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Introduction: Histories of a Building: The Peoples, Purposes, and Students of the Dayton Arcade

2022; Kent State University; Volume: 129; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ohh.2022.0002

1934-6042

James Todd Uhlman,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Introduction: Histories of a Building:The Peoples, Purposes, and Students of the Dayton Arcade James Todd Uhlman (bio) This issue of Ohio History is composed of articles on the Dayton Arcade written by senior undergraduate history majors at the University of Dayton during the capstone research seminars in the spring semesters of 2019 and 2020. The students set out to explore a topic in local history with the intent of sharing what they discovered with their fellow Daytonians by building a website to make findings available to all.1 Their goal was to pick a topic that remained important to the community but had not received a great deal of critical historical analysis. Most of the students were not from Dayton, but by conducting the research, writing a history, and building a website, they hoped to give something back to the community that had been their home for four years. the project begins: spring, 2019 The students in the classes began their efforts to reconstruct the Arcade's past by visiting the Dayton Metro Library, the Wright State Archives and Special Collections, and the University of Dayton Archive, where they uncovered architectural blueprints, minutes of the city council, newspaper clippings, Sanborn [End Page 9] Insurance maps, crumbling city directories, and folders filled with postcards and photos spanning the twentieth century. The young scholars found a host of allies waiting for them. Archivists went out of their way to lend their expertise by staying after hours, compiling potential resource lists, and helping conceptualize where we might look for certain evidence.2 Fellow travelers appeared along the route to lend a hand. Digging for secondary literature, the students soon discovered the diligent labor of amateur local historians. Intimately knowing the story of the city, these sleuths had cobbled together connections that would have gone undetected, and along the way, they amassed an invaluable body of evidence. One of the most intriguing was a mysterious figure who went by the pseudonym of Guest Jeffrey online. His blogs provided a treasure trove of maps, diagrams, and data. Although we were never entirely sure where it had all come from, we had little reason to doubt its importance. "Mr. Jeffrey's" diligent labor had created a structural foundation for the project. The renowned local historian Curt Dalton's efforts provided more intimate insight into the lives of the many who had lived and worked at the Arcade. Asked in 2008 to write a history of the building by the grassroots organization The Friends of the Arcade, he employed the oral histories they collected to craft an account of the Arcade, which they sold to raise money to save it.3 The transcripts of these interviews inspired the students to find and record the memories from a rapidly fading population of others who had direct experience of the Arcade in its last half century. We quickly discovered people who were eager to talk of working there, visiting it to shop, or attending its [End Page 10] Click for larger view View full resolution The "Arcade Block" in the city of Dayton is enclosed by West Third Street on the north and West Fourth Street on the south, Main Street on the east, and Ludlow Street on the west. The photograph looks southward allowing us to see the Arcade complex's most distinctive external feature, the Third Street Flemish Facade. In its first years, the complex was composed of the six buildings outlined in the image. The Arcade was accessible from an entrance on each side, including a passage between the Main Street McCrory and Lindsey Buildings. Those outlined in red contained residential units as well as offices and retail. Those in green held offices and retail. Courtesy of James Todd Uhlman and Google Earth, Dayton, Ohio, 39°45'35"N 84°11'35"W, Sept. 9, 2019. [End Page 11] Christmas festivals as children.4 Taxi cabs and city buses took teams of students to the homes, offices, and nursing facilities of those willing to share their memories. As many of the students confessed, the passionate and poignant recollections of these Daytonians had a dramatic impact on them.5 By the end of that first semester...