Miami Shores

Part of Moraine, but with a sort of seperate history, is Miami Shores. So a special post for this little suburb.

This was one of at least four, maybe five, "resorts" built along the Great Miami River north and south of Dayton. There may be more further south along the river in the vicinity of Hamilton and Middletown.

This was a development fad of the 1920s, maybe a bit earlier, too. Examples can be found in Louisville and Indianapolis as well. The idea was to develope areas along water as a sort of weekend getaway. "Boating/Bathing/Fishing" as the brochure says.

You'd get there by car, but the brochsure does show the interurban, too. In other cases these were developed around interurban access (Indian Lake up in Champaigne County is an example of that) or around railroad stops (Fox Lake in Lake County Illinois, near Chicago).

The brochure mentions the "Iron Bridge", and this pix shows that bridge, which seems like the old spans on Siebenthaler and on 725 west of Germantown. This is now replaced by a big concrete bridge, perhaps part of the road realignments associated with the extenstion of Gettysburg south to Moraine.
Miami Shores was laid out within a bend of the Great Miami, and didn't have that much frontage on the river. The swimming was not in the river but in the "swimming hole" south of Sellars Road.
One can see on the map Venetian Way as a parkway, and the "Swimming Hole" . Perhaps these are remnants of an earlier watercourse on this bend, as an 1875 map shows an old mill race where these features are at.

Since boating was one of the attractions there was two boat ramps. One by the bridge, the other further into the plat.

Since there is (or was) a boat ramp people had boats:

Miami Shores houses, mostly older ones shown here. Since this was so close to the Frigidaire plant one has to assume this pretty quickly became a place to live year round as well as a weekend or summer vacation getaway.




Downtown Miami Shores. If I recall right this was where the old "Iron Bridge" crossed the river, so there was a little collection of stuff near the bridge and and boat ramp. Reminiscent of little weekend communities in the chain of lakes area northwest of Chicago, which saw similar development in the 1920s.

Moraine After the War

The 1940s was a liminal era for urban form. The first two years, perhaps casting back to 1938 and 1939 was the start of a construction revival, but what form suburbia would take was still somewhat in question. Yet one could see the outlines form of what we know as “suburbia” as a place separate from the city, the great rupture between the old way of building and modern times.

After the war , in the late 1940s, this perhaps became a bit more clear.

We will move into this era with Moraine City. As we’ve seen in this post the place was starting to grow during the run-up to WWII, yet there was very little new platting.

A map of Moraine in 1948:


And a corresponding pix. This pix shows Moraine after the war, probably in 1949 or 1950, as the expansion for the Frigidaire plant is underway (this opened in1951). Note that this pix faces south, so is “upside down” from the map.


The pix labeled, showing that the interurban, though abandoned 10-11 years prior, is still a ghostly presence via the overgrown right-of-way. One can see the wartime expansion of the Frigidaire complex, as well as suburban housing expansion into Moraine City section 2 and the other Moraine plats. Note that by this time there is plenty of parking.

(you can click on the pix and they will enlarge)


A close up of the further reaches of this area. This was the south suburban frontier. One of the furthest plats was Moraine Little Farms, which dated to the 1920s and actually did see some pre-Depression construction. Note also the appearance of what is today Appleton Papers as a small industrial building out in the fields. Alexanderville still has its own identity (today it’s all but obliterated by sprawl), and a mill from the canal era still stood. One can see relics of the interurban here, but also an early accommodation of for the automobile.


The 1939 overpass over the New York Central perhaps reflected the increase in auto traffic on the Dixie Highway, coming up from West Carollton, Miamisburg and points south. These towns south of Moraine were already being brought into the suburban orbit before WWI via the interurban, and one can assume this process continued in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s with the automobile. And there was, no-doubt, an increase in cross-country travel, too.



Shifting to the east a bit one can see the South Moraine plats being built on, including the Lindbergh Boulevard area. The Slanker Plat still had houses on it, and one follow a two lane Springboro Pike out into the country, with the Moraine Center plat to the east (left) starting to see postwar construction.

Planning and construction for the automobile starts to have an impact on the landscape as rapid transit via rail had been abandoned and vehicle traffic was increasing. The first move was the 1939 railroad overpass, which also required a realignment on US 25/Dixie Drive.

Apparently sometime in the 1940s the separation of inbound (Dixe Drive) and outbound (Kettering Boulevard) traffic was made and the US 25 outbound realignment was cut through the Moraine City section 1, connecting Kettering Boulevard to Dixie Drive at the Springboro Pike intersection.

This was one way of getting a four lane divided highway. Closer in to Dayton the inbound lanes are located on the interurban ROW, but here the traffic is actually on seperate roads. This one way traffic set-up is a peculiarity of Moraine.

This was how that odd three way intersection came to be, which is today the most accident prone intersection in the county.


The End of the Old Way of Building

1940s retail/commercial construction illustrates the end of one way of city building and the start of another with the.

Moraine saw some of the last “sidewalk retail” in the Dayton area, where retail buildings are aligned to the sidewalk, not to the parking lot. Apparently the incipient “downtown Moraine” developed in the 1940s, but didn’t grow any further, and in fact lost a building since then.



Instead, one sees the start of “the strip” along the US 25 alignments and Springboro Pike. None of these survive today; they remain a ghostly presence on this pix, with their adjacent parking lots

In the late 1940s WLW-D built their TV studio out here, and the building is a premonition of the new suburban world to come. The studio is a one story big box with lots of adjacent parking. Yet construction techniques were still evolving to respond to the demand of unencumbered floor space; in this case a arched truss is used, which can be seen in the curved roof.



The US 25 extension today, two southbound lanes, looking south from Moraine City section 1 toward the Springboro Pike intersection (marked by a Waffle House sign in the distance).


Suburban Housing of the 1940s

This map shows population growth between 1933 and 1952. Most of this happened in the late 1930s, 1940s, and very early 1950s. One can see some wartime expansions and the first postwar plat, as well as the early trailer parks. Housing in this era, in Moraine, was quite utilitarian, usually variations of the cottage style.



The most extensive build-out prior to 1950 was Moraine City (and maybe Miami Shores) Moraine City Section 2 is sort of interesting as it was wedged in between Dixie Drive (northbound traffic) and Kettering Boulevard) (southbound traffic). One can see by this enlargement that MC was expanding northward, and that the land along Kettering Boulevard was being kept free of houses, as perhaps the start of a commercial strip. An early commercial building of some sort (in a quasi-deco style) is shown in the inset, showing the vesitgal memory of the old way of building in the siting: instead of a parking lot in front there is a lawn.



Moraine City Section 2 behind the old prewar foursquare



Typical houses; one story brick cottages still with period detail. We are not in the modernist ranch house era just yet.

Weaverville

I occasionally post songs and song lyrics here since I'm a music fan. Usually it's been the Greatfull Dead or something similar.

Here is something similar. It's a song I've never heard on the radio here, but did when I lived in California since it is about a California place, up in the Coast Ranges, I think.

I don't know if the incident here is real or is just a fiction created for the lyric. But it makes a great tale, somewhat reminiscent of Dylans' "Lilly, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" since it involves a card game. But it stands as an artifact of the "back to the land" movement and renewed interest in folk music that was somewhat prevelant in the 1970s on the 'coast, when the tune was written. And its just a good tune and tale in it's own right.

I heard it peformed by one of Californias' most beloved folk singers, Kate Wolf, though it was not written by her.

The Ballad of Weaverville

Well, I'll tell you 'bout a gambler, folks,
Jim Weaver was his name;
And I don't know where he came from,
But gamblin' was his trade.
Ride in here close beside me,
I'll tell you about a game,
The damnedest game in all my years
ever did see played.

Some said they'd seen him play before
Down on the Barb'ry Coast.
He said that might be true enough
'Cause he'd gambled all around;
And he lost his stake to a jack high straight
Out at Sutter's Fort,
But he'd saved a little poke in case
Of a game within our town.

And a lady loves a gambler,
Running loose, running free;
I felt a tremble deep inside
When I turned around to see,
He was lookin' hard at me.

Now the game was set in daddy's tent,
An honest man, you know,
And all the boys in town were set
To take Jim Weaver's gold
'Cause diggin' gold is hard work,
And pannin' is too slow;
And I saw Jim Weaver smilin'
At some little private joke.

Well, by midnight he had all the gold
That the boys in town had saved.
They never caught him cheatin'
Though they watched him all the while;
And he never lost a single hand
At any game he played;
He never lost a dollar, boys,
And he never lost his smile.

And a lady loves a gambler,
Smilin' free, smilin' wide;
I knew I wouldn't rest
'Til I was smilin' by his side,
Smilin' as we'd ride.

Soon all the boys were busted flat,
But they wanted still to play.
So they asked Jim Weaver what was left
To gamble in the game.
He said he'd cut high cards one time,
And if he lost he'd pay;
But if he won they had to swear
To give the town his name.

And he told my daddy he would bet
Ten dollars on the side,
And I could be my daddy's stake
If I would so agree.
And I rode out of Weaverville
Next mornin' as his bride;
And I left the town that bears the name
Of the gamblin' man and me.

And a lady loves a gambler,
If he cheats all the same;
And no one saw me slip to him
Tha ace that won the game!
And gave the town our name!

Dayton as Crimetown: Felony Types 1969/70 & 2007

We can break felonies out into violent crime and property crime (armed robbery is sort of both) and do a comparison between the start and end of the long postwar crime wave.

1969/70 would have been a few years into the wave, which began, nationally, around 1965 or 1966, so what we are looking at here might not have been the peak either nationally or locally. 2007 would have been after the national 1990s drop. The assumption here is that Dayton is mirroring national trends

For the violent crime numbers reported there has been a decrease in nearly every category except for rape, which has really jumped. This might reflect an increase in reporting.


But taking a look at the rates for the felony categories (still the same reported crime divided by population, but here I add a factor to make the numbers read in larger fractions) one can see things not improving that much. Murder is the only crime that is down. All the others are at still at a higher rate than 1969/70, so we are not really down to pre crime-wave levels.



For property crime there is a drastic drop in Commercial Burglary numbers, by far more than the two other forms of theft shown here.



Looking at the rate again, residential burglary is still at a higher rate than 1969/70, but the commercial burglary reduction remains drastic, and the auto theft rate has dropped, too (fewer cars in town?)




One wonders what would account for the commercial burglary drop? Better crime prevention via security gaurds and alarm systems probably helps. But also the collapse of retail, industrial, and commercial activity within the city probably accounts for the drop, too; Dayton is no longer a target-rich environment for this kind of rip off.

Key missing data points are from the era before and during the height of the crime wave. If Dayton trends mirror national statistics the 2007 rates are not really a drop to the postwar lows, but just to, say, somewhere around the midpoint of the ramp up to 1970s/80s crime rate highs.

Presumably Dayton crime rate lows would be in the 1950s and early 1960s, and this might be what old-timers remember when they say Dayton is unsafe. For a younger suburban generation growing up with 30 years or more worth of local media crime reporting the city would have always seemed unsafe.

Daytons' persistent crime wave

How did the crime rate change over time and is Dayton safer? The police do report a near term decrease in time, but how does that look in the long view. One thing we know is that, nationally, there was a big spike in crime starting in 1965-66 and peaking in the 1970s, where it plateaued until dropping in the 1990s.

So how did this look in Dayton?

We have that old felony map and know that 280 cases went to trial in 1932.



A crime report is available for 1969-1970 (July 1969-July-1970) from a Model Cities study that lists reported crime by type, so one can collect numbers for certain felony crimes for that year. The Dayton PD web page also has crime stats for 2007 where one can collect similar crime report numbers.

Reported crime is not cases going to trial. I’ve read that about 5% of reported crimes go to trial, so applying 5% to reported felonies (in this case total of reported murders, armed robberies, aggregavated assaults, burglaries, rapes, and car thefts) yields numbers for 1969/70 and 2007 that can be very roughly compared with 1932.



But these are raw numbers. How do these compare to city population. Using census data for 1930 and 1970 and the census estimate for 2007 one can see there is a higher crime rate in recent times, based on an estimate of felonies going to trial. This does not count petty crimes like vandalism and so forth.

This comparison is consistent with national statistics showing low crime rates until the mid 1960s, when there was an explosion of street crime, with peaked in the 1970s and remained high until our time, dropping in the 1990s.



Comparing Reported Crime 1969/70

The 2007 and 1969/70 numbers are much more comparable since they are measuring the same thing, reported crime. They are comparable as we can compare the same category of crimes. Taking a closer look it appears for the types of crime being counted the number of crimes being reported have drastically decreased since the 1960s/1970s crime wave.


Yet, during this era Dayton was being depopulated, dropping from 243,601 (1970) to 155,461 (2007 estimate). Today, Dayton had less reported felony crime as there are fewer potential crime victims. Yet the felony report rate went up as though there was a decrease the number of felony reports didn’t drop in proportion to the population. There are less people and fewer crimes, yet Dayton is a slightly higher crime rate place (as measured here) than it was during the 1960/early 1970s crime wave.




Something that is actually fairly suprising given reports of a national decrease in crime during the 1990s and 2000s.

Crime & Poverty in Early Depression Dayton

The 1933 housing survey is one of the very first studies to provide sociological data on the city, delving into things like tuberculosis rates, servants per household, and so forth, and mapping them out by voting precinct. The study maps crime, showing felony cases and juvenile delinquency investigations. There is also a map for “policewomens cases”, but doesn’t provide any information as to what these are.

The study also maps out numbers of families on relief and poor relief costs per capita .

So one can see if there is a correlation between poverty and crime.

One of the rationalizations behind modern Dayton’s high crime rate is that it’s caused by poverty. This seems to be a good example of mistaking causation for correlation, not to mention disrespecting the poor by implying they are incipient criminals. By using these early Depression figures one can see if there are geographic correlations, and if they are consistent: high crime areas are always high poverty areas.

First, felonies for 1932, with the highest concentration of felony cases noted. There were 282 felony cases bound over to the Grand Jury (presumably going to trial), so this is not a crime report map, but cases going to trial map.


The highest concentration was south of Third Street, in todays Wright-Dunbar neighborhood, with high concentrations in nearby precincts and in the Oregon/near east side.

Juvenile delinquency. Sounds so retro, conjuring up images of West Side Story. West Side Story had Officer Krupke and it appears Dayton’s Officer Krupke was Sergant Snyder, as the map is based on his records, with one dot = one boy investigated. Perhaps the policewomen investigated delinquent girls?


In this case there are considerably more juvenile delinquency reports than felonies going to trial, and the geography was more extensive, with concentrations in Newcom Plain on the east side and Old North Dayton.

Next, a look at poverty. This map shows two things, the amount per capita spent on poor relief and numbers of families on relief. This map is pre-Depression, from 1929, showing that there was already substantial concentrations of poverty in the city. Poor relief during this era was mostly via private charity.

The number of family on relief data will be used as a proxy for the geographic extent of poverty.

Overlaying the number of family on relief by precinct over the felonies, one can see there is some correlation. Yet, the precincts with the most families on relief are not ncessicarily the precincts with the highest number of felonies. In fact there are tracts with over 30 families that have three or fewer felonies. In only one precinct, along Hawthorn north of Broadway in todays inner west area, is there a strong correlation.


For juvenile delinquency one also can’t generalize, as there high concentrations of delinquency investigations in areas have less than 10 families on relief, like parts of Newcom Plain, todays Tals Corner/Linden in the Huffman district, and Old North Dayton.



The delinquency numbers are from 1933, one of the low points of the Depression, and the relief numbers are from 1929, so maybe an indication of a more disordered society as hard times deepened? It would be fascinating to see a geographic mapping of the increase in relief in 1933 and 1934 to see the spread of the Depression in Dayton, and to see if precinct seeing more poor relief in the 1930s are also seeing increases in delinquency investigations.

But the correlation between high poverty indications and felony cases seems to be weaker. If causation = correlation there might be a deeper and more consistent correlation, with the highest crime areas being the highest poverty indication areas.

Happy New Year and Farewell!

2009 (OK, maybe early 2010) will be the year yer humble host departs Dayton, hence the last year for this blog. Though this would be a great stopping point Daytonology has some loose ends to tie up before shutting down.

But enough of this blog, more of Dayton:

There are some cool urban affairs things to look for in Dayton in 2009. Daytonology may or may not blog on them, but you will see them in either the DDN or at Dayton Most Metro or Esrati, and perhaps on some of the other city blogs, too (check out the blogroll to the left).

Shrinking Dayton: This was a post by "Acetone" at DMM. It'd didn't get much mention but is a real key thing as it shows the city moving forward developing a shrinking city plan, one of the very few in the US embracing this concept:

As the first part of a series, there will be a Town Hall meeting March 28 at the Dayton Convention Center focusing on a green, sustainable, neo-city beautiful vision for the garden city of tomorrow. Future Town Hall meetings are planned, including discussions on the future of historic preservation and walkability. Possible topics for the March 28 discussion could be adopt-a-lot and the Real Estate Acquisition Process, community gardening, Olmsted's 1911 vision of the City of Dayton, and population and housing trends.

Maybe more for Dayton citizens not suburban kibbitzers, so don't expect much coverage here. Still, a pretty cool and contrarian concept. And Daytonlogy likes contrarian.

Downtown Plan: Another effort to save downtown. This doesn't have an official title as far as I know, but it's being sponsored by Dr Ervin and the Downtown Dayton Partnership. This is probably the first true comprehensive downtown plan since the 1960s, aside from the 2020 plan earlier this decade. What makes this interesting as its a public/private effort, involving elements of the local business community as well as the editor of the DDN. So one hopes some extensive and positive media coverage. This will be covered at DMM a the board owner is on one of the planning committees.

Austin Road: Union Center with a Hockey Rink? Presumably we can expect the local politicos to put that hotel tax increase on the agenda again to subsidize RG Properites hockey rink/event center, which will somehow make the land around the interchange more attractive to developers and tenants. Color me "skeptical". The original plan for Austin Road made sense. This doesn't, especially if the place becomes more retail-focused.

Creative Class Stuff. DaytonCreate will have one year under its belt. One can follow the progress at the Dayton Create website, but there should be some stock-taking at the one year. Also keep tabs on the more grass roots stuff, like Dayton Dirt Collective and the Circus. DDC is one of the coolest things to happen here in the recent past. Another place to keep your eyes on is Garden Station at 4th and Wayne, which had a fun little Halloween event last year, the unnamed ground floor space in the last Cannery building on 3rd which occasionally has shows and events, and the next permuatation of the Dayton Music Fest.

City-Data Forum Dayton Board: Brand new and already has a small community of posters. alk, Give relocation advice to people considering moving to the Dayton Region (yes there are a few): Link.