University of Dayton history

The first decade was eventful as the school burned to the ground in 1855, but it was rebuilt and grew to 100 students five years later.

By 1860, when Brother Zehler became president, the enrollment was nearly 100 students.

College preparatory classes started in 1861 along with a novitiate and school for Marianist candidates.

In 1882 the university was incorporated and empowered to confer collegiate degrees by the State of Ohio.

The Aviation Center has more Wright family artifacts than any place in the world, including the 1905 Wright Flyer III: the only airplane designated a National Historic Landmark, the world’s first practical flying machine, and what the Wright brothers considered their most important aircraft.

Inside the barn where Kettering and the Barn Gang invented the starter motor is a 1912 Cadillac.

In 1913 the most disastrous of a series of floods occurred in the area.

In 1920 the school was renamed for a fourth time and became the University of Dayton.

The first bowl game (well, in the bowl). Coach Harry Baujan called the plays in front of 10,000 fans at the first football game held in the new "football bowl" on campus in 1925.

In 1930, W.E.B. Du Bois, the great civil rights leader, scholar and author, wrote to the University of Dayton to ask for information on African American enrollment.

The first impromptu race organized by Scott was such a success that her arranged for a second race on August 19, 1933.

The 1934 race was won by Robert Turner of Muncie, Indiana.

Back at the University of Dayton, coeducation was introduced in 1935 to help boost enrollment during the Great Depression, and two years later enrollment reached 1,000.

By 1937, printing was the second largest industry in the United States.

Starting in the 1960s, the university began acquiring hundreds of single-family homes and duplexes in the neighborhoods adjacent to the campus for student housing, extending the campus to Brown Street. It reached more than 3,500 in 1950 with the return of the veterans and grew steadily.

Vowed Marianists governed the university until 1970, when the charter was amended and lay members joined the Board of Trustees.

In 1973, the two schools merged to become today’s Chaminade Julienne High School.

Established in 1984, CPRSS operates a 7.5 gauge (1/8th full-scale) miniature railroad at Carillon Historical Park.

Doctor Daniel Curran became the university’s first lay president in 2002.

In 2005, the university acquired a 49-acre parcel of land for $25 million that had once housed the cash register factory complex of the NCR Corp.

In 2007, the university built five new townhouses and renovated four homes in a Citirama project with the Home Builders Association of Dayton.

In 2009, the university announced the purchase of another 115 acres from NCR for $18 million, including the former NCR World Headquarters and Old River Park, the former NCR employees' recreation area, extending the campus to 373 acres.

In 2010, GE Aviation announced it would build the $51 million GE Aviation Dayton Electrical Power Research Lab research and development facility on eight acres of the campus, becoming the first major new development on the former NCR land.

In June 2014, The University of Dayton announced it will begin divesting coal and fossil fuels from its $670 million investment pool.