Notre Dame, breweries tell us history is fragile
Notre Dame burning on April 15. Photo: LeLaisserPasserA38 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) The flames that erupted through the roof of the majestic Notre Dame de Paris last week gave us a shocking reminder of the fragile nature of history. Architecture is a part of the record of our existence on earth. Old buildings tell us what times were like in our communities and around the world before we came. They're like postcards from the past. When it comes to breweries, a lot of those postcards are missing. When I researched Dayton Beer: A History of Brewing in the Miami Valley , I wanted to locate as many original breweries as I could. Dayton itself had so many I had to make a map to help me keep track of them. Map of old Dayton breweries. Composite graphic by Timothy R. Gaffney, with 1875 and 1869 maps. But when I went looking for them, I found very few still standing. In most cases, newer buildings, parks or parking lots had replace...