Dayton Stories Project
Story Circle Session #100495
Biltmore Towers
Dayton, Ohio
October 4, 1995
Old Dayton Buildings and Businesses
Facilitator: Marilyn Shannon Recorder: Todd Williams Transcriber: Lindsey Kuziensky Transcribe Typist: Sue Broadstock
Participants: Nora Chadwell, Tony Dallas, Gail Hall, Bernice McCormick, Willie Reynolds, Virginia Warwick, Darwin Whitt
This session lasts approximately 39 minutes.
The following transcription of the session has been edited, with repeated phrases or interruptions deleted to make the text flow more smoothly. It is suggested that visitors who find the text interesting take the time to listen to the audio portion of this session. A more detailed text will eventually be added.
The topic of downtown buildings and businesses was chosen.
Gail Hall
They paid very little and the floor would flood and you’d keep working behind the counter. That was the one on Ludlow Street that I worked at, Third and Ludlow. Then there was one on Main that we would sneak down in the basement and smoke after school and we’d all meet down there and it was so neat because they had, do you remember, the whole basement had tables? It was nice.
Behind the soda fountain and making hamburgers and sodas and things like that. Lot of crabby people came in. You couldn’t fill the coffee cup high enough for them. I didn’t stay there for very long.
Nora Chadwell
Down through the years, I’ve lived here since 1938, I can remember quite a few of the buildings that have been moved, been torn down. Dayton Power and Light, the whole block there at Main over to Ludlow from Main Street, the whole square. We hated to see the buildings torn down. It just seemed not fair. There’s been a lot of changes. It’s kind of hard to remember all of the sudden without thinking about it. South Main Street, that was all torn out and rebuilt new. So many changes it’s hard to remember all. I shopped a lot at Rike’s back years ago. I shopped at Thal’s and I could always get a dress in Thal’s Fashion when I couldn’t find one some place else. One that fit me and I liked. I shopped at Elder-Beerman. Years ago it used to be Home Store there at Third and Main. I worked in there in the cosmetics department and I worked all over the store really, later. During Christmas one year I was working at a drugstore on Lexington Avenue.
My husband had cancer and he was sick, so he took a disability and I worked at this drugstore in the evening and downtown but it’s Forest Park Plaza-and I was working in the houseware department and some man came in. He was looking around, shopping and I asked him if I could help him and he said, “Well, there’s lots of things you could do. Do you have a back scratcher?” Kind of floored me.
Bernice McCormick
I’m a latecomer to Dayton, so I really have nothing to say other than I have seen quite a change in the city since I have been here with the renovations, the rebuilding, factories come, factories going. I have seen that change. I’ve only been here since ‘72 and I’ve loved to be able to say I was here sooner than that, but that was vacationing time. I came to live in ‘72. Quite a bit had gone ahead of my time.
Virginia Warwick
I remember Dayton pretty well. I was born in Preble County, but I’ve lived in Montgomery most of my life and I’ve seen changes in this downtown Dayton over the years. I remember a while back, when I was a kid, my boyfriend would bring me over here to the movies. He’d say, “Which one you want to go to? Victory, Lowes, the Colonial, Keyes?” I’d say, “Oh, let’s go watch a stage show at the Colonial!” “Oh, that costs to much money!” I says, “Why, you old tightwad! You get a new car every two years. Why can’t you take me?” I go to group therapy now, and they told me just to say one sentence, so that’s enough.
Darwin Whitt
The first time I came to Dayton was in 1947. I come here from Fort Thomas, Kentucky. I had a paralysis in 1947 and I went to a hospital in Huntington, West Virginia, the C&O Railroad Hospital. Then they sent my to Richmond, Virginia. Richmond, Virginia back to Huntington. Huntington, they sent me home. When I got home a buddy of mine was in the Kentucky Ex-Servicemen’s Board, sent me to the hospital in Fort Thomas for rehabilitation and after I’d been down there about six months, they sent me up here because I had a deformity in my nose and they sent me up here. At that time they didn’t have any hospital in Fort Thomas or in Dayton or Newport; they didn’t have any VA hospitals. So they sent me up here for surgery and one of the funny things that happened when the anesthesiologist come in and talk to me the day before the operation. He said, “We’ll start out with sodium penathal. If that don’t work fast enough, we’ll give you ether. If that don’t work fast enough, we’ll use a ball bat.” I said, “I hope that second one works.” I come in and they had me all fixed up for surgery and first they give you sodium pentothal and it didn’t do any good right at that time, so her he come with that ether mask. He slapped that down on my mouth and I just paid my money, no use fighting it, so I started a couple three big breaths and that was it, dear John. Then I went home. My wife was living in Columbus, so I went to Columbus and stayed there awhile and then I went back to my home town in Ashland, Kentucky. Then I had my paralysis so I fooled around there and I went to school there to complete my education and I took accounting. So in 1950 I came back up here to work at Wright-Patterson and at that time there used to be a drugstore on the corner of third and Main, I think it was Roger’s, I’m not sure, but I remember the Rike Building. We used to come up there and get candy and things. They had the best clothing. They had the best candy and stuff like that. Now the Rike Building, that’s just all there is, just the building. Courthouse Square wasn’t there and the next building to that used to be a Savings and Loan. So one time I took a ninety-day furlough and I went to Florida out here from the Dayton VA on West Third Street and when I was down there they wrote that I had a few thousand dollars in the savings bank and they sent me a letter and boy, was it embarrassing. I almost hate to tell you people about it. See my name is Whitt and they over there one day and she said, “By the way, how do you spell your name?” I said, “W-H-I-T-T. Why?” She said, “We got a letter back here where the first letter is an S.” So, I said, “Is there a mistake with my loan?” She said, “Yes.” She gave it to me and every time I’d go in after that she’d say, “What’s your name today?” After my furlough was up, I came back up here and I went down to the Savings and Loan, I walked in and I let them know I was madder than a hornet. I walked in and I said, “Who am I supped to see, you or my lawyer?” Boy, she saw that and she turned every color of the rainbow, I think She was so embarrassed. I said, “Well, lady, there’s nothing strange about it. My feelings are not hurt because W is only one letter above the letter anyway.” When you’re typing you make that mistake. Get away from your home keys, go up one, hit the S instead of the W and if you don’t proofread it or something like
that sometimes it’ll slip by on you. You just can’t help it. There was no Courthouse Square at the time. I used to have to come down to the old Montgomery county building down there. Do you know very much about that historical courthouse there? They have a lift on it but I never did went down there to try to see what makes it work or how it works. Now, if you want to, you can go up in there and the lifts supposed to take you up to the first floor. I never have went down there in the daytime to check on it to see who operates it. I would like to go down there to go through there. I think it would be very nice to go in there and just check on those things.
Tony Dallas
Some instances have gone through my mind that has nothing to do with downtown Dayton and it has nothing to do with hospitals or bank statements. I grew up in Yellow Springs and we used to watch Lassie on TV when I was a little kid. I suppose I must have been about six or so and, many of you remember Lassie, this is before Timmy, this is back when Jeff and Porky, Jeff’s friend Porky used to yell out the back door, “Yucky.” We had a dog whose name happened to be Lassie who was also a collie and they had constructed this tree house which they could get Lassie up and down in through this little elevator. That’s the connection right there, elevator. Elevator that they made out of rope and a little pulley and they’d get Lassie on this little board and pull Lassie up into the tree house and tie it off. We decided that morning that we were going to make a tree house with an elevator for Lassie. The only thing we were short of was lumber and the people who lived in my friend’s backyard, their neighbors, was this older woman and her son and we sort of thought of her as something of a witch. We didn’t have a whole lot of encounters with her, but she seemed very crabby and had white hair and her son was this very, very large gentleman. Sort of rotund with a big belly and his name was Big John and they had a lot of lumber in their backyard. I think John would go out and do some wrecking or something and bring back lumber scraps. It was not in any sort of organized fashioned. It was like a big dump pile in their backyard of old lumber. So, this was just the thing we were looking for and they weren’t home and we figured they would never miss it. So, we were over there pulling out boards saying, “Oh! This is a good one for the elevator and this will be a floor board.” when who should drive up but Big John and his mother in there truck and my friend took off, lickety-split and they’d obviously seen us so I figured, okay, I was going to be very diplomatic and explain the situation to them and they didn’t really give us to much time to explain. They came hauling out to where I was and just started screaming at me about stealing boards and they were going to call the police on me and I just ran home. They asked me my name, where I lived and, of course, I told them and then I ran home crying. Of course, the police never really did anything. The police came around and talked to me and gave my parents a phone call. I don’t know exactly what the lesson was. Don’t be heroic.
Gail Hall
I worked at the Metropolitan for a while and I ran a cash register and they brought a girl in. Her parents were real poor. They were tailors at the Metropolitan and I had to teach her how to run the cash register. Her name was Lenora Gray. Finally I taught Lenora how to run the cash register and then one day she came and she said, “Gail, I want you to read this. See what you think.” And it was this real weird story about Mars and outer space and I thought, “This girl is a kook. She’s never going to make it.” So, I finally left the Metropolitan and I was in the hospital in the labor room with my first child and I hear over the pager, “Dr. Lenora Gray.” And I thought, “Surely, this couldn’t be Lenora.” I asked if I could see her and sure enough it was and she’s one of the best psychiatrists now in Dayton and I though that was really weird. And there were so many dime stores downtown. It was fun to go to the dime stores because you could have a dollar and shop all day at the three different dime stores. I hope it will be building back up soon.
Todd Williams
I moved to Dayton initially in 1986 to become a student after I got out of the Army. Then in the summer of 1987 I had a real string of bad luck things happen to me. It was in May and it was in early summer. It was very hot and very humid and I was driving across town and I was distracted, so right at the corner of Fourth and Main right downtown I shot right through a red light because I was interested in changing lanes and I ran right on into the side of an elderly gentleman. Just my fault. Just ran right into him. Something that I had never imagines the possibility of happening to me and it was very embarrassing because it’s out on a main intersection of town and the police came and there were all these people looking around and the elderly gentleman saying, “Oh, I just heart surgery.” And so I’m saying, “Please, stand in the shade, sir. I’m sorry.” And I felt so sorry I just didn’t know what to say. So then that laid up my car for awhile. It had to go into the shop to get fixed, so my wife and I were staying with her grandparents on North Main Street and Shiloh and I had to take the bus and I forget whether it was two or three days later I had to take the bud downtown while my care was being fixed and I was getting on the bus in front of the Church of St. Rita’s there on North Main Street and I was the last in a long line of people to board the bus and I guess the bus driver evidently didn’t see me because he shut the doors right on my face. It squeezed my glasses and he actually started to drive away with me shut in his bus door and I’m screaming and yelling and pounding on the glass and he maybe drove like two or three feet and he stopped and he’s all apologetic and I was just embarrassed. I wasn’t angry. I was just very embarrassed. So, anyway, I’m kind of superstitious and I heard that bad things happen in a a streak of three, so I remember after that I spent probably the rest of the summer, if not longer, just kind of being very cautious about every step I took and every bus I got on because two things that were completely unimaginable happened within a space of several days and so maybe my coming to Dayton was kind of a little bit scary at first, but I’ve smoothed out since then.
Marilyn Shannon
I’m going to talk a little bit about Rike’s a store that has meant a lot to me through the years. I moved here in 1964 and of course, I remember the Christmas decorations, the Christmas windows that were so nice and one thing I remember in particular was taking my oldest daughter downtown, just her, there were three other children in the family besides her, but she was the oldest, and I took her all by herself and we went to eat in the dining room. It was big deal. That was a fancy dining room to be in I think for a little kid and I remember she had a chicken pot pie that was actually in a pot the form of a chicken and I remember buying her a coat. I know it meant a lot to her to go downtown and I think going downtown was such a big deal for everybody and it certainly was for little children. Then I’ve shopped at Rike’s through the years and as Rike’s turned into Shilito-Rike’s, then it turned into Lazarus, and then it eventually closed.
But before it did that, I used to be the director of an arts council called the Miami Valley Arts Council and we had our offices inside Rike’s, which was really a fun thing to do, and we also had an art gallery there and I don’t know whether you ever saw it in some of the different floors. We were on various floors during the years, but in the latter years we were on the second floor, right by the lingerie department and so in order to get to the art gallery you had to walk through the lingerie department. I don’t know if that helped us or hurt us, but that’s where we went and then finally we went up to the third floor and we had an art gallery in what used to be the travel office in there and then they opened up that up and we had an art gallery there. But it was fun for us to be in a department store because we had a lot of people looking at the art that we had there that ordinarily might not see art. They might not go to an art institute or something like that, but as they were shopping they were able to look at the art.
Then I remember being one of the last people in the building because, as you recall, I think they closed about the end of December of 1993 or 1992, and they actually closed sooner than they thought they were going to. They said, “well, we’ll stay open until such and such date.” But what happened was, that when they started selling the things, they went so fast, people just kind of descended like vultures and they had some really good buys and people just cleared out the merchandise so fast. In fact, they were really pretty good about how they were doing it. They would kind of block off different parts of the store that didn’t have anything in them and then they’d have all the merchandise in certain places, then you kept just seeing it getting smaller and smaller. So they actually closed the building to the public before they thought they were going to, but they had told us at the Arts Council we would have until the first of February to get out. So, after it closed, I remember being in there trying to clean out all the Arts Council records. We had all this storage space in there and you know what happens when you have lots of storage? You keep things and so I remember going through that stuff and they’d turn off the lights at night, most of the lights, and I’d be in there with my flashlight coming down through this spooky, empty store, and letting myself out. Even after it finally closed, I went back into the store. We had bought our own locks for the doors and there was another arts organization that needed some locks, so I remember going back in. It was really closed then. It was really empty then, going back and taking the locks off our doors so that I could give them to somebody else. It was a building that meant a lot to me and I know it meant a lot to a lot of people and who knows what its future is going to be.
Willie Reynolds
Downtown Dayton, when I first came to this town back in the forties to visit my sister, everybody had something in their buildings here. Everywhere there was (inaudible). People just operated. People downtown had so much it looked like because of the highway. We had people come on the street. Just oodles of people. But now, I can’t find them no more. It was nice. Everywhere places was open. I don’t care what time you want to come out, you could find somewhere that’s open all night, all day, everything. Then, five and ten cents stores were beautiful. Real nice. You could go in there and get practically anything. They don’t have that stuff like they used to. Nails, screwdrivers, and hammers, and everything. IN the ten cents store. You can’t hardly find them now in the hardware store. It was a lot of fun to go find things like that.
Boy, I’ve seen a long time. Many a day. I used to live in the country. I can tell this story. I ain’t never tell nobody. The country house used to be out, come by my uncle’s house, they had just got married and once in awhile they’d stop at the house. They stopped by one night-it was summertime, and it was hot. I was tired. I’d been playing ball and playing around and I had to go in there an d I was tired. I was talking to him. I just laid down on the porch, on the floor and they was talking and my uncle said, “That boy going to sleep. He’s asleep.” I heard that much and then I was asleep. I was laying there asleep and he grabbed me and he shook me and he said, “go now. Go now.” My uncle and his wife said, “What’s the matter?” I said,, “Nothing. I got to go. I got to go.” “Go.” I went. The road ran right by the house. Went down the cotton patch road to the road that cut around it. Went across the road. Went over to the watermelon patch and got me a watermelon. Come back to the road to go up to the house-my granddaddy’s had houses built around the crib like it was a town-and I got the watermelon and I come to the road and went across on the cotton patch, and the cotton was about that tall, and we had a kitchen built there where the boys stayed and the big house where my granddaddy stayed and the boys stayed in the big old log kitchen. I whipped the gate back and got over in the middle of the cotton patch and come up through the back gate, across the road going up to the barn with a watermelon and I went in the gate. Opened the gate, went in and went up in the kitchen and put my watermelon on a table and by that time I was looking around and there was a bunch of dogs howling. A mad dog was around there and was trying to get in. Done got in there with these dogs and he was biting them. I jumped up and closed the door. After a few minutes I heard my granddaddy. A shotgun went off. “Kill him. Kill the dog.” If I’d have come in the front gate, he would have had me for his dinner. That’s true. (Inaudible) Looked like Somebody leading me. I had no mind to do nothing else but to keep on going like He lead me. Went over and cut across the road. I crossed the road. Didn’t think about no snake. Looked right at that back gate and went in that back gate. As soon as I got in there and put the watermelon down, them dogs started howling. I jumped up and closed that door. I know there was something out there. I couldn’t help myself. I just follow The Man. Just led me around like they had me on a string. I went around to that gate. I didn’t think about that until a long time. You pay attention sometime, by yourself, you can think of a whole lot and get yourself together. It’s The Man up there and He waits. Woke me up and got me up. I was sleeping and tired.
Virginia Warwick
He said he like watermelon. I remember a long time ago, my mother, when she was living and my sister and her husband and mom says, “Oh, I just love watermelon!” I says, “Oh, Mom, I go to Dayton quite often and they always had those watermelons up there near Lakeside-there at the Veteran’s Administration going from Third Street over to Route 4,” and I found one. I brought it home to my brother-in-law and nieces, “Oh,” he says, “Sis, I can’t eat all that. I’ll give half of it to Grandma.” Well, they took half of it to Grandma. They were all eating. They was happy.
Darwin Whitt
My funniest incident happened to me while I’ve been in Dayton was in the sixties when they had the riot here. They brought in the federal troops and they was running around in the streets of Dayton with Jeeps with machine guns on them. I was living at the VA then and a buddy of mine, just the day before that he got his papers in that he was supposed to go to Fort Hook, Arizona, that night. He couldn’t come down the main streets of Dayton. Down Third Street and that ways. I had to go all the way around Dayton. I think we had to go out Turner Road and at that way to come in on the old 25 into Dayton and he left and he was gone about three years and he came back to Dayton. He had to have one of his lungs taken out for cancer and then while he was here, he hadn’t been here about two or three years until it got into his other lung and he went to the hospital in Louisville and they couldn’t do anything for him. It was too late. That riot was enough to scare the pants off of me, I know that. There’s places that still hasn’t been restored. That was back in the sixties. Used to be a store up there on Third Street, almost to Broadway, called the Famous. He’d sell large man clothing and suspenders and things like that that the other stores didn’t carry. That was about the only place then that you could get larger clothing for stout men and large men. After the riot, they just closed up or sold all the stuff to the surplus store down there on Third Street. I’ve always wondered, whatever happened to the places like that Savings and Loan on Main? Of course there’s been a controversy about the old Arcade Building Yu used to be able to go in there in the sixties and seventies and get anything you wanted. Any kind of food you wanted. You could find it somewhere in there and you also used to be able to go into McCrory’s and turn into the Arcade. I haven’t heard in the last few years, but they thought they had it sold for a long time, but it must have fell through or they wanted too much.
Marilyn Shannon
I think it sold, but it’s not open. I think the maintenance on the building is enough to deter a lot of people for what they are going to do with it.
Darwin Whitt
They spent millions of dollars renovating that building.
Gail Hall
Some years back there was a man that did architecture work and it was in the newspaper that he said, “Dayton looked like Rotterdam after the bombing.” And that really stuck in my mind because I can remember when there was just everything downtown. You could skate or amusement parks were nearby.
Darwin Whitt
I had a very strange classification in the late sixties. A very good friend of mine was blind, out at the VA. He’d go around all over the VA, didn’t need any help. He wouldn’t venture downtown and there used to be a little branch office down on Third and St. Clair and everybody called me a seeing eye dog. We’d catch the VA bus in front of Building 309, down to the main gate on Gettysburg on Third and then we’d catch the city bus downtown and then we’d go down to the bank first. He’d go in there and he’d buy his war bonds and then we’d go back to the back and put in his money. He put the bonds in his safety deposit box and we’d come back out to go check on his savings account. Then we’d go back out of there. Then we’d go from there over to Sears. Then we’d walk from there up to Rike’s and he’d always buy the nurses candies and things. Then we’d leave there and go over to the Metropolitan and he was always checking their clothing out. Then we went from there down to the McCrory’s. Then McCrory’s over to Sherlow and Gallery (?) for dinner. Then we’d come back up and catch a bus back out to the VA. That was our big day.
