The Golden Age of Main Street Shopping
The last few years have been a difficult time for many downtown small businesses.
Retail stores especially face a combination of challenges ranging from lingering pandemic effects and economic struggles to competition from suburban big-box stores and Amazon delivery.
Downtown Dayton has nevertheless continued to welcome many new businesses, while housing and hotel projects promise an uptick in foot traffic to help support them.
But the days when downtown was the unquestioned shopping center for the whole region were another world entirely.
This article will take a look at downtown retail history including Rike’s, Elder-Beerman, and other former staples.
Many Daytonians’ fondest memories involve these stores: childhood trips downtown to shop with family, magical experiences during the holidays, and much more.
For these visitors they were much more than just places to buy things, they were truly special experiences and vital parts of the Dayton community.
In this article we will trace how these stores came to be with plenty of historic photos to help tell the story.
History of Rike’s (Rike-Kumler Co) and Elder & Johnston
Rike’s dates all the way back to 1853 when David K. Rike and partners Gideon Prugh and James Joice opened Prugh, Joice & Rike at 17 E. Third St.
About a decade later the name was changed to the D.K. Rike Dry Goods Co.
By 1883 there were 24 dry goods stores in downtown Dayton, and a new one operated by Thomas Elder, William Hunter and J. Russell Johnston opened at 114-16 East Third Street.
Boston would soon be left off the store name, giving us the familiar name of Elder and Johnston.
In the 1890s, Fourth and Main Streets became a major center of retail for downtown Dayton.
The Rike’s dry goods store had moved in 1893 to a corner building “copied from a World’s Fair structure, featur(ing) arched windows and doors, white woodwork, a winding stairway and Oriental rugs.”
And in 1896, Elder and Johnston moved into the new 11-story Reibold Building, the tallest structure in Dayton at the time, that was built next to it.
In 1907, the Rike’s store’s name changed to the Rike-Kumler Co, which was now headed by David Rike’s son Frederick and his cousin I.G. Kumler.
But their white corner building proved to be a very short-lived one: it was razed just 19 years later in 1912.
The following image shows how imposing it originally looked since its neighbors were homes and other small buildings, but once the Reibold was built (see the above image) it suddenly looked much too small for such a prominent downtown corner:
The white Rike’s building was replaced by an 11-story addition to the Reibold which became the home of Elder and Johnston. But Rike-Kumler was on the move to a much larger home of its own as well.
Its iconic store at Second and Main opened that same year in 1912, but the move was originally considered a risk, because “the location was then far from the city’s retail mainstream” which was the southern part of Main Street downtown.
But it quickly became a staple of the downtown retail experience, as well as a sort of “city within a city” due to the extent of its offerings, services, and events:
“From the chicken salad on the fifth-floor restaurant menu to the electric Santa Claus on the outside walls, the Rike-Kumler Co. had Dayton’s pulse and its loyalty. A Rike’s label in a blazer or sweater was a sign of prestige. Rike’s at one time or another included a grocery store, an in-store hospital, a 250-watt radio station and a beauty parlor. Special events included tea parties, musicales and the Thanksgiving morning Toy Parade” (“Rike’s Once a Jewel,” Klein, DDN 7/21/99).
Other Downtown Shopping Options
In the ensuing decades, Rike’s and Elder and Johnston continued to grow, and by the middle of the twentieth century there were a wide variety of stores making up the downtown retail scene.
There were higher-end stores like Donenfeld’s and The Metropolitan, where “anyone who was shopping for a fur coat, three piece suit, designer dresses or anything else elegant was a frequent visitor.”
Other shops focused on inexpensive goods, such as five and dime stores like McCrory’s. And there were of course specialty retailers, clothing stores, shoe stores, drug stores, jewelry stores.
According to one article, “there was sort of a commercial zoning on Main (Street), from discounters and five & dimes on the south to more upscale retail to the north.”
Some specific types of retail showed a tendency to cluster, like furniture and jewelry stores mostly located around 5th Street near Main.
Johnson & Shelton, Adler & Child’s, The Home Store, and Elder-Beerman
Beerman is another major name in downtown Dayton retail, and one whose history helps us make sense of other popular stores and their various consolidations and acquisitions over the years.
Arthur Beerman came to Dayton in 1930 at the age of 21, and took a job as a manager at the Home Store, a downtown department store at 8 E Third St.
That store dates back to 1912 when Russell Johnston and Harold Shelton took over what had been the DeWeese and Biddleman store and gave it the Home Store name.
Then in 1923, Johnson and Shelton’s company was taken over by M. L. Adler and A. M. Childs.
Adler had first opened a small store of his own at 120 East Third St starting in 1895, and was joined in business by Childs, his brother-in-law.
Around the turn of the century their store, now called Adler and Child’s, moved to 22 East Third, which was only a couple doors down from the Home Store when they acquired it.
Returning to Arthur Beerman, he only worked at the Home Store for a year before he was transferred to the company’s other store, Adler and Child’s.
In 1939, Adler and Child’s moved from Third Street to the United Brethren Building (Centre City Building) at Fourth and Main. (It was frequently called Adler’s by Daytonians.)
Beerman continued to rise through the ranks in the ensuing years and in 1956 he purchased all the assets of the Johnson-Shelton Co and became its president. He added his name to the store which would now be called Beerman’s Home Store.
By this point, it consisted of a 5-story building on East Third and an 8-story building on Main Street, “which were basically joined together into one store. The store was L shaped, with entrances on both Main and Third streets” (Dayton Daily News).
One clerk later said of Beerman that “everybody who worked for him felt he was their father. He would stand and listen to you. He would be just as concerned about your personal problems as with the business.”
Beerman expanded his growing business empire in 1961 when he took control of the Elder & Johnston Company as well.
The following year he merged his Beerman Stores and Elder & Johnston, giving us the familiar name of Elder-Beerman.
Soon after that he closed the Elder’s store in the Reibold Building and consolidated his downtown presence at Third and Main.
There were also several suburban Beerman stores, and by this time, large malls had begun to open up and had significantly affected Daytonians’ shopping patterns.
In part 2 of this series, I will trace the history of downtown Dayton retail from that period to the present day.
If you have memories of these or any other downtown stores, feel free to share them in the comments!
Image Credits:
Dayton Metro Library
Beerman’s 1957: Dayton History Books Online/Dayton Metro Library
Thank you for these articles about downtown retail stores.
I shopped all these stores with my mother and grandmothers
and truly miss them now.
My children and grandchildren are missing out on great shopping experiences.
Thank you for this history. It brought back many good memories of shopping downtown.
I was downtown virtually every weekend for years growing up in the 60s and 70s. I clearly remember the sidewalks, especially Main Street from First Street to Fifth Street being so crowded with shoppers and pedestrians that you would sometimes have to walk off the curb into the street to get around people. It felt like walking down Broadway in New York. If one store didn’t have something, chances are there was another store close by that did. There were great places for lunch like Culps, both their restaurant on 4th St. or their lunch counter in the Arcade, or at Rike’s dining room or their lunch room on the mezzanine, or The Virginia Cafeteria on Third or even the great lunch counter at the Greyhound Bus Station on First Street. There were lots of shoe stores and I also remember a few shoe repair stores dotted around downtown. My grandmother always took me to the one in the Arcade to have steel plates put on my new shoe heels (they called them taps) to keep them from wearing down from all the walking. We walked everywhere. Shopping was a little more work in those days, but you didn’t have to worry about the new shirt or pants you bought not fitting when you got it home.
What was the name of the restaurant in the tikes store where you could get a great chicken salad sandwich. It was some kind of room. Just can’t remember the name.
That’s Rikes department store