Wiedemann's beer! Might have helped if they had run it through the horse one more time. And Richman Brothers - wasn't their slogan "700 Fussy Tailors?"

 

Great photos! Trolley buses were everywhere; almost every street scene has catenary in it.

I guess Im suprised on how active (and leased) the Arcade was as late as 1969. Maybe it could have survived as a market, the way the North Market did in Columbus? The guy who owned it wanted to turn it into a Dayton version of the Cannery in San Francisco, but maybe it could have remained viable as a downtown place for food, services, small retail (even if somewhat scruffy and low key, as in these pix).

 

Do the current reuse plans for the Arcade include any provisions for market-related venues? Like bakeries, fresh food stalls and so forth?

Another few shots of the Arcade  Dayton History Books Online

 

This is Smales Pretzels.  They are still in business on Xenia Avenue in Twin Towers, selling pretzels and pasta.  You can buy them warm right out of the oven.

 

 

 

In the market area: Tasty Bird Chicke, Eden Meats, Arcade Seafood…

 

 

Arcade Seafood is still in business a few blocks to the north (and they are open on Saturdays, too, one of the few downtown food places that are).  They were the very last tenant in the Arcade.

 

 

You used to have to cross an alley to get from the Arcade to the “dome” part, which I think is the “discount center” in this pic.  Note that this place was pretty busy based on the glimpse of people through the door.

 

 

I think the Discount Center is the store to the left?

 

 

This used to be Culps?  It’s been recreated, sort of,  at Carillon Park

 

 

(old timers will recall those U-shaped counters)

 

In the Arcade…jewelry

 

 

…and hats

 

 

The Arcade, lets bring it back.

 

 

In answer to Sherman’s question, there is no firm redevelopment plan.  The latest news was the Wisconsin guys who bought it tried to interest the library in relocating to the Arcade but the library director is cool to the idea. 

 

The park district operates a market in the Webster Station loft area just east of downtown, the Second Street Market, in a converted freight house.  So I doubt there will be an attempt to duplicate market functions in the Arcade since there is already another one.  However, it should be noted there was more than one market in Dayton.  There was a market off of East Third, the St Clair wholesale market, the Wayne Avenue Market House (sort of like the West Side Market or Findlay Market, a neighborhood market), which even had kosher butchers since there was a large Jewish community off Wayne. 

 

And there used to be a market in Webster Station area, a part of which was converted into this fire house (back part into a police station):

 

 

(people familiar with this area will recognize what is now The Merc to the left, Delco/Mendelsons surplus in the background to the left.  Team tracks from the freight houses in the foreground.

 

@@@@

 

A few more…

 

Steve Kender (sr?) and family in front of Kenders, which apparently was a Hungarian place, based on the window sign…

 

 

To show you how much has been lost even in my time, is that I actually remember this scene, in fact I was in that brick four-plex apartment building at the extreme right, the first floor far right apartment, since a good friend of mine lived there.  He was an art student at Sinclair but worked at MVH for a day job.  He relocated to San Francisco, and this entire block was removed for MVH expansion.

 

 

…since this was on a hill he had a good view over the Fairgrounds neighborhood over towards UD.

 

Belmont

 

Someplace in Belmont, probably on Watervliet:

 

 

Watervliet and Smithville in Belmont, looking south on Smithville. The D-X bus barn on the left.  DX was an interurban that converted to bus operations.  Trolley buses in the city, gas busses through Beavercreek to Xenia (fairly frequent service, too, back then).

 

 

“Downtown Belmont”..Watervliet and Smithville looking south on Watervliet

 

 

..there was a Beermans about a block down this street.  This is 1958 and this shopping district would be rendered obsolete by new strip centers opening just to the south (Van Buren Plaza on Smithville and Brietenstrader at Patterson & Wilmington)

 

 

 

And Richman Brothers - wasn't their slogan "700 Fussy Tailors?"

 

...the neighbor, the Joy Shop, did make the transition to suburban stirp centers because I remember them from Louisville, as a tenant in Dixie Manor (a big shopping center from the 1950s).  Both those storefronts, the Joy Shop and Richmans, are still open as clothing stores (but not as those brands), some of the very last retail left on Dayton's Main Street.

 

Smales is definitely a Dayton Original.  There's another small pretzel factory off Patterson near Greenmont village. It's called K  & R Pretzel Bakery.

 

Great thread Jeff!

A few notes -

 

Downtown was indeed quite dense. When I was a kid in the 1960s, downtown Dayton seemed dense, dangerous and confusing. Lots of neon signs at night. Still a lot of walk around traffic in the 1960s day and night.

 

In the picture of Watervliet and Smithville, the fragment of a sign at the lower right that says "Clark" is Clark's Drugs, the original predecessor to today's "Mr. Prescription" local chain and was located in the point building where the gun shop is now. When I was a kid we got our prescriptions at his newer store on Watervliet Ave., across the street.

 

Culp's - I ate in that cafeteria with my mother a couple of times in the late 60s when we would make a day of going downtown on the bus. Ordinary burgers there seemed delicious. The Arcade also seemed dense, lively and busy then. The last surviving old school retail in the Arcade that I am aware of was McCrory's. My brother bought me a table lamp at that store in 1995 or '96.

 

The comments about the age groups - you've got that right - the arcade was for older women to shop and people in their  late 40s and up.

 

Last note for now. Dayton seemed to go through a period, starting in the late 1960s, of real self loathing of its history and older architecture. I recall middle class people in that period wanting everything like "Dayton Malls" - more parking lots, less visible poor people, less density, lower rise and more modern buildings with air conditioning. Everything new - Rt 35 freeway, urban renewal, etc - was talked up like the second coming and "it'll be great when stuff is cleaned up."

 

If you want to know what people were thinking in a 20 year span starting in 1965 or so, here is a narrative: "we hate these smelly, busy, confusing, ethnic, briarish old places - clean it up - WOW, that's how it will be? - geez, it's dead now - we hate it. Let's move to Kettering or Centerville and forget about Dayton."

 

By around 1980 I think people in Dayton who loved the city sort of woke up and realized how sterile the city had become, but by then it was way too late to reverse or stop.

By around 1980 I think people in Dayton who loved the city sort of woke up and realized how sterile the city had become, but by then it was way too late to reverse or stop.

 

The Arcade is still there.  So is Xenia Avenue, Wayne Avenue, Belmont, etc. 

 

"To get the city you want you have to use the city you have".

 

 

 

 

By around 1980 I think people in Dayton who loved the city sort of woke up and realized how sterile the city had become, but by then it was way too late to reverse or stop.

 

The Arcade is still there.  So is Xenia Avenue, Wayne Avenue, Belmont, etc. 

 

"To get the city you want you have to use the city you have".

 

Of course. But a functioning city is more than just buildings.

 

What I meant is that age old patterns of commerce and living had been broken in Dayton starting in the mid 1960s by a combination of urban renewal, highway construction and gentrification. It's almost like some mad scientist saw a bunch of untidy, messy life, and decided to create "neat new life" that didn't excrete or smell as much. So what you wind up with is a pile of dead constituent chemicals. But it's orderly.

 

All of the threads you see on these boards debating things like "would a grocery work in downtown Dayton" all wind up in an impasse because the pump - urban life - needs to be primed, and without that, you just have yet another failed future venture.

 

What made a place like downtown Dayton lively is a democratic variety - you could readily find churches, and bars, and greasy spoon diners, and fine dining, and fine clothiers, and not so fine bargain places, etc. Plenty of reasons to look around, hang out, check stuff out. That (IMO) requires truly public places, not sanitized commercial lifestyle malls like the Greene pretending to be a downtown that it's not. Where even the first amendment doesn't count because some private entity owns the freaking sidewalk itself.

 

If I can't take the risk of tripping over a vagrant preaching the end of the world unless you buy him a beer  :evil:,  it's NOT a "downtown"... it's a Disney World recreation of reality-that-never-was ... end of story.

 

Downtown was, extending my life metaphor, a complex organism that was killed off. Now we propose to try engineering at the atomic level, to make life happen again. It may work. Probably won't.

 

I think the reason that places like Downtown Dayton died due to sanitizing urban renewal is because voters didn't want to experience slight risk or personal discomfort of any kind. Plus the mid century fealty to scientific progress. What we now have is the result.

I think we all see something postivie in these images beyond the nostalgia.  My point is the shell of the city is still somewhat intact and there are still things in town.  The city requires use and repopulation by users...customers and people living there. 

 

I am not really sure about my point here.  It has been a long day and my head isnt clear enough to rebut your critique.  Just that I am tired of the negativity and want to spin the positive possibilities. 

 

 

Jefferey, I wasn't (for once) engaging in pointless negativity.

 

What these old pictures did for me was to show clearly that it required tens of thousands of individuals and several hundred businesses to collectively decide to make Dayton's business districts a place to live and work. Then in the space of about 25 years all those decisions were recast either voluntarily or because the environment changed and those decisions were no longer feasible.

 

I'm not saying Dayton is unique in this regard.

 

What I am saying is that I don't see how one could even start to rebuild a fabric of that complexity from scratch. For one big thing, people were downtown and in business districts because they had to be there in order to live and work. There weren't any alternatives.

 

There was an old SF novella called "City" by Clifford D. Simak. One of the interesting aspects of that future earth was that there were no cities because mankind was able to splatter out all over the earth arbitrarily, anywhere people wanted to live. So the cities died out. What has happened to US urban landscapes reminds me of that story.

 

Basically people seem to always get out of cities unless there are compelling reasons to stay there. It appears to be human nature - cities are harder places to live than suburbs. It requires some discipline to voluntarily stay someplace where your neighbors are close and it's busy.

great thread jeffrey. our ohio cities were cities back then not the shells of their former selves that they are now.

 

and you bet smales is still around. my spouse loves them and gets them every visit home to dayton.

 

btw its pronounced "small eez" not smales as in "ten bucks the smales kid picks his nose...!" from caddyshack.  :laugh:

^ That is by far the best way possible to explain the "Smales" pronunciation.

Wonderful pictures. I just love to stare at these types of old pictures.

 

Thanks!

My mother was born in Dayton.  I was not, but I came to know the city through visits there, beginning in the mid-sixties.  By '74, I was permanently settled there, and Dayton became my education in urban planning, urban failure, urban triumph.  Sadly, I tended to suffer the changes I was seeing -- having arrived at one of the worst decades for cities in the so-called Rust Belt.  The urban renewal mindset is one I shall never understand completely, but it comes from a lack of feeling for history, detail, and just living in general.

Just the same, I was learning photography from that very time and managed to capture some of my adopted city.  I had spent a few years in Toledo, where I enjoyed specific things, like the Art Museum and Zoo.  But I never got to know that town with any real intimacy.  It was experienced in flashes and little adventures.  Dayton was the real experience and gave me a perch from which to watch the country change, often very destructively, with the times.

 

Looking at the attached picture, we see a view made from within Midtown Dayton, looking toward the South East.  The view dates to the mid-to-late 1970's.  The parking lot at the foreground has long since been usurped by a large municipal garage.  Next to the parking lot is the landmark Municipal Building, constructed, originally, as a YMCA and used for that purpose until the 1920's, when the much larger Y was built along the river and Monument Avenue.  A bit of The Dayton Inn is visible -- a horribly-modernized fin-de-siecle hotel originally known as the Algonquin (constructed 1899).  For most of its Twentieth Century life it was known as The Gibbons Hotel and was the city's principal hotel until 1913 when the Hotel Miami was constructed at 2nd and Ludlow Streets.  Around 1981 the hotel was renovated, brought up to code, given a luxury designation, and renamed The Daytonian.  Unfortunately, the tastless maroon skin remained in place until more recent years when the Hilton Corporation removed it and restored a portion of the hotel's former classical beauty.

 

Left of the hotel you can see the Third Street entrance to the Arcade Market -- easily recognizable by its Flemish facade.  Well behind the facade is the dark hump of a dome which once covered the city's principal market house (as of 1904).  The Arcade, a national landmark, had yet to undergo a massive renovation which would bring it firmly into the late Twentieth Century as an urban mall in 1980.  The dome, at that point, became glass and steel -- as per its original purpose to act as a large-scale skylight and ornamental nexus for the city.

 

Virtually everything else in the picture remains, save for the modernistic tromp l'oeil design (six bars, painted in perspective) on the Then-Centre City Building, previously known as the Knott Building and before that the UB Building -- a publisher and printer.

 

In the distance is the very new Stouffer's Dayton Plaza Hotel (1976) - designed to serve the convention trade.  It is now a Crowne Plaza hotel.

Welcome to the forums. From your narrative, I'd guess you've documented a substantial amount of downtown Dayton's history over recent decades; I encourage you to share some more photos, and perhaps that will jolt some other forumers out of their torpor and garner some interaction.

Great stuff--keep it coming!

Thanks Robert and 'ink'.  I'll do just that. Yes - I made weekly pilgrimages to Downtown Dayton from 1974 until I left town for University in 1980.  Frustratingly, my family decided to initially settle in Madison Township, and I often walked, mostly on Saturdays, from Castlebrook Apartments, down the three mile route to the RTA 5-Salem roundabout.  In 1978, I managed to convince my parents that a move to the Rockwood (on Grand Avenue, walking distance to Downtown) was ideal.  So this helped my situation a bit.

I actually got to attend the Dayton Art Institute and Living Arts Center, both.  As a result, I knew even the old Marmon-Harrington trolley coaches well.

If I only knew then what I know now about photography...  well, even more would have been captured.  But I didn't do too badly.  I'll share what I can salvage.

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton_Arcade seemed to be languishing.  Sorry -- but this block of Dayton is far too important to have anything associated with it but a first-class article in Wikipedia.  I decided to add a gallery to the site, and I provided some copy from the original opening souvenir gala program from 1904 -- something I was able to acquire some years ago.  I still have at my desk four Italian ceramic tiles from the original Arcade flooring -- from right under the rotunda.  Got those during the original renovation.  They remind me to stay in touch with this subject.

The Wikipedia article has a long way to go.

good show -- i never edited wiki before. we should remember to do that for all important ohio sites. everybody uses wiki so at the least its good ohio pr to load it up with info.

 

i heard wiki is languishimg in general and that they are having trouble finding people to update lately.

Incidentally, Robert, your images of Chicago in '72 are wonderful -- particularly from on-board passenger trains.  I visited Chicago for the first time, that very year.

The photographs of Dayton make it look quite inviting.  I'm glad it strikes you thus.  I don't know just where to post new images, but I guess this "City Photos" forum will continue to do.  Thanks again.

 

James

So many memories, so few photographs (relatively).

Below is a photograph taken from inside the new State Fidelity Savings building on 2nd and Ludlow.  Across the street is the southwest corner of Rike's department store (the part which was, until 1960, The Miami Hotel).  The bank was giving away lemonade, if I recall.  There were takers.  This is about 1978.

Here's a scene which almost has to be from the calendar year of 1976.  Elder-Beerman (Dayton's #2 department store for years) did the unthinkable act of building a new Downtown Dayton department store from scratch.  In the mid-70's this generally was not done.  Department stores were already cutting down their space or leaving the center city all together.  So Elder's went up in all its steel and concrete glory (six stories all together, I believe) and became Elder-Beerman Courthouse Square.  It was connected, via a pedestrian bridge, to a garage across Ludlow Street.  I shot a sign builder as he addressed the last of the eastern sign.  Behind him is the behemoth Rike's department store, and to the right is the nearly-completed Mead Tower.

A bank founded in 1863 (now part of the great American bank continuum), 3rd National was always a bank with a regal bearing.  Part of its activity was constructing the remarkable 3rd National Bank and Trust Building on Main Street, in 1926.  My aunt worked in this building for a period of time.  I once delivered sandwiches there.  Luckily, the building remains, though its provenance has been somewhat blurred of late, owing to different ownership and a covering over of its original large frontage sign.

I always thought that Elder Beerman was built pretty late. The company had completed the Downtown Hamilton store in 1968 and one in Downtown Richmond, but I am unsure when that one was finished.

 

Just a suggestion--you might want to start one general thread for posting your Dayton images, instead of a single thread for each photo. We can combine those you have created already if you would like, or you can just do this moving forward.

The view dates to about 1977.  We look North and see the roof line of the Kuhn's Building (1883) and a portion of the Arcade Market House, both on West 4th Street.  In the distance stands the First National Plaza Building (1974) and its art deco neighbor the Hulman Building (now Liberty Tower) from 1931.

Other structures in the picture are The Dayton Inn (originally an apartment hotel from 1899), the DP&L Building (1976) on Courthouse Square, and a portion of the 25 South Main Building.  I had been making surveys of the city at the time, trying to discover what there was to know.  The old stuff kept giving and giving and taught me a fair amount about architectural and engineering history.

A good idea I knew would be suggested.  For the first several of these I wanted to relay some detail about each image.

If you have any suggestion (or template) for being able to describe each image in one multi-photo posting, let me know.

Elder-Beerman (or, rather, "Beerman's" operated a large store fronting on both Main and 3rd Streets (separate entrances).  That store had been relegated to a discount department store by the early 70's when I first plied it.  Elder-Beerman's main (and very good) store was at Northwest Plaza, in Dayton.  It may still be struggling on.  When the big store was constructed on Courthouse Square, the old Beerman's was shut down and, ultimately, razed.

These are fascinating. Please keep them coming.

Thanks, James, you're in the right place to post your photos. Following up on ink's suggestion in another post about combining multiple photos into one post, I sent you a personal message with info explaining how to do that while keeping the narrative with the photos. I hope that's helpful.

 

 

Indeed it will be!  Thank you very much.

Thanks.  That is being worked on.

Wonderful! 

Nice.

Welcome and this is fantastic!  Please keep these coming!!!

Just added more last evening, with more in preparation!

In the view you can see they hadnt built the parking garage yet next to city hall, and the Arcade dome was still covered....

The CHS location also had a full-service restaurant on an upper floor.  That was very traditional for a downtown dept store.  That downtown store was one of the things I thought was 'different' about Dayton since most cities Daytons size had lost their downtown stores by the late 1980s (when I move to town), let alone having such a new one.

Excellent elevation shot!  How did you do that?

Jeffrey, that was scanned (after having been cleaned up a bit from extraneous text) from the 1904 Program Souvenir book, celebrating the grand opening of The Arcade.  I think it shows the importance of the Fourth Street facade -- always over-shadowed by the Third Street entrance.  They were, of course, built two years apart.  Many thanks!

This photograph was way before the garage (1989?) went up -- a good dozen years or so before that.  The dome became uncovered, as it were, in late 1979/early 1980.  I visited the newly-glazed domed area before the HVAC, HID lamps (as if for a parking lot), and bathroom tiles all went in.  It was extraordinarily beautiful.

yr welcome.  Yes..this would be the elevation that had the nicer apartments.

 

Btw...there are some 'historical" posts on the Arcade here that I put together a few years ago.  More explanatory.  I was working with the Lutzenberger collection and some old online Sanborns.

I may have seen some of those, but I'll look again.  You have a wonderful thoroughness.

I myself toured the 4th Street apartments, when the sounds of TV sets could still be heard coming out of the units.  I remember, mainly, the large and very high hallways with skylights illuminating them.  My great aunt once told me, even in her youth {and she was already in Dayton a year before the Arcade opened} that the apartments were "icky".  Don't know which ones, but probably the 3rd Street variety.

This was my bank when I lived in Dayton. Thanks for the memories.

Elder-Beerman's Northwest store is scheduled to close any day now. The chain is now owned by The Bon-Ton of York, PA

steeber - I grew up in the Dayton area and also lived in Madison Township in the housing development (Westbrooke Village) next to Castlebrook Apartments.

 

The municipal garage was built in the late 1970's. I know because my Dad worked for the City of Dayton.

steeber - I grew up in the Dayton area and also lived in Madison Township in the housing development (Westbrooke Village) next to Castlebrook Apartments.

 

The municipal garage was built in the late 1970's. I know because my Dad worked for the City of Dayton.

 

Wow.  I wandered around through the unfinished Westbrook Village,  at the time that my family moved to Castlebrook - Summer of '74.  Driving through that complex a couple of years ago sent chills through me.  It was a perfect fossil!

I do remember the municipal garage going up.  Must have been '79.  Nice to meet you, and thanks for commenting!

Elder-Beerman's Northwest store is scheduled to close any day now. The chain is now owned by The Bon-Ton of York, PA

 

That's too sad to contemplate for any length.

This appears to be a festival and parade held in downtown Dayton, Ohio. The date is implied by the movie title shown in the movie marquee (Lowe's Theater, long gone) - "Fool's Parade" starring George Kennedy and Jimmy Stewart, which the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) says was released in August, 1971. Lowe's showed first-run movies so this nails the approximate time - late summer or early fall, 1971.

 

I seem to recall a "Dayton's 175th Birthday" celebration, which would be correctly indicated by the date also (founding of Dayton 1796 - to 1971.)

 

I have no idea what film, what camera, etc. I think my dad took these pictures. At the time we would buy some 50s or early 60s rangefinder like a vintage Ricoh with a winding lever on the bottom plate of the camera. For film, I was bulk loading 35mm cartridges with Tri-X that was actually surplus movie film that we bought from an el cheapo mail order house. So I suspect this is one of those cameras purchased through ads from some private party advertising in the "Trading Post" using a sub par, grainy, somewhat fogged B&W film, which I hand developed.

 

Of note:

 

- EVERYONE is skinny except the occasional older person (except me, this was immediately prior to my puberty growth spurt.) No ubiquitous fat unwholesome "people of Wal-mart" like today.

 

- No skanky dirty ghetto-ness as we know it today. The worst dressed persons in these photos look like they are wearing what passes for nice clothing today.

 

- Lowe's Theater.  (Loew's? Duh, don't remember.)

 

- Revco

 

- Vintage dunk tank.

 

- Downtown Elder-Beerman's flagship store next door to "The Shrimp Boat" restaurant.

 

- The Rike-Kumler company (don't you know.)

 

- The Oscar-Meyer Weinermobile!

 

- Herle's (formal wear)

 

- Virginia Cafeteria

 

- Old-school Rex TV & Appliance sign.

 

- Winter's Bank Tower (aka Kettering Tower) under construction.

 

- Display window at Malone's Camera store on 2nd street.

 

Overall, besides the obvious liveliness of downtown Dayton in those days, the most striking single fact to me is just how bad average people look today. People in public back then just seemed to hold themselves with more dignity and had a better appearance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is just WOW.  Look at the old Rex!

I remember the Rex - it was on the north side of 3rd St. between Main & Jefferson - it's a parking lot now.

 

Yes - it's very sad. My Mom worked there on and off for over 20 years.