Building #7

Once a factory, now an apartment block

My original promise not to post about my PhD research fell by the wayside with Building #6 (though a structure is yet to be identified). This post will be about an actual building and is assisted by someone else’s research, but it’s relevant to a strand of my own thesis write-up.

The building is to be found in a North American city. This was a place once thriving with manufacturing industry at the time the building was constructed about a century ago. It’s in a US State located towards the East Coast of the great continent which includes part of a Great Lake. If your geography is up to scratch, the State Capital is called Columbus after the famous Italian explorer who ‘discovered’ America. But the city I’m thinking about is well to the west, about halfway to Indianapolis. The below photo of it comes courtesy of https://www.goodfreephotos.com .

Of course the city is Dayton, Ohio. Where? Dayton, Ohio.

Yes I know, it doesn’t stand out as a famous place unless perhaps you live there. According to Wikipedia it’s the birthplace of Orville Wright, of the flying brothers fame, and in 2007 was put into a list of the top 100 cities in America. It is also the place where the huge NCR Corporation was founded in 1884, known then as National Cash Register, which is the very product it manufactured until computers took over and we now have modern PoS devices in our shops.

Building #7 had an indirect link to NCR. Back at the start of the 20th century, two members of the corporation’s staff set up their own electrical business to supply ignition systems to the burgeoning American automobile industry; the manufacture of the vehicles became the focus of on another US city, Detroit or Motor City, not far from Dayton. The new enterprise eventually took the name Delco (it was originally ‘Dayton Engineering Laboratories company’) after setting up a range of manufacturing premises in Dayton. One of these is Building #7.

The connection with Detroit is helpful. In 1910 Henry Ford opened the world’s first continuous assembly-line factory for his Model-T car at Highland Park in what is now a much dilapidated part of the city (fortunately the empty building still stands, but for how long?). The factory was striking by both its sheer scale and the number of large glass windows it contained, hence the description ‘daylight factory’ that was applied to an American industrial architectural typology of the pre-First World War period. One aspect of my PhD research is examining the influence of the technical features of such a building since it was constructed using a reinforced concrete system. The below photo was taken in 2008 (original and credits here).

Which brings us to Delco Lofts, a recent loft apartment development in Dayton, Ohio. Does it? Yes it does, but you need to know a bit more first.

A few days ago I found a Masters thesis in Architecture undertaken at the University of Washington in 2015. The title was music to my ears. The researcher had focused on a handful of ‘daylight factories’ in Dayton of which one was a former Delco manufacturing premises. At the time of researching there were development proposals afoot, spurred by local tax incentives for historic preservation. To my delight a quick Google search led me to the website for Delco Lofts, the finished renovation project. Below is a photo I’ve taken from the website of the former Delco 1 ‘daylight factory’ (note: I’m giving them free publicity in this post, but the image shouldn’t be used for commercial purposes).

I’m not sure what you think of this building but I love it! Given the chance I would quite willingly travel all the way to Dayton just to experience the inside. For me it is an excellent example of how we can preserve our industrial heritage. I’d love to show you more photos of the original building as it was first constructed in 1912, and then subsequently in a state of dilapidation prior to the recent renovation, but there are limits to how much non-public domain media I can share in this post. If and when I publish my thesis then perhaps more will feature then and I can come back to this post - but first I need to submit …