Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park

By 1900 Dayton's West Side was a thriving neighborhood of working-class homes and small businesses. Some residents commuted to downtown Dayton by streetcar. Others, like Wilbur and Orville Wright, lived and worked in this community.

The brothers walked between their home on Hawthorne Street, one block to the south, and their print shop in the Hoover Block, the large building on the street corner. At "Wright & Wright, Job Printers" on the second floor, they printed local circulars and published their own papers and newsletter, such as the West Side News and Snap Shots.

In 1892 the Wrights started a new business, a bicycle shop on West Third Street. Over the next 20 years, in various West Side shops, the brothers designed and built bicycles—-and then airplanes. Even after building a grand home in nearby Oakwood, Orville still went to work daily in his West Side laboratory.Paul Laurence Dunbar-Dunbar went on to achieve international fame as a poet, author, lyricist,. and powerful reader of verse. He set one of his novels and several short stories in fictional Ohio towns that resembled Dayton. Dunbar returned to Dayton in 1903 and purchased a comfortable brick home on the West Side. He died there of tuberculosis at age 33.

(Inscription under the photo on the bottom left side)

A scene on West Third Street around 1912

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Show me all markers in:  Dayton, OH  |  Montgomery County  |  45402  |  Ohio  |  United States of America

Wheels to Wings
Birthplace of Aviation
Preserved and Enshrined
The Neighborhood Geniuses
We were always happy on Hawthorne Street...
Wright Brothers Home Base
31 Years at the Lab
The Professor of the Propeller
Orville's Last Workshop
Coming Home

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