Playing around with rephotography.  Based on old images are from the Lutzenberger Collection at the Dayton metro library.  Perhaps these are not true rephotography as I don’t line up the pix exactly and in one I break a rule where you have to have things in the modern one that are in the original…in one set that’s not the case.

 

East 3rd, 1871:

 

Last week:

 

 

Patterson and 3rd, probably the  WWI era,  or very early 1920s

(the ramshackle building to the left was the canal toll collectors house)

 

 

Last Week

 

 

4th & St Clair.  This building was built in the late 1860s

 

Today

 

 

The original Webster Street Station (big building is the freight house, little building to the right is the station.  Railroad was the Dayton, Xenia, & Belpre, later the Pennsylvania

 

 

Today

 

 

Canal Street in the late 1920s, after this branch of the canal was filled in.  The building to the right is an old canal building from 1850 (the year the railroad came to Dayton), a commission and forwarding house. 

 

From the caption:

 

” The building on the left was A. N. Nixon’s Tobacco Warehouse. The center building was said to be more than 100 years old when it was torn down in 1934. The building on the right was Chambers Canal Depot. It was built in 1850 and was still standing in 1935. All merchandise was received and shipped from this point between First and Second Streets.”

 

 

 

Today

 

Since this is such a significant building (the very last canal building, or building built to serve the canal trade, left in the city) here is a closer look.  Very nice classical façade

 

 

Since I was in the neighborhood a few shots from Webster Station.  I was trying to avoid taking pix of the obvious subjects, and trying to avoid pix that convey a feel of “density” or “loft district”, though there are a few of those, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The alleys of Webster Station are an unrecognized resource as they are of characterful brick, and I could see them redeveloped lined with townhouses, like Efreths Alley in Philadelphia….if there was a market for urban infill housing here….

 

 

In Dayton it is best to be content  with & appreciate what is rather than wish for what is not nor ever will be….

 

 

 

 

I was going to use this for a thread on Wayne Avenue from Belmont to Downtown…..never happened….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The obligatory SSP/SSC boosterish “ooh look at the rowhouses and skyscrapers, we’re urban !” pix:

 

 

 

 

The old Dayton & Troy Interurban Railroad freight station seemed to be a good subject.  This is probably one of the very few purpose-built interurban freight stations remaining in the US. The D&T (also called The Lima Route) stopped operation in the 1930s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The real feel of Webster Station is imparted by a quilt of one story industrial and commercial buildings and parking lots….

 

 

Radio Free Dayton

 

 

The frieghthouses.  What were once team tracks are now parking lots.

 

 

 

The same area from the air, probably early 1920s. 

 

(image courtesy of Wright State University Special Collections and Archives Dept)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old Mad River Railroad right of way.  The Mad River (connecting with Springfield and Sandusky) was the first railroad into Dayton

 

 

The curved building.  This is sort of a neat building, because it is, after all, built on a curve, and because it is sheathed in part in metal panels pressed to look like stone.

 

 

 

The silos are one of the icons (for me) of this neighborhood…..

 

…route of the Basin Extension Canal,  soon to be Tech Town campus

This area will be all redone in landscaped parking lots and low-slung commercial buildings, a more planned version of the parking lots and low-slung long slung commercial buildings  one finds elsewhere in Webster Station.  And there will be more grass and trees to make it less hard-edge urban and more comfortable and inviting and suburbanesque. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like the old fashioned lights on this sign

 

There’s that old interurban freight house again!

 

 

 

 

For me, if ever I should leave here, the image or memory of Dayton that will certainly stay with me is a night freight rumbling and clanking overhead on the railway embankment through downtown. 

 

 

 

 

The obligatory SSP/SSC boosterish “ooh look at the rowhouses and skyscrapers, we’re urban !” pix:

 

Heh

^Except you picked the worse rowhouses EVER.

 

Thanks for the pics, neat stuff!!

You're welcome, inkaelin. 

 

Those rowhouses are pretty nice inside, but a lot of stairs.  I looked at one when I first moved here from California.  My complaint about them is that the windows are too small for me.  I liked the built-in garage, though.

 

That being said Cooper Place was a sucessfull proof-of-concept for Dayton in that they proved people will consider living downtown.  I went on a tour of downtown today and the tourguide said they apprecieated $60,000 to $80,000 since they where built. 

 

I think the concept might be better than lofts, and I do like that they are trying to work off a traditional houseform for the urban Ohio Valley.

 

 

 

 

Nice pics. I grew up in Dayton and lived there until I was 27. The city has much potential but they just can't seem to get their act together.

Nice pics. I grew up in Dayton and lived there until I was 27. The city has much potential but they just can't seem to get their act together.

 

Gee...I wonder why?

 

 

Rare shots.

The mayor is being attacked by a fruit basket! MEDIC!

"In Dayton it is best to be content  with & appreciate what is rather than wish for what is not nor ever will be…."

 

Dayton in a nutshell.

 

I'm diggin' the "rephotography," and I love the standard SSP/SSC shot.  Boosterism is my thing.

Fantastic photos.