Screened linen. Some fading on the bottom right quadrant (it was folded for many years and that section was on top and exposed to light), otherwise in very good condition.
The earliest examples of the specific “Dayton Bicycles” logo that we have been able to locate are from 1918, so that is currently our
terminus post quem for the item.
A
version of the following was originally posted on the Classic and Antique Biccyle Exchange (CABE) in 2020.
This was bequeathed to me along with a number of other interesting items by my Great-Uncle Robert Reynolds Huffman (“Uncle Bob”) when he died in 2007. He was the youngest of my grandfather’s four siblings. He and my Aunt Gay moved from Dayton to Arcadia, California (near Pasadena) in 1967 to work in what was the new plant in Azusa, California.
When my father got out of the Navy in 1966 (I think), he and my mother moved to nearby La Verne, California, so my father could work in the Azusa plant. I was born in 1966, and we moved to Sacramento in 1971 when I was five. Even so, I have a good number of memories of Uncle Bob and Aunt Gay’s house in Arcadia. I have one memory of going to the Huffy plant with my father.
An interesting sideline: In a bunch of places around the border (not visible since framed) is an ink stamp (see image): “W. Warren Fenton / Bicycle Sundries and Repairing / 211 West Water Street / Elmira, N.Y.”
After about 15 minutes of internet sleuting I found the three attached postcards on the
Chemung County (NY) Historical Society webpage.
According to the website, William Warren Fenton served in the American Expeditionary Force during WWI from July 1918 until sometime in 1919, and sent 15 postcards back to his wife that are in their archives.
Presumably he got into hawking “bicycle sundries and repairs” upon his return in 1919. How it made its way from William Warren Fenton to Uncle Bob we’ll never know.
Attached is an image with the name of the lithographer: “Sweeney Litho Co., Belleview, New Jersey.”
According to
this, ” Sweeney was William J. Sweeney born in Ohio Oct. 1882. He appears in the US Census of 1900 age 17, living with his father, Patrick J. Sweeney, a railroad conductor, in Dayton, Ohio. William J. Sweeney’s occupation is listed as “Stenographer – Typewriter.” The business evolved into the Sweeney Lithographing Co. located in downtown New York from around 1926 until the early 1950s.” It includes a picture of the sign still visible on the side of the building in New York.
So he actually lived in Dayton as a young man. An amazing coincidence.
Mark Huffman 9/19/2026
