Main Street Paving By The Numbers

1916 Main Street paving, looking south from Fourth (Courtesy of Tom Case)

This coming week, the long-awaited makeover of Main Street in downtown Rochester will commence. The eight month project will include 12 weeks of complete road closure and is expected to cost around $5.6 million. When the excavation work begins in earnest in a few weeks, the layers of pavement will be peeled back to uncover a time capsule, of sorts, of Main Street history.  As the contractors dig, they will reveal Main Street's first pavement, a brick roadway that was laid in 1916.  Here's what the contractor's advertisement in the Rochester Era issue of  October 6, 1916 had to say:

The Williston Construction Company

of Chicago, Illinois

C.A. Williston in charge, have just completed the paving of Main street, Rochester, Michigan.
The brick, Hocking Valley Shale, was laid on a cement filler, with sand cushion and cement filler.
In the job 600,000 brick were used by the Williston Construction Co., and the D.U.R., with 4,500 barrels of cement. Cost of work $40,000 (village $27,000; D.U.R. $18,000)
From Third to Fifth streets the width of paving is 68 feet, from Second to Third and Fifth to R.R. crossing, 63 feet.
A storm sewer was put in the whole length of the job under the D.U.R. tracks. The D.U.R. co-operated with the Williston Construction Co., paving between their two tracks. During the construction of the work a steam shovel and 15-ton cement mixer were well used.
The Williston Construction Co. have been operating for three years in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan and are now engaged on a similar job at Howell, Michigan.
They consider their Rochester job a success in every particular, and think Rochester is to be congratulated.

Paving bricks stacked in front of Masonic Block, Fourth & Main (Courtesy of Tom Case)

An item in the July 26, 1916 issue of the journal Engineering & Contracting noted that Williston's bid for the job came in at $1.92 per square yard. When the brick roadway is uncovered this summer, we'll see how those 600,000 bricks have held up.

Thanks to Tom Case for sharing photos of the 1916 "Main Street Makeover" from his personal collection.

Mount Avon Receiving Vault

Recently, the City of Rochester announced that some restoration work will be done in historic Mount Avon Cemetery this spring and summer. Part of this project will involve the cemetery's receiving vault, a small building located just to the south of the Wilcox gate, which was originally used to store caskets until burial could be made.

In the days before modern excavating equipment was available to cemetery sextons, burial in the winter months when the ground was frozen was not feasible.  In the Rochester area, it was common during the nineteenth century for bodies to be stored in the mausolea or vaults of one of the Pontiac cemeteries until spring, when burial at Mount Avon could take place.  In the spring of 1909,  Rochester hardware merchant Harvey J. Taylor filed a petition with the Avon Township board, praying that a ballot question be placed before the voters to approve a three-year tax to fund the construction of a receiving vault at Mount Avon Cemetery. The proposed vault would be capable of storing at least ten caskets. Co-signers of Taylor's petition included J. F. Jackson, John T. Norton, George Newberry, P. J. O'Brien, J. N. McCornac, Erastus S. Letts, William Clark Chapman, and Charles Sherwin Chapman.  The board granted the prayer of the petition, and the Rochester Era issue of March 19, 1909, carried this entreaty:

VOTE YES

On the Proposition to Raise $3,000 to Build a Receiving Vault in Rochester Cemetery

A proposition will be voted upon at the coming township election appropriating $3,000 payable in three yearly installments of $1,000 each, for the building of a receiving vault in Rochester cemetery. This is a step which is most laudable and should carry by a large majority.  The need and necessity for a receiving vault in Rochester cemetery has long been apparent. It is proposed to build a stone or cement vault holding at least ten bodies. Vote "Yes" on the proposition by all means.

The proposition was carried by a vote of 225 to 116, and the receiving vault was built.  As it turned out, however, it was in use for its intending purpose for only about 15 years.  In 1925, when the Flowers Mausoleum Company built a community mausoleum in the cemetery, the township reserved for itself ten of the crypts within the new building for the purpose of storing remains over the winter months, thus rendering the receiving vault obsolete. Over the years, two additions were made to the receiving vault and it was used as an equipment shed.  The City of Rochester now plans to remove the non-sympathetic additions and restore the receiving vault to its original appearance.  Click here to read a recent Rochester Post story about the planned restoration work in the cemetery.

Subdivision Stories: Avondale Park

The city of Rochester includes a tiny subdivision north of Romeo Street and east of North Main that was called Avondale Park when it was platted in 1915. Laid out on a ten-acre parcel on the northern boundary of the Woodward Addition, Avondale Park further subdivided blocks 4,5,6 and 7 of the larger plat.  It was created and offered for sale by Pontiac real estate developers J. B. Mahaffy and Israel E. Terry, whose names are reflected in the subdivision's streets. Most lots in Avondale Park could be had for under $200, as shown in this 1915 advertisement.

At Home in Rochester: Charles Ward and Neva Burr Crissman Residence

This Tudor-revival residence at 607 West University Drive was built in 1926 as the residence of Charles Ward Crissman and his wife, Neva Mae Burr Crissman.  Husband and wife were both members of prominent merchant families in Rochester.  Ward Crissman was born in 1890, the son of Harvey B. and Carrie May Albertson Crissman. He grew up on a farm north of Rochester and was graduated from Rochester High School with the class of 1908. After an early career as a schoolteacher and principal in Waterford, Crissman married Neva Mae Burr, the daughter of Rochester hardware merchant George Burr, and then entered into the hardware business with his father-in-law. Ward and Neva Crissman eventually took over the hardware business from her father, but Ward Crissman died very unexpectedly in 1935 from complications following an appendectomy.  His widow and son-in-law continued to operate Burr's Hardware until 1965, when they closed the business after 64 years on Main Street; Green's Artist Supply moved into the building a few weeks later. Neva Crissman died in 1978.

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.