History of the Dayton Arcade
Created by history majors at the University of Dayton.
This webpage is part of the Dayton History Project (DHP). To visit the DHP home page click on the image to the right.
When it opened in 1904 the Dayton Arcade was one of the nation’s earliest in-door shopping centers. Occupying most of an entire city block near the center of Dayton’s downtown, the Dayton Arcade had a food market, specialty stores, business offices, and apartments. The heart of the complex was glass dome below which were galleries of shops. A a glass-covered street, or arcade, extended away from the rotunda. In these early years the Arcade revolutionized retail downtown.
The first decade of the Arcade came to an end with the Great Flood of 1913 that ravaged the city. Between 1913 and 1945, the growth of industrial production in the city helped revive the Arcade, but the small shop owners suffered through the Great Depression and faced growing competition from national chain stores. Arcade merchants responded in innovative ways. They used advertising and film to keep people coming to the Arcade. After the outbreak of World War Two the city as a whole experienced significant population growth that eased the threat.
The renewed prosperity of the Arcade continued in the 1950s and 1960s as Daytonians, like the rest of the U.S., embraced mass-consumerism. Workers in Dayton had some of the highest average weekly pay anywhere in the Midwest. Through much of it, the Arcade continued to supply those living in downtown Dayton with many of their needs, and it became a center of the city’s vibrant urban social life. But white Daytonians also began to migrating to the suburbs. By the mid-1960s parts of the city were becoming sparsely populated, and lacked adequate public services. Social unrest and crime increased. Efforts to counter the problem displaced people living near the downtown and robbed the Arcade of clients.
After 1975 urban depopulation, decay, and retail competition from the suburban malls, led to the Arcades decline. In the late 1970s and then again in the mid 1980s the Arcade was updated. The complex remained home to some of the city’s most beloved restaurants and public events were held under the Rotunda. But renovations also exacted a cost. Longtime residents and businesses were forced to leave. Problems persisted and the ownership changed hands several times before the Arcade finally closed in 1991. After 1993 the buildings suffered from neglect, but a grass-roots movement emerged to save the complex, and in 2019 renovations began.