Bygone Business: Hobart Funeral Home

The Hobart Funeral Home was established in Rochester by Alanson C. Hobart in January 1924, when Hobart bought out the undertaking business of Dr. Vernor M. Spaulding. Spaulding had been the successor of the E. R. Metcalf undertaking business, which was located in the building at 311 S. Main. Metcalf had been preceded by Thomas C. Severance, P. M. Woodworth, and W. Harvey Greene in the same business. In 1929, Hobart moved his funeral home into the former George M. Flumerfelt residence at 339 Walnut Street, where it remained for the next 21 years. Winkel & Potere bought out Hobart in 1950, and soon thereafter William R. Potere became the sole proprietor. John and Mary Modetz, the current owners of this business, purchased the funeral home from Potere in 1986.

This 1934 advertisement for the Hobart Funeral Home is from the collection of Rod and Susan Wilson.

This Month in Rochester History

Fifty years ago this month, Abiding Presence Lutheran Church broke ground for a new facility in Avon Township.  The congregation had been organized in 1958 and spent its first few years holding services at North Hill Elementary School.  By 1962, the parish had grown to more than 360 members and was ready to construct a new building on the north side of  Walton, approximately a half mile west of Livernois. Ralls, Hamill & Becker were the architects for the new church, and Rewold & Son of Rochester was the general contractor for the project.  The groundbreaking ceremony for the new Abiding Presence Lutheran Church was held on March 22, 1962, with Pastor Lloyd Buss officiating.  The new church building was dedicated in October 1962.

Vanished Rochester: Hubbell School

Hubbell School ca. 1957 (Courtesy of Swords Family Archive)

Long vanished from the Rochester Hills landscape is the Hubbell school house, which stood on the south side of what is today known as Walton Boulevard, near the southeast corner of Walton & Adams.  In the days when Rochester Hills was the rural township of Avon, it was served by not one, but several small school districts.  The Walton & Adams area was known as Avon Township School District #8, or the Hubbell district.  The school district took its name from  pioneer settler Samuel Hubbell, who had purchased the land in that area from the government in 1824. The exact date that the Hubbell school house was built is not known, but the 1872 plat map of Avon Township shows a school house at that location, in the corner of what was by that time known as the Lomason farm.  The Hubbell district existed until 1948, at which time the property owners in the area petitioned that their rural district be dissolved and annexed to the larger Rochester school district.  The reason for their request was that few of the property owners actually resided in the district - they were mostly real estate investors and speculators - and therefore felt ill-qualified to serve as trustees of the Hubbell school. After Hubbell was consolidated with Rochester in 1948, the Rochester school district continued to operate the Hubbell school as an elementary building for a couple of years.  By 1957, Meadow Brook Elementary had been built to serve the children of the area and one room schools like Hubbell were rendered obsolete.  The photo above shows what the building looked like when it being used as a real estate office around 1957. At that time, the Howard Keating real estate company was developing the Spring Hill subdivision at the southeast corner of Walton & Adams.  Those who remember the Hubbell school tell me that it stood approximately where the McDonald's restaurant is located today.

My thanks to the custodians of the Swords Family Archive for lending me this photo of the Hubbell School.

The Spiritualist Movement in Rochester

In the spring of 1905, the Detroit Free Press informed its readers that spiritualism had taken hold in the village of Rochester and that some of the most prominent citizens of the community were participating in seances and meetings that involved alleged contact with the spirit world.  The Free Press writer thought Rochester was an unlikely place for such proceedings, and introduced his report this way:

Nestling snugly down in a valley among green hills, the little village of Rochester presents such a picture of rural repose and idyllic contentment as would inspire the spring poet with a gush of rhapsody.  But the repose is only external. ... Every night the homes of the most respected citizens are the scenes of hair-raising performances. Tables dance around the rooms or are broken to pieces, windows are smashed, chairs overturned, while strange objects float through space and weird sounds fill the air.

The Free Press story went on to say that a group of Rochester citizens including Commodore George Newberry, village president;  Bert Norton, druggist; Charles S. Chapman and his brother, William C. Chapman; and jeweler and optician Louis E. Palmer, Jr. met regularly to conduct seances in an attempt to invite the presence of the spirits of the departed.  According to the newspaper, Newberry had once been the greatest of skeptics and dismissed any stories of communication with the spirits of the dead as "pure humbug," but having been converted now hosted regular meetings of  what the participants called the "Psychic Research Club" in his home.

The newspaper feature, which was headlined "Spooks Galore," recounted a story told by George Newberry of a meeting of the spiritualists conducted at his home and led by Louis E. Palmer, Jr.  "Louie" Palmer was the son of the prominent Rochester merchant Louis E. Palmer, Sr., who built several buildings on Main Street and conducted a jewelry business there for several decades.  The younger Palmer claimed newly-discovered powers as a medium for the spirit of a man named "Quick," who was supposed to have died in North Branch, Michigan in 1903.

According to the account, young Palmer invoked the spirit of "Quick," who made his presence known to the assembled club members:

Seated around a heavy mahogany table, their hands stretched over its polished surface, the "Research club"  awaited the spooks.
A violent lunge of the table announced an arrival from spiritland.
"Is that you, Quick?" asked Mr. Palmer.
Three slight tippings of the table signified "yes."
Quick's convivial nature is not ignored by his friends in the flesh, so he was asked if he wanted them to smoke. He again answered affirmatively and they all lit their cigars.

So, with the club members lighting up and puffing away on their Havanas, the seance continued:

The ponderous table began to gyrate as lightly as a French ballet girl and the chandelier was bent while Mr. Palmer's body was lifted over the table into the lap of one of his vis-a-vis.
Finally, according to the testimony of all present the medium's body was wafted to the top of a cabinet seven feet high while he cried in a dazed condition for someone to stop his uncomfortable ascent.

Once Mr. Palmer was returned to his seat by his fellow spirit-seekers, the spirit of "Quick" resumed his mischief:

Suddenly there was a loud crash of smashing glass and the helpless body of Palmer was seen sprawling limp on the window sill half through the broken pane, half dangling limply on the inner side.
That was too much for the unfortunate medium, and he has refused to call on "Quick" since.

The Spiritualist Movement in the United States emerged in upstate New York in the 1840s, and was fairly prominent through the 1920s, during which time the Ouija board became a popular method of interpreting perceived contacts from the spirit world.  Ray Henry, a local historian and direct descendant of Louis E. Palmer, Sr., gave me the back story to this interesting tale and explained how spiritualism was likely introduced to the village of Rochester.

It seems that the sons of Louis Palmer, Sr., attended a social event at the Rochester Opera House around 1905, at which they met two daughters of a medium named Sarah Barclay. The Barclay family was newly arrived in the Rochester area at the time, having come from Ontario seeking jobs at the Western Knitting Mills. One of the Barclay daughters, May Smith, eventually married Louie Palmer's brother, William. May's mother, Sarah Barclay, was a Spiritualist minister who conducted seances at the family home in Stoney Creek. It is probable that Louie Palmer was introduced to spiritualism through his connection to the Barclay family.

Ray Henry further relates that Sarah Barclay moved to Cleveland, Ohio around 1910, where she operated a tea room, gave readings and continued her work as a medium. She was also a reader in the Unity Church there. Sarah Barclay is buried at Mount Avon Cemetery in Rochester, next to her daughter, May Palmer; click here to view her photo and biography.

My thanks to Ray Henry for sharing part of his family history with me and filling in some of the background on this story.

Building Bridges (Again!)

During this past week, the Avon Road bridge at the Livernois intersection was closed to traffic so that replacement of the decaying structure could begin.  Those of us who live in the area have known this closure was coming for a long time, and we'll be taking creative routes around the construction until some time in June. A couple of years ago, we had a similar experience with the bridge over Stoney Creek on East Tienken Road.

How many readers remember the biggest bridge closure of our recent history?  It happened 23 years ago, when the South Hill bridge at the foot of Main Street in downtown Rochester was closed for replacement.  That project was precipitated by an earlier collapse of the bridge deck that occurred when a support strap failed. Emergency repairs were made, and then engineers determined that then entire bridge needed an overhaul.  Downtown Rochester suffered through the long months of road closure in 1989-1990, and celebrated the reopening of the span with a "Bridge Bash" in October 1990.  Then-governor James Blanchard cut the ribbon to open the roadway, and a parade of vintage automobiles made the first trip across the new bridge.

These photos of the South Hill bridge project and "Bridge Bash" festivities were taken by my dad in 1989 and 1990.

Subdivision Stories: Junction Land Company

Containing just one side street and only 38 lots, the Junction Land Company subdivision is one of Rochester Hills' smallest.  It was platted in April 1920 by Eva Barwise and her partners, John and Ella Peters and Arthur and Isabelle Law.  The subdivision lies east of Rochester Road and south of Tienken, on land that abuts the present City Walk shopping plaza at the southeast corner of that intersection.  For the last half of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth, this property was part of the Isaac and Jane Barwise farm. At its height, the Barwise farm was over 200 acres in area and was one of Avon Township's most productive.  Isaac Barwise was a native of England who came to the United States as a young man and settled in Avon in 1861. Ownership of the farm passed to his daughter, Eva, who was a well-known Rochester schoolteacher.

The Junction Land Company was doubtless named for the location of the subdivision. For many years, the Detroit United Railway had a station at the corner of Tienken and Rochester, called Lake Orion Junction. At this point, one branch of the streetcar line headed along Orion Road to Goodison, Lake Orion, Oxford and stops beyond on the Flint Division, while another branch followed Tienken Road to Stoney Creek, Washington, and Romeo. The subdivision's one and only street was aptly named Junction Boulevard, but this name was changed to Courtland in 1950 when the township renamed many of its streets at the recommendation of the county road commission.

This Month in Rochester History

February 1962 was a quiet month in Rochester. Not much was happening, except that there was a lot more snow on the ground than we have today.  One thing that did make the front page of the newspaper was the school board's decision to spend $19,000 to install language labs in the high school and the two junior high schools, Central and West.  The audio equipment for the labs was purchased from the Dictaphone Corporation.  Up until the beginning of the 1961-62 school year, Rochester students were only offered two years of foreign language instruction, and they had their choice of French or German. The district added a third year of instruction to the curriculum in 1961-62, and after ordering the language labs, planned to offer a fourth year beginning in 1962-63.

I remember sitting in the language lab at Rochester High School, practicing phrases played on a state-of-the-art reel-to-reel tape deck. Anybody else?

The Strange Story of the McDonald/Harger Family

K.D. and Maria McDonald Harger family ca. 1912.

The grave of Benjamin Fowler McDonald in Mount Avon Cemetery doesn't particularly stand out from those surrounding it. The New Jersey native and descendant of the Axford family was born in 1825 and came to Michigan in pioneer days, like many young men of his generation, where he farmed in Avon Township and reared his children. Nothing odd there either, unless you know that through the descendants of Benjamin F. McDonald, Rochester is linked in a way to a bizarre and grisly murder story that played out in New York City in 1945.

McDonald's daughter, Maria, was born in Avon Township in 1861.  She attended the University of Michigan and was graduated with the class of 1887. Two years later, in Rochester, she married a young lawyer from West Bloomfield Township named K.D. Harger. The newly-married Hargers relocated to Riverside, California, where K.D. Harger served as postmaster and as an officer of a title and abstract company, and Maria Harger taught school.  Two sons, Donald and Solon Burt, were born to the Hargers in California.

The younger son, known as Burt, showed an aptitude for ballet and other forms of dance at an early age. He began winning dance competitions in his youth. As an adult, he relocated to New York City, where he achieved relative fame as an adagio dancer, partnering at first with Helen Howell and later with Charlotte Maye. While he was fairly well known in the ballrooms of New York City during the 1930s and early 1940s, Harger became the talk of the town in August 1945 when he mysteriously vanished without a trace at the age of 39.

Harger was reported missing initially by his dancing partner, Charlotte Maye, when he failed to appear for a planned performance at the Biltmore Hotel on August 19.  A police investigation turned up no leads for three days, until a dismembered torso washed up on a Queens beach and a few days after that, an arm and a leg were fished out of the Hudson River. A postmortem identified the remains as those of Burt Harger, and determined that death had been likely been caused by hammer blows. At this point, Harger's name was screaming from lurid headlines across the country, as newspapers carried stories about what they were calling the "Torso Murder Case."

Various clues led police back to the apartment that Harger had shared with a roommate, Walter H. Dahl, Jr.  Under interrogation, Dahl admitted that he had killed Harger with a hammer during an argument, then dismembered the body in the bathtub of the apartment, before packaging the remains in several towels.  Dahl then carried his gruesome bundles, one at a time, aboard the Staten Island and Weehawken ferries, where he dropped them over the rail.

Dahl was charged with murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, where he died three years later.  His motive, according to later memoirs of those who investigated the case, was jealousy, as he and Harger were said to have been lovers who quarreled bitterly after Harger had abruptly announced his engagement to a woman.  The Burt Harger story didn't end there, however.  The next tenant in the apartment where Harger's murder had taken place was a young playwright named Ken Parker. Fascinated by the case, Parker penned a play about the murder entitled Four Flights Up (later retitled There's Always A Murder) which had modest success in off-Broadway venues.

In an interesting side note, the cremated remains of K.D. Harger, Maria McDonald Harger and S. Burt Harger are all inurned in the Cathedral Mausoleum of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (originally called Hollywood Memorial Park) in Los Angeles.  This cemetery was founded in 1899, and later sold off part of its property to Paramount Studios, which now abut the cemetery on one side. The cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of the many show business personalities buried there.

The photo shown here is from the local history collection of the Rochester Hills Public Library. Seen from left to right are: Phoebe Burt McDonald Parker (mother of Maria McDonald Harger), Donald Harger, K.D. Harger, Maria McDonald Harger, and S. Burt Harger.

Digging Up Our History

If you live in the Rochester area, you're probably well aware that the long-planned reconstruction of Main Street in downtown Rochester will kick off this spring. The roadway will be closed for several months while it is excavated to allow the replacement of aged infrastructure, after which a new roadbed and streetscape will be built. With all of the digging that will be going on, it is a near certainty that some interesting artifacts will be unearthed, and I'm looking forward to seeing what items from our history have been preserved under the roadway since it was first paved in 1916. This past week, I ran across a small news item from 108 years ago that reminds us that anything is possible when one starts digging.  On July 15, 1904, the Rochester Era had this to report:

The old cannon which disappeared years ago has been found. It was dug up by workmen engaged in digging a sewer in the rear of the F.H. Burr block, occupied by Wood & Co., where it had been buried deep in the ground.  The big gun disappeared the day after a memorable Fourth of July celebration of the night before, eight or nine years ago, when a "bunch" of kindred spirits had a gala night with a big wheelbarrow load of booze to celebrate with and the old cannon to awake the echoes.

Something worthy of study is bound to be rediscovered here, so stay tuned, and don't stay away from downtown Rochester because of the construction.  Rather, go downtown because of the construction - it will be a learning experience for all of us.

At Home in Rochester: Oscar F. Comstock House

For more than a half century, the house at 203 Walnut Street has been a dental office, but before it was converted to professional office use, it served as the private residence of some of Rochester's prominent citizens. Oscar F. Comstock, a local carpenter, bought the property in the spring of 1874 and started building his house in September of that year. When it was finished, Comstock sold the house to Lorenzo D. Morse, a businessman and developer who later built the 1881 Morse Block on Main Street. (Not long after, Morse built another home for himself nearby at 311 Walnut, which was later purchased by William Clark Chapman and moved to 311 Pine Street when Chapman decided to build a new home in 1916.)

Meanwhile, the house at 203 Walnut was sold to Arthur E. Collins, a merchant and banker whose business was located in the Morse Block. Collins was well-known in Rochester and had the misfortune of becoming somewhat unpopular for a time. Born in Malta because his father had been a British military officer, Collins himself served in the 22nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He was wounded at Chickamauga, taken prisoner, and sent to the infamous Andersonville prison.  After the war, he was a grocery and dry goods merchant in Rochester and also operated a private bank from his store. Managing a bank was apparently not in Collins' skill set, however; in 1908, the newspapers were full of stories about the padlocking of the bank after it was found that liabilities exceeded assets by greater than $8,000, and Collins lacked even enough funds to pay the filing fee on his bankruptcy petition.

A few months after his banking disaster, Collins sold his home at 203 Walnut to another prominent Rochester man and fellow Civil War veteran, John J. Snook. Snook was ready to retire to the village of Rochester from his vast Overlook farm at the corner of Rochester and Avon roads, where he had been known as "Snook of Overlook." He also bore the title of "Poet Laureate of Rochester" and had published several volumes of his verse (click here if you'd like to read some).

The house at 203 Walnut remained in the hands of the Snook family until 1954, when it was sold to Dr. John S. Terry. Dr. Terry converted the house to dental offices, and practiced there until he retired. He was succeeded at the location by Dr. Walter J. Kubinski, whose offices are currently in the house that Comstock built.

You may read about the historic Comstock house in the Oakland Regional Historic Sites database by clicking here.

Bygone Business: Mitzelfeld's

If you drive down the east alley behind 312 S. Main Street, you'll see this black-and-white striped canopy covering the rear entrance to the building. For people who have lived in Rochester for a while, those signature stripes say "Mitzelfeld's," even though the beloved department store closed its doors in January 2004 after a 54-year run. The company that became known as Mitzelfeld's started out as Leslie Eggleston's department store in 1939, and after his daughter, Diana, and William Mitzelfeld were married, the young couple joined the business. A new building was opened on the east side of Main between Third and Fourth in 1949, and the store was known as Eggleston-Mitzelfeld's before eventually becoming known simply as Mitzelfeld's.  William and Diana Mitzelfeld later passed the management of the store to their sons, Brad and Monty, and the store was known for its high quality merchandise and the personalized customer service that was the hallmark of the family-owned business.

Did you shop at Mitzelfeld's?

This Month in Rochester History

Happy 2012, Remembering Rochester Readers! Fifty years ago this month, Rochester citizens were attending a public open house at the newly-organized Rochester Aerosol Corporation. The company was located in the industrial facility at 607 Woodward Street that is the home of the Dillman & Upton lumber yard today. The building, which had been expanded several times since its original construction in 1919-20, had previously housed the Rochester Foundry Company and Oakland Foundry & Machine. It was idle in late 1961 when the Rochester Area Development Company (RADCO) and a Small Business Administration loan assisted in bringing Rochester Aerosol to the village - along with the promise of 50 local jobs.

On January 18, 1962, Michigan governor John B. Swainson and local dignitaries toured the new facility, which would package non-food aerosol products such as hair spray, home cleaning and maintenance items, insecticides, shave creams, and pharmaceuticals.  Rochester Aerosol was the first major aerosol packager in the Detroit area, and handled most of the packaging for the Detroit-Chicago market. The company president was Robert A. Willihnganz.

Driver Education the Old-Fashioned Way

New Year's Eve seems like an appropriate time for this post. When I was enrolled in a driver education course at Rochester High School in the mid-1970s, the instructors used a "scared straight" method of impressing upon their students the importance of safe, sober driving. Their instrument of choice was a film entitled Mechanized Death, (click the link if you remember this and would like to see it again!) which was gory enough to make some of the queasier fledgling drivers forget about wanting to get behind the wheel at all. The film hit home for a lot of students because in the community of Rochester, one had only to drive down Main Street and turn west on Second to see three-dimensional proof of the hazards of inattentive, reckless or impaired driving.

Shown in this snapshot from 1962 is part of the Byers wrecker yard, located directly behind the Byers Shell gas station that stood on the northwest corner of Main & Second.  When a Byers tow truck was called to clear up the scene of automotive mayhem, the mangled metal carcasses were usually deposited on their lot behind the gas station, along Second Street between Main and the west alley, where they were on display for all of the town to see and contemplate. In a small community such as Rochester, the details about the resulting injuries or deaths circulated quickly. I imagine that more than one Rochester parent used a cruise past the Byers lot as a teachable moment.

In this photo, the camera is looking southeasterly from the northeast corner of Second Street and the west alley.  The Texaco station and auto repair shop that is seen on the southwest corner of Main and Second is now the location of the Shehrzad restaurant.  The two houses shown in the background at left are now the location of the Quik Pik and Penn Station East Coast Subs store; the Village Cleaners building is seen in the background at center right.

Do you remember, Rochester?

Memory's Eye: Michigan Central Railroad Bridge

This bridge over Paint Creek east of the old Western Knitting Mills (now Rochester Mills Brewery) is an important local landmark. Having been in place for over a century, it is said to be one of the oldest remaining concrete arch bridges in Michigan. The Michigan Central Railroad originally built this bridge to carry its tracks across Paint Creek near the Western Knitting Mills dam and mill pond.  This view, which looks westward from the east bank of Paint Creek behind the Royal Park Hotel, shows a current view of the bridge on the left, stitched together with a circa 1907 postcard view of the same scene.  In the vintage image at right, the Western Knitting Mills dam and mill pond are visible.  The area once covered by the mill pond was filled after a devastating flood in 1946, and today is the site of the Sunrise Senior Living complex, post office, and public library. In 2008-2009, the Rochester Downtown Development Authority funded a rehabilitation project for the historic bridge, and it is now a pleasant pedestrian walkway that is part of the recreational trail system.

You Might Be From Rochester If...

With a nod to Jeff Foxworthy, here's a list of things you might remember if you grew up in Rochester.  Feel free to add your own in the comments!

You might be from Rochester if...

• you know where Bare A-- Beach was
• you remember when going to McDonald's meant a trip all the way to Pontiac
• you partied at the Haven
• you got your milk from Joe Case's dairy truck
• you liked shopping in the D&C because the floors were squeaky
• you distributed show bills for the Hills Theatre
• you remember when the town bowling alley was in the basement of a building on Main Street
• you got all of your pairs of “school shoes” from Jack Burr at B-Z Bootery
• you remember the Slaughterhouse Five controversy
• you wore lederhosen - or a dirndl - to dance in the Maifest
• you made an inner-tube raft for the Floatable Boatable
• you got kicked off the ice at the municipal pond for playing crack-the-whip
• you were scared of the River Gang
• you were in the River Gang
• you ate at the Big Boy drive-in on North Main next to the Dairy Queen
• you bought penny candy at Rochester Junction
• you know where the Sinclair station was
• you painted “The Rock” at least once
• you know what business Frank St. Onge was in
• you played the pinball machine at Cunningham's – for a dime
• you remember when part of the South Hill bridge collapsed
• you know why it was fun to drive really fast over the old Elizabeth St. bridge

Nothing Important Changes

A wise person once said, "History repeats itself because nobody was listening the first time."  In support of that thesis, I offer this item from the Rochester Clarion issue of  April 15, 1962, quoted in its entirety and without further commentary:

MILLER ANGERED OVER BRIDGE APPROPRIATION

Avon Township Supervisor Cy Miller sharply criticized the Ways and Means Committee of the Oakland County Board of Supervisors Tuesday for the manner in which they handled an appropriation for road and bridge improvements on Avon and Livernois Rds.

Miller said Wednesday however, that he expected the money would be made available at a meeting of the board scheduled for next Monday.

According to Miller, the supervisors approved an expenditure of $364,000 to set up airport planning and improvements on a 445-acre plot in Orion Township which is proposed as the core of a 3000-acre major airport.

Because of the expenditure, the $100,000 which was to be appropriated for the Avon Township road work, plus $200,000 for the South Oakland Health Center, was unavailable. Both the road and health center appropriations had been recommended by the Oakland County Board of Auditors.

Miller said Wednesday that he expected the full board to pass a proposal for road funds for the bridge by an extra levy of  one 20th of a mill next Monday. If passed, the proposal would bring in $108,000 for the project.

This Month in Rochester History

Rochester was watching a house on the move fifty years ago this month.  A two-story residence containing four apartments that stood at 330 Walnut Street was relocated to the north end of town to allow for the construction of Rochester's very first drive-through banking facility. The house was moved to a new location at 313 Woodward, where it still stands today.  Officials of the National Bank of Detroit began preparing the site for the new bank building almost immediately, which was planned to be connected to the main bank building at Fourth & Main by a tunnel that crossed beneath the West Alley.

Subdivision Stories: Oakdale

The Oakdale subdivision was platted in 1915 by John William Hopkins and his wife, Elizabeth Lehner Hopkins, on a village outlot lying west of Wilcox Street and south of Fifth (now University Drive). Hopkins was a fire captain with the Detroit Fire Department, and upon his retirement in 1916, he and his wife relocated from Detroit to Rochester.  The new subdivision lay between the existing streets of Wilcox and Castell, and was bisected by a new street, named Wesley.  Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins reserved for themselves a triple lot fronting on Fifth Street and built a new bungalow-style residence on it.  That house still stands today at 623 W. University, and is still on the triple lot, which gives the property extra frontage along University Drive.

At Home in Rochester: Lorenzo D. Morse House

In the summer of 1880, a farmer and businessman named Lorenzo D. Morse came from Lapeer with a plan to build a new brick business block on Main Street in Rochester. At the same time, he contracted for a large residence on Walnut Street, next to the Congregational Church.  The house was built for Morse by contractor John Ross, who was responsible for the construction of many of Rochester's well-known 19th century structures, including the Rochester Elevator, the Universalist Church, the Congregational Church, and the William Deats house. According to a news item in the Rochester Era in June 1880, Lorenzo Morse himself was responsible for the design of his new house, which cost $2,470. The newspaper praised the building as being "first-class."

Morse and his wife lived in the home at 311 Walnut Street for just over a decade, and then moved to Detroit. Lorenzo Morse sold his house in 1892 to Joseph Partello, who was superintendent of the woolen mill at that time.  When Western Knitting Mills took over the woolen mill in 1894, Partello sold the house to William Clark Chapman, the newly-arrived secretary and treasurer of the company. The following year Chapman made several improvements to the house, including the addition of a wrap-around porch, which is visible in the 1907 view of the house that is shown here.

In 1916, Chapman and his wife decided to build a new house at their Walnut Street location, so they moved the former Morse house and relocated it on another lot that they owned at 311 Pine Street, directly behind their Walnut Street lot.  The Lorenzo D. Morse house still stands today at 311 Pine Street, and is now 131 years old.

Memory's Eye: Water Street

When Western Knitting Mills was at the height of its importance as Rochester's principal employer, the company recruited workers - mostly young and female - from all over the Midwest.  To provide housing for this labor force, WKM built boarding houses along Water Street, directly south of and adjacent to the factory building.  The first one went up in 1912 and was quickly expanded to accommodate the growing workforce.  The buildings were torn down in the 1940s after McAleer Manufacturing took over the property, but here's a mashup of a current photo of the streetscape and a vintage photo of the same view, showing the boarding houses. The next time you travel down Water Street, just imagine what the scene looked like a century ago!