May 7, 201213 yr The Mall Motor Inn, as described in Jeffrey's brilliant dissertation http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,16660.0.html on The Mall, fit the urban renewal craze which was sweeping the nation. In the midst of this wave of change was the New York World's Fair of 1964 -- more of a corporate marketing push than most world fairs (and even contested as to its World's Fair fitness, owing to the lack of certain international contributions), the watchword was "new", whereas "futuristic" had been the push behind much of the '39 World's Fair. New meant replacing the aging city with its sometimes baffling lack of homogeneity and making sweeping motions of urban renewal - sometimes wiping out entire neighborhoods for highways and apartment projects. The Mall Motor Inn, however, was a marvelous small-scale urban motor hotel, the likes of which was starting to become popular in large cities. The Christopher Inn in Columbus and the Essex Inn in Chicago are two examples of these smaller "motor hotels" -- basically hotels with attached garage space which was particularly easy to drive to and from. This meant one could allow either valet or self-parking, allowing for a certain independence, even when using an automobile. Older city hotels were best-utilized by train and taxi, where one needed only alight from a vehicle at the curb. So, from this atmosphere of "now" came the Mall Motor Inn. I've scanned a 1966 brochure into place. I do recall the hotel's interior as being decidedly modern. The lobby (not pictured) had a particularly high ceiling in the seating area and an array of indirect lighting - illuminating champagne-colored aluminum tines, which gave the illusion that the lobby was larger than it was. It was a pleasant place. If one walked the full length of the first floor (entering from Jefferson), one came to the coffee shop, which was surprisingly large. I'm enclosing the northern view from the rooftop restaurant. That was during its "Ted Parker's Top of the Mall" days. Henrici's, which emanated from Chicago, is no longer even remembered by many, at its place of origin (which was actually Vienna). The view is from about 1976. Here is the view from the dining room at rooftop: The Gem City Savings Building is still in use. The roofline of the Lafee Building is visible near the bottom of the picture. Elder-Beerman's new store is just nearing completion. It's accordion-style mirrored windows are awaiting installation. The Mead Tower has topped out and has started seeing tenants, but its famous (and now lamented) "MEAD" sign is not yet in place. The Third National Building still sports its original windows (replaced with tinted, energy-efficient single panes sometime the following year or so).
May 7, 201213 yr haha what's funny about these pictures is that many of those design elements and pieces of furniture would be right at home in a trendy, upscale hotel in a large city today great pics!!!!
May 7, 201213 yr Nice history. I just read that this building was lift-slab construction. Thanks. I'm trying to find the "Dayton USA" magazine from 1964 which shows this. How did you find that out? The guest room ceilings and floors were Flexicore, if I'm not mistaken - probably resting on the slabs.
May 8, 201213 yr Thanks! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
May 8, 201213 yr Nice history. I just read that this building was lift-slab construction. Thanks. I'm trying to find the "Dayton USA" magazine from 1964 which shows this. How did you find that out? The guest room ceilings and floors were Flexicore, if I'm not mistaken - probably resting on the slabs. It was on emporis. Though, I should have probably been more specific. It's not traditional lift slab with cast concrete monolith, but I believe the hollowcore slabs were arranged at a lower level and lifted into place so that a crane wasn't necessary. This practice is rare and probably would have been considered very cutting edge when this building was constructed.
May 8, 201213 yr It was on emporis. Though, I should have probably been more specific. It's not traditional lift slab with cast concrete monolith, but I believe the hollowcore slabs were arranged at a lower level and lifted into place so that a crane wasn't necessary. This practice is rare and probably would have been considered very cutting edge when this building was constructed. Of course. I saw some pictures of the slabs. Very interesting.
May 9, 201213 yr Nice history. I just read that this building was lift-slab construction. Thanks. I'm trying to find the "Dayton USA" magazine from 1964 which shows this. How did you find that out? The guest room ceilings and floors were Flexicore, if I'm not mistaken - probably resting on the slabs. My grandpa did a lot of the cover illustrations for Dayton USA magazine. Would like to track some of those down, but haven't had much luck so far. He probably has all the original illustrations somewhere still. This one was one of the magazine covers, and the people who put out this record used the illustration and didn't pay him for it. :) Found the record at Omega Music and bought it though. It is worth a pretty good amount, it's a collectable rare garage rock LP.
May 9, 201213 yr My grandpa did a lot of the cover illustrations for Dayton USA magazine. Would like to track some of those down, but haven't had much luck so far. He probably has all the original illustrations somewhere still. Found the record at Omega Music and bought it though. It is worth a pretty good amount, it's a collectable rare garage rock LP. Wow. I have a few vintage issues, and I even have the one which, amazingly, uses that very artwork ("Restless Horizons"). He did nice work!
May 9, 201213 yr My grandpa did a lot of the cover illustrations for Dayton USA magazine. Would like to track some of those down, but haven't had much luck so far. He probably has all the original illustrations somewhere still. Found the record at Omega Music and bought it though. It is worth a pretty good amount, it's a collectable rare garage rock LP. Wow. I have a few vintage issues, and I even have the one which, amazingly, uses that very artwork ("Restless Horizons"). He did nice work! Thanks! Do you find the magazine online, or just pick them up wherever you find them? Bonnett's in the Oregon district might have some, but not the last time I checked. There is one issue hanging up in the Hastee Tastee pancake house on Linden which shows the wright brothers and some airplanes.. I was eating there one morning, looking at it and thought it was very familiar. The one on the record cover was the illustration from the first issue, and my uncle has the original hanging in his house. Ink and gauche it looks like. He's in his late 80's but still draws and paints, and works on projects for friends. He owned a graphics business in Dayton from the 50's to the late 90's. They had a big studio for a while, fun place to hang around as a kid. Lots of cameras, artwork and things to get into...
May 9, 201213 yr Thanks! Do you find the magazine online, or just pick them up wherever you find them? Bonnett's in the Oregon district might have some, but not the last time I checked. There is one issue hanging up in the Hastee Tastee pancake house on Linden which shows the wright brothers and some airplanes.. I was eating there one morning, looking at it and thought it was very familiar. The one on the record cover was the illustration from the first issue, and my uncle has the original hanging in his house. Ink and gauche it looks like. He's in his late 80's but still draws and paints, and works on projects for friends. He owned a graphics business in Dayton from the 50's to the late 90's. They had a big studio for a while, fun place to hang around as a kid. Lots of cameras, artwork and things to get into... Wonderful. I got the issues (some of them) when they were new. The ones from the 60's may have come through my aunt, who worked at the ad agency Oppenheim Herminghausen Clarke. She knew I loved this stuff and had a lot of sources. The Dragon's Lair used to be good for this, too. I'm glad he's still working. As soon as I can, I'll uncover my two missing Dayton USA's. I do have a nice bicentennial celebration issue, which was unusually colorful. Did he do that one?
May 9, 201213 yr Thanks! Do you find the magazine online, or just pick them up wherever you find them? Bonnett's in the Oregon district might have some, but not the last time I checked. There is one issue hanging up in the Hastee Tastee pancake house on Linden which shows the wright brothers and some airplanes.. I was eating there one morning, looking at it and thought it was very familiar. The one on the record cover was the illustration from the first issue, and my uncle has the original hanging in his house. Ink and gauche it looks like. He's in his late 80's but still draws and paints, and works on projects for friends. He owned a graphics business in Dayton from the 50's to the late 90's. They had a big studio for a while, fun place to hang around as a kid. Lots of cameras, artwork and things to get into... Wonderful. I got the issues (some of them) when they were new. The ones from the 60's may have come through my aunt, who worked at the ad agency Oppenheim Herminghausen Clarke. She knew I loved this stuff and had a lot of sources. The Dragon's Lair used to be good for this, too. I'm glad he's still working. As soon as I can, I'll uncover my two missing Dayton USA's. I do have a nice bicentennial celebration issue, which was unusually colorful. Did he do that one? If you scan them, post or email them to me I could tell you almost immediately. He has a pretty distinct style. Not sure if he signed all of them or not, or if any signature would be cropped out. If they are signed it would W. Patterson or Patterson, and then usually the date like '53 or '61. He still signs and dates the same way; name then date.
May 9, 201213 yr If you scan them, post or email them to me I could tell you almost immediately. He has a pretty distinct style. Not sure if he signed all of them or not, or if any signature would be cropped out. If they are signed it would W. Patterson or Patterson, and then usually the date like '53 or '61. He still signs and dates the same way; name then date. Paul Melia, it turns out, did the bicentennial issue. That one was signed. But I'm hunting others. I'll surely scan when found.
May 22, 201213 yr http://fav.me/d50tc76 <== Of course, I always want to stress the beauty of the place, and few cities I know have such natural beauty as Dayton.
June 8, 201213 yr AFAIK, Rex still had a few locations in the Dayton area until it went out of business a year or two ago. Herle's is still in business, but is now located in Kettering.
August 13, 201212 yr bump...forgot what a great thread this was. Turns out the person I mentioned who lived in the 4-plex apartment to the far right of this image (the one w. the porches) ...has contacted me, and is considering relocating back to Dayton! He spent the last 20 years or so living in San Francisco....
August 13, 201212 yr 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 This sounds interesting. Wonder when it was written? Simak might have fortold the future (Sci-Fi tends to do that).
August 18, 201212 yr 1952. Here's the overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_%28novel%29 I didn't mention "City" as any kind of playbook of the current state of urban sprawl. It's a work of fiction that was written far in advance of modern problems. The deurbanization that the novel portrayed was supposed to occur over a few hundred years due to technological progress in power generation and food supply. We really don't have a pattern of diaspora in real life like the novel describes. And the novel (like most classic SF) was socialistic in that it ignored the profit motive completely, and didn't anticipate that humans would want to stay socialized tightly for the purpose of commerce. IE: we're always gonna have cities as commercial and finance hubs. Just not a variety of sizes and flavors based upon manufacturing diversity as we had 50+ years ago. IE, we will always have Chicagos and Torontos and New Yorks. We will see "Daytons" - cities that lack some core, strategic regional knack that stays renewed over decades - dying off like flies. Unless the economics of manufacturing change in favor of decentralized production.
August 18, 201212 yr I was just in Dayton last weekend driving around a bit and I was trying to imagine what the city was like in its heyday. Something I never really thought about or explored during my time at UD.
November 13, 20159 yr I know I'm a little late to the party here, but once I saw this series of posts I thought it would be a perfect spot to share this picture of Dayton circa 1930 or so. Note the Hulman Building (what's a Liberty Tower??) under construction, dating this shot to either 1930 or 1931. I remember saying when I first found this picture that "Dayton was bigger when it was smaller." I guess it was the whole density concept that escaped us all until we found ourselves in sterile, paved cornfields, trying to remember the Haymarket, Maple Street, and the flat-iron building that used to stand at the western edge of First Street before the bridge to Salem Avenue. I found this photo in some old encyclopedia, a Compton's maybe.
November 13, 20159 yr Let's try that picture one more time... If you're trying to post a picture, make sure it's a .jpg file
December 4, 20159 yr The jpeg file is too large to upload. My apologies; I'll try to figure out another way to get it displayed here; it's worth it...
January 12, 20178 yr Main Street, 1909: www.gettyimages.com http://www.shorpy.com And about 50ish years later... https://www.daytonhistory.org/ "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 12, 20178 yr https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/ 1913 Flood https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/ "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
April 28, 20178 yr Lyric Theater The Gebhart Block on the southside of Fifth Street between Main and Jefferson Streets was built in 1867. The Old Park Theater known as "Lyric" was on Fifth Street between Main and Jefferson Streets. This theater was built in 1876. Pruden Block, Gebhart Building, Lyric Theater by Dayton Metro Library Local History, on Flickr "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 4, 20187 yr New to this forum. Can anyone ID this Shopping Center -- I think the location is Dayton and the date is somewhere in the 50s - 60. The picture features a Tasty Bird poultry story, Klosterman's Bake Shop, and Liberal Market. Have another pic of the same shopping center floating around that showed a carousel in the middle.
January 4, 20187 yr ^Couldn't imagine hanging a "liberal" sign in the white sections of Dayton nowadays lol
January 4, 20187 yr This probably isn't it, but that image kind of looks like old photos I've seen of Swifton Commons in Cincinnati.
January 4, 20187 yr ^Couldn't imagine hanging a "liberal" sign in the white sections of Dayton nowadays lol Most of the "white" sections of the city are blue-collar apathetic, similar to Cleveland. It wouldn't be a problem. Now put it in Preble County or wherever, you'd have a valid point. Regarding the shopping center, if I had to guess, it's one of the Eastown or Westowns or even the old Forest Park Plaza. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 25, 20187 yr Yeah, could be that too. Hell, it could be anywhere LOL! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
March 29, 20187 yr This is both a long-shot and probably not the most perfect place to ask this question, but I'm trying to track down a quote I read somewhere, but I have no idea where it possibly came from. It was something along the lines of "If Cincinnati is the Paris of the West, then Dayton is the Vienna" referring to the industry and innovation of the Miami Valley, but I can't find it on the internet anywhere. It might have come from a book, but I don't remember. Does it sound familiar to any of our handful of Dayton historians? “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
June 22, 20186 yr An early 1990s Jiffy Lube-sponsored illustrated map of Metro Dayton (too large to post here): https://drawme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Dayton-City-Map-.jpeg "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
June 24, 20186 yr Here is a picture of a graphic made of the Dayton area in 1987...hanging on the wall in one my bedrooms. It was part of a series of drawings of cities across the country. Sorry for some glare in the picture.
June 24, 20186 yr Pretty cool! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
June 5, 20196 yr McCook Field Before Courthouse Square... NCR's original HQ: Union Station More found here --> https://www.libraries.wright.edu/community/outofthebox/2016/06/07/daytons-union-station-early-years/ "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
July 22, 20213 yr "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
July 22, 20213 yr Why did they EVER tear this down!!?!?? Ugh!!! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
July 22, 20213 yr ^It is mind-blowing how all of that could disappear. The building that currently houses the DDN (across from Plumwood) does not even appear to have been completed yet.
July 23, 20213 yr 15 hours ago, ink said: ^It is mind-blowing how all of that could disappear. The building that currently houses the DDN (across from Plumwood) does not even appear to have been completed yet. And the same is true of the UD library, from what I can tell, or at least it isn’t in that picture. NCR could have built a great company here in Dayton and been amazingly competitive with the low cost of living and good labor pool. But they chose to not. What a shame.
July 23, 20213 yr its a terrible shame, but it really, really, really upsets my spouse. she worked there out of hs and always says how beautiful the buildings were, or i guess the last remaining buildings? her best story is one day she was walking into her building to work and the ceo was standing outside running a garden hose. she said what are you doing and he said we’re testing this thing out today. it was an early atm machine lol.
January 8, 20241 yr On 6/5/2019 at 3:10 PM, ColDayMan said: McCook Field Before Courthouse Square... NCR's original HQ: Union Station More found here --> https://www.libraries.wright.edu/community/outofthebox/2016/06/07/daytons-union-station-early-years/ Great shots of Union Station! Any idea where the train would stop in Dayton if 3C+D happens?
January 8, 20241 yr So I've heard near the Oregon District on 5th but we'll see once they actually start planning it. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 9, 20241 yr wow, i don’t think i have ever seen a train station that fit a city better than that union station. its entirely daytonesque.
January 9, 20241 yr 22 hours ago, ColDayMan said: So I've heard near the Oregon District on 5th but we'll see once they actually start planning it. This would be a great location.
January 16, 20241 yr Saw this on Facebook, couldn't think of the best place to post it, but very cool nonetheless!
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