You’re already a part of it. Let’s have some fun.
Send photos and stories to:
FrontStreetStories@gmail.com
Front Street Stories. So many voices reverberating, ghostlike, whispering, remnants of
workdays and rallies, discussions about textures, remarks about colors, eureka!
moments and curses, crashes and many hums of hmmm… Night sounds. Crowd
noises. So many great stories. Some of them are yours.
700 women climbing the stairs when Front Street was Mercantile Corporation. They left
stories in the form of grooves in the steps, took splinters from the handrails and left
them smooth for our touch. They generated a murmur that settled on the printed paper
they produced for the postal service – 7 million pieces per week – and that story
traveled to every city in the world and much of it remains in cabinets and boxes in
faraway places, unopened for decades, aye centuries, stories about numbers, pitches
and proposals, plans and apologies and unauthorized personal exchanges that
determined decisions and who knows what? There are stories at Front Street.
There are stories made of smoke that dissipated 100 years ago, settled as dust on
doors and was painted over. The story takes musical form, a slow improvisation of
percussion tinkling in the heat pipes and radiators with a drone background that rises
and falls in an extended performance from every fall until spring. Someone had a great
idea and spoke about it so evocatively it took the form of a painting that showed at
Front Street then sold and became a part of another story in a hallway with other vibes
entirely.
It’s history. No, it’s about people. No, it’s about place. It’s all about stories, yes.
You can still feel the sense of panic at the time of the flood, it is a story that is just in the
air. There are stories of scars and bones that didn’t set right, all parts of that great
shriek of celebration among the skaters when they ran Front Street. The hippies went
“OM” and “YUM” and “Yes! Yes!” and they sang songs and danced their stories. Other
people tell stories of a room with mirrors on the ceiling and walls and floor and everyone
who tells the story says “You didn’t hear it from me”.
We want to hear from you. Tell us stories.
Front Street Stories is a book taking shape. It is words and pictures, social media and
print. It tells of the times when Front Street was not a street at all. It was a canal. Part
of the Miami-Erie Canal. It informs us that Dayton was one of the early sites of large-
scale manufacturing powered by moving water. It’s about today’s artists, and about the
communal lifestyles that headquartered here.
We’d love to interview you. We’d like to publish your photos, get your name out there,
help you show your work. Let’s collaborate. We’ll create an understanding of how
magical and important this place has been and will continue to be. Send pictures and
we’ll credit the photographers. Send us an email and we’ll arrange a time to talk