How Was Dayton Built

Dayton’s most significant piece of construction is invisible most of the year.

The dry dams

After 1913 the Miami Conservancy District built five earthen dams upstream, each with a permanent opening at its base sized to let the normal flow straight through. They impound nothing in ordinary conditions — the land behind them is farmed — and fill only when a flood crest arrives, releasing it slowly over the following days. Combined with widened and levee-lined channels through the city, the system has prevented every subsequent flood, and it was among the first comprehensive flood-control schemes in the world. The conservancy district it created became the template for river authorities elsewhere.

The Oregon District

Five blocks of the city’s oldest surviving housing, built between the 1830s and the 1860s in brick, in Federal, Greek Revival and Italianate styles, saved from clearance and now the city’s best street.

Hills and Dales

The NCR founder John Patterson commissioned the Olmsted firm to design a model landscape and worker housing, part of a paternalistic welfare-capitalist scheme that included factory gardens and a schoolhouse.

Downtown

Early twentieth-century commercial blocks, several being converted to housing, and the Art Deco Dayton Arcade, reopened after decades empty.

The Arcade

A complex of five interconnected buildings around a glass-domed rotunda, opened in 1904 with a Flemish facade and a market hall beneath the dome. It closed in 1991 and stood empty for nearly thirty years, and its reopening as offices, housing and an innovation centre is the single most visible piece of downtown recovery.

The base

Hangars and research buildings spread across a very large site east of the city.