Dayton is a city in southwestern Ohio, United States with a population of 166,179 (2000). It is the county seat and largest city of Montgomery County. The Greater Dayton area or Dayton metropolitan area encompasses a number of contiguous communities outside Dayton city proper, including Vandalia, Trotwood, Kettering, Centerville and Beavercreek, with a population of 848,153 (2000). Dayton is situated within the Miami Valley region of Ohio, just north of the Cincinnati metropolitan area.

Unlike many Midwestern cities of its age, Dayton has very broad and straight downtown streets (generally two full lanes in each direction), facilitating access to the downtown even after the automobile became popular. The main reason for the broad streets was that Dayton was a marketing and shipping center from its beginning: streets were broad to enable wagons drawn by teams of three to four pairs of oxen to turn around. In addition, some of today's streets were once barge canals flanked by draw-paths.

A courthouse building was constructed in downtown Dayton in 1888 to supplement Dayton's original Neoclassical courthouse, which still stands. This second, "new" courthouse has since been replaced with new facilities as well as a park.

Dayton's nine historic neighborhoods — Oregon, Wright-Dunbar, Dayton View, Grafton Hill, McPherson Town, Webster Station, Huffman, Saint Anne's Hill, and South Park — feature mostly single-family houses and mansions in the Neoclassical, Jacobethan, Tudor Revival, English Gothic, Chateauesque, Craftsman, Queen Anne, Georgian Revival, Colonial Revival, Renaissance Revival, Shingle, Prairie, Mission Revival, Eastlake/Italianate, American Foursquare, and Federal styles of architecture.[2]

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