I enjoy covering the history of Dayton’s built environment, but I don’t only focus on the buildings like the Dayton Arcade that would normally be considered “historically significant.”
Instead, I’m also fascinated by the everyday, more humble structures that make up the urban landscape and how they help chronicle the lives of the ordinary people who lived and worked here.
And those stories aren’t ever just about the building itself, but are intimately tied to its street context, and it’s especially interesting when a building helps tell the story of the surrounding neighborhood and how it has changed over time.
With that in mind, we are going to look at a simple commercial structure at 867 Valley Street in Old North Dayton that was depicted in this 1950s photo.
It was once Howard’s Pharmacy, a business owned by Howard M. Coon who had first opened his own drug store in 1930 right down the road at Brandt and Valley Streets (address 1 Brandt).
Coon also served on the Dayton School Board and was a president of the Miami Valley Drug Association.
He moved his pharmacy from Brandt and Valley to this building that had just been constructed and opened in March of 1954.
Its original address was 873 Valley St but that was renumbered to 867 Valley.
We can see in this 1950 map where the new pharmacy would be built, and also circled to the top is Howard’s earlier pharmacy at 1 Brandt.
Note that the Miami & Erie Canal once ran right past this spot by Rita Street (formerly Lukazewitz). The canal bed is labeled to the left of the image.
Same view today:
Then in 1959, Howard’s expanded with a second pharmacy location at 5930 Brandt Pike at a cost of over $100,000, and he left to manage the new store.
He would sell his Valley Street pharmacy in 1965 and it subsequently became the Valley Pharmacy. That business would go out of business a decade later in 1975.
As of 1977 the building was a King Kwik Mini Market.
In 1985, that had closed and the building was sold at auction.
As of the 1990s it was occupied by Baily Food Machines Inc. which offered meat processing, scales and restaurant equipment.
Streetview images show the changes in the early 2010s around the old pharmacy building, with the home next to it and the apartments across the parking lot being demolished. (You can also see the Bailey Food Machines sign still present in the middle image.)
Current view:
And right across Valley from the former pharmacy, we see more big changes with the building that was Progressive Printers being replaced by the new Dayton Children’s Mathile Center for Mental Health and Wellness.
Old North Dayton, once a cohesive community populated by Eastern Europeans including large numbers of Hungarian, Polish, and Lithuanian immigrants, was greatly altered by highway construction.
In more recent years the expansion of Dayton Children’s Hospital has continued to change the makeup of the area.
A couple of isolated historic survivors in this area are the American Czechoslovakian Club at 922 Valley:
And the industrial building right across from Valley, which was visible in the 1950 map above, was formerly the Louis Heitman Co Cigar Factory and built in 1916.
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