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!

Main Street Stories: Lewis Ward Curtis Building

Hitching posts are long gone from Rochester's Main Street, but the town has had a western wear and tack shop at 315 S. Main for over half a century. Dr. Lewis Ward Curtis had this one-story double business block built in 1935 as an income property. Dr. Curtis was a 1902 graduate of the University of Michigan College of Dentistry, and after receiving his degree he returned to his home in Rochester to establish his dental practice. By 1907, he was successful enough to build a new brick building at 307 S. Main Street, which housed his offices on the second floor and provided retail space on the first floor. In 1927, he expanded his Main Street holdings to include the property at 315-317 S. Main.

The site had long been the location of a two-story frame building housing a variety store, originally known as the Newberry building. Anna Newberry sold the old structure to Morris M. Gardner in 1913, and he operated a store there for about a decade before selling to Harry Steinberg in 1925. Dr. Curtis bought the property from Steinberg in 1927 and eight years later razed the old building to make way for a modern, one-story structure.

In October 1935 the Rochester Clarion described the new building:

L.H. Aris, owner and manager of The Variety Store, Rochester's 5c to $5 store for a number of years, will move his entire stock of goods into new quarters in the Dr. L.W. Curtis building at 315 Main street in the next few days.
The Curtis building with the combination red brick and green and black tile front is one of the newer additions to Rochester's Main street. Under the supervision of Carl VandenBerghe, local contractor, the building was completed last weekend.
A double entrance has been made to the store. The front display windows have been partitioned off into three sections. The interior of the building has been covered with Celotex, beautifully designed on both ceiling and walls. Available floor space will accommodate space for display, tables and racks.
In the rear of the building is a large store room. The building is air conditioned, using a blower in the hot air furnace.

Aris sold his store in July 1953 to Donald Butcher, who operated it as Butcher's Variety Store. Bonnie & Charlie Becker opened the B-Bar-B Western Supply at 315 S. Main in 1957. In 1974, the Beckers sold the store to Jerry Leannais, who opened the Arizona Saddlery there.

This Month in Rochester History

Fifty years ago this month, Rochester was talking about a group of seven boys who had gone on an unusual joy ride.  Seems the seven young lads, who were between the ages of 13 and 16, decided to avail themselves of a small railroad flatcar and take a trip from Rochester to Pontiac on the Grand Trunk tracks.  According to newspaper reports, as they were pushing the car all the way to Pontiac and back, the police were notified that the boys were missing. When it was discovered what they had done (and before it was known that they had, in fact, already made their way safely back to Rochester), train traffic on the Grand Trunk line was slowed to avoid a possible collision with the intrepid band.

It was afterward learned that the idea for the jaunt had come from two boys who were facing an upcoming  hearing in juvenile court, and had talked the other five into the escapade.  The Clarion did not publish the names of the wayward ones, but it has now been half a century since the event, so if any of you are out there, you may confess!

Main Street Stories: Rochester Clarion Building

Clarion building as it appeared in the 1940s.

The front of the building at 313 S. Main is inscribed with the date 1898, but that year has no true significance in its construction history.  In 1898, Charles Sumner Seed of Cass City, Michigan, was invited to Rochester by school superintendent Abram L. Craft. Craft hoped that his acquaintance would establish a newspaper in town, and the first edition of the weekly Rochester Clarion rolled off the press in August of that year. C. S. Seed opened his newspaper office at 424 S. Main, in a building that has long since been torn down and replaced, but in September 1899 his wife, Frances, purchased the John J. Blinn harness shop on the other side of the street. The couple then moved the Clarion's office and printing plant to that location, numbered 313 S. Main.

The former Blinn building was a frame structure, and housed Blinn's harness shop from 1891 to 1899 before the Clarion moved there. In 1933, after 35 years in that location, the Seed family completely rebuilt the Clarion building in two phases.  According to Charles S. Seed's 1946 memoir, published in the Clarion:

The present building was built in two sections. Work was started in 1933 on the rear part, or printing plant, and the front section, or office, was completed in 1935. The building was the first of its kind in Rochester, and is said to be the first one in Oakland county to have a modern vitrolite glass front.

Vitrolite was an opaque glass, popular in Art Deco style buildings at the time, but it was fragile and easily broken. The Vitrolite face on the Clarion building lasted into the early 1960s, when it was replaced with brick.  The newspaper itself lasted until October 1997, when it was absorbed by its rival, the Rochester Eccentric, after 99 years of publication as an independent paper.

Bygone Business: Rochester Bar-B-Q & Pizza

Anyone who lived at the north end of Rochester during the 1960s and early 1970s probably remembers a small take-out store called Rochester Bar-B-Q & Pizza.  James and Lorraine Schultz opened the establishment in a small, one-story building at 812 N. Main Street  (just north of the Romeo and Main intersection) under the name Bar-B-Q Kitchen, in March 1963.  The Rochester store was a franchise of a Detroit company called Bar-B-Q Kitchens, Inc. that had launched its first store in Port Austin six years earlier.

The menu at the Rochester Bar-B-Q Kitchen featured chicken, duck, turkey, ham, spare ribs, pork roll and strip  steak. Pizza was added to the bill of fare later on, and the name was changed to Rochester Bar-B-Q & Pizza.  The little store suffered a couple of fires, and was gone by the mid-1970s.  The building has long since been torn down.

My mother remembers that the Bar-B-Q Kitchen had really great cole slaw.  Anybody else remember eating here?

This Month in Rochester History

Fifty years ago this month, the local newspaper was reporting that the community's oldest congregation, the First Congregational Church of Rochester, was moving into its new home at 1315 N. Pine St.  Dedication services for the new campus were held on October 8, 1961, and parishioners began a new chapter in their history after worshiping in the same building at the corner of Third & Walnut streets for 107 years.

Not only is this congregation the oldest in Rochester, having been organized in 1827,  but it is also the first and oldest congregation of its denomination in Michigan. The Rev. W. Isaac Ruggles, a circuit-riding missionary in what was then the Michigan territory, started the congregation with ten members who met in a log cabin south of the village of Rochester. In 1853, the Congregationalists built on the northwest corner of Third & Walnut and continued to meet at that location for over a century.

After the new church campus opened in the fall of 1961, the old church building on Walnut Street was sold. It was the home of the Rochester Elks lodge for a short time, and then suffered the indignity of being covered with a faux-castle facade and painted purple. The exterior has now been restored and the historic building currently houses a design firm.

At Home in Rochester: Joseph Reimer House

Rochester hardware merchant Joseph Reimer built this Italianate Victorian style house at 211 Walnut Street in the summer of 1878 as his personal family residence.  Reimer was born in Pennsylvania in 1826 and lived in Upper Mount Bethel township in Northampton County.  Several of his neighbors in that Pennsylvania community also emigrated to Rochester in the mid-19th century, including Azariah Ross, John Ross, Reuben Immick, Francis Stofflet, Dr. William Deats, and Elias Butts.

Joseph Reimer served briefly in the Civil War as the captain of a company in the 153rd Pennsylvania volunteer regiment.  When the war was over, he moved with his wife and four children to Rochester and established a hardware business. In 1878, he built this house on Walnut Street and in 1885 he built a brand-new brick building at 418 S. Main Street to house his store. (The hardware store building still stands today and is now the home of the Sumo Sushi restaurant.  Reimer sold his hardware to his son, Cyrus, and son-in-law, Alvin Bliss, in 1886; eventually, Harvey J. Taylor bought them out and moved the store to 335 S. Main.  Then, Charles W. Case bought out Taylor and the hardware firm became known as Case's Hardware.) Reimer also served the community as a member of the school board for Avon District #5, and as a justice of the peace.

Joseph Reimer died in 1896 and in 1917 his heirs sold the Walnut Street home to Elizabeth Butts Casey and her mother, Julia Bromley Butts.  The two women divided the house into apartments and used it as both a residence and an income property.  After Elizabeth Butts Casey Case died in 1973, her daughter Della Casey Wilson inherited the property, and when her heirs sold it in 1995, it had been in the Casey/Case family for 78 years, more than twice the number of years that the Reimer family owned it.  The house is currently vacant.

Memory's Eye: First Baptist Church

Today's the Memory's Eye camera looks at the former First Baptist Church building on the northwest corner of Walnut and Fourth streets, currently the home of the Village Shoe Inn. In 1855, the First Baptist Church of Rochester, which had been formed in Stoney Creek, purchased an unfinished wood frame building from the Christian Church Society and moved it to this corner in the village of Rochester. The congregation used the building, with numerous alterations and expansions over the years, until 1973, when a new campus was opened on Orion Road.  The former church building on Walnut was sold and became the home of the Village Shoe Inn.

When I was growing up, the brick veneer on this building was painted white, and a pink neon sign over the front door glowed day and night with the words "Jesus Saves."  This mashup view was composed using a recent photo as the background and a ca. 1940 postcard view of the same building displayed  on the tablet screen.