Holiday Greetings from Daytonlogy

The Housing Crash in Warren County

Here is a chart based on data in County Business Patterns. Usually there is a considerable lag in CBP data, but there is this is special series they are running on building permits that is very up-t0-date, with data by month.

I put this together in August for permits in Warren County, basically aggregating data for each year. As one can tell there's been a drastic drop in permits in 2006 and 2007.
Warren was one on of the fastest growing countys in Ohio, so it's a good place to see the difficulties in the real estate economy play out, more on the new homes side of real estate/home finance.

"Where the Hippies are"

If it’s the holidays it must mean my annual shopping trip to Yellow Springs.

I used come here more frequently when I first moved from California, but now maybe just once or twice a year.

Yellow Springs is known in the Dayton area as the place “where the hippies are”, which annoys me whenever I hear people say that..

The hippies no-doubt were in Yellow Springs. In 1970.

We’re in 2007.

Hello?

Yellow Springs is akin to certain northern California communities, like Nevada City, Bolinas, Tomales, Booneville, Guerneville, Mendocino, perhaps Calistoga, perhaps even Davis, that were once locales for the 1960s counterculture, but have beyond that, in some cases becoming somewhat upscale enclaves for whom David Brooks calls “bourgouis bohemians” (AKA The BoBos).

But Yellow Springs is (was?) a college town, too, the college being the famous (albeit small) Antioch, which drew a student body and (I’m guessing) faculty hip to whatever countercultural scene was current, so the “alternative” aspect of the community was always being refreshed and updated.

I guess folks in the rest of the Dayton area have no context for all this, thus it is all “hippie” to them.



Yellow Springs also draws on newcomers to the area from more progressive and open-minded parts of the USA, who go into culture shock at first encounter with Southwest Ohio and look to Yellow Springs as an oasis of sorts.

I was one of those newcomers. I came very close to moving to Yellow Springs. In fact the ‘Springs was my first choice as a place to live. For various reasons I ended up in Washington Township, which means the “Springs became very out-of-the-way for me. As time wore on I visited to Yellow Springs less and less


Though I drew comparisons with certain country towns in Northern California Yellow Springs also reminds me of Louisville. If one can imagine an urban neighborhood infused with the spirit of Yellow Springs one would have the Louisville neighborhoods of Clifton, Crescent Hill, and the various neighborhoods collectively known as The Highlands (though Louisville is a bit more politically avant-garde, and Yellow Springs is more new-agey).

Yellow Springs’ cultural aura makes extends beyond the village, particularly in the local music scene. Some of my favorite music acts (The Professors, Dawn Cooksey, The Corndaddies) are or were based in Yellow Springs, and there is of course WYSO 91.3 FM, which helps make life in the Dayton region bearable. The bar/restaurant Peach's Grill is turning out to be one of the better live music venues in the area, giving Canal Street Tavern a good run for the money in the bands it books

One can also talk about The Winds and the Little Art, particularly The Winds, which operates at California levels of gastronomic innovation and quality

Given the recent issues with Antioch one wonders if Yellow Springs will retain its character. I think it will, as long as there is a trickle of in-migrants to the Dayton region from outside of Ohio who appreciate what the community has to offer and relocate there.

The Dayton Mall is Ghetto.

City-Data forums are for people relocating to an area to solicit advice from people who already live there. This means mostly suburbanites wanting to relocate to other suburbs, so one gets some interesting insites on what the locals think of their city as a housing choice. As this is the internet, people tell you what they really think. (and there is also real estate agent action with some obvious steering going on):

Dayton doesn’t have its own subforum, but Dayton-related threads appear in the Ohio forum. There was this interesting exchange on the Californian Seeking Advice Re: Suburbs of Dayton thread:


YoMikey617: "Springboro is OK, but I'm not so sure I'd bend over backwards to buy a house there… The nearest mall is Dayton's worst, The Dayton Mall. People in towns surrounding the Dayton Mall will drive 3-4 exits further to avoid Dayton Mall."

MiddyDJ: " Maybe I'm reading wrong. But please expound on this for me. Did you mean the exists near the Dayton Mall are worse are did you actually mean the Dayton Mall is horrible? Lol I found it funny you said that."

Penelopelp: "You have got to be kidding me! … The only reason why I can imagine anyone avoiding the area is because the traffic is heavy because it is a big shopping area".

YoMikey617: : "Uhhh, most people in Centerville and most people I know along Mad River road drive north on 675 to shop because the Dayton Mall is GHETTO. That whole area is just suburbaghetto these days and people with money don't feel safe shopping there."


So the Dayton Mall is ghetto, and the area around is suburbaghetto?

"YoMikey617" might be making an aesthetic/urban design critique, or he might be commenting on the merchandise, but the use of the term ghetto has racial connotations

Too many black faces in and around the Dayton Mall?

Enough to cause discomfort to some suburbanites, causing them to shop elsewhere?

White Flight from Public Schools.

“Schools" are a perennial topic of discussion in the Dayton area, both in the media and online, and probably everywhere else. A topic I usually tune out.

But I did make a lengthy contribution to Esrati today on the subject, and want to elaborate a bit.

I was responding to suggestions for a countywide school system, based on my experience in Kentucky. One of the points was that whites would leave public schools if they had to go to school with a lot of minorities (which, in this part of the USA, usually means blacks).

In the case of Louisville/Jefferson County, the school system I was familiar with, there was a substantial minority population due to bussing for racial integration. This has led to more and more whites to opt-out of the public system, until now about a third of the white school age population is in private schools. The public school student population is now around 34.1% black.

Locally, Dayton City Schools also had racial integration. A similar percentage of the white school age population is attending private schools (32.4%), and the public school population is nearly 70% black.

This chart shows the move to private schools for white students based on certain grade groups. What’s interesting is one can see an accelerating departure from public education in Louisville with the younger cohorts, while in Dayton there is a consistent range in the low 30%s



What might account for a fairly stable situation in Dayton is that whites in Dayton are likely to be lower income, thus don’t have the resources to leave the public system. As the Louisville system is countywide there are more affluent whites with the resources to go private, which they apparently are doing.

The question of what is a tipping point in public education for white flight has been addressed elsewhere. From an article on school integration in Charlotte NC , is this passage.

Whites will go to schools that are 60 percent white and 40 percent minority," said Clark. "When it gets down below 50-50, they will not go. Whites will just pull out and if new people are moving to the district, they will look at the school structure in the city and say, 'Well, I can live in a neighboring county.'"

With schools, the move toward the tipping point usually doesn't start with racial discomfort, but rather with a general perception that a school system is somehow inferior. Because middle and upper-middle class whites are typically the first to bypass the system in favor of private schools or public schools in surrounding counties, the system becomes increasingly populated by minority students, and increasingly low-income. At around 50 percent white, race increasingly begins to drive the abandonment of a public school system.

It becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, said Charles Gallagher, an assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State University who studies race and ethnic relations.

"The presence of a sizable minority population then becomes a proxy for the quality of the schools," said Gallagher.

Taking a look at a few Dayton suburbs one can see there is somewhat of a correlation between the % of blacks in a district and the % of whites going private (particularly in Huber Heights and Trotwood). The exception is Kettering (the city of Kettering, not the school district), were there is a surprisingly high number of white students going private. One wonders what the explanation for that is (or I should go back & check my numbers)?


It’s also interesting seeing the 9% of students going private in Oakwood, which is said to have the best school system in Montgomery County. One would expect the % to be lower, 5% or less.

In closing it seems this statement from the Charlotte article does sound familiar when talking about Dayton and vicinity:

“With schools, the move toward the tipping point usually doesn't start with racial discomfort, but rather with a general perception that a school system is somehow inferior.”

Dayton Canals & Hydraulics: Front Street Backstory

Though we know Front Street as a venue connected to the local creative class, the place has historic significance to the economic and industrial history of the city.

Though called "The Front Street Warehouses" the complex was never intended for warehousing. Front Street was an early industrial development, originally powered by water, one of the earliest factory districts in the city, part of a system of canals and waterways that formed the original industrial backbone of Dayton.

Here is the historical context of Front Street, told via diagrammatic maps.


The Pre-Canal Era (to 1829)


This period of flatboat/keelboat trade to New Orleans was discussed in an earlier post. During this era early manufacturing developed along millraces tapping the very fast Mad River, which, together with some minor changes in topography, provided enough power to drive waterwheels.

These races were built mostly before and during the war of 1812, and were the early power for the first industry in Dayton. The long tailrace to the southwest followed the route of a natural slough or backwater, which was a floodway for the Mad & Great Miami during high water. This tailrace and slough was later followed by the Miami & Erie Canal.

There is evidence that the proprietor of Dayton, Daniel Cooper, had a strong interest in developing the water power of streams around Dayton, and one wonders where that came from. Knowing that Cooper and some of the early settlers came from the Passaic Valley of New Jersey, and knowing that the Great Falls of the Passaic were being developed for industrial use around this time, one can speculate that Patterson NJ may have the inspiration for the first attempts at manufacturing in Dayton. There is no proof of this, though.


The Miami & Erie Canal Arrives (1829-1831)


The canal came into the city following the old slough and tailrace to terminate at a basin next to today’s Cooper Park. The basin was very shortly extended northward to First Street, fed by a millrace. An additional feeder constructed northeast to tap the Mad River. This feeder was sized to permit the canal to be extended northward, and a grade change was accomplished via a temporary “tumble” built of logs. Later this was a lock site.


Canal Extension to the North


In the mid 1830s the canal was extended northward, requiring two locks, an additional feeder, and an aqueduct over the Mad River. Lock 21 replaced the temporary tumble.


The First Hydraulics (1838)



The fall at Lock 21 and change in grade to the west was put to use via the Cooper Hydraulic and “Oregon Race” (my name for it… it might have been part of the Cooper Hydraulic company). These were conceptually similar to waterpower development in Lowell and elsewhere in New England,, but tapping a canal instead of a river for water to drive the wheels. Also around this time a race was cut across the bend of the Great Miami to power a mill.

The Cooper Hydraulic probably operated like the Locks and Canals Company in Lowell, Mass, leasing water powers and surplus powers to factories and mills along the hydraulic canal.


Later Hydraulics and the Basin Extension Canal (1840s)
After the construction of Cooper Hydraulic, factories began to move away from the old Mad River millraces. This area was substantially reconfigured by the rerouting of the Mad River to the north and the construction of the Basin Extension Canal, connecting the Basin Extension at First Street with the main stem of the Miami and Erie Canal. This canal also required a lock, 21A. This fall at this lock was used as a water power for the Barney & Smith Car Works (the lock was later known as the Car Works Lock). B&S shipped their first cars via the Basin Extension Canal.


In 1840-41 the Dayton Hydraulic Company was formed (one of the oldest joint stock corporations in the state), and built a lengthy headrace from the Mad River, terminating at the drop in grade at Dutoit Street, were the land drops into the floodplain.

The company subdivided the land along the drop into factory lots, built tailraces the fed into the main stem of the Miami & Erie canal, and leased the water powers. The result: the Upper Hydraulic industrial district formed up in the late 1840s and into the 1850s.

This industrial district is known to day as Front Street.

The Cooper Hydraulic company built yet another hydraulic, on the southern edge of the city.(1847). This district didn’t develop in earnest until around the Civil War.



The Dayton View Hydraulic (1870s)

Coal became readily available via canal boats and later, after connections were made to the Hocking Valley, via railroad. But one last attempt at water power development was via the Dayton View Hydraulic, a reconstruction of the old mill race off north of the Great Miami. This hydraulic canal didn’t attract a lot of industry and its water power was never fully utilized. It was the site, however, of the first electric power station in Dayton.


Flow Diagram

The above schematic shows how the canals in Dayton were used not just for transportation, but as a system of head and tail races to use and reuse water to power industrial operations, at first via large waterwheels (probably via breast shot wheels), later via turbine wheels. One wonders how this was all controlled, and the canals maintained for navigation, given that the excess water in the system must have developed some degree of current.

Anyway, one can see how Front Street fits into a larger picture of canal construction and industrial development driven by water power. It is the last survivor of that era of industrial Genesis, and one of Front Street the buildings was the last factory in Dayton to be powered by water.

As for the canals, only one physical remnant survives in the city...


…the pier for the aqueduct over the Mad River.

More posts at a later date with details on the hydraulic districts, including Front Street.

(PS, the invaluable source for this thread, and for 19th century Dayton industrial history is Carl Beckers’ “Mill Shop & Factory, the Industrial Life of Dayton, Ohio”).

(PPS, click on the pix for enlargements)

"I'm Gonna Wave my Freak Flag High"

I couldn't help but be reminded of that line from "If 6 was 9" when I saw this great portrait of Hendrix:...it was one of the student works on display, as part of a silent auction at the Stivers benefit at Goloka Gallery (which extended beyond the gallery space to take up a lot of the first floor of the old envelope factory at Front Street). The work was entitled "Hey Joe", and it had a bid. I should have upped it. Oh well.

There was more things to bid on...lots of student work:
Fairly well attended. This did get a media mention (most events here are fairly low-profile).
There was also quite a bit of performance here. Mostly students doing things, but aslo some local bands and, from Chicago (duh), the Chicago Afro-Beat Project.
Front Street is always so atmospheric. Another one of those sites that needs to be landmarked, but isn't.

For more on the event click here for a quick walk-through, including some pix of of two very out-there peices from Robert Shifflers collection. Bob Shiffler is an avant garde art collector. Who knew?