Written with the help of AI from Preservation Dayton’s endangered properties pages and archived copies of its earlier lists.
A roadside diner the City just bought for a police headquarters, the hangars where the Wright brothers built airplanes, and a corner of North Main Street that was once Riverdale’s downtown are all on Preservation Dayton’s list of the city’s ten most endangered historic properties. Residents nominate properties, and the group’s Endangered Properties Committee picks the ten it most wants to save. The group uses the list to raise money and to find buyers before these buildings are lost.
Five of the ten are in the City of Dayton’s own historic districts: Dayton View, Grafton Hill and St. Anne’s Hill. Most of the others are downtown or on the West Side. Here is each property and why it’s at risk.
1. Diner on St. Clair and the Power House block, downtown
The Diner on St. Clair began around 1955 as Bill’s Diner in Canton. In 1987 it was trucked to Dayton and set down at St. Clair and East Fourth. Preservation Dayton calls it an O’Mahony dining car, a factory-built style of diner that is getting hard to find anywhere in the country. The old power plant next door at 118 E. Fourth St. is a contributing building in the Downtown Dayton Historic District.
In 2025 the City Commission approved spending $1.4 million to buy both parcels for a new downtown police headquarters. That plan could mean demolishing both buildings. At that meeting, Preservation Dayton asked the city to look at other city-owned buildings first. It has since gotten a quote from the contractor that originally set the diner on its foundation to move it across the intersection. Before the city bought the site, a defense contractor had proposed turning the power house into a research and business center.
2. Wright Airplane Factory, West Dayton
Hangars 1 and 2 at US 35 and Abbey Avenue were built between 1910 and 1916 for the Wright Company. They’re the oldest aircraft factory buildings still standing in the world. The site became part of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park’s boundary in 2009, and the City of Dayton owns it.
A fire on March 26, 2023 badly damaged the hangars. Preservation Dayton says they’re still open to the weather, and the front of Hangar 1 has since collapsed. The city has received at least $4 million in congressional earmarks for the site. A redevelopment plan the city commissioned includes options that would demolish the two historic hangars. Contamination on the site has also held up the National Park Service taking it over. The new West Dayton police station is already built on the property.
3. Dayton Daily News Building, Fourth and Ludlow
Newspaper owner and future governor James M. Cox had this building put up between 1908 and 1910, designed by Albert Pretzinger. Cox’s autobiography says a banker turned him down for a loan, so he told his architect to build him a bank. The Beaux-Arts design, with Corinthian columns, is modeled on the Knickerbocker Trust building in New York.
The building has been empty since the paper moved out in 2007. A 2014 plan to fold it into student housing fell apart, and the 1922 addition along Fourth Street was demolished by mistake. The demolition contractor took the building to settle a lien. The original front doors have been removed. Preservation Ohio named it one of the state’s most endangered sites in 2017 and 2019. Preservation Dayton notes that it’s for sale for $1.25 million, across the street from the renovated Dayton Arcade.
4. Santa Clara Business District, North Main Street
The stretch of North Main around Santa Clara Avenue grew up in the 1920s as Riverdale’s own shopping and entertainment strip. Its landmarks include the 1896 Flatiron Building, the curved brick Smith Building, and the Riverdale Theatre building, which once had a 1,000-seat theater and a bowling alley. Most of the storefronts now sit empty.
Here there’s progress to report. Preservation Dayton got the district listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2024. That makes renovations eligible for up to 55% in combined federal and state historic tax credits, and the area is also a city Community Reinvestment Area for property tax abatement. The group also used a county arts grant to paint the boarded-up storefronts to look like the shops that used to be there.
5. First English Lutheran / Second German Baptist Church, St. Anne’s Hill
This empty 1872 church in the St. Anne’s Hill Historic District has housed several congregations. It got a new roof in 2020, but Preservation Dayton says stained-glass windows are hanging loose or have fallen out, leaving the inside open to weather. A previous owner got approval to convert it to condos, but nobody is working on saving it now. Preservation Ohio added it to its statewide most-endangered list in 2026. Preservation Dayton hopes the attention brings a buyer who can use historic tax credits to stabilize and reuse it.
6. John R. Reynolds Mansion, East Dayton
This 12,000-square-foot Second Empire house was built in the 1860s or early 1870s on what was then a farm hilltop. It has a mansard roof covered in patterned slate, a tower, and 15-foot ceilings. The Montgomery County Historical Society has called it an exemplary Midwest example of the style. It was divided into 15 apartments during World War II. After vandals gutted it in the 1970s, a nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital restored it with a HUD loan and years of her own work.
It later declined again. The city put it on its building code violation list in 2009, and a new owner bought it in 2019. When Preservation Dayton trustees toured it that year, water damage was eating at the roof, the upper floors and the rear addition. The original porches are gone.
7. Van Deman Apartments, Dayton View
Lawyer John N. Van Deman built this Jacobethan apartment building in 1908 for upper-class tenants and lived there himself. It has a slate roof, diamond-pane bay windows and mahogany and oak inside. It was later divided into more apartments. A fire around 2012 damaged two units and left the building empty. Since then it has sold for $1,000, then for $50,000 in 2017. A plan to restore it with grant money never came together.
8. Leopold Rauh House, Dayton View
Albert Pretzinger also designed this 24-room house, built around 1909 for Leopold Rauh, president of the Egry Register Company. It was fully restored as the Dayton Philharmonic’s Decorators’ Show House in the 1980s. Preservation Dayton says most of that work has since been lost. The group points out that the current owners won a Dayton View neighborhood award in 2024 for restoring other houses nearby, and it hopes they’ll take on this one next.
9. A. H. Kemper House, Dayton View
Built around 1906 for Alfred H. Kemper, vice president of the Gem City Boiler Company, this house follows a design (pattern #149) sold by Michigan architect D.S. Hopkins, with the floor plan reversed. It later became the Yale Manor Nursing Home. The house lost its porch in stages between 2015 and 2021. The roof over the nursing home addition has been failing since about 2014, and its assessed value fell from about $203,000 to $54,400. Preservation Dayton says it’s currently for sale by the owner.
10. Michael Neil House, Grafton Hill
This brick Queen Anne house in the Grafton Hill Historic District went up around 1898 for Michael Neil, who platted the Wolf Creek area. Its later owners included the president of the Seybold Machine Company and a well-known violinist. From 1940 on it served as a rest home, nursing home, boarding house and adult foster care home. Preservation Dayton says it has been empty for years. The carriage house behind it was torn down after a fire in the 1990s.
How the list has changed since 2021
Preservation Dayton publishes the list every year, and comparing this year’s list with earlier versions of the group’s page shows which buildings were saved, which were lost and which have stayed stuck.
The 2021 list had the Louis Traxler Mansion, the Leopold Rauh House, the Michael Neil House, the Dayton Daily News Building, the Van Deman Apartments, the Thomas E. Tucker House, the Gem City Ice Cream Building, the John R. Reynolds Mansion, the Santa Clara Business District and the Edward T. Snediker House. The Dayton Daily News covered the selection at the time.
Six are still on the list five years later: the Dayton Daily News Building, the Reynolds Mansion, the Rauh House, the Neil House, the Van Deman Apartments and the Santa Clara Business District. Santa Clara is the only one of the six where real work has happened.
Lost
- Edward T. Snediker House, Dayton View: the city demolished it in August 2022 because it was close to collapse.
- Gem City Ice Cream Building, West Third Street: torn down in September 2022. The Landmarks Commission had voted in 2021 to deny the city’s request to demolish it, but the Board of Zoning Appeals overturned that decision. The city’s demolition contract saved 500 bricks.
- Louis Traxler Mansion, 42 Yale Ave., Dayton View: gutted by fire in April 2023. Preservation Dayton got an estimate of just under $1 million to stabilize the shell. A second fire that August led to an emergency demolition two days later.
- First Church of Christ, Scientist, 105 Sawmill Road: lost in 2024, after a demolition permit was issued for a planned new home on the site. The neighborhood has no local historic zoning, so the group had no legal way to stop it.
- Ohmer Garage, behind the Victoria Theatre: added to the list in 2023 and named one of Ohio’s most endangered sites that year. It was demolished in 2026, and the city made a laser scan of the facade first.
Preservation Dayton also tracks historic buildings lost that were never on its top ten. They include the Benjamin Stoner House on East Third Street in 2021 and Fout Hall at the former United Theological Seminary on Harvard Boulevard in 2024.
Saved or improved
- South Park Methodist Church was saved in 2021, when the University of Dayton and Premier Health announced plans for a health care building that kept the church.
- Thomas E. Tucker House on West Grand Avenue came off the list in 2023 after its owners stabilized it and rebuilt the porch to match the original. The same owners now hold the Rauh House.
- Santa Clara Business District is still on the list, but it’s the clearest progress story: it was listed on the National Register in 2024, opening up historic tax credits, and its boarded storefronts were painted that year.
- The Dayton Arcade, a 2017 Preservation Ohio pick that Preservation Dayton nominated, has been restored.
New this year
Four properties were added this year: the Diner on St. Clair and Power House block, the Wright Airplane Factory, the First English Lutheran / Second German Baptist Church and the A. H. Kemper House. They join the six holdovers to make ten. The City of Dayton owns two of the new four, the diner site and the airplane factory.
What happens next
Preservation Dayton’s committee raises money to stabilize properties like these or to gain control of them, through an Endangered Property Fund at the Dayton Foundation. That fund has grown. In late 2021 the group’s page showed about $16,000 raised toward a $100,000 goal. Today it shows $300,000 toward a $1 million goal.
To nominate a building or ask about one of these, you can reach Preservation Dayton through the form on its endangered properties page, by email at preservationdayton@gmail.com, or at 937-234-7475.
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