A little while back I covered Dayton’s oldest commercial buildings that survive downtown. There I wrote about how the classic 19th century business block, most often Italianate or other Victorian style architecture, is all but extinct in Dayton’s central business district.
They were lost over a long period for a myriad of reasons, but one of the most complete collection of these buildings used to be located on East Second Street in a district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The nomination form describes it as “a row of seven streetfront commercial buildings: one Eastlake style; five Renaissance Revival – two Northern Italian Mode and three Romano-Tuscan; and one Romanesque Revival with a Gothic addition.”
At the time of its nomination in the 1970s, it was “the only remaining commercial row in the city which represents the growth of the community during the third quarter of the 19th century … (and) “one of the finest representations of the 19th century commercial architecture styles in the city.”
The Cooper Building (also called the Eaker Building) on the corner was the most prominent structure. It was built in 1878 by philanthropist Miss Mary Belle Eaker. As one source explains, “the gleaming white facade of the building (which was built of buff Amhert stone quarried near Cleveland) was completed on April 1, 1879. It was an elegant building fronting E. Second Street with its six storerooms divided by iron fronts. Offices occupied the upper floors.”
An original tenant was the Barlow Clothing House. It became known as the Cooper Building in 1923 for L. T. Cooper, president of the Cooper Medicine Company.
One of the hidroborering buildings also bore the Eaker name, the 1860 B. F. Eaker Building at 15 E Second. That structure was long occupied by Edward Canby, who manufactured coffee and spices.
The building at 19 E Second continued the trend of female developers on the block, as it was built by Catherine Dudley and Caroline Roth. It was built in the Northern Italian Mode with a painted brick three-bay facade including stone quoins and windows featuring ornate iron hoodmolds.
The single three-story building in the district was the Hanitch Building (1858), built in the Romano-Tuscan Mode and with a boxed cornice and detailed frieze flanked by end brackets. It was named for John Hanitch, a grocer.
The Romanesque Revival structure was known as the Gump Building, also built in 1858 and the first stone front store room in Dayton. It was built by Andrew Gump who operated a store dealing in wood and willow ware.
By the late 1980s, Dayton had started to recognize the value of its historic districts and the most destructive urban renewal projects were a couple of decades in the past.
But this collection of fine architecture would swiftly bite the dust. As one book explains, “one of the city’s oldest buildings would meet the wrecking ball so that a new banking center could be built.”
It makes sense that Dayton would try to shore up its downtown by adding additional Class A office space to retain tenants at a time when suburban competition was accelerating and businesses were relocating.
But incredibly, two massive office towers were planned at the exact same time, and instead of a collaborative effort focused on actual market demand and space needs, the process was instead widely described as a “race” between the two buildings without nearly enough tenants actually lined up to make them viable.
The building that would occupy the corner of Main and East Second was the Citizens Federal Tower, a $35 million project by the company and Danis Industries.
Just south at Third and Main, the Arcade Centre was a city-backed $50 million project by the Webb/Henne company of Lexington adjacent to the Dayton Arcade.
That project suffered delays due to land acquisition and financing, while the Citizens Federal project had to contend with the National Register listed historic structures on East Second.
Local preservationists “protested the planned razing of this area” and a newspaper article explains that the developer was apparently considering four options: “renovate the structures, keep the facades while building a new structure behind them, demolish them entirely or remove and save the facades for possible reconstruction elsewhere.”
But the city and companies pressed on despite the delays and challenges, and one city council member said that “There will be two buildings, and it’s going to be a race to see who’ll fill it quickly.”
The district of course would meet the wrecking ball, but fortunately the Cooper/Eaker Building facade was saved and is now part of the RTA complex on Third Street next to the Conover Building.
With those buildings out of the way, the project moved forward. Several news articles from that time applauded the simultaneous tower projects as progress and a good thing for downtown, but a few were more critical. An 1987 article said that the office tower “will help speed a changing face of Main Street, boost the proposed performing arts center and add a new foundation for downtown Dayton revitalization efforts (“Officials Laud Office Project,” DDN 7/17/1987).
But in a Dayton Daily News article from 1989, Lou Lunne of Danis Industries said that the two towers adding another 650,000 square feet to the center city market “outstrips the local market’s ability to absorb vacant offices … Danis figures that without new businesses coming into the market, it would take five years to lease its space.” Developers also saw “weaknesses in the downtown market even without the addition of new buildings. ‘We haven’t found many positive signals,” (Post) said about attempts to interest tenants in the downtown” (“After the Boom,” DDN 7/17/1987).
Those warning signs would prove to be accurate. By 1990, an article reported that the “Arcade Centre and Citizens Federal Centre aren’t faring well. The Arcade Centre had 85% of its space vacant, while Citizens Federal had about 50%. It called their first year “unusual because they hit the market at the same time, causing a glut of Class A space. The glut, however, won’t last forever, brokers say” (“Office Space Plentiful Downtown,” DDN 2/25/1990).
Another source described the situation at the Arcade Tower during its first few years: “It was conceived in part to supplement the adjoining Arcade. It must have been an embarrassment to the promoters … (as) the Arcade closed the following year, an event that led to the building being renamed the “One Dayton Centre.” Although dressing up the Main and Third intersection, the building was initially a financial failure. In 1991, its vacancy rate was an astounding seventy percent. The owners attempted to bail out by selling the building to the Ohio government for office use, but the state lacked sufficient interest.”
The Arcade / One Dayton Centre, today the Fifth Third Tower (photo credit)
Citizens Federal also didn’t last a decade as a company, as it was acquired by Fifth Third Bank in 1998.
But the architectural losses could have actually been much worse, as the Arcade Centre was part of a “strategy to acquire the entire west side of that block of Main as far south as the Kuhns Building including McCrory’s. The plan was to tear down the buildings and construct a Twin Towers type of complex, twin high-rises with a little arcade between them to connect up with the old Arcade, as a way to generate foot traffic and a customer base for the struggling Arcade project, which by then was in receivership or owned by the creditors.”
So it’s fortunate at least that the Kuhns, McCrory and Lindsey Buildings weren’t lost along with the East Second Street district for massive amounts of additional unneeded office space.
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