Two Lost Grand Entrances in Downtown Dayton

A little while back I wrote about the great collection of grand entrances one can still find on Ludlow Street, a key downtown corridor.

In addition to their beauty and aesthetic value, these entrances also played a major role in communicating the identity and value of the businesses within, as well as serving as a sort of threshold between public and private space.

Many other grand entrances in Dayton haven’t survived.

Of course there is a huge number of buildings that were demolished downtown, but there are also some interesting examples where the buildings remain but the original entrance has been lost over time.

These include the Reibold Building, which originally housed the Elder and Johnston department store on the lower floors.

A closer up look at the Reibold’s grand entrance can be found in this flood recovery photograph.

In 1972, the Reibold Building was bought by Montgomery County to be used for county offices. It went through multiple major renovations, and unfortunately the grand entrance was one of the casualties, as well as many of the other architectural details (although a later renovation did restore some of them).

But at one point there was a plan to cut off the building’s top 6 floors, so at least that renovation did not come to fruition.

Another example of a lost grand entrance is actually back on Ludlow Street near where the surviving entrances stand.

The Algonquin (Dayton Grand) Hotel was actually originally built as an apartment house in 1898, but was soon expanded and converted to a hotel.

You can see the grand entrance on the Ludlow side in the postcard here:

Later, a modern aluminum facade was added over the beautiful limestone and masonry of the northern portion, and the southern portion including the entrance was removed to add a parking garage and new rooms.

The remaining historic portion was later uncovered again.

And as I’ve written about before, there is a tantalizing opportunity for a larger uncovering just one block south at the former Reynolds and Reynolds headquarters, most recently Dayton Public Schools offices.