Hours: Dunbar House is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Sundays hours are noon to 5 p.m.
Cost: Admission is $2.50 for adults and $1 for children.
Directions: From downtown Dayton, drive west on West Third Street to Paul Laurence Dunbar Street. The house is 2 1/2 blocks north of West Third Street.
More info: Phone 224-7061.
The morning light came and went and came again upon the porch of Dunbar House as LaVerne Sci spun stories about Dayton's most famous poet.
"Paul Laurence Dunbar was a low-key person, a likable man whose legacy grew greatly after his death," said Sci, site manager of the house, a state memorial since 1938.
Of all the historic sites in the Miami Valley, Dunbar House evokes some of the most vivid images of times long past.
Perhaps that's because the two-story, red-brick dwelling at 219 N. Paul Laurence Dunbar St. looks much the same as it did when Dunbar lived there from 1903 to 1906.
In Dunbar's upstairs bedroom, one of the poet's suits is laid out on the bed.
Another room - Dunbar's book-lined study - holds his typewriter, eyeglasses and the ottoman-like bed where he died of tuberculosis in 1906 at age 33.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, who grew up in poverty, published more than 400 poems. Another 200 of his works remain unpublished.
When Dunbar entered Dayton's Central High School he was the only black student in his class, Sci said.
To help support his mother, Matilda, and his two half-brothers, he worked a number of odd jobs. He cleaned furnaces and mowed lawns. Later he worked for $4 a week as an elevator operator at the old Callahan Building in downtown Dayton.
Many of the more than 5,000 people who visit Dunbar House each year are out-of-towners, according to Sci.
"Mr. Dunbar's poems remain popular all over the country. More than 58 high schools bear his name and there are cities named Dunbar in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida," she said.
Sci looked around the room where the poet died.
"At the moment he died, he was reciting the 23rd Psalm. He said 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of death. . . .' And then he was gone," she said.
Then she remembered something else.
"One day a man from California came to see the house. Standing on the porch, he began to sob. He told me, 'This is a pilgrimage I have always wanted to make but never did. Now I am here.' "
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