,

By: Nate Sikora, Phil Drayton, and Chandler Mott, with contributions by Dr. Caroline Waldron Merithew and Dr. James Todd Uhlman. Edited by Hannah Kratofil.

Introduction: The Postwar Boom 

The revitalization of the Arcade began during World War II and continued after the war ended. Businesses within the Arcade benefited from the newfound prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s.[1] During this period in Dayton and around the nation, families were able to purchase homes at affordable prices and relatively low interest rates, which allowed more Americans to accumulate wealth as real home prices increased. Evidence of rising incomes at all levels of the earnings distribution produced the wisdom of “a rising tide that lifts all boats.” Between 1947 and 1973, both median and mean family income doubled, and the poverty rate decreased by more than sixty percent. The post-war economic boom was a period when economic growth soared, income equality increased, and the poverty rate fell.

The demand for capital, technology, and workers in Dayton caused by the production of war materials boosted the wages and purchasing power of consumers in the city. In fact, Dayton became the “richest” city in Ohio after World War II, in which “richest” was defined by average weekly pay. When GM transitioned back to producing normal products in 1947, they employed 40,000 workers in the Greater Dayton Area.[2] The average weekly pay for Dayton workers in 1958 was $101.21, much higher compared to $85.48 in Cincinnati and $83.21 in Columbus.[3] From 1945 to 1958, total real income in the Dayton area increased by 50%. Montgomery County’s per capita income of $2,600 outpaced both the state of Ohio ($2,225) and the nation ($2,027).[4]

The Arcade reaped the benefits of the economic success brought by Dayton’s strong manufacturing sector. Higher real wages and greater discretionary income fueled consumer spending. Dayton workers in the 1950s, like those elsewhere in the country, began to buy. And they had a growing number of things to spend their money on. The application of mass production from war materials to consumer goods made products affordable to more Daytonians for the first time, allowing workers to buy both necessities and luxury consumer goods. Arcade merchants were eager to supply what Daytonians wanted. Increased disposable incomes from workers at Frigidaire, General Motors, NCR, DELCO, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) meant good for business at the Arcade in the postwar era.

The Arcade Complex in the late 1940s. The photograph takes in the Commercial Building at Fourth and Ludlow and the two wings of the Arcade that branch out from it.  Courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, OH. Lutzenberger Picture Collection.

The Arcade’s Appeal to the Basics

Food remained the successful business model for the Arcade during the postwar era. Food had always been central to the Arcade’s business since its opening in 1904. The new owner of the complex, real estate developer Arthur Beerman, conducted renovations to improve foot traffic in the complex. The photographs below reveal the changes introduced by Beerman.  On the left is an image of the Market House floor in the mid 1940s. On the right is what the Market House flood looked like several years later.

Records gathered by Guest Jeffrey reveal the majority of Arcade purveyors in the 1950s were stores that sold some sort of food, particularly baked goods, fruits, meats, and poultry (Figure 2).[6] News articles and advertisements of store openings in the late 1940s and early 1950s affirm Beerman’s investment in offering more food options to customers. The real estate developer was estimated to have invested nearly $300,000 in remodeling the Arcade, including the new counter arrangements made for the grocery and other shops in the central marketplace.[7]

Cashing in upon the increased value of the Arcade produced by his efforts and the growth of the economy, Beerman sold the complex in 1952 to Robert Shapiro for $2.5 million. Shapiro planned “to maintain the remodeling program that has been under way in the building since Beerman interests bought them in 1940.” [9] Indeed, Shapiro followed Beerman’s lead, and the food booths in the Arcade Market House became a hot spot for shoppers. Columnist Marj Heyduck for the Journal Herald, a longtime Arcade booster, observed the building had become a “mecca of perfect, unusual, unique foods to delight the eye and titulate the palate […] all under the beautiful dome with the arched balcanys.”[10] 

Two city block area in which the Arcade was at the center, c1956. Sanborn map of 1950. Guest Jeffrey, “Aspects of the Dayton Arcade,.

Visiting the Arcade in the 1950s was an experience of the senses. Many Daytonians recall the Arcade during this period to be “a building totally alive, full of excitement…A mixture of pool people, well-heeled and common folk. We all came together like the smells and sounds of the Arcade.”[11] Shapiro and the merchants of the complex extensively advertised to preserve this “aliveness”. For example, a 1959 Dayton Daily News advertisement for the Arcade Food Market included savings discounts for stores like Vincent’s Produce, Culp’s Counter, Noll’s Sandwich Bar, Arcade Seafoods, and more (pictured below).[12] 

The Arcade appealed to Daytonians not only for its vitality but also its location in the heart of downtown. In the 1950s, the downtown remained a popular and thriving commercial destination. From 1945 to the late-1950s and early-1960s, the cultural appeal of the downtown area remained strong. The bulk of Daytonians still lived close to the city’s center and, as a result, downtown remained a critical commercial center.

Advertisement in Dayton Daily News, 1959

Lured Away – Signs of Trouble 

But things were changing. Suburbanization and the rise of a national car culture placed pressure on Arcade shops to retain customers. Beginning in the 1920s, automobiles had became more readily available and affordable, a trend that only accelerated in the post-war era. National car ownership increased from 49 million in 1950 to 62 million in 1960 and again to 119 million by 1972. Additionally, auto registrations for Montgomery County increased nearly 50 percent from 1944 to 1950.[13] That, combined with Federal investment in highway construction with President Eisenhower’s Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, facilitated the migration of middle-class families out of the city and into new suburban communities. At the same time ridership on the trolley and buses of the public transit system plummeted. In 1946, 66.4 million Daytonians used mass public transportation but [14] by 1957, ridership had dropped to only 33.5 million riders. Increased mobility provided by automobiles allowed consumers a greater range of consumer choices as firms quickly established roots in the new developing suburbs, increasing the Arcade’s competition for customers. 

While signs of trouble that suburbanization would produce for the downtown were already evident, in the 1950s street traffic remained dense, providing retail stores with plenty of opportunity to hawk their wares.  Courtesy of Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University, Dayton, OH. Dayton Daily Collection.

Figure 2. Population of Dayton & Montgomery County, 1810-2014 

Millsap, 6.

Figure 2 above documents the population divergence in the greater Dayton area. Tracking population growth since 1810, U.S. Census data reveal a sharp increase in the total population of Montgomery County from 1950 to 1970. At the same time, however, the population within city-limits peaked in 1960 but then began to slowly decline. The divergence between the county’s population growth versus the city’s population decline highlights the decaying importance of the city center. From the perspective of downtown firms, talented labor expanded outward from the city as young professionals – workers in their twenties and early thirties – with children moved into the suburbs. These new suburbs were separate from the old Dayton neighborhoods like Five Oaks, St. Anne’s Hill, Oregon, and Huffman, whose residents had relied on downtown stores, like those located in the Arcade, for their needs.

By 1958, nearly 69% of all suburban residents in Montgomery County were under the age of 35 compared to only 55% in the city. Furthermore, the suburbs by the mid-1950s held the highest proportion of high-skilled workers, leading to reduced tax receipts and business transactions for the city. The flight of high-skilled laborers out of Dayton during the postwar era shocked the downtown labor market. In 1958, only 7% of downtown residents were college graduates compared to 17% in the suburbs (Table 1 below). This led economist Adam Millsap to conclude, “Dayton’s relatively uneducated labor force in 1958 was certainly a factor in its decline in the latter part of the twentieth century.”[18] The focus on food is one vital way the Arcade was able to succeed in the new economic market of consumerism and suburbanization.

Table 1. Dayton Area Educational Attainment, 1958

Millsap, 22.

Women, Families, & Friends: the Arcade Customer

While Dayton was undergoing economic and demographic changes, Arcade management sought to attract new customers in new ways. Along with food, Arcade shops sustained business by appealing to women and families. The roots of this strategy date back to traditional retail orthodoxy of the late-1920s that focused upon “pedestrianism.” The key for urban commercial success according to this doctrine was to properly identify and rent properties in “lucrative areas of dense female shopping traffic” in the city. It was a commonly held belief that there was an inherent link between the location of women’s activities and high commercial property values because women were categorized as the main economic spender of the family.[19] Beerman had reshaped the Arcade to appeal to these demographics. Women’s clothing stores were some of the first establishments visitors would encounter such as Lerner Clothing Shop & Sibyl Hat Shop in Gibbons/3rd Street entrance in the 1950s (seen below). Beerman encouraged Columbus pharmacy firm, Sloan Drug Company, took a long-term lease in the “island stand” that he had installed in the center of the market. The drug store was the first health-related business to lease space within the Arcade. The store offered a complete prescription department and a registered pharmacist on duty during all business hours.[20]

Sibyl Hat Shop, Gibbons/3rd Street Hallway, 1950s. Courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, OH. Lutzenberger Picture Collection.

Examination of the Sanborn Insurance maps of the 1950s affirm the argument made by independent researcher Guest Jeffrey that the further one ventured into the Arcade the more likely they would find shops that “appeal more to the lady shopper.”[21] Jeffrey color-coded the diagrams to reveal the different types of shops. The majority of stores in both areas were jewelry, clothes, shoes, and even a hosiery store in the Gibbons/Third Street entrance. The 1954 Sanborn diagram provides greater detail by providing the specific stores within the Arcade. For example, the Gibbons/Third Street hallway included stores such as Carson’s Ladies Hats, Sibyl Hat Shop, and the Flower Mart alongside Dayton Card Shop and Murdocks Candy.

First Floor Arcade Complex, based on Sanborn map of 1950. Guest Jeffrey, “Aspects of the Dayton Arcade.

The Decline of Downtown and Rise of Suburbanization

The stability and slight decline in the commercial success of the Arcade and Main Street initiated the first fears of downtown’s collapse that circulated in the media in the 1950s. This is evident in the number of organizations and committees that emerged to specifically address downtown economic decline. “Small-town Main Streets were in fact caught in a double bind: the dollars of frugal consumers leaked out through the chains, while out-of-town shopping siphoned off the dollars of the affluent.”[22] William J. Reilly – a notable American economist during the early twentieth century – was the first scholar to develop an economic model in 1931 that attempted to predict shopping behavior. His research became known as Reilly’s Law of Retail Gravitation. The law proclaimed customers would be willing to travel longer distances to retail centers dependent on the “attractiveness” of the locations, where attractiveness was meant as an analogy for gravity. His research was first published in the early 1930s, but its influence remained in research departments for chain stores and advertising firms for decades afterward.[23] The problem the Arcade encountered was that customers began to gravitate out of the city as a result of suburbanization, becoming the main concern of marketers for store departments with urban locations.

By 1960, there was no doubt that the rise of suburbs surrounding Dayton had begun to affect consumer traffic and activity at the Arcade. In one sign of this trend, articles like that to the left extolled the virtues of living in the downtown area rather than moving to the suburbs. Here, Mrs. Dave Hall talks about her love of living in the Arcade. It has conveniences and excitement that can’t be matched by suburban living.

Despite examples such as this, by the end of the decade, the Arcade and the surrounding downtown area were clearly losing to the suburbs. Throughout the 1960s, Daytonians had moved to the surrounding suburbs of Kettering, Vandalia, and Huber Heights. Kettering became an incorporated city in 1958, Vandalia in 1960, and Huber Heights (formerly known as Wayne County) in 1956. Kettering became the first of Dayton’s suburbs to have a shopping center, called Town and Country, which is still operating today. Vandalia was home to the Delphi plant, an auto parts manufacturer and large employer in Dayton during this time. These suburbs, and the other suburbs surrounding Dayton, saw an increase in their population between 1960 and 1970. Huber Heights jumped from 1,921 to 12,022 residents, Vandalia 6,342 to 10,796, and Kettering 38,118 to 54,462.[24]

Table 2. Population of Dayton Suburbs, 1940-2000

Millsap, 33.

The drain of people away from downtown resulted in fewer customers for the Arcade. Suburbanization in Dayton, like elsewhere in the country, was further developed with the construction of Interstate 70 and 75, 70 running east and west and 75 north and south, with the two intersecting in Dayton. Interstate Highway 75’s construction began in 1956 and was finished in Dayton by the early 60s, while Interstate 70 was officially finished in Ohio by 1976.[25] The 1956 Interstate Highway Act, which called for an increase in miles of highway constructed from the previous 1947 plan, resulted in I-75 being built across Ohio and through Dayton. The plan’s main purpose was to increase highways primarily meant for local commuting, which did directly affect the commute times of those living outside of the city limits.[26] On average, cities that built interstate highways during the 1950s experienced a 17 percent decrease in their city population. [27] The construction of the two interstates allowed residents to live farther away from Dayton. 

The Journal Herald, Top: December 6, 1966; Bottom: September 6, 1966

The two highways acted in a way that segregated Dayton by isolating its predominantly black West Side from white surrounding areas.The urban redevelopment programs along with the new highway had a devastating impact on the Arcade. While the new roads facilitated the depopulation of the downtown area, the construction of the highways created a barrier between the remaining West Side residents and the city center. Urban housing demolition then emptied the West Side land connected to downtown, robbing the Arcade of many of its customers.

At the same time, the increased building of suburban shopping centers outside of Dayton resulted in money being spent in the suburbs and draining the downtown area of potential consumers. From 1950 to 1958, Dayton’s suburbs built ten shopping centers, a dramatic increase from its prior years. Between 1948 and 1954, Dayton’s retail sales increased by only 6.1 percent while suburban sales increased by 56.3 percent.[29] Dayton’s first shopping mall was built in 1947 by Arthur Beerman, the founder of Dayton’s long standing department store, Elder-Beerman. After selling the Arcade in 1952, Beerman later built malls in Northtown, Eastown, and Weston in the mid-1950s outside of downtown. By 1956, JCPenney, another Dayton department store, left downtown Dayton and moved its new storefront to Kettering’s Town and Country.[30] The movement of retail businesses to the suburbs was just one of a few forces putting strain on Dayton’s Arcade.

The Kettering “Town and Country” mall, one of the first suburban retail centers in Dayton, shortly after it opened. Courtesy Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University, Dayton, OH. Dayton Daily Collection

In the late 50s and early 60s the Civil Right’s activists began to target downtown retailer that discriminated against minorities.  Picketers outside stores sought to bring the problem to the attention of customers and ask them to support the cause of justice with their purchasing choices. Courtesy Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University, Dayton, OH. Dayton Daily Collection.

Civil Rights protests did occur at the Arcade.  In April of 1964, after African American patrons were refused service at the Arcade Barbershop, the threat of protest was sufficient to bring an end to the discriminatory behavior. It appears that by this time, what remained of the de facto restrictions of serving black customers at the food stands or restaurants had all but ended.

The Arcade’s relatively positive race relations were not reflected more broadly across Dayton. The city remained, as it is today, highly segregated. Grady Cross, another black Dayton resident, expressed his frustration of living through Dayton’s urban renewal and highway construction that lead to the demolition of neighborhood organizations and homes. Mr. Cross described his neighborhood recreation center,

“It was a center for recreational things and helped kids. A lot of the kids down there stayed out of jail and some of them went to college. Then they shut it down… The Classic was the first black theatre. It had a ballroom and everything, then they shut it down… That’s what they did, they tore all that down and put that [I-75] up there. They tore my mother’s damn house down to put that up there.”

The Dayton Daily News edition at the outset of the 1966 Race Riot.

These incidents signified the less-than-favorable views white Daytoians had of their black neighbors. The rioting following Mitchell’s murder eventually died down, but the effects of Dayton’s racism would continue to drive white flight. The effect on the Arcade was to further discourage prosperous suburban whites to travel downtown to visit the complex out of fear of interacting with African Americans.

From 1940 to 1970, Dayton experienced a dramatic increase in its black population. During these years it is estimated that 54,000 new black residents moved to Dayton while 32,000 left. In 1940, only 10 percent of Dayton’s residents were black, in contrast to 1970 when the population had reached 30 percent.[33] The impacts of these events were twofold. The black population in Dayton rose significantly, leading to many white families leaving for the suburbs and abandoning the Arcade. Black families were unable to replace the Arcade’s white consumers because they had less disposable income. By 1964, white families on a national level had significantly higher incomes than black families. White families, on average, had an income of $44,700 which contrasted black families averaging $24,700.[34] Dayton’s wealthier white residents left the downtown area, leading to a decrease in Dayton’s tax base and a decrease in funds to maintain the downtown infrastructure. People were no longer buying homes, investing, and being taxed downtown, resulting in a decay of infrastructure and housing.

The rapid exit of white students from Dayton city schools not only meant that the current adult population would not be visiting the Arcade, but also that the generations growing up in the suburbs would not be either. Students who would normally be going to school downtown and spending time at the Arcade after school with friends were no longer doing this. Certainly, black students would have gone down to the Arcade and replaced the now-removed whites, but with lower paying jobs now occupying Dayton and the aforementioned discrepancy between black and white families’ disposable income, they likely did not have the money to spend at the Arcade’s businesses. This meant that the suburban families with money would frequent their own shopping centers, restaurants, and parks in the suburbs.

Crime was the end result of Dayton’s crumbling infrastructure and the flight of downtown consumers. With the dwindling tax base, the city’s infrastructure was falling apart and jobs became less abundant. People were forced to turn to crime to support themselves amidst poor quality of living. In an April 8, 1976 news article, Weldon Peely Peelle, an 84 year old man and downtown resident, was asked about why he planned to move out of downtown: “I am moving on to where feel safer and more at ease” he continued, “It just doesn’t seem safe for me down here at night, and I am a night person.” It was becoming clear that the downtown area and the Arcade lost its luster.

Urban Decline

The Dayton Arcade experienced a major problem moving into the 1970s: economic hardships undercut business in the downtown area. The challenges grew worse as the U.S. economy encountered the first major economic downturn since the Great Depression. Stagflation, where both unemployment and inflation increased simultaneously, blighted the economy. “By 1978 unemployment was at 7% and inflation at 13%. Efforts to fight inflation by restraining the money supply caused unemployment to increase to 11% by 1982, the highest  it had been since 1940.”[36] All of this was occurring while rapid globalization was shifting the American economy away from one of manufacturing to one of services. Globalization gave large manufacturing corporations the ability to move their manufacturing capacities to less-developed nations, which had lower costs of living. These lower costs of living allowed these companies to acquire much cheaper low-skilled labor than they would in the U.S., where living costs were much higher. The chart below reveals how the Dayton area was impacted by these economic changes.

Figure 4. Employment in Dayton Metropolitan Area Compared to Total Non-Farm, Private-Sector Employment, 1969-2000

Millsap, 34.

As a major manufacturing city, Dayton became a prime example of how significantly the economic issues of the 1970s could disrupt a city that was struggling to adjust to a new normal. Dayton’s major industries – GM, Frigidaire, and National Cash Register – began slashing their manufacturing operations in the Dayton area throughout the 1970s.[37] A long-time staple of the Dayton economy, NCR remained an important Dayton-area employer into the 1970s. At that time, NCR had about 20,000 relatively well-compensated employees in the area. Economic pressures and outsourcing to foreign countries would cause NCR to cut its Dayton area jobs down to less than 2,000 over the course of the decade.[38] Some economists estimated at the time that these job cuts actually resulted in more than 30,000 total job losses in the area as other businesses, which relied on the business of NCR employees, began to shut their doors and layoff employees.[39] This situation was worsened in 1979, when GM announced that it would be cutting 8,000 Frigidaire manufacturing jobs in Dayton. The actual number of jobs lost in the area as a result was estimated to be closer to 16,000, as other businesses failed and cut their budgets in response to the lack of customers.[40] While NCR’s job cuts occurred gradually over the course of the decade, the Frigidaire cuts occurred all at once, making them even more devastating for the local economy which struggled to adapt.

The loss of these jobs was particularly devastating for the Arcade’s businesses. The workers in the manufacturing jobs lived near downtown and did much of their shopping in and around the Arcade.  With the loss of these jobs, the Arcade lost much of it’s clientele.  On top of this problem, local business owners and workers who also did their shopping downtown and relied upon the manufacturing workers for their income would also have less income to spend in and around the Arcade. These major economic shocks would cut disposable income in the area and cripple the city’s tax revenues.[41] The chart below shows how in spite of the flight to the suburbs, city tax revenues grew consistently following World War II. It was not until the 1970s that this tax revenue growth would stagnate. This stagnation would last for the entire decade and push the city into greater economic trouble.

Figure 5. Dayton Total Revenue and Expenditures, 1951-2006

Millsap, 45.

This decade-long decline in tax revenue came at the same time the city was working hard to revitalize downtown. Downtown revitalization efforts worked in conjunction with city funding. Therefore, a decline in tax revenue would limit the City of Dayton’s ability to contribute to downtown revitalization projects, such as the Arcade’s renovation project. This loss of tax revenue would become a major reason why the City of Dayton put so much effort into creating programs that would revitalize the downtown area. One of these major projects would involve the revitalization of the Arcade itself. To make matters worse, Dayton’s economic decline and led to many issues, such as an increase in the crime rate and homelessness downtown. 

One of the most famous of the street-people in Dayton was known as “Rags.” As The Dayton Daily publication For the Love of Dayton: Life in the Miami Valley, Elias J. Barauskas was a World War Two vet and onetime Priest. Courtesy of Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Dayton, OH. Dayton Daily Collection.

Increases in crime even prompted the Arcade’s ownership in 1972 to post ‘No Loitering’ signs throughout the Arcade.[42] Efforts like these, however, had a negative social impact, as they went against everything the Arcade had represented to the community. The Arcade’s image as a long-time gathering place was damaged by the notion that individuals could no longer engage in the old tradition of standing around in the Arcade and watch the world go by. In one instance in the early 1980s, at the prompting of the Arcade ownership, the city arrested one man for trespassing inside of the Arcade. This individual was homeless and seen as a nuisance by the Arcade’s ownership which wanted him removed.  Arcade management’s efforts to ‘clean-up’ the complex in order to bring back suburban shoppers had resulted in damaging the building’s long history as community center where Daytonians freely gathered. The homeless man’s lawyer successfully claimed that the Arcade’s rotunda was covering a public sidewalk connecting the surrounding streets. Therefore, the city could not lawfully arrest anyone for trespassing outside of the the Arcade’s businesses. After a difficult court battle, this individual received a sizable settlement. Another anti-crime measure came in 1975, when the city constructed a “wino wall,” which blocked off an alley next to the Arcade.[46]

Conclusion: The Arcade’s Declining Image

The racial tensions that emerged downtown in the 1960s had continued to degrade the image of downtown Dayton among white shoppers.  This would increase their desire to move their shopping habits from downtown areas, like the Arcade, into new suburban shopping malls.  There was a cultural shift in shopping as well. Suburban shopping malls developed into the preferred destination for middle and upper-class shoppers throughout the 1960s. During the 1970s, however, young suburbanites created a strong mall culture that would further pull shoppers from downtown into the suburbs. Shopping malls became the preferred hangout for teenagers and young adults during this time.[47] The opening of the Dayton Mall, the “biggest retail happening between New York and Chicago”, sped up this cultural shift towards the suburbs.[48] This cultural shift would have major effects on the Arcade, which was already challenged by a growing negative perception of downtown and severe economic difficulties.

Counteracting these negative views of downtown Dayton would have to become an important aspect of the Arcade’s redevelopment.[49] A 1975 ad campaign by a group of local business leaders, city government members, and local figures further tried to bring residents and customers back downtown. This campaign promoted the benefits of and debunked the myths around “urban living.” [50] The concerted effort by the city and downtown businesses to bring business back downtown by countering the negative views had limited success. Revitalization of the Arcade would have to wait until significant renovations were undertaken on the buildings by a new owner in the late 1970s.[51]

Endnotes 

^[1] Steven Avdakov, et al. Ohio Modern: Preserving Our Recent Past: Dayton and Surrounding Area Survey Report. Prepared for Ohio Historic Preservation Office of the Ohio Historical Society (September 2010), 40.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid, 47.

^[4] Adam Millsap, “How the Gem City Lost its Luster and it Can Get It Back: A Case Study of Dayton, Ohio,” Mercatus Research, Mercatus Center at George Mason University (2017), 24.

^[5] Memorial Arcade History (2008), 37.

^[6] Guest Jeffrey, “Aspects of the Dayton Arcade,” https://forum.urbanohio.com/topic/4351-aspects-of-the-dayton-arcade-building-owning-and-occupying-the-arcade/#msg192506.

^[7] Dayton Daily News, March 14, 1952.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Memorial Arcade History (2008), 50.

^[10] Ibid., 39.

^[11] Ibid., 46.

^[12] The Dayton Daily News, January 29, 1959.

^[13] “History,” Dayton Regional Transportation Authority, http://www.i-riderta.org/about-rta/history; “Dayton Routes,” Current and historic transit in Dayton OH, http://www.daytontrolleys.net/history/routes/routes.htm

^[14] Steven Avdakov, et al. Ohio Modern: Preserving Our Recent Past: Dayton and Surrounding Area Survey Report, 16. 

^[15] Ibid., 48.

^[16] Ibid., 55.

^[17] Ibid., 48.

^[18] Adam Millsap, “How the Gem City Lost its Luster and it Can Get It Back: A Case Study of Dayton, Ohio,” 20-22.

^[19] Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A history of the pace and people who made it (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 84

^[20] Dayton Daily News, October 3, 1951.

^[21] Guest Jeffrey, “Aspects of the Dayton Arcade,” https://forum.urbanohio.com/topic/4351-aspects-of-the-dayton-arcade-building-owning-and-occupying-the-arcade/#msg192506.

^[22] Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A history of the pace and people who made it, 168.

^[23] Ibid., 93-94.

^[24] Adam Millsap, “How the Gem City Lost its Luster and it Can Get It Back: A Case Study of Dayton, Ohio,” 33.

^[25] The Ohio Department of Transportation, Ohio’s Timeline. 

^[26] Nathaniel Baum-Snow, “Did Highways Cause Suburbanization,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 122 (2007), 779.

^[27] Ibid., 800.

^[28] Steven Avdakov, et al. Ohio Modern: Preserving Our Recent Past: Dayton and Surrounding Area Survey Report, 49.

^[29] Bruce W. Ronald, Dayton the Gem City, (Tulsa: Continental Heritage Press, 1981), 150.

^[30] Steven Avdakov, et al. Ohio Modern: Preserving Our Recent Past, 47.

^[31] The Dayton Daily News, September 1, 1966.

^[32] The Dayton Daily News, September 2, 1966

^[33]  Adam Millsap, “How the Gem City Lost its Luster and it Can Get It Back: A Case Study of Dayton, Ohio,” Mercatus Research, Mercatus Center at George Mason University (2017), 29-30.

^[34] Ibid., 40.

^[35] “Post War America,” 4

^[36] Ronald, 162.

^[37] The Dayton Daily News, May 2, 1975.

^[38] The Dayton Daily News, February 1, 1979, 19.

^[39] Ibid.

^[40] Ibid., 25.

^[41] The Dayton Daily News, August 17, 1972, 23.

^[42] Ibid.

^[43] The Dayton Daily News, August 18, 1972, 17.

^[44] The Dayton Daily News, October 4, 1977, 1.

^[45] The Dayton Daily News, May 30, 1975, 15.

^[46] Blaszczyk, 206-209.

^[47] The Dayton Daily News, October 17, 1969, 14.

^[48] The Dayton Daily News, October 8, 1980, 60.

^[49] The Dayton Daily News, August 25, 1975, 19

^[50] The Dayton Daily News, October 23, 1975, 3.

^[51] The Dayton Daily News, November 4, 1975, 11.

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——– Dayton Daily News

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