Main Street Stories: Frank Burr Block

During the year 1890, there was a flurry of building activity on the east side of Main Street, south of Fourth. On the corner, the opera house block was under construction, and right next to it, two other business blocks were going up at the same time.

The immediate neighbor of the opera house block is the Frank H. Burr block, consisting of two stores at 334-336 S. Main. Frank H. Burr was the brother of two other well-known Rochester businessmen, and all three men left lasting marks on Main Street. Frank's brother, Charles A. Burr, built the opera house block and was also part of the group that built the State Savings Bank building at 408-410 S. Main in 1907. Another brother, George Burr, was a hardware and implement dealer whose building at 429 S. Main still bears his name today.

Early occupants of 336 S. Main were hardware merchants; these included the Frank Burr, Winans, H.L. Wood and McCreedy & Myers hardware stores. Later occupants included the C.J. Smith grocery, Gamble's, Shaw Appliance, and Rochester Refrigeration. In more recent years, the 336 address has been the home of Robert R. Rose Jewelers and J. Powrie Jewelers.

For the past couple of decades, 334 S. Main has been the home of Tower Pizza, and during the 1960s it was occupied by the Pastry Shoppe. For a large part of its earlier history, the building was the location of Becker's Barber Shop, and the Shoemaker sisters had a dressmaking shop upstairs.

Although the business blocks he and his brothers built have endured and are now downtown Rochester landmarks, Frank Burr himself came to a tragic and bitter end. In the 1920s, he and his wife relocated to Highland Park, where they ran a hardware business. One day in 1924, when Frank failed to come home as expected after closing the store, his wife sought him out and found him on the floor of the empty store, shot through the heart with a revolver lying in his lifeless hand. Fortunately, we can remember Frank Burr for the handsome building he left behind and not for the troubled circumstances of his death.

The Frank Burr block celebrates its 119th birthday this summer.

Photo: View of the Frank Burr block (the two storefronts on the left) as it looked in 1912 when occupied by McCreedy & Myers hardware and Becker's Barber Shop. Notice the barber pole near the curb.

Main Street Stories: Thomas W. Hacker block

Thomas W. Hacker built a new brick building at 330 S. Main St. in the summer of 1886, to house his meat market. A description in the Rochester Era gives us a glimpse of what a state-of-the-art meat market looked like 124 years ago:

The new building is 20x70 ft., two stories high, with a fine cellar under all. The salesroom is 20x30 ft., with full plate glass front, and furnished with a marble-top counter. Just back of this room is the ice-box eleven feet square, where the meats for immediate use are kept, the contents being plainly visible through a plate glass front running the width of the box.

The business was known as the Palace Meat Market, and in an ad for the grand opening of the new store, sirloin steaks were offered for twelve cents a pound.
Four years later, there was major activity on the east side of Main, between Third and Fourth, where the Palace Meat Market was located. Charles A. Burr was building the Opera House block, and his brother Frank Burr was building a two-store block adjacent to the Opera House on the south. One lot stood between Frank Burr's new block and the Palace Meat Market, so Thomas W. Hacker tore down the small building that stood there and built another new brick store to fill in the block. The Era reported:

The Hacker brick building adjoining his meat market has been torn down to make room for a new one, which will be erected in connection with the Burr stores. When this full block is completed it will be an ornament and the pride of the village. Work on it is steadily being pushed forward, a full corps of workmen being employed thereon.

The new building bore the address of 332 S. Main. Over the years, occupants of the two Hacker buildings included Wiley & Bitters, the T.E. Nichols Furniture and Undertaking business, Bebout's restaurant, and Mitzelfeld's at 330, and Nichols Furniture, Pixley Furniture and Mitzelfeld's at 332. Once the Mitzelfeld block expanded to absorb the buildings at 330 and 332 S. Main, the storefronts became part of the Mitzelfeld facade and used the Mitzelfeld address number. After Mitzelfeld's closed, the buildings formerly known as 330-332 became 324 S. Main. O'Connor's Public House is currently located there.

This postcard view of the Hacker block from the collection of the Rochester Hills Public Library shows the buildings as they looked around 1912.

Main Street Stories: George Burr Building

The building at 429 S. Main is the only older building in the downtown business district that has had only two retail occupants in its entire history. Hardware and implement dealer George Burr built the store in 1914, after he had outgrown his previous location across the street at 418 S. Main. George Burr was the brother of fellow Rochester merchants Charles A. Burr, builder of the Opera House block at 4th and Main, and Frank H. Burr, who built a two-store block to the immediate south of the Opera House block.

In 1920, George Burr retired from the business he had founded and passed the management of the store to his daughter, Neva, and her husband, Ward Crissman. When Ward Crissman died suddenly in 1935, Neva Crissman brought her own daughter, Arlene, and son-in-law Leon Robertson into the business, and they continued to manage it until they decided to close the hardware store and sell the building in June of 1965.

On August 30, 1965, the grand opening of Green's Artist Supply was held, introducing to Rochester residents only the second business ever located in the building. Forty-four years later, Green's still occupies the building erected by George Burr in 1914.

The George Burr building celebrated its 95th birthday this year.

This ca. 1961 photo from the collection of Marjorie and the late Walter Dernier shows the building at 429 S. Main while it was still occupied by the Burr Hardware.

Main Street Stories: Opera House Block

Postcard view of the Opera House block about 1910

There has been a pharmacy operating in the Opera House block on the southeast corner of Main and Fourth streets ever since the building opened its doors in late 1890.  John T. Norton was the first drug store proprietor there, and his store was followed by the pharmacies of Zeno Schoolcraft, T. Kenneth Fetters, Richard J. Morley, and Robert A. Lytle.

The man behind the construction of the Opera House block was Charles A. Burr (1857-1934). Burr was one of eight sons of German immigrants Louis and Eliza Gendrick Burr, who came to America in 1850 and soon thereafter settled in Sterling Township in Macomb County.  Charles Burr was truly a "man of all trades" and had a varied career that followed several occupational paths. He started out as a school teacher, traveled to California in 1876 to mine gold for three years, then returned to the Utica area to run a hardware business. He brought his hardware business to Rochester in 1882 and also served as the town postmaster for a time. Among the other businesses he engaged in while in Rochester were undertaking, men's clothing, real estate, and fire insurance; he also served as an agent for the local express company.

C.A. Burr's diversified business interests must have served him well.  He built the substantial business block at Fourth & Main in 1890, providing retail space on the first floor and an entertainment and public meeting venue, known simply as the Opera House, on the second floor. He also founded the Bank of Rochester along with partner A.F. Newberry, and was financially interested in several other banks in the greater Detroit area.

At the same time that Charles Burr was building his new block, his brother Frank H. Burr, was building a two-store block immediately to the south of the Opera House block.  At the close of 1890, the two Burr brothers controlled the first four storefronts south of Fourth on the east side of Main.  Ten years later, in 1900, another of their brothers, George Burr, would join them as members of the merchant community in Rochester.

The Opera House block, with its signature Richardsonian arches which were restored by owner Robert A. Lytle in 1986-87, is still one of the most recognizable structures in any image of Main Street.  The building was listed on the State Register of Historic Places and received a Michigan Historical Marker in 1991. The Opera House block celebrates its 121st birthday this year.

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