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Built by pioneering retail developer Don Monroe Casto Sr., the Bank Block was dedicated in 1928. Considered one of the earliest regional shopping centers in the United States, it innovatively featured 350 free parking spaces-complete with uniformed attendant-to accommodate the rapidly growing numbers of automobile-owning suburbanites. The Bank Block’s first tenants included several competing national grocers (Kroger, A&P, and Piggly Wiggly), the First Citizens Trust (later Ohio National Bank), a stationer, barber shop, and pharmacy. It remains the nucleus of Grandview’s commercial district. Casto, once described as “the man who changed the shopping habits of the free world,” also built the Town and Country Shopping Center in Whitehall and was a dominant figure in retail commercial development in the Midwest for much of the 20th century.
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From the 1890s to the 1930s, interurban railways were an important form of travel in the Midwest. Beach Park Station had an interurban carhouse, where repairs were performed and passengers boarded. The Lorain & Cleveland Railway (L&C) built the 65½ by 200 foot brick station in 1897. By 1901, the L&C became part of the Lake Shore Electric Railway (LSE) and Beach Park became stop 65 on a line that ran from Cleveland to Toledo and then to Detroit. Requiring power and water, the LSE built an electric plant and water tower at Avon Lake. This infrastructure spurred the community’s development and growth. (Continued on other side
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The discovery in the mid-19th century of iron-rich black band ore in this region helped revitalize Mahoning Valley’s iron industry. The land now called Mineral Ridge was primarily a farming community before the 1850s. In the 1830s, coal was discovered and mining began on a small scale. For years, it was believed that the coal seam sat on top of a layer of slate, which was considered to be of little worth. In the mid-1850s, however, John Lewis, superintendent of the Mineral Ridge Coal Mines, identified what was previously thought to be slate as valuable black band ore instead. (Continued on other side)
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The Dayton Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center was established by Congressional legislation signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1865. One of the three original VA Hospitals in the United States, Dayton received its first Civil War Veterans in 1867. Although officially The Central Branch of the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the facility became known as Dayton Soldiers Home. By 1884, it was a self-sufficient planned community, providing hospital, living quarters, gardens, and amenities to 64 percent of the Veterans receiving institutional care from the U.S. government. An early tourist attraction, the campus boasted 517,106 visitors in 1906. Today, the Dayton VA Medical Center is a modern healthcare facility that continues to honor President Lincoln’s promise “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
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Steel-frame skyscrapers and retail buildings replaced wood-frame residences as the downtown evolved into a commercial district. A small public library branch occupied the north side of the square from 1923 to 1954. The Keith-Albee Theater (later the Palace) in the northeast corner of the square from 1926 to 1964, featured vaudeville performances and movies. Streetcar tracks around the square were removed for scrap during World War II. With expansion of suburban shopping malls, downtown theaters and department stores gradually closed. In 1973-74 Central Square was converted to a pedestrian Federal Plaza by closing off traffic on Federal Street one block east and west of Market Street. Central Square reopened in 2004 with a new traffic pattern, planting beds, and street furniture. Marker for “Central Square (1798-1899)” across the street.
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Dayton Woman’s Club. Community leader Robert Steele built the house that became the Dayton Woman’s Club between 1845 and 1850. Napoleon Bonaparte Darst, a wealthy merchant, bought the residence in 1861. After the Civil War he refurbished the structure, updating it to the then-popular Second Empire style. In 1916, Darst’s heirs sold the house to the newly-formed Dayton Woman’s Club. Mrs. Marie Kumler (1856-1925), first president of the Club and the Dayton Federation of Women’s Clubs led efforts to raise the $25,000 to purchase the property. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and the Club celebrated 100 years here in 2016.
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Clark Lane (1823-1907), industrialist and philanthropist, was a son of John Lane (1793-1880) and Rosanah Crum (1795-1877). John came with his family to the Ohio Country when it was still part of the Northwest Territory. As a young man, Clark worked in his family’s blacksmith shop, and eventually helped found Owens, Lane & Dyer Machine Company in 1854. It built agricultural machinery, sawmills, papermaking machines, and other products, initiating Hamilton’s prominence in metals manufacturing. Lane funded the Butler County Children’s Home, an orphanage for over a century, and constructed an octagon house as his residence on Third Street. He built this library in 1866, also as an octagon, and donated it to the people of Hamilton. A 19th century admirer wrote, “The name and generous deeds of Clark Lane will never fade from the memories of a grateful people who have been recipients of his favor.”
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Founded in 1876 by a group of Toledo businessmen, Woodlawn Cemetery was designed in the tradition of the country’s “rural cemetery” movement, which was first popularized in Europe in the 1830s. This movement reflects the change in American burial practices in the nineteenth century as attitudes of death changed from grim to sentimental. The cemetery’s landscape emphasizes nature and art. Besides being a burial place, the cemetery is an arboretum, bird sanctuary, outdoor museum, and historical archive. Woodlawn also became a fashionable park for Toledo’s residents to escape the commotion of the city. The cemetery chronicles the growth of Toledo and northwest Ohio, and is an important cultural and historic landmark in regards to community planning and development, and landscape and building architecture. Historic Woodlawn Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
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