University of Dayton Ghetto

The University of Dayton South Student Neighborhood (formerly and colloquially Ghetto) is a neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio, that is home to upperclassmen at the University of Dayton (UD). It is an example of a form of housing called a student ghetto. Houses in the neighborhood are leased to students, an arrangement that resembles both traditional university housing and a landlord/tenant relationship. The neighborhood is also known as the South Student Neighborhood, a term commonly used by the university.

Tracing its history back to the 1870s, the Ghetto now includes more than 200 university-owned houses as well as landlord-owned houses, high-density housing and gathering spaces. With the inclusion of Holy Angels and The Darkside, two smaller neighborhoods the university owns property in, there are more than 400 houses currently used as student residential space. Because of the area's age, the university has been engaged in a program to renovate and update the Ghetto, and several additional changes to the neighborhood are expected in the coming years as part of the university's Master Plan.

The Ghetto is south of downtown Dayton but north of the city of Oakwood. The Great Miami River is just more than half a mile to the west, and Interstate 75 is just more than a mile to the west. In its current form, it is bounded by Brown Street to the west, Irving Avenue to the south, Trinity Avenue and Evanston Avenue to the east, and Caldwell Street and Stonemill Road to the north. This gives the area a roughly triangular shape.

The land on which the Ghetto now sits was owned by John Henry Patterson until the mid-1870s. The land was then divided between suburban housing lots to the east and the NCR factory to the west. The original proprietors of the neighborhood were Thomas S. Babbitt, Dr. Joseph E. Lowes, R. D. Hughes and Harry Kiefaber. The area was known as the town of Babbitt, and in its original form included only four streets: Lowes Street, Kiefaber Street, Hughes (now Stonemill Road) and Wead (now Lawnview Avenue). This core area was measured at 47 acres (190,000 m²).

The NCR Corporation used Babbitt as housing for its workers. In 1906, the area was annexed by the city of Dayton and continued on as a middle-class neighborhood. The University of Dayton, Babbitt's neighbor to the northeast, began to buy available houses in the neighborhood in the 1950s as an experiment in off-campus housing. By the 1970s, the student population of the area was growing rapidly.

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