Ohmer was a prominent name in Dayton’s early commercial history.
Michael Ohmer initially arrived in Dayton in 1837 and as the city grew in the subsequent decades, so did his reputation as a business leader.
For decades Ohmer operated a successful furniture business which started at age 17 when he and friend J. B. Wagoner started making cabinets using $100 borrowed from banker Valentine Winters. (Decades later Winters’ grandson, also named Valentine, famously turned James M. Cox a loan for his Dayton Daily News Building (1910) because “newspapers don’t make money”).
As the furniture business grew it came to be located in a four-story brick building on East First Street next to the historic Victoria Theater.
Ohmer Furniture offered bureaus, chairs, beds, mattresses, mirrors, and upholstered furniture. In later years it also provided furniture for banks and other public buildings.
Ohmer’s sons eventually joined the business and after he retired in 1877 they continued it under the name of M. Ohmer’s Sons Co.
His sons were also involved in other ventures. In 1927, John F. Ohmer oversaw the building of the Ohmer Garage Building on the former site of his family’s furniture factory.
The three-story building is notable for the ornate classical detail on its façade which contains tiles of glazed architectural terra-cotta, a design unusual for a simple commercial building primarily used for parking.
It’s one of the oldest parking structures ever built in Dayton and is certainly the most interesting.
When it opened, the Ohmer Building operated as a parking and service garage, and also housed the Weckesser Radio and Electric Shop as well as the offices of the Ohmer Fare Register Co. of which John was president.
The Ohmer Fare Register Co. made ticket-printing machines, taximeters, and other time and distance recording instruments used by electric railways, bus and taxicab companies, and truck fleets. A variety of instruments was “on display at all times” at the Ohmer Building.
The structure operated as the garage until 1941 while another of the ground floor spaces housed a restaurant at one point.
Later the SWS Chevrolet agency then opened a dealership in the building from 1946 until 1958.
In the 1960s the structure was converted to a parking garage again, with ground-floor spaces used as offices. In 1968 the president of parking company PMI moved its headquarters to the building along with Metro Lease Inc., a car and light truck leasing agency.
Another first-floor tenant in the latter decades of the 20th century was Warwar Custom Tailors.
Eventually the entire building became vacant including the parking levels.
Today it is deteriorating and has been boarded up by the City of Dayton to prevent pieces of the façade from falling on passersby.
Preservation Dayton has included the building on their Endangered Properties list, and hopefully this unique part of downtown history will be stabilized and see new life soon.
Sources
Combination Atlas Map of Montgomery County Ohio, 1875
Dayton Daily News Archives
Dayton Through Time
Preservation Dayton research
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