Historic South Park, Incorporated Records

The Historic South Park, Incorporated Records document the organization's actions to regulate, govern and improve the South Park Historic District. Researchers will gain insight into issues facing the District, as well as the group's attempts at keeping it beautiful. Records are incomplete, as fire destroyed nearly all records prior to 1980.

Series I, Administrative Papers, documents the weekly dealings of the organization. This series consists mainly of Executive Council and General Assembly meeting minutes, as well as minutes of various other committees. Included as well are the organization's founding Constitution and Bylaws, membership lists, financial documents and incoming and outgoing correspondence. Correspondence is divided into incoming and outgoing, to keep original order of collection.

Series II, Marketing and Events, consists of newsletters produced by South Park and the city of Dayton, newspaper articles and other documents. The majority of this series contains information on South Park's many events, namely their themed Home Tours, Rehabarama and Summerfest events.

Series III, Architecture and Infrastructure, includes files on numerous residences, businesses and landscape initiatives within South Park. It is split into two Subseries, Architecture and Infrastructure, and Organizational Grants. Subseries IIIA contains files on numerous residences, businesses and landscape features (photos and files mostly relating to restoration), Parks Committee meeting minutes, Public Events Committees meeting minutes, and zoning documents along with a wide variety of architecture and landscape planning and documentation. Numerous photos and files of individual residences are contained in this Subseries. Subseries IIIB contains a multitude of organizational grant proposals and paperwork, including grants responsible for the improvement of Blommel Park, the creation of the Tot Lot, and installation of the District's wooden boundary signs. Nearly every community improvement project were funded through these grants.

Series IV, Community Affairs, contains newspaper articles, documents and files relating to the South Park community and Dayton as a whole. This series covers controversies relating to historic architecture guidelines, class conflict issues, and zoning issues. Series IV also provides several historical sketches of South Park, contains the files of the South Park Preservation Works, and several University of Dayton student projects focused on the South Park community.

Series V, Audiovisual and Memorabilia contains numerous pieces of memorabilia containing either HSPI's name or South Park's logo. Media items include a VHS tape, South Park Soliloquy, a DVD copy of South Park's annual "Shakespeare in the Park" theatre show, and a data disc containing scans of two photo albums. Fragile items are separated into a separate box (Box 12).