(Not sure if this belongs under architecture & preservation, but since there are a lot of images maybe pix is better?)

 

The Dunbar House is a state historic site (which is in itself historic as it was one of the first such sites honoring a black person), and a contributing structure to the Dayton Aviation National Historic Site.

 

Dunbar only lived there a short time before he died of TB. His mother, Matilda, lived there until the 1930s, when she passed on.

 

Dunbar’s life began on the other side of the city, on the east side. Dunbar was born and spent his childhood in the old Haymarket area, across Wayne from the Oregon. He was born in 1871, but the city directories don’t start listing Matilda at 311 Howard Street until 1874. Apparently Matilda was living with her sister and brother-in-law at first, which is why they are not in the directory.

 

Here is the location on an 1880s Sanborn map

 

 

But what did this house look like?

 

Enlarging the Sanborn, we see it was a double, with the Dunbar’s in the northern half. The house has a 2 story front, 1 1/2 story addition, and a 1 story back. So, based on the heights and the proportions, here is what I suspect the house might have looked like (though the rear roof lines are really guesswork)

 

 

Since this was a fairly old neighborhood (platted before much of the Oregon) and this part was built on by 1869, I suspect it might have looked like some of these old Oregon houses

 

 

Or, as an alternative, other types of doubles, one with a different roof line.

 

 

Here is an even more likely candidate, especially since the Sanborn symbols indicate the house was wood.  It just so happens that the Lutzenberer collection has this image of two double houses just west of the downtown, on Maple Street just west of Wilkinson (now the Sinclair campus), which might be similar to the Dunbar house, based on the number of stories, possible roof line & orientation to street, wood construction:

 

 

But where was it? The Haymarket was torn down via urban renewal, and Wayne went through changes too. Fortunately one structure on Wayne that survives today, and is on the 1880s Sanborn, is the Dietz Block. We can use this building as a reference point to see where the Dunbar house was, a block way.

 

 

Knowing that the city block between Wayne and Howard had an alley, one can reconstruct the outline of the Howard side of the block, and then projecting from the Dietz Block, one can roughly locate the site of the Dunbar house, where it would have stood on Howard, as shown on this aerial.

 

 

…and here is the rough location. If I had a 100’ tape measure and some chalk I could probably chalk out the outline on the parking lot, just by eyeballing the Dietz Block corner through that little gangway, and scaling-off the house dimensions from the Sanborn.

 

 

This would be a good spot for a historical marker, as it is readily accessible and it is, after all, were Dunbar was born.

 

 

Paul Lawrence Dunbar lived most of his life with his mother, so one can follow him by following her, as she moved around the city. One can discover were he was living when he published various worker, went to high school, etc.  There were actually several

Dunbar houses.

 

 

These sites are all based on the city directory, and I was able to locate all but one, the one up in Riverdale, 818 N Linden, where the Dunbar’s lived for one year 1891-1892. This was the year that Dunbar published Oak and Ivy, his first poetry book.

 

 

First location from the Howard Street house was on Magnolia, which is today part of the Miami Valley Hospital complex

 

 

 

The Dunbars then moved to Sycamore Street just west of downtown, but then moved a year later to the neighborhood Dunbar would spend 15 years in, the area south of downtown between Ludlow and the river.

 

First location was 121 Short Wilkinson, then a series of moves on Washington Street,, then the move to Riverdale, and back to the neighborhood, on 140 W Ziegler. Dunbar was also a member of an early black church, the Eaker Street AME (later renamed Wayman Chapel).

 

 

 

The neighborhood today, mostly obliterated via freeway construction and commercial expansion:

 

 

The Zeigler Street house was where Dunbar was living when he published “Majors and Minors” and “Lyrics of Lowly Life”, the books that made his national reputation.

 

 

 

The Short Wilkinson house was Dunbars first home in this neighborhood.

 

 

The Washington Street houses: Dunbar was in high school while living here, where he met the Wrights. He was writing The Tatler newspaper while at 315 & 317 Washington, published by the Wrights.

 

 

 

Dunbar’s church: Eaker Street AME. This is a good before and after pix as you can see the back of Emmanuel church, and the commercial building down the street a bit, in both pix.

 

 

After 1897 Matilda and Paul disappear from the city directories. The biography at the NPS website says the Dunbars were moving around a lot, including Paul moving to Washington DC, and some time in Chicago, too. It seems there is a Chicago-Dayton connection with the Dunbars as Dunbar went to Chicago to work at the Worlds Columbia Exhibition, and that his half-brothers also moved to the Windy City around this time.

 

But Paul and Matilda did return to Dayton.

 

The Sycamore street house. This is an interesting location, as the Dunbars moved into this brick double on the south side of the street after their brief stay at Magnolia, and rented here briefly when they returned to Dayton in 1903..renting the adjoining half of the double, before they moved to West Dayton. Today the site is a plaza to the west of the Ponitz Center.

 

 

 

And the final move. The Dunbar house on what used to be Summit Street. The Dunbars moved here in 1903, and Paul died here in 1906, in the upper front corner bedroom. The second story room facing the street in front was Pails study and library.

 

 

Matilda kept Paul’s’ rooms intact, and when she passed in 1934 the state acquired the property in 1936 and opened it as a house museum in 1938. This was one of the first state historic sites related to black history in the entire US. A famous visitor to the site was (at that time) first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

 

For the National Park Service web page with more detail on Dunbar, click here.

 

For a digital collection of Dunbars’ works (from WSU) click here

 

 

FABULOUS!  FASCINATING!  INCREDIBLE!

Jeffrey,

Newbie here. Just wanted to tell you I appreciate the work you've put into researching and establishing the locations related to the life of Paul Dunbar and his family. Too bad much of the timeline reconstruction was hypothetical as Sanborn/old City maps are never a good substitute for extant buildings. Far too many municipalities, in hindsight, have expressed regret after losing significant structures. Perhaps with more in-depth studies of this type, fewer important historical resources will be lost in the future.

John S.

 

    I love the outlines drawn over the photos.

 

    You are on a roll lately. Well done again.

Fantastic post!

When you see windswept urban landscapes today, it is hard to imagine some of them were so densely settled at one time.

Great job Jeffrey.

^

yeah, actually there are scale issues too..things seemed to be more "human scale", finer grain, than the minimalist/auto-scale modernist landscapes of today.

 

 

Looking at some more recent Sanborn maps "Dayton, Ohio; 1918-1932 vol. 1, 1918" of the Haymarket area, 311/313 Howard was still a double, but it was now brick with expanded kitchens. It's quite possible PLD's first home did not survive the 1913 flood.

 

I remember this from your blog. This was a great post, Jeff.  :-D

Wonderful work.

 

yeah, actually there are scale issues too..things seemed to be more "human scale", finer grain, than the minimalist/auto-scale modernist landscapes of today.

 

And that gets back to the whole urban renewal fashion of the 60s. Those finer-grained "human scale" neighborhoods probably seemed crowded, dumpy and too old, and most damning, *NO PARKING* available. Basically the prime criteria for construction for the last 40 years has been to have lots of parking spaces.

The places were pretty ragged, no doubt, by the 1950s.  But a bit sad to see the inner city so depopulated and "suburbanized" (via lots of parking).

 

I remember this from your blog. This was a great post, Jeff.

 

Thanks, yeah, as I wind down the blog I am putting the better, more "urbanist" posts here at UO. 

 

 

 

 

wow what a thread. great work jeffery.

 

Jeffrey,

Newbie here. Just wanted to tell you I appreciate the work you've put into researching and establishing the locations related to the life of Paul Dunbar and his family. Too bad much of the timeline reconstruction was hypothetical as Sanborn/old City maps are never a good substitute for extant buildings. Far too many municipalities, in hindsight, have expressed regret after losing significant structures. Perhaps with more in-depth studies of this type, fewer important historical resources will be lost in the future.

John S.

 

you said it!

 

i know that in nyc records and photos of buildings and other structures on the blocks are required before they are torn down or majorly altered. i dk how long that has been the case, as with anywhere else for sure not long enough.

bump for black history month