N° 05 — Place

Oakwood, Ohio.

An established, family-oriented neighbourhood with historic charm — a small, walkable, tree-lined inner-ring suburb just south of Dayton. The Wright family lived here. So did much of the city that once built the world's airplanes, cash registers, and traffic signals. By most accounts, one of the most considered small communities in the American Midwest.

346 Corona Avenue, Oakwood Ohio — front exterior
Corona Avenue · OakwoodN° 06.01
1908
Incorporated as a village; chartered as a city the same year — small by deliberate design.
A+Niche grade
Oakwood City Schools — district graded A+ overall; high school placed among the top-ranked public high schools in Ohio.
1924Public safety
The country's second-oldest continuing consolidated public safety department — police and fire trained as one.
A small city, built carefully

Two-hundred-and-seventy-five feet higher than downtown.

Oakwood was advertised, after the catastrophic Dayton flood of 1913, as the higher ground above the city. The community grew quickly through the 1920s — and stopped, by choice, before it could become anything other than what it had set out to be.

01
Schools

Among Ohio's most-ranked.

Oakwood City Schools — a single small district serving roughly two thousand students PK–12 — has been near the top of every state-level public-school ranking for decades.

  • Niche district grade · A+
  • Oakwood High School · ranked in the top 25 public high schools in Ohio
  • Middle school · top 20 in Ohio
  • Two elementary schools · both A-graded
  • State proficiency · 88 % math · 90 % reading
  • Student–teacher ratio · 16 to 1

Buyers move here for the school district before they move for anything else.

02
Wright Brothers

Hawthorn Hill, six minutes' walk.

In 1914, Orville Wright moved into a house at the corner of Harman and Park Avenues. He had helped his brother Wilbur design it. Wilbur, who contracted typhoid fever in 1912, did not live to see it built.

Hawthorn Hill — a quiet Greek Revival on the hill — became Orville Wright's home until his death in 1948. It is now part of Dayton History; tours are open to the public. From 346 Corona, the house is a short walk through Oakwood's residential streets.

  • Hawthorn Hill · 901 Harman Ave
  • ~½ mile from 346 Corona
  • Open for guided tours via Dayton History

Aviation began in Dayton. It rested in Oakwood.

03
Daily life

Walkable to almost everything.

The shops and restaurants of "Far Hills Avenue" — Oakwood's small commercial spine — are within an easy walk of Corona. So is the Wright Memorial Public Library, and the parks, schools, and the city's three small commercial blocks.

  • Far Hills Avenue · cafés, shops, post office · ~5 min walk
  • Wright Memorial Public Library · ~6 min walk
  • Smith Memorial Gardens · ~3 min walk
  • Oakwood schools campus · ~10 min walk
  • Downtown Dayton · ~10 min drive
  • Dayton International Airport · ~25 min drive

A car is useful in Oakwood. It is not, day-to-day, required.

On the map

Where, exactly.

346 Corona Avenue, Oakwood, Ohio 45419. South of central Dayton; north of the Far Hills commercial corridor.

A small city that was finished a century ago — and has been carefully unchanged ever since.

For more on Oakwood's history, the Oakwood Historical Society maintains an archive of self-guided architectural tours, family histories, and the city's record of growth from village to its present form.