The Monument: Good Urban Design

Following up on the Newcom Manor post, here is an aerial showing that building, Monument Avenue (Dayton’s 19th Century social row), and the Soldiers Monument, which is a Civil Ware memorial.

The Monument was erected in 1884, after a lengthy fundraising campaign, which included repeat performances of the “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” at Turner Opera House (today’s Victoria).

Lichtenberger’s caption :

Excavation for the foundation of the Soldiers Monument at Main Street bridge began on September 19, 1883 and ended on November 22, 1883. Granite for the monument was quarried at Hollowell, Maine. The first carloads arrived on April 19, 1884. The statue of the Union soldier was cut out of white marble in Carrars (sic), Italy. It arrived in Dayton in June 1884. George W. Fair of Dayton was the model for the statue. On Wednesday, July 30, a G. A. R. parade was held. It was estimated that 10,000 persons were on the streets of Dayton that day. The monument was unveiled the next day, Thursday July 31st. It was 85 feet high with the statue accounting for 11 l/2 feet. This photograph, which was taken in 1889, also shows the old iron bridge and the Hose Company

George Fair was a Dayton bricklayer, living most of his life in the neighborhoods west of downtown, between downtown & the Great Miami (now the site of Sinclair and the county government buildings)

After the Monument was dedicated Water Street was renamed Monument Avenue.

With the advent of the automobile the Monument became a bottleneck (back when Main Street had a lot of traffic), so it was relocated in 1948, to a park area across the river.

(pix from Dayton, the Gem City). Good view of the Biltmore Hotel here, and traffic coming across the Main Street Bridge. The Monument was a gateway feature for downtown.

And there it stood, pretty much forgotten, until the late 1980s, when an urban design plan for downtown proposed the relocation back to Main Street, as part of a larger streetscape improvement for Main (more trees and benches and such). This time, the Monument was sited mid block between Monument Avenue and First Street.

The Monument was rededicated in 1991 at the new site, just a few yards from it’s original location.

The design was to site the Monument in a traffic island, necking down traffic to two lanes as it passed the Monument, but broadening again after passing the island. The design is actually a good traffic-calming feature, permitting people to cross to the island, between a row of bollards, where there is some seating and a small plaza south of the Monument.

The raised planting beds provides a sheltered space in the middle of Main, so as to admire the monument and look at the surrounding streetscape.


A view of the Monument and island, looking north. As part of the project the statue of Private Fair was found to be badly damaged by acid rain, and was remade as a bronze casting by a Cincinnati restoration firm


The bollards marking the break in the raised planting beds, and dip in the curb, inviting one to cross the street



The little plaza inside the island, with the planting bed edges developed as benches. This is a neat space, actually fairly sheltered from traffic and somewhat intimate in scale, yet in the very heart of the city.


At the end of the space is one of those pay-telescopes if one wants to look into the windows of the surrounding high-rises. A pretty good view south down main (and one of Dayton’s trolleybuses is visible; since they don’t make them in the US, RTA got new ones from Skoda in the Czech Republic).


An interesting feature is that the planting beds are broke here as well, but the low iron fence prevents walking across the sreet (and a good thing, too, as traffic would start to accelerate at this point due to lanes starting to widen and the venturi effect of the island)

Looking back one has a great view of the Monument, flanked by flagpoles and decorative light globes, reminiscent of City Beautiful era urban design. From further back on Main, the Monument terminates the northward vista up the street, creating a sort of quasi-baroque or neoclassical urban design concept (boulevard vista, termnatd by a monument or arch or public building).



And looking back across Main at the ground floor of the Biltmore., with the street trees and widened sidewalk. The street was slightly widened at the entrance to the Biltmore to permit passenger loading and unloading.



This is a deceptively simple design, but it is quite successful in creating a mix of monumentality and intimacy, as well as being quite successful as a traffic calming feature.

One of the better urban design features in a mostly utilitarian city, and an illustration on how small design moves can still be quality moves, and have a big impact on a cityscape.

The Oldest City House in Dayton

What is the oldest house in Dayton on its original location?

It seems it's an old farmhouse on the northern edge of the Westwood neighborhood, dating from the very early 1800s. There may be other old farmhouse out in the neighborhoods (according to the auditors records theres is one in Ohmer Park from the 1840s)

But what's the oldest city house? The Newcom Tavern has been relocated, and an old house from the 1820s was recently torn down for the new Avis office.

Local tradition says that the Clegg House is the oldest house, dating from 1827 or 28. Looking at the facade on First Street one sees an impressive cube house with nice limestone facade with rusticated base and an ionic pilasters. I would date this later than the 1820s based visual evidence in the Lutzenberger collection and extant houses in the older parts of the Oregon.


To the rear, however, one sees these appendages to the Clegg House. What if one of these, particularly the two story one, was not an appendage but a frestanding house at one time? One can see some modifications (like the horizontal band windows) and what looks like half wood/half brick construction.
However, going around to the front one does see a facade that looks "old", due to the roof line running parallel to the street and the zero lot line construction.
Comparing this to some of the oldest Oregon houses, one sees the window arrangement and central "gap" matches the facades of some early double houses, and there is a central chimney that might have been shared by two sides of the house. The door is also on the end, like some early doubles.
A typological analyses showing how this might have been either a modified double, or a single borrowing the typology of a double.

So, the oldest city house (not farm house) in Dayton could well be the "Clegg House", not the big house on First but the rear "wing".

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

Dave Hall's Penthouse

There is an urban legend about this building, that the mayor of Dayton lived in a penthouse on the roof:


This legend is true! The mayor was Dave Hall, serving on the city commission from 1963 and as mayor from 1965 to his resignation in 1970 due to health problems. Hall is named by the city directories as living there around this time.
Architecturally the design is ahead of its time for Dayton, An early postmodern design , with the black screen element with the outlined windows and keystones, and then a touch of Mies Van Der Rohe or Phillip Johnson, with the big steel and glass pavilion and window walls.

One of the things I found out was that this building was apartments, not just the penthouse. The Sam Hall Apartments (named after one of Hall's sons?). Four floors, ten apartments per floor, including the fifth floor with those big French door windows.

Can you imagine living in such a grand space? With huge ceilings and big windows that swing open to provide a view of the city?

Apparently the place was converted to apartments in the early 1960s (it was originally an Elks lodge), and stayed apartments into the mid 1980s. By 1988 it was back to offices.

What a loss.

Dave Hall was a loss too, maybe even a tragic figure.

Hall could have been one of the better mayors, and he was certainly a big advocate for downtown and renewal to compete with the suburbs. The urban unrest & racial strife of the 1960s intervened and Hall’s plans for downtown came to naught.

The Dayton Mall opened in 1970, the same year Hall resigned, pretty much ending downtown as a retail destination. Hall died in 1971, so he was spared a penthouse view of the slow destruction of the downtown he championed.

Urban Nights Inspires the Bloggers (but whats goin' on?)

Two of the more urban affairs oriented Dayton blogs are abuzz after Urban Nights, which apparently was quite an event.

Esrati has come up with a list of pretty good ideas on how to improve downtown. And Bill @ Dayton Most Metro has a great call to action directed at not just at the political leadership but also at local citizens and buisnesses. I particularly liked the Most Metro post as it was fairly inspirational and makes me wish we had more urban evangelists like Bill around town.

Yet what is really the plan for downtownton? As Marvin Gaye sang, "Whats Goin' On?"

Well, everything is pretty close-hold here, isn't it? We know about Ballpark Village. But what else?

I found something online. A planning document prepared by Citywide Development. And it is chilling. Apparently this is going to be an economic development part of the Daytons city plan and is recent, from June of this year:

CitiPlan 2020 Focus 2010 and Beyond
Economic Development Component
(2007).

4.2.3.2. New Product and Reuse. Create new building product that is more aligned with the demands of today’s marketplace by providing:

* large horizontal floor plates

* close in parking and other amenities.

Find reuses for obsolete office buildings that can be transformed into non-traditional re-uses”

4.2.3.4. Downtown Office Space….Work with community partners to develop strategic shovel-ready sites for potential development”.

So, what does this bureaucratic bafflegab mean? Well, it means they are going to finish the job started by urban renwal in the 1960s. The concept is large flat or low buildings ("...large horizontal floor plates...")and adjacent parking and maybe lunchtime restaurants and dry cleaners and such ("...close in parking and other amenities...")

The idea is to maybe use Port Authority or other agencies to clear sites and remediate hazamats to provide empty property that could compete with surburban office parks for potential development("...Work with community partners to develop strategic shovel-ready sites..."). Conceptually this would be akin to what Kettering did with Hills and Dales or what UD is doing with the NCR site.

So it's back to the future. Examples of large horizontal floor plates with close-in parking built on shovel-ready sites, downtown, from the 1960s...






...groovy, baby. But what about that city income tax?