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. 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, 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 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. Both buildings have little turrets or towers, and the Gebhardt tower had a statue on the very top.
They were torn down in the late 1960s, replaced by the Convention Center, 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. 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.

The Convention Centers big wastepaper basket entrance is approximatly on the site today. Unintended symbol for a city that’s been trashed.

Climbing into the upper floors of the Worman-Dye Buiding 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.

Fifth Street was pretty impressive as a donwtown 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 over the zone of destruction. Nearly everything you see here is gone. Visible survivors are numbered (you might have click on the image to enlarge to read the numbers)

1. Back of Third Street buildings

2. Delco, later Mendelsons

3. Price Store

4. St Clair Lofts

5. Hauer Music.

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

Fifth looked like a great city busy street. But it was dying by the late 1950s, dying and dead urban underbrush. 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 expaneded into this area due to concentration of trade and people via mass transit (on of the first streetcar lines ran downt 5th), which expanded to serve a growning 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).

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 dead buildings, which were replaced by landscaping, parking, and things that are intermittent uses, like the convention

…continue reading the article Clearing Urban Underbrush: South of Third

Still under scrutiny for violating election laws by voting from and representing a vacant house, the vacant suit makes a triumphant return to the Dayton Chamber of Commerce.
State Sen. Jon Husted has been hired by the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce to oversee its workforce development efforts, the organization said Friday, Jan. 30.
Husted, R-Kettering, will

…continue reading the article Payback, Parachute or Patronage? Husted rehired by Dayton chamber

Right now, I’d venture that Dayton has an ample supply of affordable homes. Right now, the economy is tanking and people can’t get credit. Out of work, under-employed, trying to get by.
When this country was going through its industrial boom at the turn of the twentieth century, immigrants and rural Americans flocked to the city

…continue reading the article Is it time for Dayton to rethink rooming houses?

In this case the particular industrial prairie was Garden Station, a project of the Circus

The event was sort of a halloween party, on the same night the Oregon/5th Street has it’s party. Not too well attended but one can see a lot of potential for a “Dayton Music Fest” type of thing going on here as this is a neat outdoor venue.

I hope they have this again next year as one can see some potential in re-inhabiting these derelict urban spaces. Almost like a Heidelberg Project.

More pix …continue reading the article Rocking the Rustbelt on Dayton’s Industrial Prairies

…continue reading the article Why Monotheism Fails

Steal food from a grocery store to feed your family- go to jail. Steal trillions from the global economy, pay yourself a bonus and the new President calls it “shameful.”
Obama told reporters he was outraged by a report of $18.4 billion paid out in Wall Street bonuses, as taxpayer money was being used to shore

…continue reading the article To Obama- “shameful” or “Criminal”

Downtown’s newest street, running between Fourth and Fifth. Who was Pretzinger and why did they put a street here? Who knows. But a good example of how Dayton’s deep blocks offer possibilities for making downtown more “interesting”.
Investigating the only empy space on the street, a parking lot, for downtown housing:

The site midblock opens onto a private parking area associated with the old Reynolds & Reynolds compex, now the school board. This means there will be natural light on both sides of the site. The site closer to fifth backs up onto a three story wing of the Ludlow Building, so there would be natural light coming from the east and south.

The concept is to develope a mix of apartments and townhouses. Three story apartments on the southern side of the site, along the Ludlow Building, and two story townhouses with maybe small patios and trees on the midblock site.

The floor plans of the apartments would put halls, stairs, bathrooms, kitchens and storage on the “dark wall”, backing up to the Ludlow Building and living & sleeping spaces facing Pretzinger and Fifth.

The parking lot across Fifth Street could be aquired for dedicated parking, controlled by keycard or some other control feature.

The site:

A very rough concept. Exterior facade could be designed with bays and quasi-turrets to emphasise the corner or entrances, and the ground floor could be raised somewhat to provide visual privacy.

Citing precedent for apartment buildings on tight urban sites from downtown Lexington KY. Note the use of bay windows to enhance the facade (and a nice interior feature, too). I think six units for the building in the upper image and four upper floor units for the corner building. Yer humble host was at a party in the top building (dinner party in honor of Bishop Tutu’s daughter, who was going to college in KY), so can vouch this place is nice inside, big enough for a dining room).

And precedent for downtown housing from Dayton’s history. The lower right was on Market Street, a midblock street like Pretzinger Lane, and and is offered so one can see the townhouse possibilities (though these have retail on the ground floor).

The upper right are good examples of a long thin multi-unit residential. A modern version, not shown here, is the Eva Felman Apartments.

Downtown Housing for….who?

The idea is to build housing for people who would activate downtown. Demogaphically one would be pitching to singles and unmarried partners (or married). The people in this case would be singles or couples who want a pied-a-terre but prefer to spend a lot of time “out”, either at work, school, or active in other ways. Active in doing atheletic things like jogging, biking, working out, but also active in going to music venues, coffeshops, etc, and using downtown retail (or being a market for downtown retail, since there isn’t much). Maybe a free two wheel shopping basket comes with the apartment with directions to the grocery on 3rd next to the Arcade?

Since parking is not 0n-site the idea is that people who live here would walk to places unless they need to go grocery shopping or drive to suburbia for work. Walk to the coffeeshop across the street. Walk to work or to RTA to catch the bus to work or school. Walk to the Oregon or elsewhere downtown to listen to some music. Things like that.

Townhouses would be maybe for more affluent or more established households. Parking might be able to be leased from the school board lot immediatly behind the townhouses, solving the off-site parking problem (people buying a house would expect parking to be

…continue reading the article Pretzinger Lane

The theme here is building subsitution and downtown housing.

First, the familiar Dayton Daily News building, looking like a bank because thats what owner/publisher Cox wanted it to look like. In front are the all the newsies posed for a group shot, label says “picinic”, so maybe that’s somewhere other than the intersection of 4th and Ludlow.

Note, though, the building just to the right, with the awnings. This was one of Dayton’s downtown apartment houses. Beyond that the old Gibbons Hotel, now Doubletree.

Today, the DDN building expaned to the rear, then north on Ludlow via a new building in the 1950s, removing the apartment building. Next door is the Schwind Building, built as office, then converted into a hotel (popular with vaudeville and theatrical types) and later low income apartments.

A bit further south on the same block, looking to the east side of Ludlow between 4th and 5th (you can just see the Commercial Building anchoring the NE corner of 4th & Ludlow). This was what was before the Keith theatre. The back of the Methodist church (one cans see the two spires) and another downtown apartment building (this one 4 stories).

In the foreground are two very interesting houses. One can speculate by the scale and style that these were before the Civil War, probably the second structures built on their lots after the “log cabin era”. Looks like a double next to the church, too.

The things closer to 4th were replaced by the Keith theatre, which itself was replaced by the 4o W 4th skyscraper. The rest of this part of the block was replaced by the Wurlizter and Ludlow buildings. So a good illustration on how downtown expanded into a residential area.
Another illustration around the corner on 4th Street. This house was on the south side of 4th between Ludlow and Main. The house survived into the 1950s as a womens club. I think it was replaced by a parking lot.

By the time of this pix the backyard was taken up by a five story loft building that opened up onto an alley “Temple Lane”, which brings to mind the Callahan Power Block or the Ohmer factory. Dayton blocks were so deep that alleys, or lanes, worked as secondary streets with a second layer of construction behind the street -ront buildings.

In the background on the upper left one can see the upper floors of the Riebold Building.

The scene today. The vacant lot next door to the right (also a house) became the Keith Theatre and now the 40 W 4th Building. Reibold building is stil visible. The parking lot that replaced the house is now Pretzinger Lane…

…which reintroduces the secondary street or “lane” concept back to this block as Temple Lane has disappeared, being blocked by the new parking garage and what’s left acting as a private drive to parking behind 4o W 4th.

Pretzinger Lane…the side closer to 5th…presents an opportunity for some infill housing, which we will look at

…continue reading the article More Ludlow Street Rephotography: Downtown Housing

Gotta love the people at the DDP, instead of working to build standardized parking rates, signs, and create a real parking infrastructure, with tax breaks for cooperation- they build a website.
The Downtown Dayton Partnership launched a Web site Thursday to help people find parking in the city.
The site, EasyParkDowntown.org, has an interactive map of downtown’s

…continue reading the article Parking downtown- don’t solve the problem- build a website.

From: “Walbridge, Amy” <Amy.Walbridge@cityofdayton.org>
Subject: Wayne and Wyoming Meeting Cancelled
With the closure of Dayton Public Schools today, we have to cancel the Wayne and Wyoming Meeting scheduled for tonight at Ruskin Elementary.
Your help in spreading the word is

…continue reading the article Wayne & Wyoming meeting for tonight postponed