For those that don't know Dayton, Saint Anne's Hill is the area to the right (east) on this aeriel photo, east of downtown. 

 

 

I have been looking into some of the "commercial history" of this neighborhood, mainly via city directorys and sanborn maps.  Though this neighborhood dates pretty far back, to the 1840s and 1850s, the criss-cross directorys (listing occupants and buisiness by street address) go back only as far as 1914..further back would be difficult to trace.

 

But 1914 is a good enough start date to look at the history of use of a few of St Anne Hill's corner stores, the ones on the side streets, off the main arteries and streetcar routes of 5th and Richard Streets.  I would have liked to go back to 1910, as the Model T came out in 1909, but perhaps In 1914 the automobile still hadn't really hit the city too much yet, and chain retail also wasn't a big player either (thought that would change in the 1920s).  It is also before Prohibition so one would see neighborhood saloons.

 

The stores I am looking at are these:

 

 

They are not all in the official historic district, but are within what I consider the St Anne Hill plats, based on the developement history of the neighborhood (stay tuned for a post on that at a later date)

 

The first store is at the intersection of High and McLain.  This was consistently a grocery until 1950, and apparently the owner lived on the property and continued to live there after the store closed in 1950.  The storefront was never utilized for commercial purposes since 1950.  The timeline at the bottom shows the use in increments...1914, 1919, 1924, etc, and also a small Sanborn map of the property from the 1940s/50s is shown.

 

 

All the stores here are at the intersection of McClain with a north-south street, and all usually face the north-south street.

 

There are no stores at the LaBelle/McLain intersection, with the next at the intersection of Henry. 

 

This store was a grocery fairly late..."Brownies Grocery" from 1964.  The directorys list "artist" for 1984 and 1989 and "consultant" for  1999 in the 1990s, but I don't know if these where buisinesses or just what the occupant did.

 

 

The store intersection with McClure has a more varied history....saloon, soda shop, the a "restaurant".  I wonder about that "restuarant" as in my research on the area a plethora of restaurants appeared in 1934 and 35, which is suspect as Repeal was in 1933.  So where these really "restaurants" or just food as a respectable sideline or buisness listing for new taverns?  Then a cleaners and finally a storefront church (actually two, the second was "The First Church of God".

 

An interesting feature is that this looks like it was two stores...the two story+ the one story annex...yet directorys list only one establishment through time for this address

 

 

The sidewall has this painted sign advertising "Sachs-Pruden Pale Ale, Porter, and Ginger Ale", from the saloon days no-doubt.  Sachs-Pruden brewrey was the building where Hauer Music is today, on Patterson, though they started out as druggists.

 

 

The next corner was a nice little buisness corner in the old days. Today this is Drummer Street, but before 1967, when the US 35 expressway went throught, this was called Allen Street.  Dry goods, grocer, barber, and shoemaker in 1914, and this was pretty stable into the Depression. 

 

70 Drummer (NE corner) was a dry goods store, under various owners.  Don't know what they sold, maybe it was like a little variety store or 5 & 10.  Then there was that long period when it was a beer and wine carry-out.  The first carry-out owner of that also had a carpet cleaning buisness on the side (maybe in that little annex to the left) in the late 1960s.

 

 

Across McLain on the SW corner, was this great building, one of my favorites in this neighborhood (note the nice slate finish around the little palladian window on the gable end, and those chimneys..just a really good generic building).  This was a grocery mostly, then

"Pearline's Beauty Salon" in the 1960s.  The Sanborn says "Sal"..maybe saloon?  No record of that in the criss-cross directory.

 

 

Across the street on the SE corner is 100 and 102 Drummer, which is the only building that had businessess at both addresses.  A barber and a shoe maker into the Depression and WWII, then a variety of uses, including a "Dayton Daily News Substation" (the Journal-Herald had one as well, around that time, on 5th Street)...wonder what that was?  Then various repair services, contractors, and the "Fountain of Youth Manufacturng Company". What could that have been?

 

 

 

Putting it all together to see if there are any patterns or trends, a composite time line for these corner stores.

 

It seens that there is that 'neighborhood services era" ..barber, shoe repair, grocers, dry good and so forth, up into the Depression and WII, then there are the repair shops, cleaners, and such, plus things like storfront churches, liqour store (well, just beer and wine), and even some groceries hold out into the 70s and 80s. 

 

The last good decade seems to have been the 1960s, when there was some buisness use in all but one of these buildings, and the last decade for full utilization was the 1930s. 

 

 

I guess the quesion is "so what?".  Well, some of this is nostalgia on my part as I lived at one time in world of corner stores, back in Chicago....these are the ones of my neighborhood that where still operating in my time....

 

 

...so I was curious to see how this shook out in Dayton.  How this city was similar or different from the neighborhoods of Chicago, and whether the timeline was similar? As well as just curiosity to see what used to be there.

 

It seems there where more taverns here in my old neighborhood (the number actually briefly increased during the 1970s/early 80s when there was more immigration), but otherwise there was a similar downslope in use, with the 1960s being the last good decade with a lot of shut-down stores already visible in then.  There are none left here in St Anne's Hill, and one left in my old neighborhood (which might be denser, too, than St Annes Hill, but not by much).

 

Different things are the repair places, storefront churches and beer & wine carry-outs and such: no storefront churches in a Polish/Italian neighborhood.  Typically the busy street was where most of the buisness was in my old neighborhood. 5th was the busy street for St Anne's Hill, and I will take a look at that later. 

 

Finally, some pix of corner stores (in Galveston) from the National Building Museum exhibit The Corner Store.  I'd love to find some old pix of the ones in Dayton, but these will stand-in.....

 

 

 

 

Very nice!

My dad once said that when prohibition took effect a lot of neighborhood taverns became ice cream parlors. After repeal, even though they went back to selling alcohol, some never changed their names back. Near where I live was the Superior Malt Shop. By the time it burned in the sixties, it was something of a dump frequented mostly by drunks who had probably been regulars since before prohibition.

 

The A&O Sweet Shop, named for August & Otto, the German brothers who started it, is still a respectable functioning neighborhood tavern that does a pretty good business.

Very good work.

Great stuff!