In Dayton, as in most other American cities, many once great buildings were reduced to rubble, while in other cases endangered landmarks have been successfully preserved.
But there’s also a sort of middle ground between demolition and restoration: cases in which the facade of a building is saved and incorporated into a new development.
One notable example in downtown Dayton can be found in the RTA’s central headquarters at the southeast corner of Main and Third streets. The complex actually contains two historic facades that once graced other buildings nearby.
One of them is the 1886 Laffee’s Temple, the last surviving cast-iron and terra cotta storefront manufactured by the McHose and Lyon Company right here in Dayton. It was demolished in 1987 to make way for parking, but the facade was saved. In 2001, it was incorporated into the design of RTA’s new facility, known as the Wright Stop Plaza Transit Center.
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The tall building on the corner was known as the Conover Building when it was constructed in 1900 with Frank Andrews as the architect. That location had previously been occupied by Obadiah Conover’s blacksmith shop since 1811. It later took on the name of the American Building when it was purchased by American Savings and Loan, which later went bankrupt. The building was expanded in both 1921 and 1926.
But this isn’t the only historic facade incorporated into the RTA complex. The other is the 1878 Cooper Building (also called the Eaker Building), which stood at the NE corner of Second and Main Streets at the location of today’s the Premier Health tower.
The beautiful structure featured six storefronts with offices on the upper floors and was built of “buff Amherst stone quarried near Cleveland.” Henry Barlow of the Barlow Clothing House was the first tenant.
The building’s neighbors on Second Street (see below) were elegant mid-Victorian commercial structures of the type that once lined many downtown streets. In the late 1970s, there was a movement to have the whole block put on the National Register of Historic Places, due to it being “an unusually contiguous facade, and because it is the only such strip of representative buildings left in Dayton.” In fact, the Cooper/Eaker Building was originally going to be five stories, but the top floor was eliminated in order for it to better fit in with the buildings on either side.
But instead of being given historic status they were all razed in the late 1980s for the new office tower that was originally known as the Fifth Third Centre.
Much of the Cooper Building facade, however, was saved, kept in storage for over a decade, and today can be found on the Third Street side of the RTA Wright Stop Plaza.
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As a general architectural trend, what is referred to as façadism certainly has its share of controversy, especially in cases where the juxtaposition between a historic facade and a shiny modern building surrounding it is striking. One article about London refers to the “creeping plague of facadism, an infection spreading across the developments” of the city. Another source calls it “an architectural Frankenstein; tasteless, mismatched, and ostentatious.” But façadism done well, on the other hand, can be “an effective bridge between the old and the new.”
Here in Dayton, we may have lost these two historic buildings (as well as their neighbors), but at least a significant part of them continues to live on alongside another prominent early building. And the project earned RTA a Heritage Award from the Montgomery County Historical Society (now part of Dayton History) in 2002.
What remains of the old Oddfellows Temple that we looked at recently is on the other corner of the block down Third Street. Unfortunately for a location right near the center of downtown, surface parking for RTA occupies the space in between.
For more on the RTA hub and the Central Market House that once stood next to where the Lafee facade is today on Main St., check out my book Lost Dayton, Ohio.
Sources
Dalton, Curt. Dayton Through Time. Charleston SC: Arcadia, 2015.
MacIntosh, Craig, and Robert Frame. Craig MacIntosh’s Dayton Sketchbook. Dayton, Ohio: Landfall Press, 1985.
Geological Society of America, Michael R. Sandy, and Daniel Goldman. On and Around the Cincinnati Arch and Niagara Escarpment: Geological Field Trips in Ohio and Kentucky for the GSA North-Central Section Meeting, Dayton, Ohio, 2012. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 2012.
Nichols, Jim, Marvin Christian, and William Preston Mayfield. Dayton Album: Remembering Downtown. Dayton, Ohio: Viewpoint Publications, 2004.
Outrage: future generations will laugh in horror and derision at the folly of facadism
How Architectural Façadism Keeps the Old New
Historic images courtesy of Dayton Metro Library
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