The Eighth Tribe, 1979 (6. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1979-05-01 / 5. szám
Page 4 THE EIGHTH TRIBE May, 1979 Hired to build railway cars, the immigrants lived, shopped, played in their own little ... WALLED CITY Reprinted from Journal Herald of Dayton, Ohio, p. 21, Saturday, March 24, 1979. A war was fought in Dayton in the first decade of this century. The battlegrounds were the city’s newspapers, and the issue was a small ethnic community just outside the city’s northern boundaries. The community was one of Hungarians, about 500 people in all. They were not different from other immigrants in Dayton or America, but one thing attracted attention to them: Their homes were surrounded by a 12-foot wooden wall. The area, which covered 12 to 14 acres just off Leo Street, was called the Kossuth Colony, after Hungarian liberator Louis Kossuth. It was the brainchild of the directors of the Barney & Smith Car Co., manufacturers of railroad and trolley cars. The company, located at Keowee and Monument streets, had its heyday in the mid-1800s, when ornate passenger, dining and club cars were in great demand. Eliam Barney and Preserved Smith were capable businessmen who expanded their operations to meet the demand for the products of their master craftsmen. But, sales dropped during the depression of the 1890s, and, although the company switched to building traction and trolley cars, its fortunes were waning. Dear Mr. Chomos: Enclosed are two articles I thought you might like to reprint in the EIGHTH TRIBE. One was sent to me by my sister from the Dayton, Ohio newspaper. It concerns life in the American-Hungarian Community of Dayton around 1906. The other article, from the Ohio State University Lantern, tells about the university’s new fencing coach. I’m sure that many similar articles are appearing in newspapers around the country and that your EIGHTH TRIBE readers would enjoy them if they were printed, from time to time, in your monthly magazine. Perhaps this letter will encourage some of your “readers” to become “contributors” when they see an article that they think deserves a wider audience. Wherever we may live at present—scattered as we are throughout the United States—all of your readers share certain things in common: (1) a heritage that goes back across the Atlantic ocean to Magyarország, and (2) an interest in that heritage. Üdvözlettel, Arthur A. Bartfay Columbus, Ohio 43224 JOSEPH MOSCOWITZ They called him the ‘czar of Little Hungary' After 1900, more and more railroad companies replaced wooden cars with steel cars, but Barney & Smith was slow to meet the challenge. The company declined financially during the first decade of this century, limped through the war years, went into receivership and finally was dissolved in 1926. In 1905, Barney & Smith decided to build facilities for building steel railway cars. While the change came too late for the company to be a dominant force in the field, the decision was to make a significant mark on Dayton’s social history. The change to steel railroad car manufacturing MRS. ETHEL DELY
