Ohio's Largest Company Town?

The company town, built and owned by one company as a place for its factory, managers, and workers, sometimes dominated by a paternalistic industrialist. The famous one is Pullman (now part of Chicago), but there are others. The raison d’etre of these places is to work and make money, lots of money for the owner or the stockholders, maybe no so much for the factory hands.

And can any place be more stifling?

Dayton is in some ways the largest company town in Ohio. There seems to be this historical pattern here., of one company dominating the community, some moreso than others.

In the 19th century it was the car works, in the early to mid 20th it was “The Cash”, also in the 20th it was Delco/Frigidaire/GM. Now it seems to be the military.

Of course, historically, the dominant company was NCR, due to sheer size and the force of personality of the paternalistic industrialist John Patterson. Patterson this, Patterson that, Patterson Road, Patterson Park, Patterson and the big flood, etc. etc. etc. Really, was having such a figure healthy for Dayton in the long run?

The problem I see in this type of economy and the mentality behind it, is that it squelches innovation and initiative. That it engenders conformity and uniformity. That it is risk-adverse. That there is an expectation that some new big daddy industrialist and line of business will rise to provide tons of new jobs. The question always seems to be “Where is the next John Patterson? “,”Where is the next Kettering?”

Which makes me leery of this big new influx of military work coming to town, as it seems like once again, the community is looking for or identifying with the next big company, rather than on economic diversity.

The next Patterson or Kettering is apparently is Uncle Sam. And he’s in an Air Force uniform.

Wouldn’t one prefer a city that is more diverse? Where there is a lot of smaller and mid sized firms and businesses of various types. Where there is more of a culture of entrepreneurialism leading to a richer more diverse and growing economy not dominated by two or three firms or a very limited set of business personalities.

And isn’t Dayton that city, or could be that city, but we just don’t notice it?

I blog on local history a lot. In fact the focus is mostly local history, or historical geography. History is open to interpretation, and has been selectively interpreted in Dayton to highlight the company town aspect of the community. There is more to the history of Dayton than that.

Which is why when I blog on historical things I rarely blog on NCR or Delco or the Air Force, as I prefer to bring to the fore the neglected and obscured history of the city, which I feel is more relevant to our times, and just inherently more interesting

At least to me.

Dayton (Amateur) Rephotography

The Dayton Metro Library has an interesting online collection of photographs of old Dayton, the Lutzenberger Collection.

The collection was created by William Lutzenberger. Apparently Lutzenberger photographed the city through the later 19th and early 20th century, capturing a lot of the changes downtown. The collection also has photos and images that pre-date Lutzenberger, but that he apparently acquired somehow.

The collection is a community treasure.

And I've been working with the collection on and off, experimenting with rephotography.

Rephotography is more than "before & after" pix as it requires close study of the original image so as to match the technical characteristics of the original camera position, exposure, depth of field, lens, etc, and lighting conditions arising from time of day and time of year (winter afternoon low sun would be different than high noon in the summer).

Another unwritten rule is to chose an image that has something of the original image still in it.

In a sense rephotography is almost a form of conceptual art.

This type of photography got started in the western US, via the Rephotography Survey Project, organized by Mark Klett, and published as “Second View” . Klett and his team rephotographed 19th century federal land survey images of the western landscape. Klett returned to the same locations some years later and then rephotograped them a second time (published as “Third View”). Here is some interesting blog commentary on Klett and his project.

From what I recall many of these were rural/wilderness images. Rephotography is being done in urban areas, too; one of the better known examples is New York Changing by Douglas Lavere (rephotographing Springfield, Ohio native Bernice Abbot’s Changing New York)





For Dayton, it’s tough to exactly duplicate Lutzenberger as he made his own camera and ground his own lenses (or had them ground to his specification). Pro photographers or serious amateurs might be able to duplicate the images better, but this is beyond my competence as a snapshooter.

Lutzenberger photographed on quite times, usually on Sunday when there was little “traffic” (so he could position himself in the middle of a street).

Another issue is the changing landscape. Much of what Lutzenberger shot is now gone…not just the individual buildings, but entire streetscapes and blocks.

So what I am doing is not strictly rephotography, though do I try to match the images as much as possible. Here are two examples:


From this month, the southeast corner of 2nd and Jefferson.










From a year ago: northwest corner of 1st and Keowee

I will be posting more sets every so often

Killing Off Main Street Retail.

The heyday of downtown Dayton and Main Street was well before my time, but it was an interesting exploration rebuilding the street using old city directories and a base map from the 1950s, as well as my knowledge of when certain buildings went up.

One of the urban legends of Dayton is that I-675 helped kill retail downtown.

The following study proves that to be false.

Staring out with the retail mix on Main Street through time


Then taking a closer look at what I call “mall retail; the type of shops one usually finds in a shopping mall or larger strip center: men’s, women’s, and general clothing stores, shoe stores, jewelry:

Aggregating the clothing retail and then inserting a trend line. The expected trend from the 1960s was clearly downward, but the five years after the Dayton Mall opened in 1970 really dropped retail downtown.

Then some key urban renewal and new construction projects helped destroy what was left of downtown shopping. The Arcade Centre project (intended to “rescue” the Arcade) helped kill off retail on the 3rd-4th block. Courthouse Square, The Gem Savings bank and the Citizens Federal tower along with the renovations at and around the Victoria wiped out retail on Main north of Third.

So one can see retail being killed off well before I-675 was opened. Downtown retail was essentially dead by the time the new shopping centers and malls opened off 675 in the early and mid 1990s.

Taking a look at three key blocks, 1st to 2nd (Victoria and Lazarus block), 2nd to 3rd, (Courthouse Square), and 3rd to 4th (Arcade Centre), one can see how big drops after the impact of the mall was because of specific projects and buildings clearing out storefronts




(the graph line shows how “mall retail” faired on each block. In some cases there was a lot of other kinds of businesses, too).

An example of how urban renewal helped drive out retail is the Donenfelds womens wear store. Originally located on west side of Main just south of Lazarus, across from the Keybank Building, the store was forced out by the Court House Square urban renewal, to the 3rd-4th block. Then the Arcade Center urban renewal came to displace the store again.

Instead the store closed.

The bitter local struggle over I-675 in the 1970s(worth a blog post of its own) was partially driven by the city wanting to preserve downtown. But by then the die was already cast.

Urban renewal efforts just completed the job, bringing to mind the 1960s Vietnam war catch-phrase: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it”. Maybe the planners, architects and developers were thinking they were helping, but they were just nailing the coffin shut by the type of development that was put in.

Or maybe the type of redevelopment was a tacit acknowledgement that storefront retail opening to the sidewalk was a lost cause so why bother designing for it.

In any case, by the time the first big I-675 shopping centers started opening around 1990 it was all over for Main Street.

20 Years in Dayton

I rolled into Dayton on a ice cold Sunday afternoon the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1987.

So this is my 20th anniversery here.

yay.

The Fall of Main Street, Block by Block

An investigation of Main Street and how it got that way. Block by Block. Looking at Main Street as a street (per Jane Jacobs). I look at street front retail, storefront business that has some public interaction (no professional offices or beauty schools), but things like stores, loan companys, restaurants, theatere, and so forth.

No arcade or lobby business (as much as possible)...just things that face the street, as a gauge on how active or lively the street is

Here is the rough cut, where I graph the businesses. I also lay in things that affect the retail environment, particularly the suburban competition.
Then a look block by block, from Monument to the railroad embankment.
Then looking in some detail at the blocks. I note physical changes (like the opening of a larger store) that impacts the count. First, the two blocks north of Third:
Next, the two blocks south of Third:
Note that some of the largest drops are from physcial alterations driving removals of buildings, reducing the number of storefronts. This implys that, though retail was declining, some urban renewal and new construction decisions also had an impact, and accelerated the decline.
I will take a look at a the retail mix next.

For a more in-depth treatment follow this link:

The Decline and Fall of Main Street

The Grocery Gap III: Where are the stores?

Continuing to investigate the grocery gap (if there is one) in Dayton.

This time I look at grocery stores. Here is a map of the major regional and national chains in the area (that I know of).



Taking away the base map and shading in the more or less built up areas to see if there are any patterns, and there are. There are some gaps in the distribution of the big chains (though some of that is due to population density south of town due to the Kettering/Oakwood estate country, with large lots and country clubs meaning there is more open space than is shown)
But also, from what I know about east and south Dayton, there are local independent supermarkets that fill in those gaps. The two Dorothy Land Markets, Dot’s over in Belmont/Greenmont, and a supermarket on Linden (an old Liberal,, I think) are located in the holes. This could be the case elsewhere in Dayton.


Looking at West Dayton, based on the yellow pages listing of groceries, there are a few out there, including some that I think are small supermarkets that go beyond just a convenience/carry-out trade.
So maybe things are not that dire in terms of accessibility. The situation might be different for price and selection.

As a proposal a centrally located shopping center and supermarket for the city. This would be very similar in concept to a Chicago-style TIF developmen for large-scale retail.

This could also solve that Kroger issue and address West Dayton folk’s complaints about the preferential treatment for the Wayne Avenue Kroger, by having a big super located so it could serve both east and west Dayton, located on the vacant and semi-used lands along the river, close to the bridges


And alternative would be a centrally located supermarket and shopping center in the heart of west Dayton, on the Kuhn’s Foundry or McCall property.

History of a Parking Lot.

Wondering how it got that way (and when it got that way) I did a "history of a parking lot", more accurately the investigation of the transformation of one downtown block near the edge of downtown. The block bounded by Third, St Clair, Second, and Jefferson.

Starting in 1956 already there is parking.

The little lot at the 3rd/St Clair corner was a filling station in 1918. The big mid-block lot first appeared in 1928/29, so it's one of the oldest downtown (click on the image & it will enlarge so you can read the store names).



Then a series of black plans showing how the block lost the buildings, closing with my guess on the next removal.


The block today. The business names have all changed, of course, but an impressive void nonetheless.


For some before and after pix, plus some history of the block in the 19th and early 20th century (including what was in that early big lot on 2nd) click here:

History of a Parking Lot