City Hall building shown above shortly after it was built in the early 1930's.
In the early 1930’s, the City of Dayton was in the planning stages of building a new City Hall building. According to the minutes from a Dayton City meeting, the commission drew up a resolution for the purchase of land from Birdie Waterhouse. Dr. G.V. Taylor Sr. was the Mayor, while Sue K. Hicks was the City Recorder. Commissioners W.T. Boyd and F.R. Rogers joined Mayor Taylor in the decision.
Prior to the new building, the city offices were housed upstairs over a laundry business in a building at the intersection of Main and Market Street.
Due to economic necessities, some of the bricks had been salvaged from when the old Rhea Central High School building on East 4th Ave. was torn down to make way for the new high school building at the same location. The new City Hall building was built using some of the salvaged bricks from the old High School.
The labor was paid for by the Federal government under the Work Projects Administration (WPA). The new building consisted of office spaces downstairs for the various departments. It also housed the city’s fire truck and the police dept. Upstairs were several apartments that were rented. Several tenants would come and go over the years.
In the past, the late Gertrude Neal and the late Billie Coulter Garrison had spoken about living in the apartments above the fire hall. Gertrude had said that it was not all that noisy. They rarely blew their sirens. Billie described their apartment as having a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bath.
Jimmy Cunnyngham has fond remembrances having located his first photography business upstairs from 1960 through 1963.
A new City Municipal building was built on First Ave in 1964 and most of the offices from the Main Street building moved to the new location. The Police and Fire Department remained until 1977 when the new Police and Fire Complex was built on south Market Street.
The building sat empty and was used for storage only until it was torn down in 1980.
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