The project took a significant step forward this week as the Roundhouse will be stabilized and the outside will be renovated.
Credit: Lisa Powell
Credit: Lisa Powell
“The Exposition Hall” was designed in 1874 by Dayton architect and contractor Leon Beaver.
It was completed in 1874 for $8,400.
It was ordered as a “round” house, but the building evolved into the eight-side building of today, according to a 1953 Journal Herald article.
It is not clear exactly why the roundhouse became an octagon, but Victorian author Orson Squire Fowler promoted the octagon as an alternative to the rectangular shape because it allows more room, according to Fairground record.
The octagonal structure, often referred to as the “Roundhouse,” is two stories tall and has a diameter of approximately 150 feet. It was one of the original buildings constructed at the site.
The then-newly organized Fair Association voted in 1874 to hold its first annual exhibition that fall, according to research done by the City of Dayton for a National Register of Historic Places registration form.
Credit: TY GREENLEES / STAFF
Credit: TY GREENLEES / STAFF
On display in the Exhibition Hall the first year were “household appliances, including heating and cooking stoves and grates, furniture, pianos and organs, sewing machines and jewelry,” reported the Sept. 22, 1874 edition of the Herald Empire.
The 1953 reconstruction of the Roundhouse paid tribute to Ralph C. Haines, the secretary-manager and director of the Montgomery County agricultural board.
Credit: Photo: Amelia Robinson
Credit: Photo: Amelia Robinson
It was rededicated Sept. 7, 1953, in his memory.
The $55,000 overhaul included cement floors and a maple floor on the second level.
“Wooden beams were replaced with steel, and noise-proof ceilings were put in and the ‘long haul’ stairways to the second floor entirely rebuilt,” according to the Journal Herald article.
Credit: Photo: Amelia Robinson
Credit: Photo: Amelia Robinson
After the 1978 Great Blizzard, more than $23,886 in repairs were made after a portion of the roof collapsed during heavy snowfall, according to Montgomery County agricultural records.
When the fair wasn’t going on, the Roundhouse held A.B. Hallum furniture store, owned by Andrew Bradley Hallum.
• PHOTOS: The Roundhouse at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds
The Roundhouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
The building hailed as “magnificent” by the 1882 “History of Montgomery County,” was noted in the application as the largest of five still surviving eight-sided halls constructed in Ohio between 1871 and 1889.
Today the building remains an iconic landmark in the city.