10
RECLAIMING HERITAGE
It’s all but impossible to visit Dayton and not run into reminders of its aviation heritage. Countless institutions have made Wilbur and Orville their namesakes, such as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Wright State University, Wright Library and Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport. Two original Wright airplanes are on display, and the area sports more than a half dozen full-scale replicas and sculptures of gliders and flyers.
For all that, Dayton still struggles to reclaim its heritage.
Just as Daytonians allowed the Wright brothers to work on Huffman Prairie in near anonymity more than a century ago, the community has been remarkably nonchalant when it comes to reminding the outside world of its rich heritage. As a result, people tend to associate the Wright brothers with North Carolina, not Ohio or Dayton. A nationwide awareness survey conducted in 2005 by the Aviation Heritage Foundation, a Dayton-based nonprofit, found 80 percent of the population knew the Wright brothers invented the airplane, but only 14 percent knew they invented it in Dayton, while 40 percent believed they invented it in North Carolina.
Ideas for a memorial to the Wright brothers in Dayton surfaced as early as 1910. A short article in the February 10 Dayton Daily News that year reported on a rumor of plans to commemorate the Wright brothers’ 1905 flights on Huffman Prairie. Civic leaders in 1912 considered a number of proposals. Most ambitious was a concept for a memorial science museum to be built near Simms Station, coincidentally less than three miles from where the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force stands today. Nothing materialized. Other plans for memorials came and went over the years.1
This full-scale model of the 1903 Wright Flyer hangs in the atrium of Wright State University’s Dunbar Library. Author’s photo.
Civic leaders in North Carolina started working on plans for a national memorial on the Outer Banks in the 1920s. They saw it as a way to showcase the state’s role in the Wright brothers’ accomplishments and boost tourism on the Outer Banks. State and federal officials dedicated the Wright Brothers National Memorial in 1932. The National Park Service acquired it in 1933 and continued to expand it. The project coincided with construction of the first bridge between the mainland and the Outer Banks.2
Meanwhile, Daytonians had converted their Wright heritage into an industry and an important part of the region’s economy. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and other institutions memorialized the Wright name. Civic leaders formed the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1962 and persuaded Congress to charter it in 1964; its first two enshrinees were Wilbur and Orville. But plans for a memorial place languished, and Dayton showed scant interest in preserving the places where the Wright brothers had lived and worked.
A C-5 Galaxy from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base passes over the Wright Memorial in 2008. The hilltop memorial overlooks Huffman Prairie. Author’s photo.
This neglect came at the same time racial segregation was concentrating Dayton’s black population in West Dayton. In response to a 1923 policy barring African Americans from downtown theaters, the Classic Theater opened in 1926 on West Fifth Street between Horace and Mound. Its opulent marble lobby, ballroom and pipe organ helped make West Fifth “the center of black life,” according to Margaret E. Peters’s Dayton’s African American Heritage. African American businesses flourished along West Fifth Street. By 1940, 84 percent of Dayton’s black residents lived west of the river. West Dayton declined, especially after race riots in the 1960s drove away business investment. Historic buildings deteriorated, their connections to the Wright brothers largely forgotten.
In 1936, Henry Ford bought the old Wright Cycle Co. building at 1127 West Third and the family home at 7 Hawthorn. He had them taken apart and reassembled in Greenfield Village, his collection of historic structures in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford’s acquisition jolted Daytonians. Edward Deeds spearheaded the Wright Memorial Commission to create a memorial park on a hilltop overlooking Huffman Prairie. Senior military officials and community leaders dedicated the Wright Memorial in a ceremony on August 19, 1940—Orville’s birthday and, as of the previous year, National Aviation Day. Orville attended, along with then Major General Hap Arnold and other aviation pioneers who had learned to fly on the prairie.3
This replica façade stands on the site of Orville Wright’s laboratory in the Wright-Dunbar neighborhood. Author’s photo.
The first efforts to preserve local sites associated with the Wright brothers came in the late 1940s. Deeds launched a project to restore the 1905 Wright Flyer III and build a special hall for it at Carillon Historical Park. After Orville’s death, National Cash Register (now known as NCR) acquired Hawthorn Hill and preserved it as a VIP guest quarters.
After Ford acquired the bicycle shop and family home, a feature story in the July 12, 1936 Dayton Journal showed photos of Wright sites that were still standing, including Orville’s laboratory and the Wright Company hangar on Huffman Prairie. But the buildings languished. The hangar continued to deteriorate until it was torn down at some point after World War II.
The saga of Orville’s laboratory is especially sad. In 1972, Standard Oil Co. of Ohio bought the property for a filling station to be built at the corner of West Third and North Broadway. Standard Oil delayed demolition for several years, offering the building and $1,000 to anyone who would take it. But community groups failed to stir much interest or raise enough money to relocate the building to another site. Standard Oil tore down Orville’s laboratory in November 1976, preserving the façade and giving it to Wright State University. It never built the gas station.4
But a grassroots effort was sprouting to preserve and promote the region’s aviation heritage. In 1973, an informal group of individuals at Wright-Patterson decided to build a flyable lookalike of the Wright brothers’ first production airplane—one built to modern standards so they could fly it at air shows and other events. They launched the project in 1975 and formed the nonprofit Wright “B” Flyer, Inc. to support it. The one-of-a-kind lookalike has been flying since 1982.
By 1980, a growing loss of manufacturing jobs prompted Dayton to look for ways to bolster its economy. Aviation Trail Inc. (ATI), incorporated in 1981 as a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the region’s aviation heritage, raising awareness of the region’s place in aviation history and stimulating the economy through aviation-related capital projects. ATI identified numerous historical aviation sites, identified them with markers and produced a guidebook, A Field Guide to Flight.5
In their research, ATI members discovered one Wright Cycle Co. building still existed in Dayton—the one at 22 South Williams. The organization raised money to save the building from demolition and restore it as a public attraction. ATI also worked to preserve the nearby Hoover Block. These projects helped spur a broader community effort to restore the Wright brothers’ neighborhood and establish a national historical park. The effort grew as the Dayton region began planning for the centennial celebration of powered flight in 2003. Community leaders pressed Ohio’s congressional delegation to pass federal legislation to establish a national park.
The Hoover Block building (left) was renovated as a part of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park’s Wright-Dunbar Visitor Center. Author’s photo.
The Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park opened in 1992, originally with four sites—Huffman Prairie Flying Field, the Wright Flyer III at Carillon Park, the Wright Cycle Company shop at 22 South Williams and the Paul Laurence Dunbar State Memorial. NCR returned Hawthorn Hill to the Wright family in 2006, and in 2009 President Obama signed legislation expanding the national park’s boundary to include Hawthorn Hill and the Wright Company factory site. Dayton History acquired Hawthorn Hill and began offering tours of the home to small groups on a regular schedule. The Wright Company site was active as a part of the Delphi Home Avenue manufacturing plant until Delphi closed the plant in 2008. A redevelopment company acquired the site in 2012 and was completing the demolition of non-historic buildings in 2014, but the factory remained closed to the public.
The federal legislation that established the park also established the Dayton Aviation Heritage Commission to support the park’s development and chart a long-term strategy for preserving and promoting aviation heritage in the region. A “sunset” provision designed to keep the commission from becoming a permanent federal bureaucracy required it to find a non-government successor to carry out the strategy by the end of 2003. It formed what’s now known as the National Aviation Heritage Alliance (NAHA), a nonprofit organization.
NAHA advocated for the creation of a U.S. National Heritage Area, which would be eligible for federal funding and technical assistance from the National Park Service. In 2004, Congress established an eight-county region surrounding Dayton as the National Aviation Heritage Area and designated NAHA as its management entity. NAHA works in partnership with the National Park Service, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force and numerous large and small aviation heritage partners. Its board also includes representatives of the tourism and aerospace industries. NAHA’s vision is for the Heritage Area to be the recognized center of aviation heritage tourism and aerospace innovation, sustaining the legacy of the Wright brothers. As this book went to press, NAHA was working with the National Park Service, the private developer Home Avenue Redevelopment LLC, the City of Dayton and others to secure and restore the Wright Company factory site. Once in the hands of the National Park Service and open to public visitation, the Wright Company factory site will complete the story of the Wright brothers in Dayton and the birth of America’s aerospace industry.
This artist’s rendering shows how the Wright Company factory might look as a unit of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. Courtesy of the National Aviation Heritage Area.