The Diner on St. Clair: a History and an Uncertain Future

Downtown Dayton is in the midst of a renaissance, and it’s easy to become passionate about the redevelopment of architectural gems like the Arcade or sites with major historical significance like the Delco buildings near the ballpark.

But sometimes it’s the smaller, more ordinary buildings that speak to us the most. Maybe it’s the way a simple façade blends into the street context around it. Or the layers of memory and echoes of past eras that you can sense by looking at a particular abandoned storefront. And often, if you dig into it there’s more history in these everyday buildings than meets the eye.

For Samantha Hughes, owner of Riley Street Merchants, that building is the diner at the corner of 4th and St. Clair. On social media she expanded on what drew her to it:

“Recently I had a months residency as a vendor down at Reduce & Reuse Refillery and would stop in for a visit each week to chat with Meg, do some social media shenanigans and wander around a little.

Part of my wandering took me past the Diner on St Clair (which wasn’t too much of a stretch since it’s just across the way) and each time, I’d give this abandoned space a longing glance, feel the frustration that it has sat empty for so long. And I wondered….about it’s history, about why it’s empty and falling into disrepair. With so much misinformation about it around and an overall lack of knowledge about the history of this place, I decided to wander down a rabbit hole to uncover some truths.

So, my first nugget of information made me realize that this site isn’t as historic as many would imagine as the structure was only created in 1988. It started as a diner obviously and then went on to become a night club which changed hands/names over a fairly short period of time. The Pearl, Vex, Cloverdale…..until it closed doors for good roughly in 2011 or so.

Then after finding some images of the menu when it was Diner on St Clair, that gave me a little clue of something really unusual. It mentioned that the stainless steel part of the structure was an original O’Mahony dining car. Which of course made me a little curious. Being that this copy of the menu misspelled O’Mahony as being O’Mahoney, it was a little confusing at first.

So! I did some digging and discover that O’Mahony diners were created by a New Jersey based company that started off in around 1917 and modeled these diners after the dining cars oft used in railways. They manufactured around 2000 of them in various styles and shipped them across the United States where they served their purpose as roadside diners in their respective locations.

I believe there are about only 20 of these diners left in existence today and thanks to the encouragement from Dayton Architecture and a lot of excellent sleuthing and information from Kegan at Preservation Dayton, Inc, it was deduced that this one originated from North Canton, Ohio where it was originally placed in 1947.

As to what happened to it in the time it was there is currently unknown but somehow, it was saved from the ravages of time, fully restored and landed in Dayton in 1988 where it became The Diner on St Clair.

My heart aches a little with that knowledge, the fact it was left to ruin once and then restored again to be given new purpose. Only to be left to ruin yet again. And it sits empty now with some terms and conditions of its current for sale status that prevents most from realistically being able to do anything about it.

I’m still digging, trying to get any kind of confirmation of its authenticity as an O’Mahony diner and for reasons I can’t explain, I don’t want to give up on this place. I want to keep some hope that eventually someone will be able to give it another chance and preserve it so it can be appreciated and enjoyed in the years to come.
Anyway, time to wrap this up and get back to my day. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little walk in history.

Cheers,
Sam.”

It was at this point that I connected with Sam and began to look into the history of the building. I had seen pictures of the old diner when it was open, but was unaware of the O’Mahony history and the fact that the diner was built elsewhere before being transported to Dayton.

Despite plenty of research, the circumstances surrounding its previous location and whether it was indeed an O’Mahony diner remained murky.

Most sources agreed it was originally called Bill’s Diner and owned by Bill Wertz. But I soon discovered that Wertz actually operated three Bill’s Diners: one in North Canton, one in Canton, and another in Massillon.

It turns out that the Bill’s Diner in North Canton closed in the late 1960s before its entire block was demolished for a new city hall. His Massillon diner was moved to Cincinnati in the mid-1980s, which inspired the move of the Canton Bill’s Diner to Dayton a few years later.

At the time, on the heels of a wave of revitalization in the adjacent Oregon District, developer Tom Tornatore

“thought a large casual-dining establishment would be key to drawing visitors to the area. A friend took Tornatore to Cincinnati and introduced him to the Diner on Sycamore Street. ‘It felt perfect to me,’ Tornatore said. ‘Soon thereafter I purchased a 1959 O’Mahoney stainless diner in Canton. I had it trucked to Dayton and had it installed on the corner of St. Clair and East Fourth streets as a 188-seat restaurant, to be known as the Diner on St. Clair.'” (Dayton Daily News)

That article concluded with the fact that the diner “will remain as a landmark for years to come.”

But its current state has many in Dayton concerned over its future, perhaps no one more so than Hughes, who made a second post about it:

“Yeah, I’m still obsessed over the old Diner on St Clair and won’t give up. Stopped by there today and have decided to increase my social media efforts to shed some more light onto this great location in Dayton which has been through various incarnations since 1988. A diner, nightclubs of various names and now just another underutilized and empty building downtown. Falling into further neglect. Up for sale still and no takers – and it’s no secret as to why that is.

Thanks to the research from @daytonvistas, there is now enough evidence that the stainless steel structure is indeed an O’Mahony diner which means it’s one of only 20 or so left in the United States.

Isn’t that something worth saving? Something of historical value that should be protected? Having done enough research on these particular diners, they are a fascinating part of American history and that we have one in Dayton, well that’s kind of awesome.

Do I wish I could buy it? Of course I do. Do I have the funds to do so? Not a chance. But will I keep talking about it? You bet your coffee cup I will.”

This isn’t the first time the building has experienced struggles. The diner changed hands multiple times and was later renamed Roxy’s Diner.

In 1998 its owner filed for bankruptcy and put it up for sale for $1.2 million, but there were no takers. The following year it was put on the auction block for $690,000 and then lowered to $525,000 but it still didn’t sell.

Finally in March 2000 it was purchased for about $400,000 by Scott Edsall who invested about $200,000 more into the diner and reopened it.

Later the diner transitioned to a nightclub, first called The Pearl and then Vex. In 2016 it was renamed Cloverdale, “but barely a year later it was up for lease again, after Hats Off Investment Group spent nearly $400,000 on the property.”

Now it appears to be listed for sale for $1,500,000 as part of a property including the adjacent building complex that was formerly a DP&L Power Station, and is the only structure that survived the massive urban renewal project that took out the surrounding blocks which are today the Convention Center, hotel, and Transportation Garage.

In 2021 I wrote about how Infinity Labs was pursuing a major redevelopment of the old DP&L “Power House” but there were no updates after that and the company has instead expanded their office in the Dayton Arcade.

My article covered their plan at the time as well as a history of the power building complex: https://daytonvistas.com/major-development-could-revive-historic-downtown-power-house/

No local developers have jumped on the opportunity, with the high price tag and the coupling of the diner with the larger site surely playing a factor.

With her writing, Hughes hopes to inspire more people to stop and learn the stories of this diner and similar buildings around Dayton, because only then will we have the chance to write new chapters in their history, and we’ll end up bettering our city at the same time:

“I hope it will encourage people to learn more, talk more and think more about the empty locations downtown and how as a city, we should be encouraging people to spend time down there, shopping in local businesses and driving more foot traffic into areas that could really benefit in the right hands.

I ask @downtowndayton to help us talk more, to chat with more people about places such as this and see if we can’t work together as a community to avoid having places like the Diner on St Clair becoming an eventual demolition site.

I won’t give up.
Sam.”