History of the Art Frame Gallery at 1652 Brown St.

There are a couple of main pockets of old buildings remaining on Brown Street near the campus of the University of Dayton. One is north of Stewart near Woodland and Fairground Ave, while the other is near Irving Ave across from the Patterson Homestead.

In the middle of these two areas you’ll find everything from mixed-use developments to remaining individual homes to surface parking lots.

There’s just one 19th century commercial building in between these two concentrations, the somewhat lonely-looking structure at 1652 Brown Street (the NE corner of Brown and Stonemill across from the former South Park UMC church) which currently houses the Art Frame Gallery.

Constructed around 1874, the building was originally a grocery store which came to be known as Fancy and Staple Groceries. (A few decades later another grocery, King’s Market, would open a couple of blocks south at 1900 Brown.)

Below is a map from 1918 showing the block and building at the corner. You can see that Stonemill Road was called Hughes, and that the Oakwood Street Railway Co car barns were farther up the block on what is now campus apartments.

In 1940, the building would shift in use from grocery to art and photography, which it has remained ever since aside from a few periods when it was vacant.

It was first the Donald P Tucker Photography studio, and then in 1952 the business was purchased by two employees who renamed it Miller Studio Photography.

It remained under the Millers’ ownership but in 1960 they shifted focus to art framing and changed the name again to Art Frame Co Picture Frames.

After a couple of other minor changes in the ensuing years, in 1974 it adopted the current name of the Art Frame Gallery, at which point they also began to display art inspired by the work of artists Edna Hibel.

After over 50 years at the helm, the Millers finally sold the business to Rob and Susie Grossman in 2002.

References

Brochure created by student at Miami Valley School