Photos and memories courtesy of Bob Thaman

The Arcade I remember was a noisy place. Sounds of people’s conversations, shouting, shoes hurriedly clicking and pounding to a destination on that hard terrazzo flooring. All of those sounds coming together, magnified and echoing under that majestic domed ceiling. But it wasn’t a harsh loudness.
It was a building totally alive, full of excitement. Happy faces, blank ones, down-trodden expressions. A mixture of poor people, well-heeled and common folk. We all came together like the smells and the sounds and made the Arcade a central gathering place in downtown Dayton.

Arcade bakery
Maybe twenty years or more earlier than in the 1970s, there was a bakery located towards the middle of the dome. I remember glass cases displaying trays of creme horns. Trays of glazed donuts, chocolate dipped donuts, all kinds of donuts. Danish rolls and pop-overs with real fruit fillings. Pecan rolls and coffee cakes. What I liked best on visits was the fresh bread smell that lingered enticingly in the air. And to watch people, mostly old ladies, buying bags of fresh white bread, salty ryes, rolls, buns, pastries and creme horns.
Creme Horns. Do people even know what they are today? The ones I see now are miniature to those the Arcade bakery sold. A good six inches long, almost three inches wide at the top where the white creme filling came spilling out. The delicate flaky, buttery pastry dusted with powder sugar.


Arcade dome
I always got a little dizzy walking into the middle section and looking up at that huge dome. From top middle center, eyes followed the lines of metal arms arching downward to the base. Where a protective railing went all the way around a catwalk. The ceiling looked empty and alone compared to what was going on below. I was told back then that the dome used to be clear glass but I remember it as being painted over in a pinkish beige. It’s now clear glass again







THE CORRIDOR
Quaint little shops lined both sides of the corridor leading from West Third into the center rotunda of the Arcade. Sibyl Hat Shop for women; a barber shop for men. A shoe repair, a jewelry store. A fresh fruit store that specialized in fruit baskets. A bar-lounge I was always curious of what it must have looked like inside but never entered, it looked too rough. A dry cleaner across from it.
These were real shops that served real needs. They were small, simple, not sophisticated, fancy boutiques. Men needed haircuts. People needed clothes cleaned, shoes repaired. A woman needed a hat because women needed hats. Just like a man might need a drink because some times men just needed a drink.



The lighted sign over the main entrance corridor off Third Street billed it as a shopping center. Probably posted at a time when that term was new and important. Shopping Center. Another sign below it said Arcade Food Market.
The Arcade I remember is just a slice out of time for the grand ol’ dame. Like a few slices out of a loaf of that fresh bread- from the late Fifties through the early Seventies.


The Arcade I remember surely wasn’t at all the Arcade that existed when it was new. Nor was it the Arcade of the Thirties or the war years. Someone who remembers it then would have a totally different picture from mine.

How different it was for her last make-over a decade and more ago in the late Eighties. When she got dusted off, painted and all dressed up. Let the sun shine in through her dome. She became a fashionable, upscale downtown mall with gold-gilded escalators and elevator.