22276u-1024x816.jpg Also none of this in STL exists anymore :( - http://www.stl250.org/userfiles/com.stl250/image/1880%20nw%20from%20Old%20Court___Source.jpg http://s148.photobucket.com/user/warwickland/media/stlouis.jpg.html -- Des Moines to me felt like a more desolate version of Dayton (smaller regional pop with less traffic) that was in a little better shape than that city - wide roads, lots of frame houses. I went there when I was in college. Typical Midwestern IMO.
April 8, 20169 yr St. Louis definitely lost a ton which is heartbreaking. I was wondering the other day, if I-75 never cut through the West End and destroyed all that housing, would the region be able to go back and rehab that whole area which sounded like it was in poor condition before? I guess that's more or less an empty question becasue there were so many more residents in the city then, but I wonder if that would have kept more people in the city, more property owners, and possibly have them re-habbing and moving back to the city earlier than now, which is really picking up steam at the moment. I don't know Dayton very well because I haven't lived in Cincy a long time. I've only really ever passed through Dayton on the Interstate, so I don't know a lot about it. I know a lot more about Des Moines and the city itself is quite nice and clean. Of course there are rough patches like everywhere but I would assume Dayton is an older city overall than Des Moines so the city would reflect that. I also don't think Des Moines ever lost much population and it is at it's highest population ever right now, but I think at some point Des Moines annexed more land before the growth of suburbs surrounded it to the south so that may be a reason why.
April 8, 20169 yr Kenyon-Barr while not perfect was in way better shape than the Brighton/Dayton Street area of the West End is today, see for yourself, these are photos taken of the area before it was torn down for "Queensgate" a failed industrial park. Racism was more an issue for the neighborhood being "blighted" than actual blight: http://victorianantiquitiesanddesign.blogspot.com/2010/11/cincinnatis-lost-neigborhood-kenyon.html Even though Dayton is older, it really didn't take off until the early 20th century - it was a tech innovation hub built more around rail and roads than around canals and the rivers. In fact part of the reason for the streets being so wide in Dayton was due to it being along the National Highway and connections to it were built wide to allow goods to be transported that way. The oregon district, the triangle and the wright bros historic area on the west side are really the only spots in town I can think of that reflect an older city. Much of the rest is similar to Indianapolis or Des Moines (the hilliness is similar to Des Moines too).
April 8, 20169 yr ^There are far more neighborhoods that reflect a pre-WWII (hell, pre-1900's) city in Dayton such as St. Anne's Hill, Inner East, Huffman, South Park (which has much tighter streets than, say, University Triangle), Grafton Hill, etc. Dayton's biggest growth period was 1890, much due to NCR and Charles Kettering. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
April 8, 20169 yr Not sure the purpose of this very long post, but this is the problem you get into when you define regions qualitatively and not objectively, and then admit you've never been there. Also - the "Great Plains" is not a region. Oklahoma is either Midwestern, Southern, or Southwestern. You can't just create a junk drawer for it and Nebraska - no geographer does this. I've always thought it's weird how the Great Plains get lumped in with Great Lakes states as this giant "Midwestern" zone with such huge cultural and economic differences (though Great Lakes cities are more "Mideastern" than anything else, with some obvious similarities to outer New York City neighborhoods like you find in Queens). And it's important to take into account plant and animal life. The geography in middle America is quite different from the Great Lakes states. But I agree Oklahoma would cross over into the South. Maybe Kansas too? Nebraska is northern for sure. In fact, they speak probably the flattest English anywhere in America in Omaha and Lincoln. But all those cities are quite a bit different from cities in the Great Lakes region or Ohio River Valley. They need to divide up the "Midwest" more! There is nothing like the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forests in the Great Plains. It doesn't look like the Ohio Valley forests either. Geographically, it looks quite a bit different, which you see whenever driving across the country. West of the Mississippi River, trees start thinning out... For lack of a better term, the Great Plains states feel like the "West" to me in a way the Great Lakes states do not. America "opens up" west of St. Louis. I get why St. Louis calls itself the "Gateway to the West." It makes a lot of geographic sense. However, very salient point here. I have always thought you could easily just take a city's population today, divide it by its 1940 population, and that's the portion of that city that is "urban core." I can see 1930, I could also see 1950, although that's getting pretty borderline. I think even in the 40s these cities were building interesting communities - a lot of late Art Deco, prime mid-century, and early modernism. Totally agree. Never knew that, but I guess that's why they're called the Royals... :roll: Don't tell that to Dallas or Minneapolis. Haha, Minneapolis is a weird case, but it was a little bigger than Kansas City at peak urban. Minneapolis seems part Great Lakes and part something else (maybe a little Canadian Prairie influence, which would explain the smiling and friendliness). Dallas boomed early for Texas, but still only 269,475 people by 1930. That's a significant gap with Kansas City. It also seems like Dallas destroyed a lot more of its downtown. :| I like Dallas a lot (due to its unique culture that is counter-culture to Austin), but it does seem like they made tons of urban planning mistakes there (true of all of Texas). One thing I'm wondering is why is Oklahoma City now growing much faster than Tulsa? Historically, they weren't that far off from each other... *How is Tulsa's economy doing? I like a lot of the downtown architecture, but it looks pretty dead. Are offices occupied? Is the downtown residential population substantial?
April 8, 20169 yr Cincinnati feels a lot more dense to me on foot than say St. Louis, but that may be entirely because St. Louis has lost half a million people from it's peak while Cincinnati has lost around 200k from it's peak. But either way, the urban form is a bit denser and taller in Cincy than St. Louis. My friends who visited who also spent time in St. Louis, and also my aunt who lived in St. Louis for 15 years and visited me in Cincy, all said they thought Cincy was bigger. I honestly feel St. Louis is bigger and edgier than Cincinnati, when you are there you just get the feeling you are in a city that used to be a lot more thriving and is emptied out a ton, it feels with the Mississippi and the huge flat watershed area that it is bigger overall, but Cincinnati definitely is "tighter" in it's urban form. You move West to Indianapolis from Cincy and this has more of a Des Moines feel to it. Wide streets and avenues, on a grid for the most part, houses further set back. I don't know if it's a fair comparison because I know Indy has lost a ton of it's old urban core. You can see remnants of the old core in Indy going south towards downtown on Meridian. It must have been impressive in it's day but I think they cleared a ton out of the city for urban renewal. Pretty much agree with all this. St. Louis was the much bigger city in its heyday, but it has lost such an incredible amount of building stock (maybe a higher percentage than Detroit), it's now just a hollow shell of its former glory. It's a heartbreaking and depressing place, but I do like it. The depressing vibe there downtown actually reminded me of Toledo. Some of the big abandoned rail yards, abandoned factories, and big old warehouses reminded me of Toledo too (in fact, St. Louis has a clone of Toledo's Great Lakes Terminal Warehouse, which is pretty shocking to see so far removed from the Great Lakes). St. Louis is actually a Rust Belt city. Cincinnati is more active at its core than St. Louis. Cincinnati might now feel a little bigger too (it's more intact). Though we're splitting hairs in that comparison since they do have similar histories. It's just St. Louis had most of its trade with the Great Lakes while Cincinnati bridged the South to the North. St. Louis certainly feels more "Rust Belt" even though it's outside of the Great Lakes region. It looks and feels like a Rust Belt city complete with all of the social ills, abandoned industrial buildings, and urban prairies. With that said, there is still a lot of great East Coast-style row housing. Sadly, a lot of it is abandoned and getting near end stage (I hope they can save as much of historic St. Louis as possible). And by some miracle of God, St. Louis built a good light rail system! How did they pull that off? Ohio really has no excuse for its poor transit if St. Louis can build a viable system. That light rail system also connects the airport and Washington University to downtown. I can see St. Louis recovering a little due to their transit infrastructure and some key neighborhoods within walking distance of stations. But the economy does not feel very strong there... In terms of Indy, yeah, it was demolitions that thinned out the city. Pre-WW2 urban Indianapolis lost even more people than pre-WW2 urban Columbus did. Indianapolis used to be very dense and urban. But even today, I don't think it feels like any Great Plains city since it's so heavily forested. A lot of Indy neighborhoods are very woodsy. Also, Indy has some pretty damn good urban infill right now in the core that is high density and high quality. This new Indy stuff would look good in any wealthy coastal city. *St. Louis is the Gateway to the West, but it shares a lot of history with Great Lakes and Ohio Valley industrial cities (elements of Detroit, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, etc.). Historically, I bet St. Louis was one of the most impressive cities in America. It's a lot different from everything west of there. Indianapolis is arguably more the stereotype of "Midwest", but although it has thinned out a lot, it was a dense urban powerhouse in its heyday (denser than any Great Plains cities). Indy is heartbreaking in its own way, but the strong economy and new urban development there is encouraging. Some of the best infill in the Midwest is actually happening in Indy. Who knew?
April 8, 20169 yr And by some miracle of God, St. Louis built a good light rail system! How did they pull that off? Ohio really has no excuse for its poor transit if St. Louis can build a viable system. That light rail system also connects the airport and Washington University to downtown. I can see St. Louis recovering a little due to their transit infrastructure and some key neighborhoods within walking distance of stations. But the economy does not feel very strong there... Yeah I feel the same way about this and STL kind of gave me an idea of what riding light rail would be like in a place like Cincinnati as physically the cities are of similar size (though Pittsburg's light rail would probably be more comparable given similar topographies). The light rail while not perfect, was really handy as was the frequent and now competitive with driving Amtrak service it now has and its only going to get better in the next few years as the whole line outside of Chicago's freight congested core will be 110mph service! Another crazy thing about STL is that even though there isn't a proper pharmacy in downtown like a CVS or Walgreens that keeps normal hours, they have a proper urban grocery and a movie theater - its like STL has everything Cincinnati needs (including said convenient Amtrak link to Chicago), even though I'll agree Cincy is a much stronger and more vibrant city now... Another thing STL has got is some incredible urban suburbs - Clayton, University City and Maplewood are all pretty great places and all have light rail service too - I think that's a major detriment to the core though because all of those places offer an urban lifestyle without the ills associated with the big city - Clayton for all intents and purposes is STLs defacto downtown. ^There are far more neighborhoods that reflect a pre-WWII (hell, pre-1900's) city in Dayton such as St. Anne's Hill, Inner East, Huffman, South Park (which has much tighter streets than, say, University Triangle), Grafton Hill, etc. Dayton's biggest growth period was 1890, much due to NCR and Charles Kettering. I knew you'd have more examples ;). I know so much more about Cincy than I do the city I grew up closest to heh.
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