Continuing to explore downtown Dayton then and now courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library Lutzenberger Collection. We will move into the part of downtown that was considered just so much dead urban underbrush that needed to be cleared away.

 

The "removals" map. Unlike Ludlow Street in most cases the things we will be seeing where removed for good, without much replacement. The numbered arrows key to the pix.

 

 

The corner of Fifth and Main. This was all houses, but most on this block were replaced by the Worman-Dye and Canby buildings (shown here) and the Lowe Building (of equal height, but more deco. which replaced the houses to the far right).

 

 

The buildings were pretty impressive. 6 or 7 stories in a downtown that was mostly 3 story in this area (if not just houses) at the time They survived pretty late, torn down between 1975 and 1980. Replaced by a parking lot, which itself was replaced by the worlds tallest parking garage (not really, though it seems that way). This garage for government workers in the Reibold Building was one of the tallest new buildings to go up downtown, built sometime in the early 2000s.

 

 

Also on 5th & Main, southeast corner, was the Pruden and Gephardt blocks, examples of downtown extending south during the later 19th century  Probably the first largish commercial blocks on this part of 5th.  Both buildings have little turrets or towers, and the Gebhardt tower had a statue of a female on the very top.

 

 

They were torn down in the late 1960s, replaced by the Convention Center in the early 1970s, which itself has undergone modernizations and expansions.

 

 

A close up of the Gephardt Block. Again, a quasi gothic facade. This was a theatre or "opera house", which in the last days became the Mayfair Burlesque (generating joking references as to what the female statue on the tower was all about).

 

Lots of ground floor retail here, and I think there were apartments in the upper floors. One can catch some of the exuberant detailing of the next-door Pruden Block too.  These were fun buildings.

 

 

The Convention Centers big wastepaper basket entrance is roughly located on the site today. Unintended symbol for a city that's been trashed.  Or maybe it’s a subconscious reference to the funnel cloud of the Xenia tornado.  Who knows?

 

 

 

Climbing into the upper floors of the Worman-Dye Building Lutzenberger took this photo of the Barney Block and old Lutheran Church, which became a Scottish Rite temple before being torn down (hence the alley name Temple Lane?). Note  between the church and corner building how a surviving house was wrapped in a two story business block. A not uncommon feature in this part of downtown. 

 

One can barely tell the house is of the popular (in antebellum Dayon) cube form, done up in Greek revival or Italianate detailing

 

 

Fifth Street was pretty impressive as a downtown busy street here, with a wall of three and four story buildings lining the blocks. The Gebhardt Block and tower can be seen at the far right.

 

All this was torn down. The proposed downtown shopping mall on this site never materialized. Stouffers, later Crown Plaza, was built instead, dating to the early 1970s.  Upper decks of the Transportation Center garage in the background.

 

 

Clearing Urban Underbrush

 

This image was probably taken from the Fidelity Building, looking east/northeast over the zone of destruction. Nearly everything you see here is gone. Visible survivors are numbered

 

1. Back of Third Street buildings

 

2. Delco, later Mendelsons Surplus (the icnonic water tower is barley visible)

 

3. Price Store (Formerly the telephone exchange)

 

4. St Clair Lofts (Formery Beaver Power Building)

 

5. Hauer Music (Formerly Sachs-Pruden Brewery)

 

The old power plant (by the chimneys) also survived though the chimneys did not.

 

 

Fifth looked like a great city busy street  This stretch was sort of the jewelry and furniture district.  But it was dying by the late 1950s, dying and dead urban underbrush.  So the subsequent mass demolition was a good example of using urban renewal to remove buildings that died an economic death due to suburbanization.

 

Recall that prior to the 1870s or early 1880s most of what you see here was residential.

 

Downtown expanded into this area due to concentration of trade and people via mass transit (on of the first streetcar lines ran down 5th), which expanded to serve a growing industrial city. A symbiotic relationship existed between economic and population growth and hub & spoke transit systems, resulting in downtown expansion upwards (via skyscrapers) and outwards (like this neighborhood).  We all know this story.

 

When the need to concentrate things went away, so did the economic rasion d'etre for a dense and expanded downtown. So downtown contracted, receded, leaving behind dead buildings, which were replaced in this case by landscaping, parking, and things of intermittent use, like the convention center.  And a hotel.

 

 

Somebody's on a mission!

LOL..the mission will be over next weekend...I have one more set to post!  But I want to do a housing thing later this weekend that will be modern stuff.

 

Excellent work again!

 

Apparently, city plans for the Reibold block include a building on the parking lot between Main and the county garage. I assume this is the reason the garage is setback instead of occupying the whole corner, which would have meant building it shorter. There are still a number of buildings that should be occupied downtown before any new construction though. Of course, it is hard to complain too much about situations like Caresource.

 

Did the Lutheran church on the old Colony site replace the Lutheran church on the DHP site?

^

No, I don't think so.  I don't know the history of that Ludlow Street congregation.  I am wondering if it came from the "Center City West" urban renewal area. 

 

The Lutheran church on DHP was converted into a Scottish Right temple (which I think is a Masonic order).  Then it was torn down for an early parking structure. 

 

There was also a second church on the DHP site, one was on the north side of 5th, mid block between Jefferson and Main ("5th Street United Brethren"), but that was torn down and replaced with commercial buildings.  Dont know what happened to the congregation.

 

You do bring up an interesting question about congregations in old Dayton, how they shifted around. There is quite a bit to be said about that from a historical perspective.

 

@@@@

 

An interesting feature of the bottom pix is the view down 5th.  This was before the railroad elevation, so the bend in 5th as it enters the Oregon blocks the view down the street, creating a bit more defined "urban" street space by breaking from the grid.  There is an example of this in Middletown, since Central Avenue (?) works at an angle downtown, with buildings blocking the view down the street.