Poet & Printers

Ohio History

Dunbar Wallpaper

Finally, we reach the three historical figures for which the museum was named. What in the world does a picture of a wall have to do with this? Well, the sample of wallpaper above is actually over 100 years old, and do you know where it came from? The home of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, first internationally-known African-American poet and writer--and native of Dayton. This museum did not have many relics from the illustrious writer, since of course most are still at the Dunbar House, which we visited a while back. (Click right here for more info on Dunbar's life and story.)

But the Wright-Dunbar Center did have many quotes from Dunbar's poems, including one which seemed to lead into our next subject:

"What dreams we have, and how they fly,

Like rosy clouds across the sky."

Wright Printers

How their dreams did fly! Literally. But the Wright brothers did not start their career in the air. As boys, Orville and Wilbur Wright loved to invent and try new things. So it was only natural to open a printing shop in 1889 and publish their own newspaper, The West Side News. You can see a copy of the paper in the exhibit above, as well as some of the commercial orders the brothers did. But there's more: the Wright print shop also printed the Dayton Tattler, published by Paul Lawrence Dunbar himself.