This thread will explore how Wright-Patterson AFB influenced the location of major postwar public works projects and subsequent office decentralization.

 

 

By 1959, with the growth of the college aged demographic, Miami University was operating an extension college for 1400 students at Roth High in Dayton and OSU had a smaller program for engineering and science students on-base at Wright-Patterson.   The president of Miami, John D. Millet, proposed the construction of a branch campus of Miami in Dayton (originally proposed for were the UD arena is today).  This would have been similar in concept to the Miami branch campuses in Middletown and Hamilton. 

 

Instead the CEOs of NCR, Robert Ohlman and Stanley Allyn, suggested that Miami and OSU pool their resources into a joint campus.  OSU president Novice G. Fawcett agreed, and the OSU-Miami University Dayton Campus was established as a joint campus (perhaps conceptually similar to IUPUI in Indianapolis) 

 

Site selection effort located three additional sites in addition to the UD arena site on Edwin C Moses, one between Huffman Dam and Huber Heights, another at the old state hospital farm (the current Research Park) , and yet another other south of Dayton, off of Far Hills north of Whipp Road.  None of these sites was optimal for various reasons.

 

The Wright-Patterson planning office then suggested the old Area D site, originally proposed to be the location of an “Air Force Institute of Technology”.  The Air Force also offered its properties at Area D to the new university.

 

 

This became the new campus of what was to be Wright State University

 

 

Fundraising for a capital program (which also included UD) occurred in early 1962 and the land was acquired later that year.  Construction of the first building , Allyn Hall, began in 1963 and opens in 1964.   The first four buildings were named for the four founders, Allyn, Ohlman, Millet, and Fawcett.

 

 

 

 

 

Wright State became an independent university in 1967, when enrollment reached 5,704.

 

The grand plan for the future university.  Since this was so futuristic, the renderer included a flying saucer in the image, and a stadium that looks like where it could land.  Note a proposed freeway was located right next to the campus.

 

 

 

 

 

Early WSU views, including a commencement and 1960s counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman conducting a teach-in in 1969.

 

 

 

The original quadrangle today.

 

 

 

 

Allyn Hall

 

 

This pavilion piece  (the original library) reminds one a bit of Minoru Yamasaki’s designs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first dorm, from 1970.  This does look a bit like a Holiday Inn, matching the suburban landscape that surrounds the campus.

 

 

 

The campus today, with the original quad in the yellow box.   WSU is now part of an edge city made up of retail, offices, housing, etc.

 

 

 

 

The proposed expressway shown in the rendering was built later, but was held back from the campus and Colonel Glenn Highway, so as to permit land for development (this was a conscious decision in the routing).

 

 

 

 

And the campus in context of surrounding development, which started in the 1980s, continuing into the 1990s.  This spec office and hotel construction supports the defense contractor community drawn here by the base.

 

 

 

This area is a node in the national network of contractors, consultants, academia, military, think tanks and non profit organizations that comprise the defense community, which is a more inclusive term than the narrow concept of the ‘military-industrial complex’.

 

 

 

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Wright -Patterson also drove road construction, particularly the location of two freeways.

 

As early as the 1920s roads were being realigned and rerouted to improve access to the base, here at the village of Riverside.

 

 

The base was early-on an attractor for suburban growth.  Here from the 1930s, is a map showing the extension of Third Street to the base, with road stub-outs for future subdivisions.

 

 

With the coming of WWII expansion the airfields grew, and roads were rerouted and extended, in this case the Third Street Extension was rerouted out past the base, and extended to an intersection with the Route 4 expressway at Skyway.   One of the WWII housing areas is also visible here, at the edge of Dayton.   Third Street Extension was eventually renamed Airway Road and Colonel Glenn Highway.

 

 

And there was the Route 4 quasi-expressway, connecting Dayton and the Riverside area with Fairborn and the base.  One of the first two limited access divided highways in the Dayton area (though without grade-separated interchanges)

 

 

 

Yet, with all this wartime construction the roads were still overcrowded.  As a solution the military proposed transforming Route 4 into a true expressway with grade separation, interchanges and an interbase road through the proposed Area D.

 

 

 

 

 

This graphic was intended to support more housing closer-in, but also shows that there was a lot of commuting to the base in from Dayton in the early days.

 

 

Congestion on the Route 4 Expressway near Huffman Dam

 

 

 

Some traffic planning diagrams from the late 1940s/early 1950s, showing the base being the big gun (pardon the pun) in local employment…

 

 

 

…and where the commuters to the base from Dayton were coming from around 1950.  Most of the commuters lived in the city at this time.

 

 

 

….leading to a proposed extension of the Route 4 expressway into the city, following the open space corridor along the Mad River.  The Route 4 expressway was also incorporated into a proposed belt highway (noted as an “at-grade expressway”), which is the first appearance of an expressway bypass around Dayton in planning documents.   The plan also proposed a set of six lane highways to support base traffic.

 

 

 

 

 

The Route 4 Expressway confirmed by a consultant’s recommended arterial plan (though no mention here of a beltway).

 

 

The Route 4 expressway, both the extension and the original, were made obsolete to some degree by the changing location patterns of base personnel.  As the immediate postwar era moved into the 1950s this workforce would disperse from Dayton proper to suburban locations.

 

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Wright-Patterson drives I-675 Alignment

 

In 1957 the Federal Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) authorized an Interstate bypass around Dayton.  Wright-Patterson eventually became a key player in determining the routing of this freeway

 

The first scheme had an alignment running to the west of the Wright-Patterson AFB, but the engineering consultant mentioned that Wright-Patterson had not concurred with this routing.   ..specifically stating that:

”Approval has not been obtained from the appropriate officials at Wright-Patterson AFB, or from the Department of Defense, of the corridor location for interstate Route 675 in the vicinity of Wright Field.  This is a matter to be undertaken in accordance with procedures governing highway improvements in the vicinity of military installations”

“

 

 

An alternative routing by the local Transportation Planning Committee (TPC) had the bypass running much closer in, through a suburbanizing area south of Dayton and cutting through the eastern inner city areas (roughly following the route of proposed Southeast Expressway).  The BPR rejected this as not being a true bypass. 

 

 

 

One can speculate that the TPC was going to use interstate money to partially subsidize the construction of the Southeast Expressway, which appears to have been intended as the driveway to suburbia.   This alignment also neglected the national defense purpose of the interstate program, as it did not provide any connection to the base.

 

 

After BPR turndown, the base, the new university, and local transportation planners formed an ad-hoc committee and engaged in a highway needs and alignment study, which more or less recommended the modern alignment of I-675 north of US 35, swinging south of the Wright State and east of Fairborn, with two interchanges/spurs for the base and one that would serve the university.   

 

 

Which was eventually approved by the BPR.

 

 

This alignment was probably generated by the increasing commuting coming in from the areas south of the base, as shown by this traffic volume and employment maps

 

 

 

The base used military funds to build portions of the spurs and interchanges.

 

 

 

The “far east” alignment went under design in the late 60s, with bids opened in the early 70s, construction got underway, and the first leg of the bypass was opened from I-70 to the Wright State area in 1974.   The remainder of the I-675 became mired in controversy, with construction delayed to the early-mid 1980s.

 

 

Thus, one can see how the base affected some key infrastructure/public works decisions in the Dayton area, influencing the siting of a new public university and the routing of limited access highway construction.

 

 

Good ole' Wright State.  Next!

Two points:

 

1) 10 pictures down, next to the one that looks like a UFO, the master plan, was that a planned football stadium?

 

2) Very interesting, I went to UD for undergrad and never knew the history of I-675, I assumed it involved the base, but nothing like that.

 

Great series of photos.

^

Yeah, I think so, and next to it was the basketball stadium (which looks like it was "carved" out of the top of the football stadium).

 

This was all real blue sky planning , no way was WSU ever going to get that big, and they never followed the plan much, anyway.

 

But it is fun to look at as an example of architecture and planning from that era.

 

While there is a large majority of commuters, there is a large percentage who live in townhouses in the near area.  There are several very large townhouse/apartment communities which are essentially all students.  Also, there are several bars in this area which are students.  So while there may be a low number of on-campus residents, there are students who live the typical college life at Wright State.  Fraternities and sororities are pretty popular also.

But yes, it's a VERY ugly campus haha

WSU is no more chaotic than other colleges in Ohio, or the rest of the US for that matter.

 

The quadrangle area I featured here is a fairly coherent design, but I think the archictect made a big design mistake in how the  the buildings work with the outside spaces.  The following parti diagram sort of explains the problem and what a solution would be.

 

 

Another big design mistake was the siting of the library facing away from the campus (tho the huge window wall facing a big forest is a nice touch.

 

In some ways WSU is a modern mimic of older state colleges.  These usually had a little quadrangle of older building, but surrounded by chaotic, jumbled modern growth, so they are ususually visual messes (Miami is a bit of an exception to this).  WSU is actually somewhat similar as it has an older quadrangle too, but done up in modern style, rather than the revival/eclectic architecture older colleges hae.

 

I really don't know much about student life at WSU, though I am on campus a lot using their library.  I could make some snarky comments that given the suburban location the greek houses are all ranches or split levels in Beavecreek or Fairborn, but I don't know where they are.   The dorms that have been build after that "Holiday Inn Dorm" shown upthread all look like suburban apartment complexes so you can't really tell they are dorms...it is "contextual" but to a surburban environment as there are non-WSU apartments and townhouses in the same area, which, as has been said, also have student populations.

 

I would be interested to know what college bars and places are around WSU...or which ones the college crowd frequent, as there are alot of places around there.

 

Very interesting thread.

Jeffrey you have outdone yourself.  This is a fantastic thread, nice work.

Very interesting.

 

I remember when my dad suggested I look at Wright State for college.  I said that was the ugliest campus, and I would not be going there.