“DAYTON IS A MASS OF RUINS...”
A CITY RISES FROM THE RUBBLE - Part One
The flood waters had not yet receded completely before Dayton’s citizens began to make plans to rebuild the city into something bigger and better than it had ever been in the past. Clement Leo Staudt vividly describes the city immediately after the flood in a letter he entitled Observations and experiences during the Dayton, Ohio Flood of 1913.
CLEMENT LEO STAUDT
Three days before, Dayton, the Beautiful City, had stood proud in her prestige and wealth. Her citizens happy, prosperous, aggressive – virile representatives of ideal American citizenship; deeply engrossed in competition for financial and social preeminence. Now, a weeping city shorn of its beautiful homes, its magnificent drives and parkways; robbed of its claim to charm and beauty – a city of destitute people, crying for bread – the beautiful city which the sun had set on three days before was now a city ravaged by fire and flood – a city of wreckage and ashes – a city of mourning and grief. But through all this pall of sorrow could be heard her people saying, “Thank God we’re all alive.” They had forgotten their suffering, had forgotten their privation; forgotten their sorrow in gratitude to their Creator for sparing their lives. Now the merchant worked in rescue with pauper; the lawyer with the laborer; the fortunate with the unfortunate. Dayton the city was now forgotten. It was now Dayton the family; a huge family of loving men and women whom sorrow had made kin. It was an event which I shall never forget; an inspiration which shall always warm my being. Although our city was now a city of ashes and ruins, her children dependent and destitute I was PROUD TO BE A CITIZEN OF DAYTON, I was proud to be one of this unfortunate family, and I was proud to be a citizen of OHIO for the way she cared for her children. Relief came from without nobly. Nearby farmers came in with wagon loads of eatables and gave them away; nearby towns sent automobiles laden with food and medicines and soon train loads of provisions were bringing us food and clothing from all directions. Soon relief work was organized; supplies were dealt out; water was furnished to all; and warm clothing was provided. Next the work of cleaning up the city began; dead horses were carted away; debris was cleaned from the streets; and houses were again set in order. The process of reinhabitation began; merchants stocked their stores; and her citizens set to work at rebuilding with an ardor never before witnessed. And now, just three weeks after that awful catastrophe, Dayton the Gem City of Ohio by right of charity; constancy; unflinching suffering; and dauntless determination rears her head above the ruins; queenlier, nobler and better than ever before.
DAISY W. FLETCHER
Daisy Fletcher wrote several letters to Flora L. Albaugh telling of her time during the flood. Excerpts from three of those letters have been included here, each separated from the others by the date it was written.
April 16, 1913
We are back home ‘camping’ in the back room upstairs, and living in a very primitive way. This morning I fried bacon & eggs in the base burner & warmed coffee I had made at Mrs. Mull’s last night. We had neither kind of gas, but today I succeeded in getting the artificial gas in, & have a little 10¢ hot plate on which we can make coffee &c. You may think it unwise & perhaps rather singular that we should leave a comfortable home for this, but I felt that we had stayed on those kind people as long as we should as they are not in the habit of keeping roomers, besides it was as hard to try & attend the house & look after mother so far away. She was anxious to get back in this neighborhood so I bro’t her over yesterday for the day, intending to return at night, but we found her room so comfortable & it seemed so good to be in your own house again, that we decided to put up with inconveniences & stay here. We had plenty of candles so got along all right. A number of the neighbors came in during the day & mother was happy...
Neither of us slept any: were warm & comfortable but had so many things to think of just couldn’t sleep, but hope to make up for it tonight, as am dead tired… [T]he mains are so full of water we can’t get gas yet. I had a plumber trying today but failed. We are so we can live & that’s about all we will be able to do this summer. Walls will not be fit to paper until midsummer if then. Things are in a bad fix here & altho hundreds of men & teams are at work trying to clean the streets you can hardly miss what has been hauled away. For the first time in the history of Dayton steam cars, engine & flat cars are running on E. 3rd St. from Main to the R.R. crossing, hauling away the debris. They built a temporary cross over switch to the St. railway tracks, it is a rapid way of cleaning the streets & yet it seems slow.
In the midst of the distress tho’ nearly everyone seems cheerful & trying to do their best to restore order. I was fortunate yesterday in meeting the head man of the Requarth Co. right at my back gate. He came in & took the measurement of glass sash &c needed, & at 2 o’c sent a man for the sash. He came back at 5 o'c & put in the windows & then early this A.M. fixed hinges on doors & put up screens. We don’t need the screens yet, but none of the doors will shut & I can hook the screens, so tho’t would have them up. When decided to stay here, had to go to Mrs. Morris’ to get some of my things. Went out again this A.M. for more & still have another load for tomorrow. Can’t get things from Guie’s until can get a wagon, but don’t need them. Miss Rasor took my laundry to the country this week, as the laundries were flooded and are just starting up…
The City was full of sight seers today. At first no one was permitted to come in merely to view the ruins but now they are not so particular, altho we are still under martial law and have to stay in after 6:30 P.M.
Elgar is busy doing relief & clean up work. No idle man is allowed on the streets: even men intent on their own business have been held for hours at hard labor before their identity could be proven. It is a blessing to all of us that such strict measures prevail, but it is new & seems strange. Must now stop.
April 20, 1913
I wish you were here today with the thousands of visitors viewing the – ‘ruins of Dayton’ – for that is almost what it amounts to. I am sure the outside world in general has no conception of the terrible calamity that has come upon Dayton. Altho a month almost has passed, our streets are still piled with debris, cellars are still being pumped out, elevators are out of commission and everything generally out of order. One woman who visited San Francisco just after the earthquake, says it was nothing compared with Dayton; men in official positions who have been sent here to aid in relief work, say the public does not realize the enormity of the calamity and are therefore not responding with the funds necessary to help Dayton on her feet again. Most of the clean-up work is being done by individual capital but that is inadequate. Unless outside help is given, Dayton cannot hope to recover from this blow – at least for many years. As for myself, I shall only buy such things as I need to live comfortably, and won’t do that until the house is ready to paper. We had an additional calamity Friday when the ceiling paper in back room upstairs began to drop. Luckily it was day time, so I got mother out and ran for a neighbor to take it down. It came off like onion skin. That makes another room to paper. Then the woodwork will all have to be done over, as it has peeled off too. Mrs. Wight will have to stand her part, but of course it will cost me considerable too, to get things as I want them again.
I can hardly realize it has been 4 weeks almost since the flood: it seems strange to hear of anyone doing the ordinary things of life... My Kirby gas burner is proving a jewel. We can only cook one thing at a time, but we can cook, which is the main thing just now. In the A.M. I make the coffee & put it on to boil, then come down & set the table, get the bacon and eggs ready & when coffee is done, mother fries bacon & eggs while I make toast on base burner, & while it means a good many steps up & down stairs, we finally have a good breakfast.
This noon made creamed potatoes, coffee & fried ham. Just as was ready, Mrs. Paul came with big bowl of hot noodles & bowl of tapioca pudding & graham crackers, so we fared better than expected. Have enough noodles for tomorrow & are going to put in beef broth & have soup for dinner. They have been trying to get natural gas in but the mains are still filled with water & will have to be pumped out first - & no telling when that will be. I am getting so anxious to go to work. They promise each day to have the elevator going but – not yet. I know I am badly needed & it worries me. When I do go to work dear, there will be short letters until get caught up, for shall work night & day if necessary. Will have to open a new set of books.
…Joe had a very narrow escape from drowning. They took Faye out in a boat early Tuesday. Joe insisted on her going as said he would be freer to save things if he didn’t have her to think of. The levee broke right at their St. & Joe & another man crossed over on telephone wires to a large apartment house across the street: the water was up to his neck & when he reached the building he was so far gone, & his hands were so clinched around the wires that they had to knock them loose & work with him quite a while. It was two days before Faye knew where he was, & when he did finally wade along the levee & get to her, she promptly fainted. That is only one of hundreds just such narrow escapes.
Your letters come on time now. We have our three deliveries as usual. I presume the collections are regular too. Am glad to know auntie is better. Mother has not felt well for several days. Sometimes I think this trouble will prove too much for her in the end. She is weak & feeble & her sight is very dim. She told me last night that she could see something black by her side all the time & I am afraid it is a growth over the good eye. At her age we wouldn't dare operate, so it will ultimately mean blindness & she won’t last long after that. No wonder after all she’s been thru! She says even the war did not leave such havoc as this flood. I have engaged another set of flood pictures and if I get them, you can keep the others for good: anyway, keep until I tell you. Haven’t heard a word from Jennies yet, & if she isn’t here in the A.M. will have to get someone else to wash down walls & woodwork & clean floors.
Hope to be in better shape by next Sunday. Martial Law is still in force and the curfew rings at 7 P.M. All cars stop & no one allowed on the street, & it is as quiet as a country village.
Going to stop & take this to box & maybe mother will go for a little walk.
July 6, 1913
Am hoping can have papering done by 1st of Aug. if not before. It will be a big job for us, as everything except my room will have to be papered, & one corner of my ceiling pasted back. My front room is nicely dried out, but dining room is very slow, altho [sp] keep house open all I can. One would think people would take cold in the damp houses, but I have never heard of it hurting anyone. The houses were thoroughly soaked and of course it takes time to dry them out.
…Orville Wright did not fly after all so the celebration had no attraction for me, altho was said to have been the best ever held in Dayton – a sort of Jubilee over Dayton’s recovery from the flood. After supper I went over on levee a few minutes with other neighbors to watch the balloons. Saw ten in sky at once: later could see high pieces at Fairground if wanted to stand out in street, but was too hot so I came home…
Later will have to change dress, as still have on house dress. Haven’t enough energy to care. All this hot weather. Library Park has been full of men lying on the grass all day, & the levee is covered with people trying to get their breath. We are having a shortage of both water & ice; can only have 50# of ice at a time & only sprinkle from 6 to 9 P.M. Two car loads of ice from Minn. arrived yesterday & more on the way. You see our ice plant was under 18 ft. of water & they are not running full yet, & the intense heat makes the demand so much greater. Business places have been cut down as well as individuals, so the situation is quite serious but I am in hopes it won’t be so hot for a few days. I know you too are suffering with the heat but you don’t mind it so much.
Going to stop for this time dear & hope some day to feel more like writing.
EUGENE J. COUR
Eugene J. Cour, special correspondent of the Chicago Journal, made a trip to Dayton as soon as he heard of the disaster that had struck the city. He returned to Chicago on March 29, and reported to his readers on how the flood victims were faring.
I was the first man from west of the Miami River to reach Dayton. The scenes of destruction and desolation are almost indescribable.
After being assured of the genuiness of my credentials, Major Huber granted me a military pass. This was at 3:30 Wednesday afternoon. I walked across the Dayton View bridge. Here I got my first glimpse of the stricken city.
The women and children in this part of Dayton had nearly all been rescued and the rescuers were bringing out the men who had been left behind. They refused to take me to the business section in a boat, declaring that lives were at stake, and that there were too few boats to lend space to a newspaperman.
Frame cottages from North Dayton, which had been carried two miles to this district, were smashed into kindling in front yards and streets. Hundreds of wrecked automobiles, streetcars and wagons interfered with the rescue boats. The asphalt pavements had been torn up and strewn in huge piles along the streets.
A young man who owned a canoe volunteered to take me into the city of Dayton. It was a hard pull against the current. We reached within a block of dry pavement. Here we were cut off by debris. I was forced to climb over the debris and waded into the city through muddy water hip deep.
I gained dry land about 4 o’clock. The military guards were then ordering people into their homes, permitting nobody to be on the streets after this time.
After some difficulty I was finally permitted to make a tour through the downtown section.
Dead animals lay all about the city. The Algonquin hotel, at one time reported burned, and the Y.M.C.A. building, in which 1,500 persons sought shelter, were both intact, though under several feet of mud and debris. A team of dead horse blocked the entrance to the Algonquin.
At the Union station, where 600 persons were reported drowned, I found eighteen dead horses, the relief train having taken the 600 refugees to the camps. I investigated every report of bodies found and learned of only two that had been recovered in the downtown district.
The burned area covers two square blocks. There was little danger of the fire spreading, as the fifteen feet of water inundating the buildings proved an effectual barrier.
I learned that the soldiers found it necessary only twice to fire on looters. In neither case were the thieves injured.
The principal cause for destruction in the Dayton View district was the breaking of the levee, which let in tons of water, and piled up hundreds of houses and barns against the principal residences and buildings.
The force of the current had washed deep ditches through the asphalt streets and carried the mud of the levee and river into the buildings, filling them in some places as deep as three feet.
The Dayton View schoolhouse, military headquarters and the refugee station for the City of Dayton, was crowded with the thousands who had been rescued from the waters. Here they were fed and given medical treatment. From this point they were sent to the various homes on the heights.
The real necessity seemed to be water. There was no means to distributing the little water on hand.
Nearly all rescued were thoroughly soaked and chilled. There was no way of warming them or furnishing them with dry clothing. Forty-five automobiles were running continuously from this point, carrying refugees to homes and churches.
When I asked survivors whether they knew personally of any loss of life, especially in their own families, they burst into tears and turned away, unable to answer.
Rescuers, police and soldiers have no relief. They work until exhausted and are carried to huge log fires, where they sleep in the mud. These are men that Dayton will never forget and that Ohio is proud of. This is the consensus of opinion of those who are held at the outer fringes of the swirling waters and have witnessed the results of the work of the heroes.
ARTHUR RUHL
Arthur Ruhl, a special correspondent of The Outlook, hurried to Dayton to report on the aftermath of the flood.
You must see and smell and slip in and become smeared with the universal mud.
This mud – fine, black, slimy river silt – was in and over everything. It was as if the first story of all the houses and shops and office buildings – and there were eight or ten square miles submerged in the heart of Dayton – were a mold into which had been poured so much of this infinitely penetrating thin plaster. When the water left, everything that it had touched – walls, furniture, pictures, books, carpets, the goods on merchants’ shelves – was coated with this uniform filth. It lay three or four inches deep on all floors – black, sloppy, evil-smelling.
From every door, up and down miles of streets, this fair spring morning, they were shoveling it forth. With snow-shovels, pans, pails, they pushed it across carpets to the front door, and thence, slopping and splashing, down the steps over the sidewalks into the street. Through these open front doors you could see it smeared over stairways, dripping from chandeliers. On the sodden lawns in front of these houses, arm-chairs, upholstered seats, tables, lamps, soaked and solid with it, were drying in the sun. Everywhere they were struggling with it – the poor, whose one-story frame houses were smeared to the eaves; in the more well-to-do neighborhoods, women whose spring hats contrasted oddly with their plastered boots and skirts, alongside their husbands and sons and Negroes hired from the street.
I saw one woman in knickerbockers and rubber boots calmly shoveling the black paste from her parlor window. An elderly gentleman in one of the finer houses asked me to step in and look around. The whole house had been covered up to the second story. The dining-room fireplace was still half full of straw swept there by the current. Outside the window was the muddy heap of what once had been his library. “I’ve been collecting those for fifty years,” he said. There, too, was a large steel engraving of the kind much valued a generation ago. “There were only five of those in the State,” he said. A little further down the street a huge Oriental rug lay over the front lawn like so much rhinoceros hide. At another house nearby, where a lady kept watch while her silver was carried into the yard, the lower floor was covered four inches deep.
The sight of this unexpected, reptilian substance, burying soft carpets, and the usually inviolate household goods, brought home to the outside the inhuman ruthlessness of such a flood even more, perhaps, than crushed houses or the poor, still figures in the morgue. One is prepared for smashed and overturned houses, for the sight of death. But about this black and glistening slime, mordant as dye, unescapable as a volatile gas, soaked into the fiber of cloth, worked into the pages of books, there is something malignant and strange. It struck one like a personal indignity, as if smeared on one’s own flesh.
ORVILLE WRIGHT
The Wright Company decided to make a donation to help victims of the flood. Andrew Freedman, a stockholder, sent a check to Orville which prompted the following letter dated April 11, 1913.
It has now been 2 and one half weeks since I have been able to be in my office and we have not as yet succeeded in getting any light or heat. The water covered the first floor of my home about 6 feet deep, but our factory is high on the hills and far away from the water, so that there was no loss there at all. My greatest anxiety was over my own office, where I keep all of our aeronautical books and papers and the scientific data upon which I base all calculations. Fire broke out in our block and destroyed the nearby building, but for some unexplainable reason, our building, which has a shingle roof, did not catch.
My personal losses have been slight, somewhere between three and five thousand dollars. Hundreds of families and merchants in the city lost practically everything they had. I do not think that the money our company has donated could have been given to a better purpose, as I feel sure it will be well handled by the Relief Committee, of which John H. Patterson is the head. I do not suppose there has ever been a similar calamity where relief was so promptly afforded with so little waste. Dayton was very fortunate in having a man with the ability of Patterson to take this work in hand. We probably did not have another man in the city that could have done it so well.
We attempted to start the factory yesterday but only succeeded in getting 5 of our workmen. There is some prospect that the street railway service will be resumed the early part of next week, in which case I think we will have a full force…
LEAH
Leah (last name unknown) wrote a letter to her father on March 28, 1913 telling of how Dayton and its citizens had been affected by the flood waters.
This is the most horrible place around here that anyone could ever imagine. We have read of such things in the papers and have said they were overdrawn and all that, but the papers could not make this worse than it is. There is no possible way of knowing how many lives have been lost, and the city itself, as far as property is concerned, is just a great waste of muddy slime, ruins and wreckage.
Last Monday I went to work at the store and on the way down I just thought to myself how beautiful everything looked. Tuesday morning I was ready to go out on the porch when the boys came home from the Cash and said the levees had broken. Two of the girls got to the store and they just brought them home today – more dead than alive. From three and a half to four miles square was the area covered by water, and it was just like a mad river – the current so swift that they could not manage boats. In many cases when they could get the boats to the people it was too late. Many of them died in the boats and many more after they had reached the Cash.
The N.C.R. has certainly done everything – Mr. Patterson stood in the drenching rain and worked like a hero. His son with another young fellow were the first persons to venture uptown. Up there conditions are terrible. Where the flood did not reach, fire has held full sway – Water was up to the second story at the Rike-Kumler department store. That is the city’s swell store (where we saw the electric train in the window Christmas, with those baby-size dolls.) When these fellows came back from uptown they said merchandise from the stores, small buildings, dead horses and human bodies were all floating on the main streets in a great swirling mass.
People are homeless everywhere. We saw beautiful, well-furnished homes all in wreckage. Pianos laying in the mud everywhere. People had no warning on the back streets where it is so low and they have lost everything.
Well, folks, we are doing fine so far, but I am afraid the worst is yet to come. We have no gas and no water. We have to cook at a house where four of five families are cooking. There is a well next door and the whole neighborhood is carrying water from there. Already the stench from the flooded district is getting awful. What will it be before they get the place cleaned up. They are still rescuing people and have hardly begun to bring out bodies – and this is Friday night! If it comes off warm – and it surely will – there will be an awful time. We are all living on things that can be most easily prepared and not what we have been used to having.
Baby after baby is being born at the Cash and one was born in a boat before they could get the woman ashore. Oh you can’t believe how horrible it all is. I saw big strong men today stand looking at what was left of their homes and tears rolling down their cheeks. Others stood with faces just like stone, as if they had no feeling left. One woman lost all her family and her parents and brothers and sisters and when they rescued her Tuesday night she went to work among the people at the Cash and won’t stop. She has been working night and day since. She says she don’t dare stop. Lots of them are losing their minds.
You know the new garage they are finishing out here on Main Street – well they have turned that into a morgue and today began hauling bodies there. In the room where they worked so long making rescue boats at the cash, they are now making rough boxes. There is not the least doubt but that the number of dead will be very, very great. All they say is that it will be anywhere between one and five thousand – and that is pretty indefinite. We have only this part out here to hear from – there is all North Dayton, and Riverdale, the most exclusive residence district. These places were entirely under water.
The little old D. L. & C. that we have laughed at so much has certainly done its part. It is the only road into Dayton that can reach the Cash, and it brings in one relief train after another, running night and day. There has been lots of robbing going on and the soldiers have shot a number of the thieves. No one dares leave their homes after eight o’clock p.m. unless they are wearing uniforms or N.C.R. badges. Orris and Ernie are working nights at the Cash and Bush works daytime. They are housing and feeding about eight thousand refugees over there. I offered to do anything I could but the men are doing the most of the work so far. There are great squads of hospital nurses and doctors there and the rescued people are lots of them able to work. I am ready to go any time I am needed. It may come later, for there is going to be an awful lot of sickness.
Well, I think I will cut this out. It seems mighty queer to write with a coal oil lamp on the table. Oh well such is life. We are improving anyhow – last night we had a candle.
Well so long. Tell everybody hello and that Leah is homesick at last, although it took an awful lot to make me so. Goodnight and love to all. Write to us soon for we can get the mail all right now.
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