At first glance this appears to be a rather unremarkable photo: a 1950s neighborhood street scene which turns out to be located at East Third and Irwin Streets.
But given the fate of most neighborhood business districts like this in Dayton, it is surprising that all of these structures have survived to the present day.
And from there, this particular intersection may even get more rare for Dayton.
It has historic buildings on all 4 corners: the 2 older “corner store” style buildings on the north side of Third and the early 20th century “business blocks” on the south side.
As far as I can tell, this may be the only such example that remains anywhere in the city.
There are several Dayton intersections with historic buildings built out to 3 corners, but I haven’t come up with any with all 4.
This does depend on what cutoff date we choose for “historic” and I’m basically thinking of pre-WWII.
Fifth and Jackson Streets in the Oregon District has buildings on all 4 corners but the single-story Goodwill on the NE corner was built around 1950 after a church that stood there was razed.
Downtown, there are some intact intersections where one or more sides has a modern office or parking structure, and/or one building set back from the street considerably (Main and 3rd, Main and 1st, 1st and Jefferson, etc.)
And there are also intersections in Dayton suburbs that would qualify for the “historic” intact label.
Some researchers trace remaining “fully intact urban intersections” in various US cities and consider them vital for thriving city environments.
And to give a special example on the historic side of things, an intersection in Kingston, NY is the oldest in the United States and the only one remaining where buildings on all 4 corners were built pre-Revolutionary War.
Here in Dayton we clearly didn’t have any dating back to that era, but urban intersections with all 4 corners featuring late 1800s and early 1900s buildings were once a common sight.
And now there might be only one left, at a rather unassuming location over 2 miles from downtown.
History of these Neighborhood Business Buildings: Then and Now
The business block buildings on the south side of Third offer a few clues to their construction and history if you look closely.
At the top of the building on the SW corner, you can read the name “Hohm.” That stands for Otto Hohm who was, according to a Dayton Daily News article, “one of the most prominent and best known men in the East End.”
As of 1919, he owned the business block and had operated a bakery at the location for 30 years. His bakery stood at this corner in the late 1800s but it appears it was expanded at some point in the early 20th century. Three decades later when the black and white picture above was taken it was East End Drugs.
More recently, it was the Rice Chinese restaurant, and today it is the Big Baleada restaurant, which serves up Mexican and Honduran cuisine.
The business block across Irwin gives us even more information on its sign: “Rensch 1922.” W. E. Rensch operated a store there, which 1920s advertisements show sold a wide variety of items, from Palmolive shaving cream and Ansco Speedex film to Lowe Brothers paint and radios like the Spartan Equasonne. Later a single-story building was added next to it to house the WW Mac Co, a variety store that operated into the 1990s.
As for the buildings north of Third, the one on the NE corner was a drug store in the early 1900s, later known as Ridgway Pharmacy. The nice corner building on the NW side was a dentist’s office.
They both recently have seen new life and house a barber shop and nail salon.
My grandmother lived just a few houses south of that intersection, so we walked over to the stores on 3rd Street all the time, back in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. We could go to the drug store for a comic book or to the Liberal supermarket for a cold pop.