The vacant site sits in a residential area, though it’s just east of a Dollar General and other businesses along Salem Avenue.
Carillon Historical Park is now home to the original Deeds barn, which is located in the park’s Heritage Center of Dayton Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship.
The park also has a replica of the barn that houses exhibits about the lives and work of inventors Charles Kettering and Col. Deeds.
Deeds, Kettering and a group of friends invented the electric automobile ignition and the electric automobile self-starter inside the barn, according to Dayton History.
“The history of the Deeds family reads like science fiction,” said Dan Barton, who is spearheading the project.
Barton, who has been heavily involved in historic preservation projects in Grafton Hill, says he plans to seek federal and state historic tax credits to recreate Deeds’ barn and home.
The reconstructed home likely will have multiple residential units and there will be at least one unit in the barn, he said.
He said he expects the units would start off as apartments but later would become condos.
“We’re not trying to become a museum. We’re not going to try to tell a story that is programmatic,” Barton said. “We are reconstructing our historic district and this site.”
The barn and home would be placed on the site exactly where the original structures stood, he said.
Barton said historic rehabilitation guidelines and standards state that the reconstruction of historic properties are eligible for historic preservation tax credits.
Barton said this project will be similar to one that reconstructed a governor’s mansion in Williamsburg, Virginia.
“This is about re-establishing the (historic) district’s appearance,” Barton said. “It certainly will change the streetscape on Central Avenue.”
Carillon Historical Park has a replica of Deeds barn that was built in the 1940s before the park opened in 1950, said Brady Kress, president of Dayton History, which owns and operates the park.
The original Deeds Barn was moved from Central Avenue to another park and then to a museum before Carillon Historical Park took possession of the structure.
The original barn is inside of the Carillon park museum and the replica is outside, in the park’s village.
The replica has a tribute to Col. Deeds, and the display includes a 1912 Cadillac, the first-electrified cash register, a Liberty engine and a Class 2000 bank machine.
The original carriage house, which is where Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. was formed (DELCO) in 1909, has some “battle wounds” after being converted into housing during World War II and after being moved three times, Kress said.
Kettering spent so much time at the barn that he was known as the “hayloft inventor,” Kress said.
“In 1908, 1909, Kettering was practically living in the upstairs part of the barn as he was working on the DELCO inventions,” he said.
Kress said he really likes the idea of constructing a replica home and barn on the Central Avenue site.
“It returns some of the historic context to the neighborhood, which is great,” he said. “It’s a neat project.”
Barton recently asked the Landmark Commission for a letter of support to help with a tax credit application.
The commission agreed to provide a letter declaring that the Deeds property is a contributing property in the historic district and it is one of most historic sites in the area.
“I think it’s a great plan,” said Fred Holley, a member of the Landmark Commission.
Preservation Dayton Inc. and the Grafton Hill Association Inc. already have provided letters of support for the project.
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