The Virginia Military District

Daytonology is going to experiment a bit with a regional perspective, investigating the area outside of Montgomery County, including the rural landscapes of western Ohio.

In this post a quick introduction to "Virginia in Ohio", the Virginia Military District, VMD for short.

The Virginia Military District is the land between the Scioto and Little Miami River, which means it includes a substantial portion of Greene County. When Virginia ceded it's claims to sovereignity over the Northwest Territory to Congress in 1784 it retained this portion of land for military land grants in case land ran out in it's original military reservation in what is now Kentucky.

Land went under survey and tracts were located starting in 1790. It should be noted that Virginia retained the title to land , not sovereignity or jurisdiction, which went to the Northwest Territory. This was a bit different than the Connecticut Western Reserve up in northeast Ohio.

Chains of Rights and Title: From Military Service to Property Ownership

The land was a bounty or reward to Virginia veterans of the Revolution who served in the Continental Army. There was a rather involved process for obtaining land, starting with the veteran obtaining a certificate of service, which entitled him to a land warrant for an amount of land depending on rank and service. This was for just an amount of land, not specific pieces of property.

Then property in the VMD was surveyed for the amount of the land in the warrant. After the survey the warrant was exchanged for a patent, which was equivilant to a deed. This patent was how title transferred from Virginia to the veteran.

This diagram illustrates the process:




However, this assumes a Virginia veteran would travel all the way to Ohio to locate his tract.

In reality certificates, warrants, and patents could be bought and sold. Speculators could purchase certificates of service (in other words, rights to land) from veterans and obtain a warrant in their own name based on this certificate; the actual veterans name would never appear on these warrants. Or speculators could purchase (and sell) warrants and patents, without ever leaving Virginia.

As an example, of the 34 orginal "proprietors" (indivduals locating property via survey based on warrants) in Xenia Township, little more than half were actual Revolutionary veterans. And none of the orignal proprietors settled in the township, having sold their patents to others.

Surveying the Virginia Military District

What distinguishes the VMD from the rest of Ohio (and the rest of the Northwest Territory) is that this is the only large portion of the state to be survyed using the ancient metes and bounds system used in colonial Virginia and Kentucky. All the other large surveys in Ohio used rectangular coordinate systems. Since metes and bounds used natural landmarks to establish corners the result was an irregular system of land subdivision, with eventually was manifested on the landscape via woodlots, fence lines, and road alginments.

To illustrate, a map of a portion of Greene County bisected by the Little Miami River, in the vicinity of Old Town (between Xenia and Yellow Springs). To the right (east) is the VMD, to the left (west) are "Congress Lands", surveyed using the township and range system.

The irregular nature of the property surveys in VMD is evident. Stripping away the property lines to expose the "bones" underneath subsequent land subdivisions one can see the orginal surveys: townships subdivided into sections and quarter sections with range and section lines running north/south versus the considerably larger, irregular orginial surveys of the VMD.


One can discern that some of the VMD surveys might have been run using the Little Miami as the base line, illustrating the importance of natural features to metes and bounds surveys.

This becomes very clear in the southeastern part of the VMD, where it meets the Scioto River. This is Appalachian Ohio; beyond the wide bottoms of the Scioto the land becomes a rugged maze of hollows, valleys and ridges. And VMD surveys here follow hollows and valleys up the tributaries of ths Scioto and Ohio, as shown by this map of the Scioto valley between Wavery and Portsmouth. In this case the VMD is to the west (left) and Congress Lands to the east (right).


A modern example of the difference in landscape are these two maps of the modern rural road system in the Congress Lands (vicinity of Arcanum at the Darke/Preble county line) and the VMD (far eastern Greene County at the Madisona and Fayette County lines just north of Jamestown)

One can see the pattern is quite irregular, even if the topography is nearly identical.

Virginia in Ohio? Cultural & Landscape Features

Some cultural geographers have noted there are some aspects of this landscape that illustrate a southern influence, such as barn types and perhaps larger sized farms (though this might be a stretch) due to the larger initial surveys. Legal issues with property lines lacking permanent monuments would be another. And, of course, the irregular road and field patterns.

Although many of the original patentees never left Viriginia settlement was, ultimatly by Kentuckians and Viriginians (Thomas Worthington, a personage in early Ohio history, was a Viriginian and VMD settler), but there was also a strong stream of Pennsylvanians in the mix, plus some North Carolinans.

The countryside does remind one a bit of Kentucky, though. Especially as one gets closer to the Ohio river in Highland and Adams County.




And there was that tobacco economy in the countryside around Ripley, akin to a similar rural economy in the Kentucky counties directly across the river. Though, in that case, the tobacco variety (white burley) was first developed and grown in Ohio, and then was adopted by Kentucky farmers. Sidebar: The Tobacco Museum in Ripley is worth the visit, especially since the guides used to work in the industry.

One demographic aspect that reflects proximity to the South is the presence of a rural black population, something uncommon elsewhere in rural Ohio. This was due to freedmen crossing the Ohio, not to southerners brining slaves to the VMD. Slavery was illegal in the Northwest Territory and Ohio's first constitution prohibited involuntary indetured servitude.

As an example, county seats of Greenville and Eaton, north and west of Dayton, have less than 1% black population (Greenville at .6% and Eaton at .4% ). In contrast Hillsboro, a county seat in the heart of the VMD, is 6.4% black. Xenia is 13.5% black, but that may be due to the proxmity to Wilberforce University (Greene County had Ohios' highest rural black population in the 19th century). The rural VMD village of Jamestown is 4.1% black versus the Darke County hamlet of Arcanum, which is 0%. But maybe these percentages aren't that signifigant and might require further study.

Coming Soon: The Ludlow Line and the Top of Ohio.

Beerman Towns: Northtown

Arthur Beerman owned the Arcade. In fact, his real estate interests had offices on the upper floors of Commercial Building at the intersection of Ludlow and 4th. And on one of those floors was the offices of the Main-Nottingham Shopping Center, apparently the leasing and development offices of the first "Beerman Town", because Main-Nottingham would later be re-named Northtown.

And the Arcade might have been the inspiration for certain features of this shopping center.

Suburban Growth in Northwest Dayton.

This enlargment of a dot map from the Harlan Bartholomew planning studies of the late 1940s and early 1950s shows population growth from 1930 to 1952. In reality most of this growth was probably from 1939-1950, the pre-WWII "Pearl Harbor Suburbia" boom coming out of the Depression and the wartime and early postwar expansion.

And what's notable, too, is that this was mostly infill on dead or lightly developed plats from the Roaring Twenties or before. The two early outlying suburbs here, Fort McKinley and Shiloh, are quite early, products of the interurban boom from before WWI.


Stripping away the plats, and showing the main streets + population growth, one can see how Northtown was positioned to attract shoppers out from areas developing closer-in (reversing the usual shopping trip into the city) but also to intercept shoppers heading into town (and from future plats that might occur in the 1950s).

The earlier Miracle Lane (first true strip center in Dayton from around 1946-47) is also shown, performing a similar function on Salem Avenue that Northtown did on North Main. Northtown was developed in the 1949-1951 time frame.



Let's Go Shopping (for urban form)

Beerman's firs shopping center was probably McCook Center off Keowee Street, where some of the features here make their appearnace. But McCook seems much more ad-hoc compared to Northtown.

Northtown in its contex on North Main Street, set in areas that were already developed east of Main. Whats' notable is the center was somewhat integrated into its site, with streets from adjacent development leading into the centers parking lots. The land behind the center was developed as apartments.

A closer-up, illustrating how the center was somewhat tentative, working out some basic strip-center concepts.

There are two larger stores, ancestors of the big box anchor store of today, but they are seperated from the center by an access drive to rear of the center. There is plenty of parking, but the center buildings are still held fairly close to the street. About half the parking is hidden to the rear of the center. The characterstic L form of Beerman's later centers appears, but the L comes very close to Main, leaving only two rows of parking. And ther's that access drive to the back parking.



Northtown today. The center apparently had facade updates over the years.


The Beerman's downtown Arcade might have been an inspiration here as, unlike other strip centers, there is a second floor of offices and a little shopping arcade connecting to the back parking.

Fairly unusual for a strip center, but there are contemporary examples in Dayton from the same era of two story mixed-use buildings going up at new suburban shopping nodes (like at Patterson and Wilmington or Far Hills in Oakwood). In this case this transitional building type is incorporated into a strip center.


Inside the shopping arcade, which is really just a wide hallway with storefronts arranged in a sort of zig-zag pattern to make the hall seem less of a tunnel.

(the offices are via the door to the left, which is probably original, with the original hardware, too).

The rear entrance to the shopping arcade....

...and the extensive rear parking area. Note the apartments in the backround as an illustration of how the center was somewhat integrated into surrounding housing. Though this is pretty desolate, a better landscaped and pedestrian -reindly parking area like this could be model for modern attempts to integrated strip centers into housing as a walkable ensemble.


The access drive to the front parking....
..the two "big boxes" on the northern part of the site. One of these is a supermarket, perhaps it always was.

The L, closing off the south side of the shopping center, here made up of one-story buildings. Present at the creation of postwar suburbia: this was the start of 59 years of shopping center development.


Yet memories of the old ways of city building linger here. Note how the L is so close to Main Street, with only two rows of angled parking. It's almost as if the desginers were still thinking stores should still be held close to the busy street, creating a street wall, not be set back away from it.

The details here are another illustration of how tentative this design is. Note the corner entrance of the store to the left. This would be typical of corner stores throughout Dayton, and is a detail carried over from the pre-war era of retail construction. Yes there is a corner here, but the "street" heading off the pix to the right isn't a street at all, it's another access drive (without sidewalks) to the rear parking.

Northtown: Past as Prologue?

What's interesting is how some of the later Beerman developments have returned to the mixed-use concept of Northtown, with stores on the ground floor and offices above. An excellent example is the Mad River Station across OH 725 from the Dayton Mall (which is no longer a Beerman property). And especially the Shoppes at 725, which harkens back to the era before shopping centers.

Beerman Towns

Arthur Beerman was one of the most successful businessmen in Dayton during the postwar era, building business empires in retail and in real estate.

Beerman was not a native, having moved to Dayton from Pennsylvania in 1929, while in his early 20s. He started in retail, but also ventured into real estate, forming the predecessor to Beerman Realty in the depths of the Depression. By the postwar era Beerman was already a player, being part of the consortium that purchased the Arcade and eventually owning that complex outright. The Arcade was perhaps an influence on an early Beerman suburban shopping center. More on that later.

Beerman Towns.

Beerman was an early developer of shopping centers in Dayton. His first may have been the McCook Center, from the 1940s. This might have been the earliest, preceding Miracle Lane, the first true strip center in Dayton.

It’s certain that Beermans’ Main-Nottingham Center was one of the very first strip centers, joining Miracle Lane and Town and Country as the first three outlying strip centers as of 1950. Main-Nottingham was later renamed Northtown.

After Northtown came Easttown, out Linden Avenue just outside the city limits. Easttown was open around 1954-1955, as the surrounding area was undergoing mass suburbanization.

At the end of the decade Beerman moved again, developing Westtown, off West Third near Gettysburg around 1959-1960.


There was a Southtown, but that is another story as it’s related to the development of the Dayton Mall. These three “Beerman Towns” are good examples of the evolution of the shopping center during the early postwar era.

Dissecting Location Decisions.

Taking a closer look at locations one can see how savvy the site decisions were. Drawing a circle around each center and then looking at development patterns, one can see how nearly all of these were located at the edge of the platted area of the city.


This platted area, shaded in yellow, was mostly subdivided before the Great Depression, but was filling up with houses during the 1940s in response to the wartime and immediate postwar housing boom. So already a market; people from these older areas would be able to drive out to the new shopping centers rather than fight parking hassles downtown or in their small neighborhood shopping areas.

And the areas in white, undeveloped in 1950, would quickly be platted and go under development. The new shopping centers could intercept these new customers before they could head downtown for shopping (as well as providing neighborhood retail for the new plats).

The shopping centers were located on arterial roads leading out of the city (Main, Linden, West Third), which isn’t so unusual. What is sharp is that they were located near intersections with the major crosstown roads on the periphery of the city (Gettysburg, Siebenthaler, Smithville, and eventually Woodman Drive), so the trading areas of the centers could extend in all directions, tapping into the newly developing suburbia.

The Evolution of Shopping Center Form

Comparing the three Towns by using aerials and black plans one can see the evolution, perhaps, of shopping center form.



For buildings one can see how Northtown is somewhat smaller and tentative compared to Easttown and Westtown. And there seems to be two early “”big boxes” (perhaps a grocery store) next to the two center buildings. But Northtown does have a first draft of the “L” plan that one also sees in Westtown and Easttown.



However, one can see that Easttown is also sort of a "U" shape, too, with a building to the east closing forming the U. One doesn't see this at Westtown; perhaps this center was never completed?

Pavement diagrams shows how parking gets moved to the front of the site over time, as the strip center form is worked out. Northtown has substantial rear parking, Easttown not so much, and Westtown none at all. Yet in all cases there is a drive to the rear of the site (for parking in Easttown and Northtown, perhaps service access for Westtown), separating the buildings.



Putting it all together, one can see how Northtown really is a transitional form from something perhaps looking back to the taxpayer strips of the 1930s and proto-strip centers like McCook, as the front parking is less, and buildings are closer to the street.



With Easttown and Westtown the fully developed strip center form is evident. Most of the parking is in the front and the L form of the center is stronger. Buildings are more integrated vs. the two big boxes somewhat separate from the center that one sees in Northtown. One also sees outlying buildings either in front or to the side of the main buildings; early versions of out lot development common in later strip centers.

Coming soon, a closer look at the Beerman towns, starting with Northtown.

Ohio Modern Goes Dayton

Belated news. This was recently announced and didn't recieve much attention at all. But its worth noting since the postwar boom essentially built a new city in Kettering, but also impacted other areas. Suburban Dayton has an excellent stock of mid century modern housing, and even a few intact office buildings from the era, like Financial South and the offices around the old Hills & Dales shopping center. Not too much retail survives intact, though.

From the Dayton Daily News:

State Historians, Preservationsits will look at architecture in in Dayton and it's Suburbs

DAYTON — A world war had ended and industrial states like Ohio were booming. Returning soldiers found good-paying factory jobs, started families and bought their dream home in brand-new suburbs. Schools, parks and shopping centers followed.

It was a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity. Between 1950 and 1960, Ohio’s population increased 22 percent and more than 1.8 million homes were built, including 127,000 in Montgomery County alone.

Now, a half-century later, state historians and preservationists say it’s time to start studying that period in earnest and preserving its significant architecture before progress sweeps more of it away.

And they want to begin their study in Dayton and the surrounding communities of Fairborn, Kettering, Huber Heights, Oakwood, Trotwood and Vandalia, the Ohio Historical Society announced Monday, June 22.

.....From the article: For more information, contact the Ohio Historic Preservation Office at (614) 298-2000 or Barbara Powers directly at bpowers@ohiohistory.org

We take this postwar suburbia for granted. For most of us it is "everyday life", nothing special since we are surrounded by it and mostly likely grew up in it. But its been over half a century since WWII ended so there is enough building stock to see variations in style and built form. Suburbia isn't static, and does exhibit evolution in form and pattern of development.

What this study will look at will be the brave new world of Cold War America, a time of mass prosperity and optimism in the future. The forward looking exuberance of the era's achitecture reflects this.

Building Northridge: Ridge Avenue @ Neff Park/Harshman Plat

Continuing with the series on the development of Northridge and points north, Daytonology investigates the earliest plats, Neff Park and the Harshman Plat (named Fieldston in later mapping) on Ridge Avenue. This would be the first section of Fieldston; the additional property would be platted under this name further west on Ridge. For a discussion of Northridge platting history see Platting Northridge.

Ridge Avenue dates from sometime between 1875 and 1898, but this part of Ridge was the first part platted in town lots, perhaps in response to Stop 3 of the Dayton & Troy interurban.

The maps below show the two plats, Neff Park in light orange and Fieldston in yellow. The arrangement of the interurban running down a median is clear in these maps, providing a traffic-free right-of-way into the city.


The lot lines as of 1930 for the plats west of New Troy Pike (Dixie Drive) compared to a modern aeriel. The area of interest is outlined in red, and the interurban stop shown. Since this was within walking distance of the stop the assumption is that this street would see a lot of pre-war development driven in-part by transit access.


A close-up of the platting on Ridge as of the 1930s. Harshman's Fieldston plat on the south side of the street has noticeably larger lots, and there's evidence of lot splitting.


(click on the pix to enlarge for more detail)

Drawing the 1930s lot lines on the modern aerial one can see how the area densified, with two houses on one lot in some cases. The lots closes to Dixie Drive have been combined for auto-oriented commerical use. The configuration of Dixie Drive itself changed as the road was enlarged to four lanes, taking the interurban median and the frontage road. If there was any pre-war commercial development at "Stop 3" (intersection of Ridge and Dixie) it has been subsequently removed and replaced


Mapping out the prewar housing, determined by visual inspection of houseforms. The entire block was not built-out before WWII, and there is evidence of larger lots being split for additional housing in the postwar era, particularly on the south side of Ridge Avenue


And a few aerials of the neighborhood, giving a bit of the flavor of the place. This is interesting as it's such a transitional area between different ways of building-out suburbia.




A Stop 3 Gallery

If there is a Stop 8 place name this is Stop 3. One can see a transition from 19th century house types to bungalows and foursquares, to the 1940s cottage style, and then to some postwar types.

This house is a good example of the urban I house found on the backstreets of North and East Dayton. It's a later form (developed in the later 19th century) since it doesnt have the four windows on the gable end facing the street, and was either built when Ridge Avenue was opened up (predating the interurban plats) or it was one of the first houses built on the Neff Park plat (north side of Ridge). It's in excellent condition (on the exterior).



One of the ubiquitous four squares, this one is a bit different as it doesn't have a hip roof . A little bungalow next door. Note that there is no sidewalk here, yet the houses are still set somewhat close to the street. Perhaps the transference of siting practices for urban lots to a suburban locations when suburbia was new..."we've always done it this way".

The Northridge area has some of the best bungalow, Craftsman, and "California doll house" style houses in Dayton. This housing stock is an unrecognized treasure. Here, two bungalows. The one to the left is probably earlier, and has some fine detailing.
A 1940s cottage that is also a version of the "California Doll House" (the famous concentration is in Carmel), which uses exaggerated forms, distorted scale, and picturesque styling to create a storybook cottage feeling for small houses.

Three generations of urban vernacular. One the far left a version of the ubiquitous four square. In the middle a postwar houseform often found on prewar plats. The form might have evolved from pre-war bungalow cottages, but the styling and material are akin to the postwar brick ranch, except the siting on a lot is to put the gable, or short end, of the house facing the street, to take advantage of narrow lot frontage.

In this case the lot itself was a large lot belonging to the house on the far right, but was split to put this house on it, increasing the density of the neighborhood. And on the right, another I house, one of the first on the street.


Finally, another example of the excellent Northridge bungalows, exterior pretty close to original condition and with a nice privet hedge in the front yard. To the right is a postwar ranch, illustrating how build-out stopped during the Depression and resumed during the 1940s and postwar era, using quite different architecture.
The result is a visually rich neighborhood, avoiding the monotony of serial construction and housing from just one stylistic era.

Ohio Opinions on Gays & Lesbians (& guesses about Dayton)

The recent Quinnipiac Ohio Poll has some ten questions on gay issues, questions #30 through #40 at the link. The poll breaks down responses by various demographic categories. The big finding is that over 60% of those polled support a statewide anti-discrimination law and support for civil unions is 50%-50%. Gay marriage is still opposed by over 50%.

Theres's an interesting denominational split here, though. The poll asks three questions on degrees of recognition of same sex partnerships:

1. support marriage

2. support domestic partnership

3. no recognition at all

And then segements the responses by three denominational groupings

1. Catholic

2. Protestant

3. Born-Again/Evangelical

Of course full marriage recognition fails for all denominational groupings. Yet for Catholics the "no recognition" answer gets only 37%, vs 51% for born-again/evangelicals and 40% for Protestants in general. So a plurality of Catholics support some form of recognition, whether it be civil unions or civil marriage.

This pattern of Catholic support for gay issues tracks across the other questions, too.

Other results mirror findings in other national and state polls.

-Support for gay rights increases with education
-Support for gay rights increases with income
-Young adults (Quinnipiac uses an 18-34 age cohort) support gay issues at a higher percentage than the middle aged and seniors.

An interesting result is the born/choose issue, whether lesbians and gays are born that way or choose their sexual orientation. In this range young adults say lesbians and gays choose (51%), yet this does not affect their support for gay rights (66% support) and some form of recognition of same-sex partnerships (only 28% say "no recognition). The born/choose question also has the highest "don't know" answers, over 10% in all age cohorts and demographics.

For entertainment value, there is question that asks: "In general, do you think society is paying too much, too little, or about the right amount of attention to the needs of gays and lesbians? "

50% say too much, 15% say too little, and 24% say about right. I guess this is about media coverage of lesbian and gay issues; should gays sit down and shut up? Not likely.

Dayton Opinions on Gays and Lesbians

We don't know but we can make some guesses.

The Dayton Daily News has taken strong editorial stands supporting gay rights. Most recently on the don't ask/don't tell policy, which is a sore subject given the big defense community here. These editorials and news stories usually generate strings of homophobic commentary. Is the vitriol representive of ingrained local prejudice?

Considering how long it took gay rights to come to Dayton (requiring a key vote from the reviled Rhine McLin, and perhaps one of the many reasons she is reviled) one can surmise this is the case.

Daytonians (city and suburbs) are not highly educated, are not particularly affluent, and the supportive young adult cohort is leaving the metro area (Dayton has the highest rate of outmigration for this age group in the region based on a study from the 1990s). So Dayton is older, poorer, and less educated. Precisely the factors that lead to less support of lesbians and gays.

One can say this is the case for Cleveland and Toledo as well. The difference is that these lake cities are heavily Catholic (more the eastern & southern European variety) compared with the Dayton area, which seems to be more evangelical/fundamentalist. In other words they are more like Chicago, possibly the most gay-supportive metro area in the Midwest. And Cleveland and Toledo did pass antidiscrimination ordnances earlier than Dayton, and have moved (especially the Cleveland area) on recognition of same sex partnerships. So maybe the lack of a substantial evangelical community is a decisive factor for making for a more welcoming and accepting social and political climate.

Yet, this poll was a statewide poll. And evangelicals are 46%/46% split (!) on supporting anti-discrimination protection for gays and lesbians. So there is social progress, even with difficult customers like the born-again evangelicals.

The Big 80s in Dayton

The big recession and Michael Jackson’s recent passing brings to mind the 1980s, when there was another big recession and Jackson made it big, really big. And how did that decade play out in Dayton, economically speaking?

Taking an Economic Pulse via Building Permits.

One way to measure economic activity is by employment and unemployment. Another indirect way is to look at construction; the expansion of the built environment in response to demand, speculation, and financial incentives (such as tax laws governing depreciation and the availability of credit). The way Daytonology will do this is via building permits and construction employment, the assumption being that the volume of permits reflect the local and national economic climate (even if the permits didn't lead to actual construction).

The Texas A&M real estate center maintains an excellent web-page on historical stats, which is the source for the numbers here. The numbers are incomplete for non-residential permits as they start in 1980 and extend only to 1995 for non-residential permits. Residential permits extend to 2009. Yet this is enough to measure peaks and troughs of the 1980s and early 1990s .

And, since the numbers are for the entire metropolitan area one can take a regional pulse using the building economy as proxy.


Office Permits.

Graphing out the office permits, and laying in the two large recessions that bracket the decade. The steep “Double Dip Recession” of the early 1980s killed the stagflation of the 1970s but also helped kill a lot of manufacturing, and was a key event in moving to a non-union, low wage economy. The early 1990s end of the Cold War recession was a key part of the Clinton election campaign (leading to the campaign staff catchphrase “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”). The effects of that recession were a bit delayed, locally, really hitting after the “official” trough.



As for office permits, one can clearly see a spike in activity at the end of the decade, which, incidentally, was the period just after I-675 opened to traffic, The 1980s was a boom time in real estate, but the boom came late to the office construction market in Dayton. Some of the products of the late 1980s boom: Newmark, Lexis/Nexis, the Colonel Glenn developments and the build-out of the Route 725/I-675 corridor in Washington Township. Other suburban landmarks were built earlier in the decade, like the Prestige Plaza tower near the Dayton Mall and some of the high-rises on Poe Avenue (along I-75) north of Dayton. The last two skyscrapers downtown, One Dayton Center and the old Citizens Federal tower, were part of the late 1980s office permit spike.

Retail Permits.

This was a very good decade for retail growth nationally, and the Dayton metropolitan area was no exception. The Dayton Mall area saw major strip center and big box development, which extended east down Route 725 to Centerville. The first Wilmington Pike/I-675 strip centers opened in this decade, as did Cross Pointe in Centerville.


The 1990s would see retail construction activity in Greene County, at Fairfield Commons and Wilmington Pike, perhaps accounting for the recovery out of the early 1990s recession

Retail and office construction in the 1980s was responding to the financial climate of the decade, particularly two tax laws (1981 and 1986) that affected depreciation of commercial real estate and a generous lending climate near the end of the decade. The boom did bleed over a bit into the industrial and warehouse markets.

Industrial Permits

People were still building industrial and warehouse space during the 1980s, in fact the high spike for this time of construction permit came at the end of the decade, before dropping again to relatively low levels.




Everything Counts in Large Amounts

Borrowing from the Depeche Mode hit of that decade, we put the non-residential trends together for the big number and also separate them to compare.

Adding the trends together, and laying in the I-675 construction period. A big construction project in its own right, I-675 improved accessibility on the edge of the urbanized area. Property that was held in speculation at the interchanges went under development after it was certain the highway would be built



Separating the three non-residential permit types and comparing the numbers. The peaks of residential and retail construction were a bit off, with office peaking a bit later in the decade.



Robert Bartley, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, called the 1980s the Seven Fat Years and they certainly were in Dayton for non-residential construction (compared to the nadir of the double dip recession). The 1980s (and the 1990s) gave physical form to the suburbia we know today, as well as adding two skyscrapers to the downtown skyline.

Housing Permits

The Texas A&M site has a longer range of housing permits for the Dayton metropolitan area, taking those numbers to 2008.



Graphing residential and non-residential one can see that multi-family housing seemed to be tied more to the business cycle, with troughs corresponding to recessions. It’s interesting that the 1990’s boom didn’t see a peak as high as the 1980s, and activity pretty much collapsed in the 2000s, signaling a very anemic multifamily market in that decade.

Single family housing peaked around 1987 and again in the early 2000s before collapsing in the latter part of the decade as the local economy slid into recession. It appears that the big run-up in the 1980s resulted in a somewhat stable plateau until the collapse after 2005. Notably, the “It’s the economy, stupid” recession of the early 90s didn’t drop single-family activity to the depths of the double dip recession.

Construction Employment

The above were graphs of construction permits, not actual construction. One way to measure construction activity is by looking at construction employment. Using historical (pre 1997) and current (1998 and later) databases one can measure construction employment in the metro area from 1977 to 2006, a 29 year range. The only issue with this is that it would measure employment for public works construction, too (roads, utilities, schools, etc).



One can see the 1990s run-up here, and also a second peak around the time of the 9-11 recession, before a bumpy slide down during the 2000s. 2008 and 2009 are not shown but employment has dropped into the 10,000-12,000 range with the recession (around 1985-1986 levels), erasing the construction job gains of the past 20 years. Still not as low as the trough of the double dip recession.


Since this time series goes back into the 1970s and knowing there was a steep recession in 1974, perhaps one is seeing the 1970s peak in 1979-1980, which seems quite low compared to subsequent peaks. Perhaps an indication on how anemic and stagnant the local economy was during the 1970s, when the metro area lost around 17,400 people.

The 1980s and 1990s peaks actually improved on the 1970s when it came to construction employment, even as population growth was relatively minimal (15,300 in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000).

Of course, population is an imperfect gauge of housing permits or homebuilding, as the market might be more responsive to household creation (as well as the credit market and the speculative environment) not raw population numbers.