The Dayton Arcade and the Arcade Block.  Sheriffs sale this December unless the back taxes are paid, part of a city block at the very heart of the Dayton metropolitan area.

 

 

Key features of the Arcade are an elaborate Dutch/Flemish renaissance facade, neoclassical arcade, and high-Victorian glass domed rotunda.

 

 

 

Arcade Prehistory

 

The first of a series of threads exploring aspects of the Dayton Arcade, located in the heart of downtown Dayton.  This thread will explore the 19th century development of the “arcade block”; the city block bounded by Main, Third, Ludlow, and Fourth Streets.

 

The arcade is located on a block at the heart of the city, the southwest block of the corner of Third & Main.  What Monument Circle is to Indianapolis, Public Square is to Cleveland, and State and Madison is to Chicago Third & Main was to Dayton:  the heart of downtown, “zero milestone”, and the point of origin of the street numbering system.

 

In one of the first town plats this intersection was shown as the location of a town square.  This square disappeared in subsequent replats, but the northwest corner did become the site of the county courthouse, thus adding significance to the intersection. 

 

 

Though considered the heart of downtown, historically the east-west street passing through the intersection, Third Street, was also a dividing line.  The part of the town plat south of Third was considered “cabin town” as the houses there were made of log, vs. the brick and clapboard of the older part of Dayton, north of Third. 

 

This distinction faded with time as the city grew, and Main Street, the north-south street, became the main axis of downtown development.  The coming of the canal along the east side of the original town plat drew commercial development into blocks to east of Main, along Third Street, so in some ways Main Street marked the western edge of the 19th century downtown.

 

This can be seen in this series of maps from the 1860s, where the more built-up areas are on Main and blocks to the east, while houses and free-standing buildings sitting in the middle of lots appear on 3rd and 4th, and on Ludlow, the street paralleling Main to the west.

 

 

 

 

We’ll take a walk around the block, looking at some pre-Arcade landmarks and what happened to them.

 

 

 

 

Directly on the corner of Third and Main, facing the courthouse, was the Phillips House, built by an early businessman and industrialist.  The hotel building was constructed in the early 1850s in a simple neoclassical style, but was quite the place to be.  The opening ball had guests from as far away as Cincinnati, which had just been connected to Dayton by rail-road. 

 

One of the more famous guests was Abraham Lincoln, who was a visiting orator for the fledgling Republican Party, Dayton before he ran for the Presidency.  He made a stop here on the way to Cincinnati at the invitation of some local Republicans.

 

 

Architecturally the building is quite interesting, as it has shops on the ground floor, acting as sort of a plinth, but the main entrance and lobby was on a second level.  This is somewhat similar in design to other large city hotels in the Ohio Valley during the antebellum period, such as the Burnet House in Cincinnati, or the Louisville Hotel.

 

The plain, blocky style here resembles the design of this old canal warehouse, the last surviving building connected to the canal trade, built around the same time.

 

 

The Phillips House was razed in the 1920s to construct a commercial building, which itself was torn down in the 1980s as part of the Arcade Centre urban renewal project, and this skyscraper built in its place…The Republican connection continued as the county GOP had their headquarters in the building at one time (and this fact perhaps plays into the history of the Arcade redevelopment, which we will see later)

 

 

….note the Gibbons Supply wall sign next door…the adjacent building was still being used as a mechanical parts supply shop, apparently, by the Gibbons family.

 

The commercial building and its neighbors were razed in the late 1980s to construct Arcade Center, or what I call the Arcade Tower.  They renamed it something else after the Arcade was closed.

 

 

 

 

On the northwest corner of the arcade block, Third and Ludlow, was the 2nd Presbyterian Church.  Like much of the Ohio Valley, Dayton was settled by Scotch-Irish, people whose ancestry was from the Scots settlers in Northern Ireland, hence the Presbyterian denominational affiliation. The first church in Dayton was Presbyterian, and there were enough in town to have a second Presbyterian church, too. 

 

 

 

This old church was built in the 1830s, during the first economic & population boom caused by the arrival of the canal.  In architectural style it certainly has an affinity with other old antebellum churches in the Miami Valley, such as this one in Red Lion…

 

 

..or this one in Centerville.

 

 

In the early 1870s a chapel was built to the rear of the lot, in a sort of gothic/Romanesque style, with a corner steeple.  This chapel appears to be a trial run for the replacement church, built in the early 1880s, which has a huge spire sitting on a relatively small base.

 

 

Ludlow Street at this time was residential, and one can see some small houses along the street.

 

This church was eventually renamed the Westminster Presbyterian church, and would relocate to a new downtown sanctuary in the 1920s.  This church and chapel would be demolished in 1927 and the Westminster Building erected on the site.  The same corner today….

 

 

And the Westminster Building when new, in the late 1920s.

 

 

the Westminster Building was torn down in the late 1980s to construct a parking garage for the new Arcade Tower.

 

One can see a more detailed look at the block in this 1889 Sanborn map.  Dayton had undergone a big economic and population expansion in the 1880s, and “downtown” was beginning to extend westward from Main, along third and Fourth.  One can see a number of livery stables, and a carriage works pretty much filled up a whole lot on Fourth Street. Mumma Lane, the alley bisecting the block, was apparently named after one of the businesses on 4th Street, perhaps the big livery.

 

Yet there were still some residential survivals.  One can see an early vernacular house style in these two houses that appear in the background of the pix of the church.  They bear an affinity with some older houses still standing downtown and in the Oregon district.

 

 

 

 

 

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Also, set back on the lots, are a number of little outbuildings or sheds (in purple).  Some of these are probably privies, as Dayton did not have a sewer system until the later 1880s.

 

On the southeast corner the Kuhns Building now appears, having been built in the late 1880s.  The Kuhns building appears in this early photograph (Pres. Church spire in the background), which also shows the mix of building types on Main Street, including included the Dayton Journal office and press

 

 

The Kuhns Building today.  This is one of the very few surviving 19th century buildings left downtown, and the only survival of a species of grand commercial block that was a popular investment for 19th century Dayton industrialists and merchants.

 

 

The 1898 Sanborn Map doesn’t show too many changes, except things are getting more filled in along Main Street and a new commercial establishment replaces one of the livery stables (in gray, on Third Street).  This is the shop of M Gibbons and partners, who are in the plumbing, steam fitting, and heating system business.  It appears their showroom or store area was in front, and there was a machine shop of sorts in the rear.

 

 

 

MJ Gibbons first appears in the city directories as a plumber in the 1870s, then in business at a location on Jefferson, a block north of Third Street in the 1880s.  Gibbons had moved to this Third location in 1896-1897.

 

Next door, to the west, is billiard hall and what looks like an old house, set back on the lot, which was in the 1890s a Turkish Bath, according to the map.

 

The Gibbons property is the first antecedent to the Arcade, as MJ Gibbons would partner with the Barney interests in constructing the Third Street portion of the Arcade (outlined in red). Gibbons would also construct a commercial building on the site of his shop.  These properties remained associated with the Gibbons estate down to the 1970s, when they were sold to the Arcade partnership.

 

The block of properties to the south of “Mumma Lane” outlined in red would all be acquired by a syndicate headed by EJ Barney as the site for the Arcade, except for the southwest corner.  That property would be acquired by Adam Schantz.

 

Together, along with the Third Street properties, they would form the site of the Arcade complex, which is still standing today.  As the Arcade Company was formed in 1901, these properties on the map are just a few years away from acquisition and demolition to make room for the Arcade.

 

Finally a black plan based on the 1890s Sanborn showing  the block slowly becoming solidly built up as the central business district expanded.

 

 

The Arcade project would remove most of the vestiges of Old Dayton from this block, with that work largely completed by the developments of the 1920s.   

 

A look at the Arcade complex itself, and its tenants, will be in a forthcoming thread.

 

Wow...

Great thread!

What an incredible thread!  Thank you for putting this together.  It was very interesting to see all these old photos.

The old photos  (except one) are from the Lutzenberger Collection, held by the Dayton public library.

 

Leon Bey, the retired librarian helping organize the Save the Arcade campaign, calls them a community treasure, and indeed they are.  The collection is a fairly good documentation of 19th century Dayton (or what Lutzenberger wanted to shoot...I wished he took a few more industrial pix).  Lutzenberg apparently had a sense of history as his captions on the pix seem to indicate he wanted to provide background of the buildings, and noting their signifigance.

 

William Luzenberger was an amateur photographer, but a skilled one.  He took his photos early Sunday mornings when no one was in the streets (which is why the pix often lack people). Lutzenberger also made his own cameras. 

 

88888

 

I forgot to note the Dayton Journal office.  It was located at good spot, as it was across the street from City Hall (which was on the second floor of the old market house between Jefferson and Main), and half a block from the Courthouse.  The Journal was closer toward 3rd, but was burned down by a mob during the Civil War.

 

 

 

 

  I can imagine,...

 

  "Son, back in my day we had to MAKE our own cameras..."

 

  Great work, again.

It's a shame the Kuhns building is missing that nice tower on its Main St. side.

^true, that tower is sweet.  Jeffrey, your threads are amazing.