FEATURES

As we learned from our school textbooks, Wilbur and Orville Wright took flight in December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But the bachelor brothers spent years working in obscurity in an insular, six-block neighborhood west of downtown Dayton before their triumph. Here, as they ran bicycle shops and a tiny printing press, the Wright boys quietly solved aviation’s aerodynamic mysteries.

Their fame led to historic sites and monuments throughout Dayton, while their old stomping grounds along West Third Street decayed. In the 1980s, when the city planned to demolish the area, a group called Aviation Trail, Inc., threatened to form a human chain if bulldozers moved on the buildings where Wilbur and Orville once worked. The idealists prevailed. In the 1990s, the National Park Service, with the assistance of Aviation Trail, established the Wright-Dunbar Village at West Third and South Williams streets. Two restored Wright buildings are connected by an interpretive center, opened in 2003 for the centennial of flight. With the federal government anchor in place, millions of dollars of private money is pouring into the neighborhood to renovate dilapidated commercial buildings and build new homes in the original 19th-century style.

The Wright-Dunbar Village also recognizes Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African-American poet and novelist to win a global audience. (He’s known for composing in both standard English and in dialect.) Dunbar’s meteoric rise ended when he died of tuberculosis at age 33 in 1906. Pairing Dunbar with the Wrights isn’t just a geographical convenience; Dunbar and Orville were schoolmates, and the racially enlightened Wright brothers published Dunbar’s writings and his short-lived newspaper. Dunbar is even buried a few rows from the brothers in nearby Woodland Cemetery.

Even though there’s been a lot of work here, the village is far from fully restored, and the two most significant buildings have been long gone. In 1936, Henry Ford moved the Wright family’s home and the brothers’ last bicycle shop, where they built their first airplane, to the Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum near Detroit, where they are on display next door to each other. But don’t let that keep you from visiting Wright-Dunbar Village. You can walk in the Wright brothers’ footsteps—from where they lived with their sister Katharine, to their printing building and bicycle shops, and to their brother Lorin’s house. (Yes, there were more than two Wright brothers.)

The restored Wright Cycle Company building—the brothers’ fourth bicycle shop, operated 1895 through 1897—is the only one left in its original spot. While repairing bicycles here, the Wrights grew fascinated by manned flight after reading that famed glider pilot Otto Lilienthal of Germany crashed to his death. The building’s wildest artifacts are tiny bicycle parts found in “archeological digs” at the foundations of the other Wright bicycle shops.

Next door is the restored Hoover Block building, where the brothers operated a printing press from 1890 to 1895 on the second floor. Their old composing room now has its original equipment on loan from the Henry Ford Museum. The view from the window—of the remarkably still-intact 19th-century storefronts along Third Street—is the same one the brothers would have seen when they looked out. In the interpretive center adjoining the Hoover building, you can see a newspaper published by the Wrights, Dunbar’s books, and two short films: one about Dunbar, and another about the brothers’ aviation breakthroughs. Its computerized recreations of their flights demonstrate the danger involved in piloting these early contraptions. Also upstairs is a Parachute Museum, which initially seems odd, but you’re in Dayton. All aviation is fair game, and besides, early parachutes were tested here.

Informed and inspired, you’re ready to stroll the neighborhood. First, ask the Rangers about homes of note, because they’re private and not marked. The site of the Wright residence on Hawthorne Street, where Wilbur died in 1912 at age 45, has been empty since Henry Ford removed the house. Now, there’s a replica of the porch at the exact spot along the sidewalk as the original. A new home across the street has the same exterior of the original Wright home. It’s easy to imagine young Orville playing with a childhood buddy who lived in a tiny home down the street.

The Village is rarely crowded, attracting only about 15,000 people annually. The simple reason: Competition from Dayton’s more-established aviation sites. The nearby Aviation Center in Carillon Historical Park has many Wright exhibits, including the original 1905 Wright Flyer III, considered the world’s first “practical” aircraft. Before he died in 1948, Orville oversaw its restoration. And since September, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, bus tours from Carillon Historical Park run to Hawthorn Hill, the stunning mansion in the affluent Dayton suburb of Oakwood where Orville lived from 1913 until his death. Until now, it hasn’t been open to the general public.

The brothers flew their early Wright Flyers near today’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at the 84-acre Huffman Prairie Flying Field, which aviation historians consider equal to Kitty Hawk. Their hundreds of perilous flights here led to their achieving controllable aircraft. The Park Service and the USAF run the site and its interpretive center. There’s also the U.S. Air Force Museum, next to the Base. It’s among the world’s best aircraft museums.

But these prominent aviation sites make the quiet stroll through the Wright-Dunbar Village all the more inspiring. As we also learned in school, the Wright brothers seemingly came from nowhere to change the world. But that “nowhere” was in our backyard, and now you can see exactly where it was, and discover how it all began.

Itinerary: Trip Planning Details

Wright-Dunbar Village
22 S. Williams St., Dayton, (937) 225-7705, www.nps.gov/daav. Free admission. Open Mon–Sun 8:30 am–5 pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day. Things to see: Wright Cycle Shop, Hoover Block Building, Interpretive Center, and neighborhood tour. Also nearby, Dunbar House State Memorial (Information on hours: 937-224-7061).

Aviation Center at Carillon Historical Park
1000 Carillon Blvd., Dayton, (937) 293-2841, www.nps.gov/daav. Admission: $5–$8; $12–$15 with Hawthorn Hill Tour. Directions: I-75, take Dryden Road exit (#50A) south of downtown, north on Dryden, right on Arbor Blvd., right onto Carillon Blvd. Open Mon–Sat 9:30 am–5 pm, Sun noon–5. Things to see: Recreated Wright Cycle Shop, original Wright possessions, and the 1905 Wright Flyer III, which Orville Wright personally helped to restore.

Hawthorn Hill
901 Harman Ave., Oakwood, (937) 293-2841. Closed to the public until recently, shuttle bus tours now available from Carillon Historical Park. Guided tours Wed and Sat 10 am and 12:30 pm. Prepaid reservations are required. Admission: $12 for mansion tour only; $15 with Carillon Park tour. A fascinating trip into the private world of the eccentric Orville Wright, who lived here from 1913 until his death in 1948. The home’s interior is largely unchanged. Total time involved: 90 minutes. If you want to pass on the tour, but plan to simply drive by the home on this exquisite private street, stop for lunch or dinner at Oakwood’s lovely French restaurant C’est Tout – a Bistro, 2600 Far Hills Ave., Dayton, (937) 298-0022.

Originally published in the December 2007 issue.