Integrated Learning-Living Communities

Local author (“Lost Dayton”) and librarian Andrew Walsh treated the BEES (Business Ethics and Environmental Sustainability integrated living learning community) to a historical slideshow and walking tour of downtown Dayton in April 2024 to reveal buildings it has lost (economic or natural disasters) and buildings it has saved, due to heroic efforts — both public and private, including the Preservation Dayton.

This tour featured blue skies, so there was no threat of a repetition of the 1913 Dayton flood, but students traced the path of the canals that once crisscrossed the city and also noted the transformation of former factory sites (printers, such as the father of the Wright brothers, DELCO, or Kettering’s electric ignitions for combustion engines, enabling Henry Ford to do away with cranks on his Model T et al., as well as GM and GE-Frigidaire (unfortunately the source of leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — all now being converted to condos and commercial space.