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Ohio Cities and their suburbs

There is an article about Dayton Ohio in the Columbus Dispatch series about Ohio's big cities today. It was kind of trip down memory lane for me. I lived in Dayton Ohio in the late 80's for about three or four years. Not a lifetime...Dayton was different than anyplace I lived. Not bad different. Just different. Face it every city is unique.... it is all so darn local. I moved to Dayton from Akron Ohio... Since college I'd lived in Green Bay Wisconsin and Rockford Illinois too. College in Madison Wisconsin and growing up in a small industrial city in southeastern Wisconsin, near Milwaukee was my whole world.

If you aren't familiar with the cities in my litany, all but Madison Wisconsin are industrial cities. All these mid-western cities were or are primarily manufacturing centers, Akron was rubber, Green Bay was paper, Rockford was fasteners (I think Rockford was at one time the screw capital of the world?) The town I grew up in had foundries.

Dayton is and was auto parts manufacturing. National Cash Register had been a huge employer in Dayton, but I remember my husbands boss taking us by the abandoned NCR manufacturing buildings the first weekend I was in the Dayton area. The NCR buildings must have been razed shortly after because I don't remember them, except for that night but today's Columbus Dispatch reminded me of that sight:

"As recently as the 1970s, Dayton enjoyed boom times, with factories rolling out auto parts and appliances by the thousand. National Cash Register, the city's largest single employer, had blocks of stately office and manufacturing buildings lining a broad boulevard leading into the more affluent suburbs."

Dayton's boom was over by the mid to late 80's.... but Dayton was still an industrial city. Dayton and Columbus are an hour, maybe y an hour and a half apart from the north outer-belt of Columbus to Dayton's south suburbs... yet in some ways Dayton and Columbus are a lot more distant than Dayton is to the other industrial cities in Northern Ohio. There are things about Green Bay Wisconsin, Rockford Illinois and my hometown that are closer to Dayton Ohio than Columbus. Not worse, not better, just different.

Actually I did not live in Dayton, I lived in West Carrollton, a suburb of Dayton. West Carrollton is a nice little town, it is industrial, it was not at that time one of the upscale Dayton suburbs and the little starter house we bought there cost us under 60K the late 80's. When we moved fromWest Carrollton to Columbus it was different. We were moving from a small suburban yet industrial community to the city of Columbus. Not downtown Columbus or even an urban neighborhood... but it is the city of Columbus.

The Columbus Dispatch article is just a little sketch of what Dayton Ohio is like for it's readers in Columbus Ohio... It reminded me of the up and down boom and bust economy, the history of what the city has been, a little about urban renewal since I've lived there, a little bit about the problems that city has....

Today's article is part of the Columbus Dispatch series about the seven biggest cities in the state of Ohio. Yesterday the Columbus Dispatch article was about Cleveland. I learned things about Cleveland. I believe the local paper will be telling us in Columbus about Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown yet in this series.

I wrote more about the Columbus Dispatch installment about on ColumbusBestBlog.com today, in Ohio Big Cities Burbs. Not a critique of the article or the city of Dayton, not about solutions for Dayton just a little bit about my experience having lived in both areas.... and more about the question about whether Ohio's big cities are worth saving.

Posted by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate on 12/05/2007 01:09 AM

Comments (12)

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12 Comments on Ohio Cities and their suburbs

Hi Maureen: Thanks for a very informational post. I learned more about Dayton that I knew in the 38 years I lived in Cleveland. Dayton has quite a history.

I would really like it if you could send me a link to the article about Cleveland in the Columbus Dispatch. I read Carole Cohen's blog about Cleveland quite often, and really enjoy catching up on my old home town. For the last eight years in the Cleveland area, I lived in Mentor, a great city about fifteen miles east of Cleveland. Cleveland Rocks ! Thanks for sharing...

12/05/2007 01:21 AM

by Fort Worth Real Estate - Karen Anne Stone (RE/MAX Trinity)

Maureen: Sheesh. Miserable lives and frozen tundra. With words like that, it sounds like Gregg, your first commentor, really did not have a very good Ohio experience. I just loved living in Ohio. Cleveland has become a very vibrant city. So much is happening in many parts of the city. Some even refer to it as the "Comeback City." And Dennis Kucinich is a pretty sharp guy. So many of the things he has to say make sense. Take care...

12/05/2007 01:28 AM

by Fort Worth Real Estate - Karen Anne Stone (RE/MAX Trinity)

Greg I know where Piqua is. This is a post for localism for people in Ohio but maybe you mean to come off as arrogant , judgemental and snobby. Your choice.

Thanks Karen Anne for the comment. My map is not working.

12/05/2007 01:30 AM

by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate (Real Living HER)

Maureen, You look like half of my family, the Reilly's, the Mackin's, Father Godfrey - OK, not so much like him, lucky you...I even have a sister named Maureen. Now that that is off my chest, I think of Ohio as the vast expanse we must cross to get from our current residence in Michigan to the original hometown regions of eastern Pennsylvania. A lot of states are suffering and change does not come easily or quickly to former manufacturing areas. I saw a report recently about cities that will no longer exist 100 years from now - Detroit was one of them. How can they say that? People and places change and adapt. New Orleans was another city in the report - that I can believe with the wall of water threatening to flood them again and again. To my knowledge, there was only Phoenix as another US city - lack of water concerns. Ohio is going to be OK, no matter what anyone says.

12/05/2007 01:57 AM

by Susan Walters (Keller Williams Realty, Ann Arbor, MI)

Susan wow no Detroit? I thnk there will be a new Orleans, a Detroit and a Phoenix in the future. I remember thinking New Orleans would not rebuild just after Katrina....

The series in the Columbus Dispatch is fascinating to me.

I have a generic Irish face.

12/05/2007 02:07 AM

by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate (Real Living HER)

The last time I drove to my parents I sort of took a turn that took me through Dayton/Kettering. I cut through the prettiest part of ohio with old brick victorian houses. It was the best sort of lost I could ever get.

12/05/2007 05:19 AM

by Chris Elizabeth Griffith ~ Bonita Springs Fl Real Estate (Keller Williams Elite Realty, Bonita Springs, FL)

I wonder where in Kettering... Victorians?... the Oregon Disctrict in Dayton is gorgeous. I remember those as brick Victorians. Like our Victorian Village in Columbus. I think though the scale of the houses in Oregon District is smaller at least than the grand houses in Victorian Village in Columbus.

We used to drive around Kettering and Oakwood for fun when we moved to Columbus we tried driving around Uppar Arlington looking for the mansions and could not find them.

There was a great funeral home in West Carrolton (Dayton area) whch was in an old huge victorian house. My sister would say it was the prettiest funeral home in the world. There was a house on the market in West Carrolton shortly before we bought that was a victorian with a smoking porch. It must have been a mess because it sold very inexpensively, I never saw the inside... and it was the dark ages, no interior photos... thanks for the comment Chris.

12/05/2007 10:00 AM

by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate (Real Living HER)

Not IN Kettering, it was after I left cutting thru country. I honestly couldn't tell you what road I was on, it was the scenic route, though. (i was lost but with a navigation system)

12/05/2007 10:10 AM

by Chris Elizabeth Griffith ~ Bonita Springs Fl Real Estate (Keller Williams Elite Realty, Bonita Springs, FL)

Maureen, Totally off topic of your blog, but have you ever been to Ireland? We were there in about 1997 and I said to my husband, "There's a certain look to the Irish" to which he responded, "And you look like every one of them!"

12/05/2007 11:47 AM

by Susan Walters (Keller Williams Realty, Ann Arbor, MI)

No I have not. There is a look. We have a thing called the Irish Family Reunion in Columbus on St. Pat's Day and it is so funny, we don't all look like brothers and sisters or even first cousins but there's a lot of similarity. In some neighborhoods in Boston I remember thinking we all looked the same.

12/05/2007 11:58 AM

by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate (Real Living HER)

Hi Maureen, How are you? You know my parents live in Proctorville, Ohio. I was born and raised in Huntington, W.Va.

It has been awhile since I have been back. I am sure the scenery has changed. I was always fascinated by Cincinnati and how the houses were built into the hills...

Hmmm, seems we have a mixture of Irish, English and Native Americans in our ancestry.

My maternal grandmother came from the Hatfield lineage. You know the Hatfield/McCoy Feud?

Probably why I argue so much...Hope you have a great Holiday season!

12/06/2007 10:52 AM

by Terry Osburn, Broker Associate (Alain Pinel Realtors)

Cincinnati is fascinating, kind of exotic... not like the flat parts of Ohio. I don't think I have ever been to Hunington, in fact I think I have just driven through West Virginia... never been there which is a shame. I will have to look up where Proctorville Ohio is. That's funny that you are part of the Hatfield clan.

Thanks for the comments.

12/06/2007 11:31 AM

by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate (Real Living HER)