This was part of an overall view of South Broad Street approaching Liberty Street. I searched in vain for additional advertisements relating to the Dayton House, but there were not dating back to the 1930's that I could find. However, as seen in the photo, it was alive and well in 1936.
Looks as though the Daytom House was alive, if not well until recently. The sign is still out front, but judging from the weeds and high grass growing in the sidewalk cracks, it hasn't been serving all that much lately.
ReplyDeleteYes, we walked by the place many times from Junior Four to our home in the Burg.
This is a great image of that part of town, which includes the First Mechanics National Bank (diagonally across the street from the old Liberty Tavern).
Another thing about the image: I tried a few times to grab and move the scroll bar at the side of the image, but it didn't work! ;-)
The Dayton House Pub was opened by my grandfather Joseph Smith in 1933. He received City Liquor License C-255 on 28 June 1934 after operating on a temporary State alcohol license. Before the repeal of Prohibition he ran a produce market in the premises which opened on 9 August 1928 (ad for "Smith's Produce Market, formerly Block's" in Trenton Times, 8 August). He had purchased the building on 2 February 1925 from John and Susan Heidi. Joseph and his wife Anna, and their 9 children, were living in Becco and Lundale, WV at the time and they rented the Trenton property to Edward Block who ran Block's Produce Market on the property. When the Smith's moved to Trenton, the Block family moved down S Broad where they opened White City Market. After Joseph's death in 1940, the business was taken over by his widow Anna who, with her sons, ran it until she sold it to Frank Kovacs in 1963. The family lived upstairs and Anna continued to live above the bar until the mid-1970s.
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