Moraine City Section One

We’ve looked at the first factory buildings at Moraine, now lets look at the first houses. Moraine City had more than one plat, but only section one saw substantial construction prior to WWII.

This plat book cut from the early 1960s shows section one, with its telltale rear alleys surrounded by later development, which dropped the alley as a design feature. This cut still shows the interurban right of way bisecting the site, shaded here in blue.




Moraine City around WWI, showing very early development, which occurred closer to Cincinnati Pike (todays Dixie Drive) . Noticeable here are the sidewalks. Apparently the intention was to build a proper suburb. No alleys yet (dotted lines show the probable extent of the plat). One can see how this street was oriented to the front gate of the Dayton-Wright factory.



A close up of the houses, which are mostly versions of the four-square. Note the little station at the interurban, with the well-worn path under the shade tree heading kitty-corner to the sidewalk. Probably made by factory workers walking to and from the station, since there wasn’t nearly enough housing here to house all the workers at Dayton-Wright and the other early industry. One can also see a billboard on Cincinnati Pike, perhaps indicating auto use was frequent enough to make billboards a feasible form of advertising.



And the first houses today. Nice examples of the ubiquitous Dayton four-square.



A modern view of Section 1, with the interurban route drawn in blue. The right-of-way was taken over for apartments and backyards, but still can be traced somewhat via lot lines, pavements, and treelines. This one street is like an incongruous piece of city set out in the midst of urban sprawl.


Another set of pix showing how Moraine City had grown by 1940 or 41. Houses had mostly filled out the western side of the plat, closer to what was by then the Frigidaire plant. Arrows show houses in both pix, as an orientation between old and new.



One can see how postwar construction filled-in the interurban right-of-way.

And some view of the last pre-war houses in Moraine City plus a few 1940s-era houses, including what looks like one of the last bungalows in Dayton.



Moraine City would have been a nice older suburb, sort of like Belmont, if it had been built-out. The timing of industrial development here didn’t really work out right because the Depression put construction on hiatus here, until the pre-WWII boom.



Moraine also never developed a true downtown. But these three or four commercial buildings offer a taste of what might have been as they follow the old way of building by fronting directly on the sidewalk. In two cases they are two-stories, like city commercial blocks.


I particularly like the "Upper Deck" group and how they fit into the residential street. Perhaps the parking lot in front was intended as a plaza of sorts?

Just lots and lots of parking here. One wnders if there were houses on some of this land?


Sort of the last gasp of the old way of building. Behind this lone house one can see the wide-open low-slung new world of postwar suburbia. The dish antennae belong to one of the first TV studios in Dayton, WLW-D. TV was a signature technology of the postwar world.

The brick one-story to the right was built on the site of the interurban station (a mostly forgotten transportation technology that had a home here, too, in the shops and car barns).

Moraine: The Dayton-Wright Era

We've seen the 1920 land divisions. By this time there where things actually on the property.


In 1916 or 1917 Delco-Light, AKA the Domestic Engineering Company, built a plant out here. I think they had a plant already in Dayton, on the Tech Town site, so this might have been the second plant. Delco-lite was Charles Ketterings solution to rural electrification via private generators for individual farms.

However, the plant never went into production. The empty factory was purchased by Dayton-Wright Aircraft, expanded, and fitted out for aircraft production.






The first section of Moraine City was platted by this time, too. Dayton-Wright was not the only industry , being joined by a foundry and a boiler factory.The foundry sometime before 1940, looking down the inturban tracks.
The foundry survives to this day as something to do with industrial gasses and welding.

..the last industrial survivor from the beginnings of Moraine.


The "Smith Gas Engineering" plant was a big high-bay erecting shop with flanking side shops, sort of like a large version of the old Foundry Nightclub building
.
The factory was later used as the shops and offices for the interurban, by this time renamed the C&LE.

The largest plant, and ancestor to todays Moraine Assembly, was the Dayton-Wright plant. There are no good exterior pix of the place, but it was apparently a long one story building, perhaps with interior mezzanines.

What's interesting from this photo is the woodworking aspect, the lack of auto parking, and the military presence since the predecessor of the Air Force was active here in helping with the engineering as well as perhaps furnishing the pilots to fly the finished planes out of Moraine.
A close up of the Sanborn showing the same area of the plant in the pix.

And the entire Sanborn. Maybe not visible here, but there is extensive use of clerestory roofs to maximize daylighting. Not energy efficient, but the plant had it's own steam system to provide heat.
This Sanborn has quite a bit of labeling of the industrial activity taking place in the factory spaces. One can see kilns and lumber sheds, indicating they were drying out green lumber before cutting it up into parts (or maybe they stuck the parts in the kilns).
The labeling permits this hypothetical reconstruction of the industrial process at the plant. One can see that since aircraft were built of wood there was a big woodworking aspect to the process to make the parts that would be eventually go into sub-assemblies, which would the be put together in final assembly.

There were two Dayton-Wright plants in area, a components plant in nearby Miamisburg, and the former Wright Brothers plant in West Dayton. I think they got engines and engine parts from Detroit, too.


An example of final assembly, where sub-assemblies are put together into the final product (and note the generous daylighting).



The final product: a DeHavilland observer/bomber plane (a British design). Over 4,000 aircraft were built in Moraine during WWI.

Dayton-Wright had Orville Wright on staff but had no direct connection to the Wright Brothers early manufacturing activity. The principles where the Delco-Light founder Charles Kettering, and NCR executives Edward Deeds and Charles Talbot. Dayton-Wright was sold to GM in 1919 and GM got out of the aircraft business in 1923. Deeds remained active in aviation as one of the founders and chairman of the board of Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines.

It's unclear whether aircraft manufacturing ceased in 1920 or 1923. But shortly after WWI the Dayton-Wright principles tried to interest the miltary in the property as a replacement to McCook Field. Preliminary plans were drawn up incoporating the Dayton-Wright plant into a new aviation research facility/airfield.



This was not pursued. Moraine did not replace McCook. McCooks replacement was built in the late 1920s to the east of the city, not south; todays Wright Field.

The empty plant at Moraine was to be put to other uses.

Early Moraine: The New Edgemont

The Moraine story really begins in Edgemont.

During the 19th century Edgemont was one of Dayton’s zones of industrial expansion. The Short Line (later Big Four and New York Central) cut through the neighborhood in the early 1870s, and industrial development followed starting in the 1880s.

Development pretty much followed the railroad south, with factories lining the railroad and housing plats on either side. By the early 1900s development was approaching the bottom reach of the long bend of the Great Miami, which formed a natural barrier.

One of the last developments (1907) was by the Edgemont Real Estate Company , controlled by the Estate of Adam Schantz



This subdivision is probably the forerunner of Moraine as it appears to have been planned as a mix of large lot industrial sites and town lots for residential development, as sort of a very basic, diagrammatic “planned community”
The Estate of Adam Schantz

Estate in the sense of inheritance. Adam Schantz Sr was one of those 19th century self made men, an immigrant success story. Schantz immigrated from Hesse when young (from the area between Hanau and Fulda, from the same region as the Brothers Grimm), learned the butchers trade and later went into brewing and other business activity. DDN columnist Roz Young did a good article on him available here: A Generous Man.

After his death his holdings took the legal form of the “Estate of Adam Schantz”, pretty much run by his son Adam Schantz Jr.

It was this Adam Schantz who was the president of the Edgemont Real Estate Company, who platted Schantz Park in Oakwood, and who lived in this delightful heimatstil mansion:



(which looks like it could have been plucked right out of a villa district in Wilhelmine Germany)

And it was this Adam Schantz who founded Moraine.

Moraine Industrial Village

One can picture Adam Schantz plotting his next real estate move. The logical approach was to follow the Big Four south across the Great Miami for another mixed industrial/residential plat. But in the era before widespread auto ownership the site directly across the river had no public transit.

But another site further out was more promising. The interurban line (which went under various names, during this time as the Ohio Electric) was following a southwest trajectory out of Dayton, paralleling the old Cincinnati Pike. It came closer and closer to the Big Four until crossing the steam road at a spot named “Dwyer”, meaning the traction line could provide commuter access into Dayton while still being within walking distance to potential industrial sites served by the Big Four.

This was might be why Moraine was located where it was. But this is also speculation unless there is some correspondence or diary or journal where Adam Schantz and his associates give the reasons for the site.

This might be available in an unlikely place: The Olmstead archives. Schantz had partnered with two other local notables, Deeds and Patterson, to acquire and develop the property, dba The Moraine Development Company. The development company hired the Olmstead firm to design a model industrial village on the property. The idea for the model community apparently came from Schantz; if Moraine was to be an extension of Edgemont it was going to be a much improved version.

And apparently the correspondence (and maybe even drawings) are on file at the Library of Congress and the Olmstead historic site in Brookline, Mass.

For anyone interested in architectural and even social history this is a tantalizing question, are there unexecuted plans for a model industrial community by the leading landscape architecture firm in the US at that time, for a site near Dayton? And if so what do they look like?

Making Moraine Real

Accounts say that Schantz started to acquire property for Moraine between 1908 and 1911, with purchases extending into 1916, but the Schantz Estate files at the WSU archives give 1903 for an early holding in Van Buren Twp. The following map shows Schantz acquisitions in 1908 or later, plus the holdings of other associates in the future Moraine Development Company. The interurban also had landholdings in the area for a car barn and power station. Berkeley Heights was the southernmost subdivision on the interurban at that time.

The map has some labels of modern road names for orientation.

By 1920 Moraine Development Company holdings had expanded to cover a sizeable amoung of the flatlands between the river and the hill country east of Cincinnati Pike, south of what is now Dorothy Lane. What’s also interesting is the Deeds holdings in this area, extending as far south as Rahn and Alex-Bell Roads, deep into what became postwar suburbia.

For whatever reason the model industrial suburb concept was not pursued after WWI. By the time of this map Moraine was starting to be subdivided and one starts to see the modern form of the place emerge. These early modern platting decisions superseded the old 19th century property lines and road alignments (note Springboro Pike "in the way" of the industrial tracts).

In this map, in yellow, are the first Moraine Development Company plats. Very large industrial tracts (compared to what we’ve seen in Edgemont), and the first “Moraine City” town lot plat.

The interurban company (renamed Cinicinnati & Dayton RR) property is shown in blue, and a small non-Moraine plat (the “Slanker Plat” in orange). Speaking of the interurban, the line looks wrong on this map as in subsequent maps and aerial photos it ran through the Moraine City plat more to the south. Maybe the map is in error or the line was relocated?

The first industrial development, including the ancestor factory to Moraine Assembly, was on tracts C and D. We’ll take a look at that in the next post.

(as in all posts, if one wants to see an enlargement of a map or image, mouse over and click on it).

Moraines' Last Week

This is the last week of operation for Moraine Assembly.

Daytonology will be doing a series of history posts on the place, the town of Moraine as well as the factory, as sort of a memorial and milestone of the end of an era for the Dayton region.

A lot of people are really into schadenfreude about 4,000 (in total) people losing their jobs, as indicated by the posts at the Dayton Daily News, which is part of the general "hate/mock unionized workers" sentiment abroad in the land. This blog won't engage in that. In fact this blog contains a number of posts on the history of how Dayton was organized, (including the original Moraine plant) and on the racial aspect of losing assembly line employment (which no one is really talking about). In short, maybe more of a long view and looking at different angles of the situation.

But that's all been said. This will be more of a geographical instead of sociological set of posts.

For the sociological side it sort of sucks to see a lot of people go on the unemployment line just before Christmas. Maybe its the symbolism of it.

And that's all I have to say about that.

The Political Economy of Infrastructure: Beavercreek Utilities

Utilities might seem a dull subject, as they are out of sight underground. But they play a big role setting the foundation for suburban growth, thus are wrapped up in the political economy of suburbia. Places that get water and sewer service can really boom.

The utilities situation in Beavercreek is a bit unusual as this suburb grew at first without any.

The first suburban developments had neither water nor sewer. Houses had private wells and septic systems, which was possible on the large lots


But as one can see from the lower part of the above diagram, public health issues could arise if there was two many septic systems and private wells in too close an area during periods of weather when the areas affected by well withdraws and leach field percolation intermingled.
Theoretically the need for large lots to keep withdrawl and disposal far apart to prevent contamination would limit the density of subdivisions, reducing the profit margin of the developer as he would be selling less lots.

One solution was central sewage.


A centralized sewage system was under construction for Beavercreek in 1964 and 1965, serving mostly Knollwood and other central parts of Beavercreek.

Yet this didn't solve the water supply problem, and not all of Beavercreek was served by the sewer system either, including areas with septic tank problems.



What's noticeable in the above map is the sharp division at the county line, where nearly all areas in Montgomery County, to the west (or left) had complete utilities.

Though some Beavercreek subdivisions close to the county line were connecting up to Montgomery County water the 1960s solution to water supply was the plat water system. This was a private water system put in either by the developer or by a private sector water company, that served just one or two subdivisions. The first one dated, I think, from 1963.

Plat water systems and central sewage permitted increased density in subdivisions, thus more profit for developers .

Plat water systems were an ad-hoc response to a problem. Plat water systems rarely connected with each other, and had limited expansion capability, which meant that surrounding undeveloped land remained somewhat undevelopable unless it, too, had a plat water system.

In the late 1960s a centralized water distribution was proposed, serving at first central Beavercreek, but with water lines out into the surrounding open country, bringing that land into the development market.




So the progression into the 1970s was from house-specfic "personal utility systems" to increasing levels of centralized services:


This wasn't a purley linear progression: as late as the early 1990s some parts of Beavercreek were still on private well water and septic systems. By the 1970s there was a mix of private wells on public sewer, private wells and septic systems, and plat water systems on either public sewer or septics.

Like I-675, but with water

The late 1960s water system proposal was defeated. Partly because of the high cost, but also because Beavercreek residents didn't want to see any more development. In the 1960s Beavercreek still had a quasi-rural feel, even in the older plat areas with their generous lots. Though one might dismiss this as NIMBYism, another way to look at this was that the citizens of Beavercreek at that time wanted growth control, and saw limits on utility services as a way to achieve this. So perhaps this opposition was akin the the I-675 controversy in that citizen opposition was driven by quality-of-life concerns.

But the big picture said otherwise.

This map from a 1969/1970 era map shows the utiltiy systems in the western & central parts of the Dayton metro area. One can see what a sharp divide the county line is, with Montgomery County suburbs having full services, but the Fairborn area too. Beavercreek had incomplete and limited utilities.


This map was from a MVRPC utilities planning document. Suprisingly, it does not show the proposed I-675, which was finalized by the time of this plan. It and it's exits are drawn in red here, showing how Beavercreek was a primo development opportunity, despite what the people actually living there wanted. The unstated subtext of this utilities plan was to extend complete utility service area beyond the proposed interstate, opening up much of western Greene County to developement.

Instead, according to the Greene County Sanitary Engineering website:

The 1970s saw many developers installing “plat water systems” that were turned over to the County to own and operate. The County was operating up to six separate water systems in Beavercreek at one time. As Beavercreek continued to grow in the 1970s, more and more residents were experiencing water problems, such as their wells going dry. In 1977 the Sanitary Engineer was directed by the Board of Greene County Commissioners to build a water system in the Beavercreek Township area for those residents that “needed and wanted it”.

This appears to be a good example of "public be damned" on the part of Greene County government. Subdivisions don't just happen. There is usually some sort of zoning and permitting process. So it seems local government, despite the wishes of Beavercreek residents who wanted to limit growth (was it a majority?) permitted unsustainable development to occur, percipitating a water crisis, which led to the start of a centralized water system.

And this centralized system was a prequisite for a real estate boom that would come with the construction of I-675.

One can see how utilities infrastructure issues overlapped highway infrastructure via this timeline.


Overcoming opposition to I-675 requied a change in Washington. Opposition to more growth in Beavercreek was apparently overcome by the fait accompli of unsustainable development, which drove the installation of a central water system.

Speculation

..in land and on this blog. To really document this story would require some research into newspaper stories and interviews with the players. Presumably there would have had to be some coverage on this in the media as the involvment of the Greene County commision indicates this was in-part a political issue. In any case a good example showing how something obscure and quite and mundane like water and sewer service can be a big player in the urban srpawl phenomenon.

Beavercreeks' Pearl Harbor Build-outs: The Birth of the Defense Suburb

The Depression pretty much killed the bungalow era in Beavercreek, putting suburban development mostly on hiatus until military mobilization spending kicked in during the late 1930s.

And when it did kick in Knollwood was the locus of some agressive construction in new housing, housing a lot different in style than the pre-Depression bungalows and foresquares.
Stylistically new housing following simplified traditional forms and was smaller, too, it seems.



So we start to see streetscapes that already appear "postwar", but predate WWII by just a bit.



Yet note the big lots. Development in Knollwood was mostly on fairly large lots, perhaps to keep the septic tank leachfield far away from the private water well/pump in the basement.




Taking a look at build-outs on the three Longview, Central, and Shady, up to 1949, one can see how construction paralled historical events and eras. Clearly the pre-war buildup was boom times in this part of Knollwood.


...with a bit of hiatus during the war and wartime conversion. With the advent of the Cold War the area started to boom again, but the cottage style was eventuall dropped for the ranch after 1949.

That Knollwood and neighborhing plats were related to a military/civilian market from the base is indicated by some of the streetnames. Next street over from Shady Drive is Beaverbook. Beaverbrook is not just a pun on Beavercreek, but is perhaps a reference to the UK wartime figure Lord Beaverbrook, who was Minister of Armanents under Churchill, also involved with managing military aircraft production.

Other streets in the Knollwood vicinity are named: Yalta, Dumbarton Oaks, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill. Clearly one of the developers was on top of current affairs in the 1940s.

Early Versions of Suburbia: Beavercreek Bungalow Belt

Knollwood is sort of the genesis community of Beavercreek, as this collection of plats is where Beavercreek as a suburb was born. What's interesting is that suburbia here goes back well before the postwar boom era.



We'll take a look at three Knollwood streets as representative of proto-suburban Beavercreek; Longview, Central, and Shady Drives.

People don't usually think of pre-war suburbia when thinking of Beavercreek, but it is that old.

The first suburban era was the 1920s and maybe earlier, when the interurban railroads and then (more likely) widespread auto ownership and paved roads opened up the Dayton-Xenia corridor to suburban settlement.

This was the era of the bungalow, hence "Beavercreek Bungalow Belt":



The first house, here, on Central Avenue, isn't a bungalow but something just as common in Dayton, the foursquare. Something you'd find in Linden Heights or maybe off Lakeside Avenue in Dayton proper. Here, well out in the country (at that time). The street is, I think, Longview.


Another foursquare


A less elaborate bungalow, but with the charactersistic brick porch. Nice pinstriping and spoiler on that car, too...


Classic midwest bungalow on a large lot. Recall that these houses didn't have water or sewer until the 1960's.

Not sure what to say about this one. Its sort of a mix of dutch colonial and foursqare....

Yet another good bungalow example.

Landscape of bungalow land. Wood frame, dormers, little bay windows, partial brick porches....you'd see this in Dayton, but much closer together.


Bungalows can be spotted on Dayton-Xenia Road, too...


...but this one doesn't have a porch, which is a typical bungalow and foursquare feature. These two house style were the last to make a substantial porch a feature of the exterior design.