Then and Now of 5th and Main, Downtown Dayton

Today we’ll be looking at some Then and Now images of the intersection of East Fifth and Main St downtown.

These views have been changed greatly by urban renewal in the years since (as has been the case for most of our previous Then and Now articles like 3rd and Wilkinson, Linden and Smithville, and 4th and Perry).

This first view is looking east from Fifth (buildings are described below):

In the foreground of the historic image on the south side of Fifth (right side of image), we can see the side of the 1892 post office building (labeled), which only survived about two decades before it was knocked down for the larger post office known as the “Grecian Lady” just a couple blocks away on Third Street. (More images and history of that here: https://daytonvistas.com/the-history-of-daytons-old-post-office-buildings/) After it was demolished the Fidelity Building was constructed on the same spot in 1919.

Then on the north side of the street (left side of image) we have a lost building, The Ohmer Block, which is now surface parking right in front of a parking garage (!!) but a great opportunity for future infill. In the historic image it is labeled as “leading hat and furnishing store.”

It turns out that the larger area extending across Main to Jefferson was referred to by some as Dayton’s “Furniture District,” and you could find “furniture stores and jewelry on Fifth and shoe stores on Main.”

In the background of the image (across Main), we see a three-story building on the north (left) side of Fifth, and on the other side we see the Pruden Building and a bit of the dome of the Gebhart Opera House at the top.

That theater “elaborately domed and galvanized iron front opera house (that) was heralded as the finest to have been built in Dayton at the time” (1877). In 1889 it became the Park Theater, and in 1907 the Lyric. From 1934-68 it was the Mayfair and presented vaudeville and burlesque shows for many years. See that building up close below:

The second Then and Now series focuses on the NE corner of Fifth and Main. Here the 3-story corner building with the signs is the same one we saw in the distance of the earlier historic image.

Now you can see the building adjacent to it on Fifth (which an 1897 Sanborn map labels as “Pythian Castle”), and to the north on main (an English Lutheran Church).

Just east of that (out of image) was a United Brethren church, the large “Central Block” and then on the Jefferson Street side was the Pony House saloon owned by James Ritty, inventor of the cash register. Across the block on 4th Street was the first YMCA (before the construction of the Y building that is now city hall), which later became the Auditorium and State Theater (read more of the history of Dayton’s YMCA buildings.

That entire block, along with the blocks to the east and south across Main, were demolished for the major urban renewal project that eventually brought us the hotel, convention center, and transportation garage.

This particular corner is now landscaping and the Levitt Pavilion outdoor concert venue.