By Hannah Kratofil

Introduction: Birth of the Dayton Arcade

Dayton in 1904 was at the vanguard of industry and innovation. A visitor to Dayton that year would have found proof of the city’s growing prosperity in the newly opened Arcade located in the heart of the city. In 1900, Eugene Barney and Michael Gibbons founded the Dayton Arcade Company with the goal of building an arcade in Dayton.[1] Barney and Gibbons’ primary motivation for building the Arcade was undoubtedly financial. Both men were entrepreneurs: Barney was head of the Barney and Smith Car Company that made railroad cars, while Gibbons helmed a successful plumbing business. Gibbons became the leading contractor in southwestern Ohio, installing plumbing to prominent businesses and universities.[2] The Barney and Smith Car Company had been highly prosperous and a leader in railroad car production. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Barney’s company began to decline, and as a result they switched to the production of cars for the interurban, a light rail system that connected Dayton to urban centers hundreds of miles away.[3] The switch was not as successful as Barney hoped, so he began looking for other business opportunities.[4]

A postcard showing the Flemish facade of the Third Street entrance. Courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, OH. Dayton Post Card Collection, Dayton.

The men envisioned the Dayton Arcade becoming the center of the city’s business district. To achieve this vision, the Arcade had to function as a state-of-the-art shopping center that was visually appealing to customers. Barney and Gibbons hired Frank Mills Andrews as the architect.[7] Construction began in 1902 and was completed in 1904, opening on March 3. On the day it opened, the Dayton Daily News reported that the Arcade was a “testimonial” of the Dayton capitalists’ “faith in the commercial future of the Gem City.”[8] In awe, the Dayton Daily News reported the Arcade as a scene of  “ever changing” wonders from its entrance to the exit, as “every place is interesting, unique, artistic, and withal picturesque.”[9] With the Arcade, the reporter asserted, Barney and Gibbons gave Dayton a “building which for completeness, elegance and artistic as well as practical value, cannot be duplicated in this country and probably not in the world.”[10]

After its completion, a decades-long craze for similar structures swept through Paris. In 1799, the Passage des Panoramas was built, followed by the Galerie Vivienne in 1823, followed by hundreds more throughout the city. Together they created a network of passages across Paris and became the “epitome” of style and elegance:

“They were not streets but covered, secure areas allowing the free flow of pedestrians. They offered the delights of shops, cafes and salons which gave them character and contained the spaces. They were extraordinarily successful, taking over the role of the market place as a cultural, social and retail center under glass, contributing an air of novelty and unreality.”[15]

The entrance to the Galerie Vivienne. This image comes from the book Arcades: The History of a Building Type by Johann Friedrich Geist.

A similar effect was achieved in Dayton by architect Frank Mills Andrews. A visitor standing in front of the Third Street entrance of the Arcade would face brilliantly lit window displays that showcased fine clothes and exotic trinkets. Walking in, they passed through the arcade itself—a walkway lined on both sides by various shops and covered by a glass roof. The walkway connected two of Dayton’s busiest thoroughfares, Third and Fourth Streets. Many pedestrians would use the Arcade’s walkway to get from one side of the block to the other, passing by shops that showcased their products in elaborate window displays. At the end of the walkway they would enter the heart of the Arcade complex, the area where the food vendors were located under the lofty glass rotunda.

The basic function of the Dayton Arcade, like its predecessors, was twofold: provide a place to sell both dry goods and food. When arcades appeared, they replaced the unsanitary, inconvenient, and primitive open-air food markets and bazaars of previous ages.[16] They provided ample space for a wide variety of stores, selling everything from hats to clothes to shoes, as well as exotic trinkets and house decorations. Although arcades varied in size, shape, and ornamentation, all have the same basic characteristics identified by German architect Johann Friedrich Geist, who designed multiple arcades in Germany.

The first characteristic is that arcades provide access to the interior of a block. The Dayton Arcade was built on the block between Third and Fourth on Main Street. The Arcade opens the block creates a space for shops, food vendors, and residential apartments on the upper two floors.

Arcades also functioned as “covers over private property that was accessible to the public.”[17] The word “arcade” first referred to a series of arches supported by columns. In Dayton, these colonnades, built by Barney and Gibbons’ private Arcade Company, held entrances to shops and supported the glass roof. The thoroughfare itself was publicly owned. Walking through a public street beneath a privately funded covering, the citizens of Dayton could shop entirely protected from the weather.

As Geist observed in his characteristics of arcades, these covered streets were symmetrical, providing access through from one side to another. The two entrances at the Dayton Arcade, on Third and Fourth streets, are directly across from each other and connected by the arcade walkway and the Market House which sat beneath a glass dome.

This extensive use of glass was the fourth characteristic identified by Geist. The 90-foot by 70-foot rotunda covers most of the ceiling, bathing the Market House below in natural light. The former is an example of what Geist described as a “continuous sylight” while the latter is an example of a “central skylight dome.”[18]

An example of a “continuous skylight” in the Westbourne Arcade in Bournemouth, England. This image comes from the book The History and Conservation of Shopping Arcades by Margaret McKeith.

Beyond these various characteristics, arcades tended to share certain architectural features. The streets over which arcades were built determined the shape and size of the building, where entrances and exits could be located, and how to gain a maximum flow of pedestrians.[23] Despite this, arcades generally followed one of four plans: 1) an uninterrupted corridor; 2) a corridor that widens into a larger, domed space; 3) several corridors that are linked into shaped paths; 4) and a lightwell, a rectangular or square space that was surrounded by shops with upper floors of shops and offices.[24]

The Dayton Arcade fits the second plan. The Arcade’s walkway, lined with shops, acts as a corridor that opens into the Market House and its glass rotunda. As with other arcades, the one in Dayton featured elaborate entrances, detailed facades, and glass roofs. When designing the Dayton Arcade, Frank Mills Andrews continued the tradition of elaborate entrances. These stunning entrances were intended to entice shoppers “towards it in an irresistible urge to find what is concealed within.”[25] Andrews incorporated many prominent aspects of the Flemish and Baroque style into the Arcade’s design, including an emphasis on vertical lines. Andrews designed the façade to sweep up in slender, elongated towers that end in steep, curved gables. The color of the Arcade is also typical of Flemish architecture: many ecclesiastic and secular buildings built in the Flemish style are made of dark red brick that is accented by white sandstone around doors and windows.[26]

The facade of the Begijnhofkerk in Brussels, Belgium. This image comes from the book Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700 by Hans Vlieghe.

The facade of the Sint-Michielskerk in Louvain, Belgium. This image comes from the book Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700 by Hans Vlieghe.

As in Dayton’s famed structure, towering facades of Flemish architecture are often broken up by the “skeletal structure” of mullioned and transomed windows.[27] Mullions are vertical bars between the panes of a window, and transoms are horizontal, rectangular windows placed above openings. Both feature heavily in the Dayton Arcade’s façade. Flemish buildings also featured ornamentation typical of Gothic and Renaissance structures. The ornamentation is usually restricted to stone elements surrounding the doors, windows, and the gable. Once again, many of those Renaissance architectural motifs appear in the Dayton Arcade’s façade, including scrolls, mouldings, and grotesques. 

A close-up of an Arcade grotesque in the shape of a women’s head. The Journal Herald, October 25, 1980.

Looking at the Dayton Arcade in 1904, a visitor would have had the grandeur of Europe brought to mind. Long before the construction of Dayton’s Arcade, in Paris, the glass wonders had become popular tourist destinations. British soldiers and travelers had been the first to visit, and inspired by such splendor, the British built the Royal Opera Arcade, completed in 1817.[28] From there, hundreds more were built throughout the country with the phenomenon spreading quickly across the rest of Western Europe and the Atlantic. Each country had their own designation for the structure—it was a bazaar or passage in Germany, a boulevard in Australia, a galeria in Spain, galerie in France, and a galleria in Italy, and a walk, corridor, passage, or colonnade in England.[29] In Dayton, and the U.S. at large, the structures were simply called arcades. But an arcade by any other name would still be as grand.

Arcades evolved as the phenomenon spread across Europe. “The simple passage with circular skylights or a pitched glass roof were improved, widened, enlarged and generally made more exciting until in its ultimate form it became the very heart of the city.”[30] British arcades were smaller and more modest than their French counterparts, which were narrow and intricately decorated. The Belgians and Italians opened “large and impressive arcades to express national pride.”

Arcades and the Rise of Consumer Capitalism

Just as the design of the Dayton Arcade was the result of over one hundred years of architectural evolution, so too was the social and economic function it served. Arcades were designed to suit the emerging society of consumerism. Entering the twentieth century, the American economy was about to undergo a dramatic transformation. A variety of new commodities were becoming available and changing the lives of Americans: canned foods, ready-to-wear-clothing, premade shoes, custom jewelry, furniture, magazines, photographs, telephones, and automobiles. Contributing to the development of a “mainstream culture” that was “fast-paced, technologically savvy, and always changing,” the Arcade represented a dynamic new way of selling those goods. [31]

Barney and Gibbons were not the inventors of this idea. Once again, the history of the innovation in retail dates back much further in time. The evolution of arcades across Europe was set against a backdrop of increasing urban populations, consumer activity, market economics, and the multiplication of goods made possible by industrialization. The city of Paris was undergoing a series of economic and social transformations that coalesced in the glamour and luxury of the early arcades built there.[32] Eighteenth-century Paris, with its growing population, was the home of the nation’s new bourgeois class. This new middle class joined the older aristocratic elite in starting to use consumption as a sign of social status. There was a desire for luxury goods and “a taste for personal ostentation,” both of which could be satisfied in an arcade.[33] As one historian describes it, people “loved to promenade, to keep in fashion, to be seen, and when window shopping was as attractive a diversion as visiting pleasure gardens and assembly rooms.”[34]

London in the early nineteenth century found itself in the throes of the same social and economic rebirth.[35] Wealth extracted by the British global empire flowed into the city, contributing to the rise of a new stratum of economic elites, middle class, and working class, all three tethered to consumption. For all people, the consumption of mass-produced goods was rapidly becoming a necessity, and for a few it was a means of establishing social distinction.

The County Arcade in Leeds, Yorkshire, showcases not only a magnificent glass roof but also an elaborate window display of a shop selling silver products. This image comes from the book Architecture of the 19th Century by Claude Mignot.

Looking at arcades in Providence, Cleveland, and closer to home in Cincinnati, Barney and Gibbons undoubtedly saw how well those venues worked. The Emery Arcade in Cincinnati had inspired a contributor to the Dayton Herald to propose the idea of an Arcade in Dayton in 1889, a full fifteen years before the actual Arcade’s construction in 1904. The 1889 letter argued that the Emery Arcade was one of the “best paying properties in the city” and that an arcade in Dayton would bring similar economic success. [39] Those proposed plans did not come to fruition. At the time, there may not have been a need for an arcade in Dayton. It was, perhaps, not yet a large-enough city to support one. However, by the turn of the nineteenth century, that had changed. Dayton was very quickly becoming a major industrial and economic center in the Midwest that enjoyed exceptional innovation and investment. In the coming years, National Cash Register (NCR), DELCO, and GM would expand the city’s population of workers, all of whom needed basic necessities conveniently located downtown where they lived. [40] Growth also led to an enlarged and prosperous white-collar middle class and a class of wealthy industrial elites who demanded luxury goods.

The Art of Selling

As it was around the world following the advent of the Second Industrial Revolution, the challenge faced by retailers at the Dayton Arcade was getting people to consume the goods they were selling. This was facilitated by the Arcade’s design. Architects do not just design buildings—they design an experience. This is the reason they incorporate fantastical and elaborate design elements; they want a person to enjoy being in a space. The building is part of the experience, not simply a space where the experience occurs. The Arcade was no different, its architectural design endowing the goods being sold there with an appeal. Visitors to the Arcade would be struck by the imposing size of the Arcade and the way it seemed to stretch into the clouds. They would have appreciated the deep red color of its bricks, contrasting beautifully with the sky behind it and the white sandstone surrounding the windows and the entrance. Their eyes would trace over the vertical mullions and the horizontal transomes, breaking up the façade, following the lines up to the sweeping, curved gables. The ornamentation would capture their attention next; their eyes would linger on the grotesques of lions and the face of a women centered over the entrance; the scrolls on the gables, the mouldings running along the top of the windows. There is no other building like it in the city, and visitors would have been struck with wonder as they are seeing for the first time the kind of luxury and grandeur that they only heard stories about from Paris and Milan.

Play the video to listen to the author talk about Walter Benjamin.

The Arcade was not only a natural outgrowth of consumerism, but it presented a dramatic leap in marketing, laying the foundations for a new, more efficient way to sell products. In this sense, arcades were, on one hand, a step in the science of retail. Arcades facilitated sales by providing customers with unparalleled convenience and satisfaction conveyed by the grandiose architecture. On the other hand, the Dayton Arcade, as with arcades across the world, captured shoppers’ imaginations by improving the aesthetics of the buying experience. 

Glass and light were the principle means by which this was achieved. The first glass windows were seen in the early eighteenth century in luxury businesses; by mid-century, the use of windows in storefronts was widespread.[47] However, these windows were made of smaller panes of glass and as a result, the window was subdivided and the view was obstructed.[48] However, panes of glass soon become large enough that windows could be made of only one sheet, eliminating the need for subdivisions.[49] These glass sheets provided unobstructed views in to the store, allowing consumers to see all the goods that were offered. The use of plate glass in America began in the 1830s, spurred by a “growing demand for larger shop windows and the need for stronger, clearer glass in some public buildings.”[50] In the mid-nineteenth century, high-quality glass was largely imported from France. A few decades later, in the 1880s, American factories began producing larger pieces of plate glass which department stores, a new type of retail store that owed a great deal to the earlier innovations of arcades, used to perfect their window displays.[51]

The Cleveland Arcade’s masterful use of light is evidenced by its impressive glass ceiling. This image comes from the book The Architecture of Cleveland: Twelve Buildings 1836-1912 by Mary-Peale Schofield.

The window display of the Sibyl Hat Shop, located in the main Arcade walkway. Courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, OH. Lutzenberger Picture Collection.

Historian William Leach, among others, has written extensively on this new era of marketing. In his 1993 work Land of Desire, Leach described a distinct culture that began to appear in the early twentieth century that was secular and business-oriented.[58] Cardinal features included “acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society.”[59] This change, as Patten and Veblen had predicted, was having transformative effects on society. By WWI, Americans were “being enticed into consumer pleasure and indulgence rather than into work as the road to happiness.”[60] Leach’s observation illustrates Patten’s theory of a shift from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance, in which consumption was the focus.

The advertising technique that drove this shift is what Leach called a “commercial aesthetic.”[61] He believed that by the end of the nineteenth century, American businesses were crafting new sets of commercial enticements to sell goods. These enticements helped shape the importance of engaging in American capitalist culture where purchasing goods leads to the “good life” and “paradise.”[62] This commercial aesthetic consisted of the imagery that appeared in store windows, electrical signs, fashions shows, and billboards.[63] At the heart of this evolution was the “visual materials of desire”—with color, glass, and light all being used to evoke feelings of happiness that contributed to notion that purchasing those products would lead to the good life. Light was used by stores and advertisers to evoke images of a paradise that was “stress-free and happy,” and by 1910 the art was perfected, cementing the connection between the aesthetics of light, color, glass, and consumption. [64]

The elaborate window displays of Traxler’s Department Store. Courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, OH. Montgomery County Picture File.

This phenomenon is readily apparent at the Dayton Arcade, with its retail stores arranging their window displays with attention to the aesthetic they were producing. Even though this image of Traxler’s is in black and white, it is easy to imagine those displays in vibrant color, the brilliancy of which would have undoubtedly lured people in. The displays showcase a variety of products, from vases to women’s clothes. The covered objects, perhaps mirrors or paintings, lend an air of mystery with their draping. The window display also utilizes decorations like the chandeliers, beading, and patterned drapery to add a touch of sophistication and evoke feelings of a shopper’s utopia that awaits consumers past the front door.

The commercial aesthetic was not just about the products themselves—it was also about the experience of purchasing those products. Shopping had moved from being a necessity to a leisure activity, and people—as per Veblen’s conspicuous leisure—wanted to flaunt their status by showing they could waste their days through the Arcade. Walking through a plain, simple building with unadorned window displays was nothing compared to walking through the Arcade, with its fantastic use of light, color, and ornate decoration; it provided a much more provocative way to spend leisure time. Architect Frank Mills Andrews paid special attention to this, designing the Arcade to be an experience as much as it was a place to purchase consumer goods. People wanted to be able to say, “I spent a day at the Arcade,” and have it mean something, even if they didn’t purchase anything.

Department Stores

After recovering from the flood of 1913 until perhaps the early-1960s, the Dayton Arcade was, along with department stores such as Rike’s, at the vanguard of the consumer economic transformation in Dayton. In the decades after the flood, the food vendors at the Arcade faced little competition, as chain grocers had yet to establish themselves, but the Arcade’s retailers faced significant competition from department stores. For more information on markets in the city, read Sarah Eyer’s essay, which traces the history and evolution of markets in Dayton.

Department stores began appearing across America in the 1870s and 1880s, replacing the dry goods markets and specialty shops. Department stores emphasized household goods and contained different “departments” for home furnishings and accessories. This emphasis helped transform shopping and decorating the home into leisure activities, another dimension of Veblen’s “conspicuous leisure.”[65]

These formidable “palaces of consumption” had spread across the country, turning handsome profits while providing ample opportunity for the growing middle class to empty their pocketbooks.[66] They were a critical component of the shopping districts of cities; Dayton was no different. On either side of the Arcade stood two department stores, Rike’s to the north and Elder & Johnston to the south. The Elder & Johnston Department Store, located in the Reibold Building, opened in 1896 on the corner of Fourth and Main Streets.[67] When customers exited the Arcade onto Fourth Street, they would see the Elder & Johnston store right across the street. The original Rike’s Department Store was built in 1853 on Third Street; it moved to the corner of Fourth and Main in 1893 and once more to Second and Main in 1912, where it remained until 1999.[68] In its location on Second and Main, Rike’s sat one block north of the Arcade. For decades it was a retail magnet, drawing people downtown. Rike’s became well-known for their magnificent window displays, especially around the holidays. For more on Rike’s and its Christmas displays, read Ryan Reed’s essay on Christmas in the city of Dayton.

Rike’s Department Store. Courtesy of thedepartmentstoremuseum.org.

Through the early twentieth century, these factors gave arcades competitive advantages. As time wore on, however, the Arcade lost some of its luster and the department stores took over as the center of retail in Dayton. The evolution of electric lighting, improvements in architecture allowing for bigger windows in multi-story buildings, and new corporate management techniques that improved supply chain efficiency all eventually tipped the advantages in favor of department stores. In addition, by the 1950s and 1960s, department stores were benefiting from new social and cultural transformations, especially suburbanization. The reign of the department stores would not last long—the 1970s brought with it new developments in advertising and consumer culture, culminating in the shopping mall, and while department stores could relocate to suburban malls, these malls afforded a cheaper version of the arcade experience.

Conclusion: The Demise and Rebirth of the Arcade

Unable to follow shoppers to the suburbs, by the 1970s, arcades across the country were being run out of business. They could no longer compete with department stores, and they were being overtaken by shopping malls. To survive, they needed to transform, but what that transformation should be was unclear. Should they change their marketing strategies? Should they begin targeting specific groups of consumers instead of trying to appeal to all social strata? Should they attempt to compete with shopping malls by becoming more mall-like? The Dayton Arcade grappled with these questions and competing strategies. The Arcade underwent a series of renovations beginning in the mid-1970s that sought to return it to its former position as the commercial center of the city. In 1976, the Dayton Daily News reported renovation plans that included a below-ground and above-ground parking garage and a 14-story apartment building for the corner of Third and Main.[71] By the end of the decade, renovation plans included restoring the glass of the rotunda, which had been painted over during WWII. After numerous funding problems were settled, restoration of the dome began in 1979. The Arcade reopened in 1980 amid much fanfare and excitement. The owners of the Dayton Arcade had decided that the best way to compete with the shopping malls was to return to its roots and emphasize its novelty.

The rotunda of the Dayton Arcade after restoration. Courtesy of dayton.com.

One Dayton resident interviewed for this project said the transition from the Arcade to the malls created a change in why people were going downtown. Their “contemporaries, who grew up in Dayton, remember [the city] as a shopping center,” visiting the Arcade and the Elder-Beerman and Rike’s department stores.[74] In the 1970s and 1980s, people began going to the suburbs instead of the city to shop. Many residents believed the Arcade was finished. “People are not going to get on the bus and go” downtown to shop said one resident.[75]

To staunch the flow of people out of the city and recoup their losses, the new Arcade owners made plans for another, this time more drastic, renovation. In 1985, plans were announced for the addition of a basement food court in the Arcade that would feature fast-food restaurants. This called for the destruction of the older wide-open food market floor beneath the rotunda[76].

A hole was to be cut in the floor and the food court would be located in it. This was a direct attempt to make the Dayton Arcade more closely resemble a shopping mall, as malls boasted expansive food courts. This attempt to mimic the malls in the suburbs did not return the Arcade to its former glory. Once again, the new renovations did not generate the expected revenue. The Arcade continued to lose both vendors and customers. It closed its doors for good in 1991.

The closure proved devastating to the building. Over the next two decades, a series of owners neglected the structure. In 2004, a new owner received the Arcade as a donation. He planned numerous renovations for the Arcade that never came to pass. The owner’s inability to pay taxes on time resulted in the Arcade being sold at a Sheriff’s Sale in 2009. It was purchased by a pair of developers that had lofty goals of redevelopment, but the hope of the Arcade’s restoration was short-lived. Once again, the new owners failed to generate interest in their project and did not pay their taxes. The unpaid taxes led to the Arcade’s closure in 2014.

Only a few months later, however, Mayor Nan Whaley announced plans to create a task force to evaluate the Arcade for possible redevelopment.[77] After ten months, the task force published their findings, declaring the Arcade fit for redevelopment. For the past few decades in Dayton, there has been increasing urban redevelopment efforts, including plans to redevelop the Arcade. By 2016, the city hoped that redeveloping the Arcade would provide much-needed economic growth. New plans for the Arcade include a black box theater, public event spaces, restaurants, shops, and a kitchen incubator to help food startups.[78] The Arcade will also be used for educational purposes. The University of Dayton partnered with The Entrepreneurs Center to form the Arcade Innovation Hub LLC and will invest more than $10 million to turn some of the Arcade’s space into classrooms for the University’s entrepreneurship, engineering, applied creativity, and art and design programs.[79] Current redevelopment plans emphasize the important of the Arcade as a cultural symbol and space to foster ingenuity rather than a center of retail.

Other arcades around the country have been able to continue their legacies as palaces of consumerism, although they experienced dramatic shifts in their clientele. Arcades in Cleveland, Ohio and Providence, Rhode Island were able to withstand the pressures of new shopping centers and retain some of their original functions. In 2001, the Cleveland Arcade underwent a series of renovations that included updating the retail and restaurant area and the addition of a Hyatt Regency hotel.[80] The Arcade Providence began renovations in 2008 that added and updated retail space, restaurant space, and micro-lofts.[81] However, as the Dayton Arcade found through its own earlier renovations, it is challenging for arcades to survive as malls. The arcades in Cleveland and Providence have found success by featuring high-end retail shops marketed towards the wealthy instead of the mass consumers. In these instances, arcades had to rely upon their unique, and now nostalgic, architectural features to situate themselves as centers of prestige shopping. Renting to boutique shops that sold high-end luxury products and designer brands, arcades became oriented towards niche markets, focused on selling premium products to people with money. In the 1980s, the Dayton Arcade’s attempts to feature artisan shops failed because Dayton lacked the clientele to purchase those goods. By contrast, Cleveland and Providence have large affluent classes to market to, allowing them to become spaces of boutiques, artisan shops, and restaurants.

The Superior Avenue entrance to the Cleveland Arcade, where a Hyatt Regency hotel is located. Courtesy of theclevelandarcade.com.

Endnotes

[1] “E.J. Barney Placed at Head of the Dayton Arcade Company,” Dayton Daily News, March 28, 1901, 7.

[2]  “Obituary of Michael Joseph Gibbons Sr,” The Dayton Herald, February 26, 1925.

[3] “Barney & Smith Manufacturing Company,” Builders of Wooden Railway Cars, Midcontinental Railway Museum, April 9, 2006, https://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/builders/barney-smith.htm

[4] “Barney & Smith Manufacturing Company,” Builders of Wooden Railway Cars.

[5] The Dayton Herald, February 26, 1925.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The Dayton Herald, April 17, 1902.

[8] “Beautifully Dedicated By A Labor Of Charity,” The Dayton Daily News, March 3, 1904, 1.

[9] The Dayton Daily News, March 3, 1904, 1.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Margaret MacKeith, The History and Conservation of Shopping Arcades (London: Mansell, 1986).

[13] Ibid, 14.

[14] Ibid, 15.

[15] Ibid, 15.

[16] Dayton Daily News, December 11, 1900.

[17] Johann Friedrich Geist, Arcades: The History of a Building Type (Cambridge: MIT, 1983), 16.

[18] Geist, Arcades: The History of a Building Type, 20.

[19] Ibid, 28.

[20] Ibid, 35.

[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] Geist, Arcades: The History of a Building Type.

[23] Margaret MacKeith, Shopping Arcades: A Gazetteer of Extant British Arcades (London: Mansell, 1985), 65.

[24] Ibid, 66.

[25] Ibid, 66.

[26] Hans Vlieghe, Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700, Translated by Alastair and Cora Weir (London: Yale University Press, 1998), 267.

[27] Ibid, 258.

[28] MacKeith, The History and Conservation of Shopping Arcades.

[29] Geist, Arcades: The History of a Building Type, 35.

[30] MacKeith, The History and Conservation of Shopping Arcades, 20.

[31] Regina Lee Blaszcyck, American Consumer Society 1865 – 2005: From Hearth to HDTV (Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson Inc, 2009), 96.

[32] MacKeith, The History and Conservation of Shopping Arcades.

[33] Ibid, 7.

[34] Ibid, 14.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Blaszcyck, American Consumer Society 1865 – 2005: From Hearth to HDTV.

[37] Simon N. Patten, The New Basis of Civilization (New York: MacMillan, 1907).

[38] Patten, The New Basis of Civilization.

[39] “An Enterprise that is to Cost $80,000: An Arcade Proposed for Dayton,” The Dayton Daily Herald, February 23, 1889.

[40] Bruce W Ronald and Virginia Ronald, Dayton: The Gem City, Boston: Continental Heritage Press, 1981.

[41] Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Penguin, 1994).

[42] Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class.

[43] Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: Belknap, 1999).

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class.

[47] Kenneth Wilson, “Plate Glass in America: A Brief History,” Journal of Glass Studies 43 (2010). https://www.jstor.org/stable/24190904

[48] Geist, Arcades: The History of a Building Type, 36.

[49] Ibid, 36.

[50] Wilson, “Plate Glass in America: A Brief History.”

[51] Blaszcyck, American Consumer Society 1865 – 2005: From Hearth to HDTV, 83.

[52] Ibid, 75.

[53] MacKeith, Shopping Arcades: A Gazetteer of Extant British Arcades, vii.

[54] Mary-Peale Scofield, “The Cleveland Arcade,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 25, no. 4 (1966), https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.udayton.edu/stable/988355

[55] Blaszcyck, American Consumer Society 1865 – 2005: From Hearth to HDTV, 84.

[56] Ibid, 84.

[57] Ibid, 83.

[58] William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 3.

[59] Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, 3.

[60] Ibid, 3.

[61] Ibid, 9.

[62] Ibid, 9.

[63] Ibid, 9.

[64] Ibid, 9.

[65] Blaszcyck, American Consumer Society 1865 – 2005: From Hearth to HDTV, 76.

[66] Ibid, 77.

[67] BAK, “Elder-Beerman, Dayton, Ohio,” The Department Store Museum. http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/2010/05/elder-beerman-dayton-ohio.html

[68] BAK, “The Rike-Kumler Co., Dayton, Ohio,” The Department Store Museum. http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/2010/05/rike-kumler-co-dayton-ohio.html

[69] Ibid.

[70] “City Within A City,” The Dayton Daily News, February 24, 1924.

[71] “A Closer Look at the Past Decade of Arcade Development,” Dayton Daily News, April 6, 1986, 10A.

[72] “Under Glass: Dayton Arcade,” Progressive Architecture, Vol. 61, No. 11 (November 1980).

[73] Progressive Architecture, 1980.

[74] Anonymous Interviee, interview by Hannah Kratofil and Chris Koester, February 20, 2020.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Dave Daley, “New Arcade food court to open in August,” Dayton Daily News, June 23, 1986, 3.

[77] Cornelius Frolik and Thomas Gnau, “Study: Complex can be revived,” Dayton Daily News, June 4, 2015, 1, 9.

[78]Aliah Williamson, “Innovation and Creativity at the Foundation of Dayton Arcade Revitalization Project,” WDTN News, December 6, 2019.

[79] John Bush, “Dayton’s Arcade’s Anchor Tenant Signs Long-term Lease, Will Invest $10M,” Dayton Business Journal, April 9, 2019.

[80] M.R. Kropko, “Cleveland’s Arcade Reopens for Business,” Dayton Daily News, May 2, 2001, 2E.

[81] Casey Nilsson, “Arcade Revival,” Rhode Island Monthly, January 31, 2012.

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