Orville's Last Workshop

For 30 years, Orville Wright worked from a plain brick building on North Broadway that contained a reception area for his secretary Miss Beck, an inner office with his desk, files, and drawing table, and a large work area across the back, with little besides a large wind tunnel to set it apart from other well-equipped machine shops. Built by Orville Wright in 1916 on a lot he and Wilbur bought in 1909, the one-story workshop was the place where, in the years after Wilbur’s death, Orville perfected the split-wing flap and the automatic stabilizer. Tom Crouch recounted that visiting reporters found the place quite ordinary, though it was hard to believe the inventor of the airplane was not at work there on some project that would eventually yield wonders, and he also recalled an incident in which two boys peered through the window and one mockingly answered that Orville was inventing. In 1976, Standard Oil of Ohio demolished the former Wright Aeronautical Laboratory to use the property to sell gasoline, though the gas station was never built.

Dayton, Ohio · United States