Dayton, Ohio Twenty-Something and Four

Wright Brothers' last bicycle shop

Paul Lawrence Dunbar mural

The spring rain fell swiftly on Dayton. I scouted the century-plus buildings on its West Side, far too many of them with boarded-up windows, for a glance at a storefront that once sheltered world-changing ideas and designs. 

The streets are still brick here. The rain seemed to scrub away their winter grime. Tucked behind the mid-rises on West Third Street, I found the small brick building where the Wright Brothers operated a bicycle store before the proved powered flight was feasible. 

Dayton Aviation National Historical Park assembles a series of historic locations around the city. The thread connecting them is Dayton in the early 20th century.  You could be forgiven for thinking the Wrights and Dayton's greatest African-American author have no ties. But the historical park does not have to dive deep to find the connections. 

Wright flier

A massive visitor center stands next to the bicycle shop, and around the corner from the Paul Lawrence Dunbar House. The Wright brothers’ fourth bicycle shop is the only one still standing. The bicycle shop was where the two conducted preliminary experiments into flying machines. 

The sites include Hawthorn Hill, the stately house where Orville lived from 1914 till his death in 1948. Wilbur planned to live there but died in 1912. His father lived there as did his sister Katharine before her marriage. The most recent acquisition by the park services is the 1910 Wright Company factory, the first U.S. factory building specifically for airplanes, but that hasn't opened to the public yet. 

Pressed for time, I could not stop at the Dunbar House. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a prominent African-American author and poet from the early 20th century, had major influence during a short life. Dunbar died at 33 from tuberculosis, but wrote prodigiously producing a volume of stories and poems, written both formally and dialectally. 

Aside from the Dayton connection, Dunbar and Orville Wright were classmates at Central High School, where Dunbar was the only African-American student, and the Wrights printed some of Dunbar’s poetry at their print shop. Dunbar’s work has grown in stature since his premature death, and deservedly so. 

No one can read the opening line of Sympathy - I know what the caged bird feels, alas! – and ever forget his way with words. Maya Angelou famously used Dunbar’s line for the title of her autobiography. 

My route to see my old friend Rob in Yellow Springs took me past one of the major NHP sites, the Huffman Prairie on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The Wright Brothers conducted many of their post-Kitty Hawk flight tests here, working through various versions of their flyer until they arrived upon a practical one. 

Dayton got a little screwed with the first flight. The city’s favorite sons took off for the Outer Banks in North Carolina for their historic flights. Dayton didn’t win the historic flight, it was the site of many others that moved the brothers toward viable flying. 

They refined their flyers through hundreds of subsequent flights at Huffman Prairie in Dayton, eventually building a hangar there to house the flyer. A portion of the marshy prairie has been restored to native grasses and hosts dozens of species of birds. 

I found myself imagining those early flights, some covering significantly more distance than the Kittty Hawk flights, and what people of Dayton thought at those early flying machines alone in the sky with the birds. 

Dayton’s historical park got the short shrift at the end of a long drive. But with the ample friends and reasons to return to Ohio, I expect I can hit a few other spots around Dayton some other trip.

Wright Brothers mosaic