According to a Dayton Regional Priority Development and Advocacy Committee (PDAC) funding request, the K-12 Tejas Gallery is looking to purchase and rehab a building adjacent to its current home.
A Dayton Business Journal article stated that the group “looks to purchase the building at 344 S. Main Street, including the rear building on the site and its adjoining alley to repurpose into a community teaching studio.”
Based on the properties involved, it appears the proposal is referring to a single structure, a carriage house, since the home at 344 S Main Street caught fire in November 2020 and was demolished.
The Iddings House was constructed in 1894 for Alfred H. Iddings, a well-known Dayton doctor. Later it housed the Cappel Family of Cappel Furniture owned by Fred Cappel. Later it was converted to 9 apartments but had been vacant for over a decade when it burned down.
It had been chosen as a Most Endangered Historic Site by Preservation Dayton, including research by Kegan Sickels, earlier the same year.
The carriage house for the Iddings home, built in either 1900 or 1910, is still standing and is the target of the galley’s plans. The article stated that “the building would be purchased for $60,000 with additional construction costs totaling $970,000.”
The potential redevelopment is welcome news not only given the recent loss of the Iddings house, but also for the fact that this area of Main and Jefferson Streets near downtown has few historic structures remaining.
A trio of commercial buildings across the street next to the community blood center Solvita were demolished in the last decade. The apartment building next to the Iddings House lot is now boarded up. But on the Jefferson Street side near US-35, Woodard Development is converting the vacant former UBS Building into its new headquarters.
The K-12 Tejas Gallery started as the K12 Gallery for Young People in 1993. After 2009 it expanded to include TEJAS, which stands for Teen Educational Joint Adult Studio. The gallery was previously located in the Cannery at 510 E Third St. from the early 2000s to 2012. Then it moved to its current home on S. Jefferson and Patterson Boulevard (341 S Jefferson), a building said to be “over 100 years old” as of 2014, and itself a combination of multiple earlier structures.
341 S Jefferson previously housed many businesses in its early years, including the Ideal Welding Co, the Doan and Walker Garage, and the Holthaus Transportation Co. Then it was home to the Standard Thomson Corp in the 1950s, and the S&V office supply store from the early 80s to the early 2000s.
