The Huffman Historic District is a historic section of the Historic Inner East neighborhood in

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...

, United States. Formed at the end of the nineteenth century primarily by a wealthy businessman, it has long been home to people of many different occupations and numerous places on the social ladder. After seeing very few changes throughout the twentieth century, it was named a historic site in the 1980s. William P. Huffman was both a banker and a real estate developer; although some of the land in the neighborhood had already been developed before Huffman became involved, he spurred development by arranging for the construction of a

street railway A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...

on Third Street. The area's early residents occupied numerous places on the socioeconomic spectrum, ranging from laborers to merchants and artisans to executives. Their presence together in the neighborhood can still be seen in the

built environment The term built environment refers to human-made conditions and is often used in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, among others. These curated spaces provide the setting for human ac ...

, most of which was built between 1870 and 1890.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 2. St. Clair Shores: Somerset, 1999, 1042. Several major architectural styles of the late nineteenth century appear in the district, including the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

, Italianate, and Queen Anne.City of Dayton Historic District
, City of Dayton, n.d. Accessed 2013-12-17. Although the district's peak period of growth ended by 1890, construction continued over the next decade, but virtually nothing was built after 1900. Minimal changes since that time have left the neighborhood resembling its appearance of over a century ago, preserving it as an example of late 19th-century developmental patterns. In mid-1982, the Huffman Historic District was officially declared and listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, qualifying both because of the buildings' well preserved architecture and because of the entire district's connection to William P. Huffman. One of nineteen National Register-listed historic districts in the city, it is located immediately northeast of another, Saint Anne's Hill. The district comprises properties on sixteen streets in eastern Dayton, almost directly to the east of

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

.National Register Districts: City of Dayton, Ohio
, City of Dayton Department of Planning and Community Development, 2011-02. Accessed 2013-12-18. Its boundaries encompass , more than ⅛ of a square mile. At the time the district was designated, it comprised 668 buildings, of which 663 were deemed

contributing properties In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

and 5 non-contributing; the ratio of contributing to non-contributing is far higher than in most historic districts in the United States, reflective of the lack of construction within the district since 1900.

References

External links

Neighborhood website
{{National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Italianate architecture in Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Montgomery County, Ohio Neighborhoods in Dayton, Ohio Queen Anne architecture in Ohio

See also

References

External links