Bygone Business: Behm's Dairy

On May 23, 1936, Mrs. Edwin J. Behm held the grand opening of Behm's Dairy and Ice Cream Parlor at 311 S. Main St. The Behms had located their dairy business in Rochester in 1924, when they began operating a creamery in a small block building on N. Pine St., between Griggs and Albertson. When they expanded to Main St. in 1936, their retail store quickly became a popular place for teens and was a mainstay of the downtown for twenty-five years.

By 1961, Behm's Dairy was forced to leave 311 S. Main because the building had been sold and partially condemned. The new owners planned to demolish the rear portion of the building (which had been a furniture warehouse back in the days when the structure house a furniture and undertaking business), install a new front facade, and locate a gift store there.

The Behms decided to move their business to Port Austin, but they left Rochester with heavy hearts. In an interview with the Rochester Clarion in March of 1961, Mrs. Behm expressed her regret at saying farewell to the estimated 250 children per day that she served in her store, after telling them that the store would close on or about April 15 in that year.

'You never saw such bawling as when we told them about it,' Mrs. Behm said. 'They all sat here and cried.'

Did you hang out at Behm's Dairy? If you did, what was your favorite item on the menu?

This bottle cap from a Behm's Dairy product container is from the collection of Rod and Susan Wilson.

This Month in Rochester History

April is the month in which we mark the anniversary of the passing of a mass transit system that served Rochester for more than a generation - the Detroit United Railway.

The D.U.R. was organized in 1900 from a collection of smaller street railway lines operating in the city of Detroit. In 1901, the D.U.R. acquired a number of suburban lines, including the Detroit, Rochester, Romeo & Lake Orion Railway, or D.R.R. & L.O, which had laid track into Rochester in 1899. The D.R.R. & L.O. had been responsible for the first bridge from South Hill to the foot of Main Street, in the form of a wooden trestle built to carry the streetcars into town.

The D.R.R. & L.O. had also established a car barn and powerhouse in Rochester and was one of the principal employers in the village. When the D.U.R. took over, the company extended its line to Flint and beyond, and the Rochester powerhouse produced electricity for the entire Flint Division.

The D.U.R. was well-used and provided cheap and convenient mass transportation, but it fell victim to the rise of the automobile within a generation. As more people began to enjoy the freedom of driving their own cars, ridership on the interurban line decreased accordingly. At the same time, trucks were beginning to offer more flexible, cheaper freight service. The D.U.R. also had considerable legal trouble with its franchises within the city of Detroit, and by the mid-1920s, all of these factors had converged to bring the line to its knees financially. The stock market crash and resulting Great Depression dealt the final blow.

As far as Rochester was concerned, the end of the streetcar line came on April 25, 1931, the last day on which regular scheduled service was offered. Soon thereafter, the remaining rolling stock on the line clattered its way out of town. The trestle was dismantled and salvaged, the tall chimney at the former powerhouse was dynamited, and the streetcar era in Rochester closed for good, 79 years ago this month.

Rochester's Role in WWII

The Rochester Avon Historical Society will present the story of the area's participation in World War II at a public program on Thursday, April 1 at 7:00 p.m. Local historians Rod Wilson and Pat McKay will tell the stories of the work that was done at National Twist Drill and McAleer Manufacturing Company, and remember the service of the more than 1,100 men and women from the community who wore the nation's uniform during the war. Among the special guests for the evening will be several World War II veterans who will share their personal stories.

The free program will be held at the Rochester Hills Public Library, 500 Olde Towne Road. Everyone is invited to attend.

Pioneer Farmsteads: Abner C. Parker Farm

In Rochester Hills, we have only a handful of nineteenth-century farmhouses remaining to bear testimony to the agricultural heritage of the former Township of Avon. The best-known and best-preserved example is probably the Taylor-Van Hoosen farm in Stoney Creek, but if you look closely as you travel through Rochester Hills, you will spot some others. This occasional series will look at our remaining pioneer farmsteads.

The subject of this post is the Abner C. Parker farmstead, which was located on the east side of Crooks Road, north of Hamlin and south of the Christian Hills subdivision. A mid-nineteenth century farmhouse still stands on this property (currently in distressed condition), and is an example of the "upright and a wing" design that was a fairly common house style in its day.

Abner C. Parker was born in Wayne County, New York in 1814 and migrated, with his wife Eleanor, to Oakland County, Michigan about 1840. He purchased several tracts of land in Avon and in other places, but chose to make his home in Avon Township. On February 10, 1857, Parker purchased most of the southeast quarter of section 20, as well as a portion of section 21. This property included a sawmill along the Clinton River, according to the 1872 plat of Avon shown here. Abner Parker was also listed a the proprietor of a sawmill in Avon in the 1863-64 Michigan State Gazetteer and Business Directory.

Eleanor Parker died in 1864, and was buried in Mt. Avon Cemetery in Rochester. Abner Parker then married Rebecca DeMun, who died in 1880 and was also buried in the Parker plot in Mt. Avon. Abner's third wife, Nancy Smith, whom he married in 1881, survived him, as did several children of his first two marriages. Abner Parker died on July 24, 1884, at the age of seventy, and was buried in Mt. Avon near his first two wives. His children sold the property on Crooks Road to his widow, Nancy Smith Parker, for 900 dollars in September 1884.

As architectural historians date the house on Crooks Road to the mid-nineteenth century, and given that Abner C. Parker lived on the property from 1857 to 1884, it is likely that Parker built the house and that he may have sawed the timbers for its construction on site in the sawmill that he operated along the Clinton River. The next time you pass by this location, take note of this valuable remnant of Rochester Hills' agricultural past.

Subdivision Stories: Tienken Manor Estates

In 1961, the plat for the first Tienken Manor Estates subdivision was approved by the Avon Township board, and streets and houses began appearing on the former dairy farm of John Tienken. The son of German immigrants and Avon pioneers Henry and Meta Tienken, John Tienken was born on his parents' Avon Township farm in 1864. He raised Holsteins on a farm in the northwest quarter of section 9, south of Tienken Road and west of Livernois, from which he supplied milk to the leading dairies of Detroit. Another of his agricultural ventures was the Rochester Creamery Company, a dairymens' cooperative of which he served as a director. For twenty-five years, John Tienken was also a member of the school board of the Ross School, which was located just north and west of his farm on the northeast corner of Tienken and Brewster Roads (the school building, now a private residence, still stands).

John Tienken died in 1944, and his heirs, including daughters Clarabell Kitchen and Etta Curran, eventually sold the farm for development. Tienken Manor Estates No.1 was the first of thirteen subdivisions to open, and the last was Tienken Manor Estates No.13, which was approved in 1974.

The builder of the homes in Tienken Manor was R & C - Robertson Builders of Birmingham, and the company advertised that the subdivision was the perfect mix of natural beauty and modern amenities. Streets curved to accommodate the natural rolling terrain, utilities were placed underground, and a private park was provided for the recreational benefit of the residents. Introductory models were priced at $21,900, including the lot. Today, there are 263 lots in the thirteen Tienken Manor subdivisions.

This photo from the collection of the Rochester Hills Public Library shows the John Tienken dairy farm, looking west along Tienken Road.

Halbach Field

With spring training well underway and shouts of "play ball!" just around the corner, it seems like an appropriate time to look back on the history of Rochester's own baseball ground, Halbach Field.

The village of Rochester acquired the property on which Halbach Field stands, along Woodward St. near Paint Creek, after the Detroit Sugar Company demolished its factory at that location in 1906. Around 1923, local residents started using the vacant land unofficially as a ball park. In the spring of 1925, the village took steps to improve the field by grading, filling and seeding the property. In announcing that the new athletic field was almost ready for use, the Rochester Clarion championed the cause of organized baseball in the village:

Rochester has needed just such a field these many years, and now that same has been secured, it is to be hoped a good ball team may be formulated and maintained as in other years, thereby bringing to our city many visitors from neighboring villages of the county, as it is bound to do.
With the possibility of our business places all closing on Wednesday afternoons during the months of June, July and August, as is now planned, why not organize a first class ball team and hold games each Wednesday for the entertainment of those who now can get away to see a game and at the same time have a tendency to keep our people at home upon these half holidays, in which, as time rolls on our city is sure to benefit therefrom.

The field opened in June 1925, when the Rochester Independents defeated a team from Armada by a score of 4 to 2. In 1936, local civic leader and Detroit Edison supervisor Fred Halbach led a campaign to light the field and and install a grandstand so that evening softball games could be played. Despite the fact that the nation was still struggling through the Great Depression, townspeople contributed nearly $1,000 under Halbach's encouragement to make the improvements to the ball park. The dedication ceremonies were held on June 24, 1936, and in a surprise move during the festivities, the village fathers announced that the facility would be named Halbach Field in honor of Fred Halbach and all of his efforts to improve the field. Unfortunately, Halbach had very little time to enjoy the fruits of his labors, as he died unexpectedly just six months later.

This photo from the collection of the Rochester Hills Public Library shows the dedication ceremonies underway at Halbach Field on June 24, 1936.

Main Street Stories: Charles H. Allen Building

The building at 329 S. Main Street has housed a variety of businesses in its history, but it started out as a saloon. Charles H. Allen, of Pontiac, broke ground for his building in August 1899, and it took shape quickly. The Rochester Era reported on September 15th of that year that "brick has arrived and the laying of the same has commenced on the new Allen block."

Allen then applied to the village council for a liquor license, but was turned down until his bond was guaranteed, two weeks later, by David W. Butts and Philip Lomason. With the legalities satisfied and the building finished, the saloon opened in November 1899 and Allen moved his family from Pontiac to the upstairs rooms in his new business block.

Charles Henry Allen died in 1907 and his building next housed the drug store of Luel H. Smith. The Rochester Variety Store followed Smith's pharmacy, and was purchased in March 1922 by Leslie Aris. When Aris moved his dime store down the block around 1937, a Western Auto Store opened at 329 S. Main. Western Auto relocated to the Tienken Building in the early 1940s, and the Village China Shop replaced it for a time, followed by the Jan Nan Shop. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the building housed Joe's Barber Shop and a succession of beauty parlors. Today, the former Allen saloon at 329 S. Main is the home of the Sole Sisters shoe and accessory boutique.

The Charles H. Allen block celebrates its 111th birthday this summer.

This view of the Charles H. Allen block from the collection of Marjorie and the late Walter Dernier shows how the building looked about 1961, when it housed a barber and beauty shop.

Vanished Rochester: The Haven

In the summer of 1926, industrialist Fred Marvin Shinnick began construction of a large country estate in Avon Township (now Rochester Hills), just west of the village of Rochester. Shinnick, who was born in Detroit in 1877, was secretary-treasurer of the Briggs Manufacturing Company, which during the period between the world wars was the nation's largest independent producer of automobile bodies. He also owned and operated the Rochester Dairy during the twenties.

Shinnick and his wife, the former Lillian Graham, located their new home on the former Manwaring farm on the north side of Walton Boulevard near Old Perch Road, and named it “The Haven.” The Rochester Era described the property for its readers in 1928:

The very handsome home completed a year a half ago stands back a full quarter of a mile from the road and is reached by a winding driveway. Built of red brick in old English style, it stands in spacious grounds containing 70 acres in all. At the back of the house is a lovely rock-garden and the ground slopes down to a fine natural pool with delightful woods and a ravine yet farther on. In front of the landscaping is still incomplete, although most attractive even in its present stage. Mr. and Mrs. Shinnick and their children lately returned from their respective schools, are all at home at present to enjoy their lovely surroundings.

The Clarion called The Haven “palatial,” and estimated that the cost of its construction exceeded $250,000. The home was lavishly appointed and even featured a two-manual Skinner pipe organ specifically designed for the space. (Pipe organ fans can click here to read the specs for the Shinnick instrument, Skinner op.599).

In 1932, according to Fred Shinnick's obituary, he and his wife Lillian decided to convert their home into a private psychiatric hospital. Their reasons were not stated, but the economic realities of the Great Depression were more than likely a major factor. Large estates were costly to operate and many passed out of private hands or were converted to other uses during the difficult Depression years.

Shinnick operated The Haven Sanitarium until his retirement in 1938, at which time his son, Graham, took over as hospital administrator. The Haven was known for treating well-to-do patients whose identities and privacy were carefully guarded. Rumors swirled that some of Hollywood's famous stars were numbered among its patients over the years.

There was an air of mystery surrounding The Haven, and children were spooked by it. Occasional news stories, such as this one from the Rochester Era in March, 1938, only served to increase the interest:

On Sunday, Sam Howlett was called to The Haven, west of Rochester on the Pontiac road, to participate in a hunt for a lunatic, who had escaped and fled across the fields fifteen minutes previously. Shortly after the call, police found the broken bonds which the prisoner had apparently cut with a hedge clipper in a garage back of the sanitorium and had vanished. While Chief Howlett was searching the section a report was phoned in to Deputy Ted Gunn that the fugitive was entering Rochester in the vicinity of Woodward street. Gunn immediately rushed to that street and seized him. Officials of The Haven conducted the patient to Receiving Hospital, Detroit, believing him too dangerous to keep at the sanitorium.

Notice the vocabulary that was used in those days: the individual is referred to as a “lunatic,” a “prisoner” and a “fugitive,” but not until the end of the article is he called a “patient.” No wonder the local kids were spooked by The Haven!

Not all of The Haven's publicity was negative, however. In 1949, Rochester made the magazine section of newspapers throughout the country when a feature appeared describing the “Rochester Plan,” a partnership between the school district and The Haven to provide mental health services to local students. The article by Robert Goldman, entitled “Rochester Counsels Its Children,” reported in its lead paragraph that the claim to fame for the quiet little village of Rochester, Michigan was that “it is the smallest town in the United States boasting a full-fledged psychological counseling program.”

The Haven operated as a psychiatric hospital for thirty-six years, but closed in 1968 due to declining occupancy and rising operating costs. The once grand Shinnick home sat vacant thereafter, and owing to its location so far off the main road, became a magnet for squatters, vandals and teens looking for a place to party. The caretaker and the Oakland County Sheriff's Department fought an ongoing battle to run the intruders off the property, but despite their efforts the old house was torn apart piece by piece.

Late in the evening of November 2, 1973, the Rochester Fire Department was called to a fire at The Haven. They found numerous problems in fighting the blaze and sounded two more alarms, answered by the Brooklands and Avondale departments. Fire department historian William A. Cahill recorded that the nearest hydrant was on the south side of Walton, so fire fighters had to lay 1,200 feet of hose to reach the house, and cars on Walton hampered their efforts by running over the hose line. Further, the heavy slate roof on the Tudor-revival house created an oven effect in the building. A large crowd of gawkers and onlookers added to the difficulties.

The end of The Haven came when the fire chewed away the roof supports and sent the heavy slate crashing down. Near dawn on November 3, after 40,000 gallons of water had been poured onto the blaze, the house was nothing but a smoldering ruin.

A few years after the fire, the property was redeveloped and became the Grosse Pines subdivision, but one reminder of The Haven still stands in testimony to the property's former use. The ledge rock wall and gates that adorned the Walton Boulevard frontage of The Haven property are yet visible among the tall pines at the entrance to the subdivision.

This postcard view of The Haven shows the ledge rock wall that is still visible today along Walton Boulevard.

This Month in Rochester History

One of the Detroit area newspapers once ran a photo feature about Rochester's Walnut Boulevard, calling it an "avenue of churches," and noting that the Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Nazarene meeting places were located within a two-block section of the street. The typical "small town" portrait that the newspaper painted had been true for decades, but as the population of post-war Rochester grew and brought more people into the pews, the Walnut Boulevard churches strained to accommodate them. Sixty-two years ago this month, on March 28, 1948, the first of those congregations began the process of moving away from Walnut Boulevard to a more spacious location.

The members of St. John Lutheran Church, who had been meeting in a converted residence on the corner of Second and Walnut since 1935, had outgrown their quarters and voted to build a new church and school facility. Three years earlier, the congregation had purchased the former Oscar Brewster property at the corner of Helen and Fifth (later University Drive), including a residence and barn. A new building was planned for this site which included a sanctuary, two classrooms, a fellowship hall, kitchen and office spaces, at a total cost of $130,000. The former Brewster residence was used as a parsonage.

Although excavation of the basement and laying of water and sewer pipes had already begun, the congregation chose to conduct a ceremonial groundbreaking on Easter Sunday, March 28, 1948. Two years later, construction was complete and the facility was dedicated. The building that was started in 1948 is still a part of the St. John campus today, although it is now "surrounded" by additions made in 1958, 1967, 1986 and 2001 and looks much different that it did in the accompanying photograph.

St. John was the first to outgrow Walnut Boulevard, but not the last. St. Philip's moved in 1951, St. Paul's in 1959, First Congregational in 1960, First Church of the Nazarene in 1965, St. Andrew's in 1969, and First Baptist in 1973.

X-Rated Rochester

Got your attention, didn''t I? And for those of you who are wondering, "where's the picture that goes with this post?" - you are out of luck. This is a family-friendly blog.

The recent news about the Detroit City Council's efforts to control the number, location and nature of strip clubs in Detroit reminded me of the Rochester area's own struggle with the same issue almost thirty years ago. The controversy involved the Northcrest Cinema at 298 W. Tienken Rd., near the intersection of Rochester & Tienken.

The Northcrest was a conventional movie theater when it opened in 1976, with a 352-seat auditorium less than half the size of the Hills Theatre. Problems developed four years later, after the ownership had changed and the theater began to offer x-rated fare. Avon Township officials made an attempt to shut the Northcrest down, and there were citizen protests complete with picket lines, but the theater prevailed against the initial challenges on First Amendment grounds. The Oakland County Sheriff's Department conducted at least three raids on the business, which successfully defended its right to stage nude "amateur nights" in 1986.

After Avon Township became the city of Rochester Hills, the new city enacted a zoning ordinance in 1987 to control the location of adult entertainment venues that might be proposed in the future. Northcrest Cinema was not located in an area zoned for such use, but had to be grandfathered in because it was established before the ordinance was adopted. The theater owners pressed their luck in 1988, however, when they applied for permits to remodel the building. The proposed work would have removed the theater-style seating in favor of lounge seating and renovated the stage to better accommodate live nude entertainment, in essence converting the theater to an adult nightclub.

City officials denied the permits for the work, and the two sides headed to court once again. The Northcrest owners filed a lawsuit in federal court to overturn the city's zoning ordinance, but the city prevailed. After spending nearly ten years in an adversarial relationship with city government, the sheriff's department, and neighbors in the area, the owners gave up and closed the Northcrest Cinema for good in late September 1989. In reporting the news of the theater's demise on its front page, the Rochester Eccentric quoted Rochester Hills mayor Billie Ireland:

I'm delighted -- I would even be happy to send them a bon voyage card. It's been a long fight over the last 10 years to encourage them to leave. I'm extremely delighted they are leaving after so many years. That makes my day.

The following year, the former Northcrest Cinema space was renovated and converted to a child care facility, closing the book on the area's x-rated episode.

Vanished Rochester: Detroit Sugar Company

In 1899, the Detroit Sugar Company accepted the proposal of a citizens' committee from Rochester to locate a beet sugar processing plant in the village. Detroit Sugar Company was controlled by Julius Stroh of the Stroh brewing family, and Franklin Walker of the Hiram Walker distillery family, both of whom recognized an opportunity when changes were made to state law that benefited the industry. Beet sugar plants were popping up all over lower Michigan in 1899 – eight of them, in fact – due to the incentive provided by P.A. 48 of 1897, which authorized the state to pay a penny per pound “bounty” to Michigan manufacturers who produced sugar from Michigan grown beets. Coupled with a high tariff that made Cuban sugar more expensive, the sugar bounty offered a highly favorable economic climate for producing beet sugar in Michigan.

The Rochester plant was announced in the Detroit Free Press on January 18, 1899 with a headline that screamed “Rochester Gets It.” Additional news articles quoted Pontiac officials who were lamenting the fact that the county seat had lost out on the factory to sleepy little Rochester, but the Free Press pointed out that Rochester's leaders had “hustled” where Pontiac's had not, and therefore Rochester was reaping the rewards.

The Detroit architecture firm of Spier and Rohns was contracted to built the sugar factory on a site along Paint Creek in the northwest corner of the village, conveniently adjacent to the Michigan Central railroad tracks. A new street, appropriately named Sugar Avenue, was opened between North Main and Ludlow streets to serve the plant, and the interurban line ran a spur from the main track to the plant site. Very quickly, a large and imposing factory was rising against the village skyline.

The Free Press described the plans drawn by the architects in March:

The main building will be 341 by 139 feet in size and of first-class fire-proof construction, the only wood used in the building being in the window frames. The materials to be used are stone, brick, iron and terra cotta. All the floors are to be of Michigan Portland cement and the roof of cement with a covering of asphalt. A gallery will be provided from which visitors will be enabled to see the methods of manufacturing and refining. In addition to the main building there will be an office building, a laboratory 50 by 150 feet in size, and three beet sheds, each 400 feet long, from which the beets will be floated into the factory. The cost of the entire plant will be $500,000.

Sugar beets were harvested and processed in the fall of each year, and the processing season, which typically ran from October to December, was called a “campaign.” Detroit Sugar's 1899 campaign at Rochester was a small one, having gotten a late start because the factory was not quite ready for operation on October 1 as originally planned. The campaign of 1900 was stronger, but after that, a perfect storm of economic factors converged to write a swift death sentence for the new plant.

The rapid demise of Detroit Sugar Company's Rochester factory cannot be assigned to a single cause. Several developments in a short period of time acted in concert to bring the company down. For one, local farmers who had signed on enthusiastically to place their beet fields under contract to Detroit Sugar when the factory was planned began to lose interest fairly quickly. Many had not realized how labor-intensive the cultivation of sugar beets would be, and when they discovered that it required far more effort than putting seed into the ground, they began to drop out of the program. Further, the hilly terrain of Oakland County was less suited to sugar beet cultivation that the the rich, flat, open land of Michigan's Thumb region, which was producing far more product per acre than the Rochester area could. Faced with declining deliveries from local farmers, Detroit Sugar had to cast a wider net for sugar beets, thereby forcing the company to pay higher freight charges and lowering its profit margin. At the same time that the freight expenses were kicking in, another blow was dealt in 1900 when the state's sugar bounty was declared unconstitutional. For smaller plants, such as Rochester's, whose success was predicated fairly heavily upon the revenue from these subsidy payments, the blow was a serious one. The knock-out punch came in 1902, when the federal government significantly reduced the Cuban sugar tariff, allowing the imported sugar product to compete more favorably with domestic sugar.

As a capstone to the entire debacle, Thomas E. Neely of Rochester filed a lawsuit against Detroit Sugar in the spring of 1903. Neely operated a flour mill on Paint Creek, downstream from the sugar factory (near the site of today's Rochester Athletic Club on North Main), and claimed that the sugar company was discharging lime, dirt, sand, refuse, beets and beet tops into the waterway, diminishing the size of his millpond by one half. At trial, Neely was awarded $2010.64 in damages, but Detroit Sugar appealed the case all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. The high court affirmed the lower court ruling in 1904 and Neely prevailed.

The fifth and final campaign at the Rochester factory closed at the end of 1903. The harvest delivered to the plant in 1904 was too small to make powering up the centrifuges worthwhile, so it was sold to the Mount Clemens Sugar Company for processing and the Rochester plant sat idle. A local organization of farmers made an attempt to guarantee an adequate harvest for 1905 if Detroit Sugar would re-open the plant, but their efforts failed and the factory remained dormant for the 1905 campaign as well. During its five campaigns, the Rochester plant had processed a grand total of 121,000 tons of beets and produced 25.8 million pounds of sugar.

In 1906, Detroit Sugar threw in the towel on the Rochester plant. The machinery was salvaged and sold to a company in Madison, Wisconsin, while the building, only seven years old, was demolished and the brick sold for other construction projects – some local, and others as far away as Flint. The property on which the sugar factory had stood was deeded back to the village of Rochester. Finally, in November 1927, the village fathers officially erased the last reminder of the Detroit Sugar Company when they voted to change the name of Sugar Avenue to Woodward Street, thereby consigning Detroit Sugar to the pages of Vanished Rochester.

This view of the Detroit Sugar Company factory, located on today's Woodward Street, was taken in 1899 and shows the plant still under construction.

Bygone Business: The Book Stall

The Book Stall was a children's book store operated by Helen Beatrice Southgate Williams at 436 ½ Main Street from 1964 to 1974. Mrs. Williams, who had taught children's literature at the University of Chicago and Wayne State University, was known in area schools as “The Story Lady,” because she brought her storytelling skills into the classrooms of several local districts.

For fifteen years, Helen Williams operated a book shop called “The Old Red House” from the living room of her home on West Second Street. A monthly book discussion group that she hosted there, entitled “Conversations in Literature,” was so popular that she had to add a second session. In 1964, when the house and property on Second Street were sold for an apartment development, the family relocated and Williams moved her book business to Main Street. Throughout her adult life, Helen Williams shared her passion for literature with children and their parents and teachers, challenging youngsters to use their imaginations and seeking to instill in them a love of reading. The Book Stall closed in 1974 after the death of her husband, Edward, but Mrs. Williams continued to operate an educational consulting business from her home until she was well into her eighties. She also published a literary journal which she titled “The Incessant Trumpet,” from 1985 to 1993.

Helen Southgate Williams died on May 10, 2002 at the age of 97.

Subdivision Stories: Yawkey and Chapman's Addition

Yawkey and Chapman's Addition lies just south of the Rochester city limits, west of Rochester Road, along the Clinton River. The plat for the subdivision was approved by the village council of Rochester in May 1900, with the assumption that the subdivision would become an addition to the village. The boundaries of Rochester were not extended that far south, however, and so Yawkey and Chapman's Addition to the Village of Rochester lies today within the City of Rochester Hills.

The subdivision was developed by William C. Yawkey (1834-1903) with William Clark Chapman (1866-1946) and his wife, Ada Barney Chapman. Yawkey was a Detroit financier who had made his fortune in the lumber trade in the Saginaw Valley and had been one of the founders of the Western Knitting Mills in 1891. William C. Chapman and his brother Charles S. Chapman were partners with Yawkey in the Western Knitting Mills and also served as officers of the company.

Advertisements for lots in the Yawkey & Chapman Addition claimed that they were "the most sightly lots in Oakland County," featuring "good drainage, pure air and wide streets." The lures of easy financing and mass transit options were used to attract buyers:

FOR SALE ON EASY TERMS
Why pay rent when you can get a home so easily. Money furnished to parties owning lots on this subdivision who will build. Electric cars go to this addition. Examine the property and make your selection while you can get a good choice.

An interesting historical note about this subdivision is that none of the street names that were specified in the original plat of 1900 are in use today. In August 1950, when the Township of Avon was preparing to purchase street signs, the board of trustees adopted the recommendation of the Oakland County Road Commission to rename 96 roads and streets (or sections thereof) within the township, including all three streets in the Yawkey and Chapman Addition. Today, the street originally platted as Oakland Avenue is known as Cloverport, while the street first known as Crescent Avenue is now Childress Street, and Rose Street is known today as Enid.

Yawkey and Chapman's Addition is 110 years old this spring.

Main Street Stories: Lyman L. Ball Building

The building at 308 S. Main, currently the home of Holland Floral & Gifts, was built during the summer of 1900 by a photographer and sketch artist named Lyman L. Ball. L.L. Ball was born in Milan, Michigan in 1879, the son of Moses and Evaline Wilbur Ball. He brought his photography business to Rochester just before the turn of the twentieth century and operated a studio on East Fourth Street. In 1900, he purchased part of lot 13 on Main Street from Frank Bitters and announced his intention to build. The Rochester Era reported the news thus on May 18th of that year:

L.L. Ball, the artist, is preparing to build a brick block adjoining the Bitters house on the south. It will be 20x60 ft., with his gallery on the second floor. Mr. Ball has a fine trade in his profession and his new gallery will give him much more room and opportunity to extend his business.

By mid-summer, things were taking shape. The Era reported on July 20th that the new building was "going up rapidly and the brick work will be finished in a few days." Two months later, the newspaper told the town that:

The plate glass of L.L. Ball's new brick block has been placed in position. Mr. Ball expects to remove his gallery to the new quarters soon.

The building opened with W.J. Kingsbury's Palace Bakery on the first floor and Ball's photography studio on the second floor. While Ball was establishing his business in Rochester, another man, Lafayette Mead, was doing the same, up the street. Lafe Mead was born in 1868 in Livingston County, Michigan, the son of Dyer W. and Sarah Smith Mead, and grew up in the Brighton area. He married in 1893 and relocated to Wayne County, Ohio, where he worked in a laundry in the village of Orrville. He came to Rochester just after the turn of the twentieth century and opened a laundry business here, with his quarters at first located near what later became the Hills Theatre.

After the bakery departed from Lyman Ball's new building and a short-lived confectionery store followed, Lafayette Mead's Rochester Steam Laundry moved into the first floor. Lyman Ball sold the building to Mead on June 11, 1904, and then moved his photography business to the Northville/Plymouth area, where he spent the rest of his working life and eventually died in 1947. Lafe Mead turned Ball's former studio on the second floor of the building into his personal apartments.

Mead operated the laundry at 308 S. Main until April 1942, when he retired at the age of 72 and sold the business to Detroit investors. In 1948, William L. Holland moved his floral business into the building, and Holland Floral and Gifts has been a landmark business on Main Street for the past sixty-two years. The building's front elevation has been lovingly maintained in its original style, and appears much as it did when Lyman Ball built it 110 years ago this summer.

This ca.1907 photograph of the Lyman Ball building shows it occupied by Lafe Mead's Rochester Steam Laundry.

This Month in Rochester History

This month, we observe the forty-third anniversary of the birth of the City of Rochester. At one minute past midnight on February 13, 1967, the village government of Rochester passed into history and the city government was born. Three weeks earlier, on January 24, 1967, Rochester citizens had voted to incorporate as a city by a margin of 689 to 166, thus ending 98 years of village governance.

The new city council composed of Roy Rewold, John Boeberitz, Thomas Case, Sam Howlett, James Hill, Burdette Lewis and Harold Milton convened on the evening of February 13 to go about the pressing business of setting up the new city government. One of their first tasks was the surgical separation of Avon Township assets from those of the new City of Rochester; specifically, the two municipalities needed to sort out the operation of Avon Park, Mt. Avon Cemetery, and Avon Township Public Library. Ownership and administration of the cemetery and Avon Park (now Rochester Municipal Park) were left with the City of Rochester, while the library remained a township asset, with the city of Rochester contracting for service. The Avon Township Hall, which housed township government offices, was still located at Fourth and Pine streets in Rochester in those days, so the township was in the unusual position of having its governmental offices physically located within another municipality. Similarly, to this day, the Rochester Hills Public Library (formerly Avon Township Public Library) is physically located in the City of Rochester.

Following the change from village to city, Rochester Clarion general manager Jim Sponseller opined in his weekly column that it might have been better to make the change on February 14 rather than February 13. Thirteen was considered an unlucky number by the superstitious, while February 14, Valentine's Day, was a celebration of love and marriage. Sponseller predicted that a "marriage" of Rochester and Avon Township would happen one day, and making the city's anniversary date coincide with Valentine's Day might have been a good omen, of sorts.

The "marriage" idea was floated a couple of times in the decades that followed, but consolidation didn't gain any ground with voters, and Rochester and Rochester Hills have since settled into (mostly) peaceful co-existence.

Bygone Business: Hurley's Market

In this new occasional series, we'll take a look at advertisements for bygone Rochester area businesses. Our inaugural installment features Hurley's Market, located at 339 Wilcox St., at the corner of Fourth. This neighborhood store was a child of the Great Depression, and opened as Cook's Market on December 20, 1930. In addition to serving the grocery needs of families residing west of Main Street, the market was also heavily patronized by students attending school across the corner from the store.

In 1939, Edward W. Alward bought the store from Cook, and it was known as Alward's Market to more than two decades of students. William S. Hurley bought the market in 1962, and operated it until the mid-1970s. At that time, Central Junior High School was closed, and the last of the hungry students left the Fourth & Wilcox education complex for other, more modern campuses. Today, the former market houses a beauty salon.

Did you shop at Hurley's? Work there? Hang out there? Tell us about it!

Vanished Rochester: Detroit Silver Fox Farm

During the Roaring Twenties, when the economy was booming and luxury items were in demand, Avon Township (now Rochester Hills) was the home of an unusual type of agricultural operation: the Detroit Silver Fox Farm.

Located on property currently occupied by the Village of Rochester Hills shopping center at the northeast corner of Pontiac Road (later Walton Boulevard) and Dodge Road (later Adams Road), the fox farm was incorporated in May of 1923. Officers were Fred W. Craft of Detroit, president; Arthur J. Anderson of Lake Orion, vice-president and treasurer; and R.D. Colquhoun of Detroit, secretary.

The Detroit Silver Fox Farm raised pairs of the silver gray fox, an animal highly prized for its luxurious coat, in pens that were carefully shaded by trees in order to protect the valuable pelts from damage by the sun. A watch tower loomed over the pens and an armed guard surveyed the area to ward off any intruders. Silver foxes were valued, in those days, at $5,000 to $10,000 per pair.

The company was also known by the name Pontiac Strain Furs, the label under which it marketed its product. One industry publication claimed that Pontiac Strain Furs operated fifteen fox farms and processing facilities in several states and Canada, and was the one of the largest fur operations in the country.

The company's prosperity turned out to be rather short-lived, however. Bills and claims against the firm began to pile up in 1926, after only three years of operation at the Avon Township location. Among the unpaid creditors was Rochester's Dillman & Upton lumber yard, which sought to foreclose a mechanic's lien against the fox farm for more than $5,000 in building material provided to the company in 1924. Detroit Silver Fox Farm went into receivership in 1927, and abandoned the Avon Township property because it could not be sold for a price high enough to pay the claims against it.

This postcard from the collection of the Rochester Hills Public Library shows the office building of the Detroit Silver Fox Farm in Avon Township.

Abram L. Craft

In 1937, a WPA program called the Federal Art Project funded a mural to decorate the halls of Rochester High School. Painted by muralist Marvin Beerbohm and installed over a central stairway in the school, the work entitled “Industrial Environment of Rochester High School” was unveiled in 1938.

As was common with many paintings commissioned under the FAP program, Rochester's mural features subject matter that is locally significant, including scenes of the Ferry-Morse Seed Farm and the Parkedale Biological Farms. The central figure in the mural is Abram L. Craft, who served as superintendent of the Rochester school district from about 1898 to 1908.

Abram L. Craft was born in Springfield Township, Oakland County, in 1854, the son of Charles Burton Craft and Lydia Ann Lyman. He was graduated from Fenton High School, and then attended Detroit Business University and Ferris Institute. He taught in several schools in Oakland County, including those in Clyde, Highland, Rose, White Lake, Springfield, Clarkston and Rochester. He was a county school examiner for 26 years, and after leaving Rochester in 1908 he served as Oakland County School Commissioner until his retirement in 1923.

In the summer of 1937, at the age of 81, A.L. Craft was honored by the Rochester Board of Education as the only local individual to be depicted in the Beerbohm mural commissioned for the high school. The inclusion of his image in the mural was meant to be a tribute to his half-century of service to the students of Oakland County. Unfortunately, Craft died at his Pontiac home on December 17, 1937, a few months before the painting was completed.

The Beerbohm mural remained on display in the school until 1961, when it was covered with drywall and forgotten during a building renovation. The damaged art work was rediscovered during another renovation in 1990, and was recently adopted for restoration by the Rochester Avon Historical Society. It has been undergoing cleaning and restoration by professional art conservator LaVere Webster; the Society hopes to return it to public view as soon as funds to pay for its proper re-hanging can be raised.

The illustration shows the image of Abram L. Craft as it appears in the Marvin Beerbohm mural.

Avon Park Pavilion

During the Great Depression, the Rochester area benefited from a number of projects funded under agencies created by the National Recovery Act. One of these was a WPA project approved in September 1940 to built a pavilion at Avon Park (now Rochester Municipal Park, off Ludlow St.). The park itself had been created a few years earlier with workers provided by another recovery agency, the Public Works Administration (PWA). Now, federal funds would make possible a building that could be used for events and recreational activities.

The project called for a log building of 30 x 100 feet, with a field stone fireplace. According to an account in the Rochester Clarion, the field stone was offered free by Homer R. Hodges of Brewster Road, and was gathered from his 292-acre farm in section 5 of Avon Township. The estimated cost of construction of the pavilion was $12,000. The Clarion reported that construction had begun in May 1941, but now said that the pavilion would be a more manageable 30 x 60 feet. It was scheduled to be finished and open for use in June of 1941.

After the war ended, an improvement was made to the Avon Park Pavilion. In September 1947, a heating unit was installed so that the building could be made available for use year-round, weather conditions notwithstanding. In 1951, the Rochester Women's Club, in partnership with the Girl Scouts, raised $856 to equip a kitchen in the pavilion. Very little else was done to the building for decades – it remained a rustic shelter with basic amenities until the mid-1970s. The floor was poured concrete, and the seating consisted of picnic tables with plank benches.

The Avon Park Pavilion was transformed after it became the home of the Rochester Community House, which was founded in 1975. The Community House has made many additions and capital improvements to the building in the past 35 years, and as a result, the full-service facility we know today is much larger and looks vastly different than it did in 1941. The building's rustic beginnings are still visible, however, if one knows where to look. The most prominent is the field stone fireplace at the north end of the structure, built from the rock harvested from Homer Hodges' farm. The fireplace is the focal point of the Community House's Lewis Room, which comprises most of the original pavilion structure.

The Avon Park Pavilion/Rochester Community House building celebrates its 69^th birthday this spring.

This postcard photo from the collection of the Rochester Hills Public Library, shows how the Avon Park Pavilion looked at the time that it was built in 1941.

Subdivision Stories: New School

In 1916, the brand-new Rochester High School building at the corner of Fifth (University Drive) & Wilcox streets was opened to students. It was the town's first school building specifically designed to house the high school students, and it was dedicated with great fanfare.

During the same time period that the new school was being planned and built, real estate developers were platting the property lying to the west of the school between Fifth Street and the southern village limits. Principal among them was the partnership of Kapp and Ritchey, whose Auburn Gardens Land Company had developed the Alhambra Gardens and Curry Hills subdivisions on the west side of the village of Rochester in 1913. Kapp and Ritchey's new subdivision, laid out and sold in 1916 and including the streets known as Helen, Taylor, Castell, Roselawn and Fairview, was named “New School” because it offered housing opportunities within easy walking distance of the new school.

The developers were Ruth Adelaide Kapp and Paul Harden Ritchey and his wife, Addie V. Ritchey. P.H. Ritchey had offices in Pontiac and Windsor and traveled extensively in his quest to locate investment properties. Ruth A. Kapp was a real estate investor based in Ann Arbor and Pontiac. Her father, John Kapp, was a physician who served at one time as mayor of Ann Arbor. Another physician, Dr. Daniel G. Castell, a prominent citizen of Pontiac, was apparently a close friend of Ruth A. Kapp; she honored him by naming a street for him in the Alhambra Gardens subdivision when it was created in 1913. The street was continued through the Curry Hills and Oakdale subdivisions, and eventually, through the New School subdivision. At the time, Ruth Kapp was living in Pontiac on Roselawn Street, and she apparently named another street in New School in honor of her Pontiac address.

The features of the New School subdivision were proudly enumerated in advertisements of the day. Lots could be had for as little as $75. A large display ad running in the Rochester Era during July of 1916 described the amenities:

The New School Subdivsion lots are large, high, dry and have nicely graded streets. During recent years it has been discovered that the English Walnut tree will thrive and bear well in Michigan. These are the thin-shelled nuts you buy from your grocer for 20c to 25c per pound. We are going to plant an English Walnut tree on the front part of every lot in the New School subdivision early next spring. We will also plant one nice Maple tree in front of every lot.
...
The location of the property is ideal. The main trunk line running out of the city towards the west, Fifth St., passes on the north side of the property. It is also intersected by Third and First Streets. The big schools are nearby.
There are no railroads or car tracks to cross in going to these schools, and the mothers never need to worry about the little ones going or coming. All churches are within easy walking distance of this property, and it is only a few minutes' walk into the heart of the business district.

Kapp & Ritchey must have made their case very effectively with prospective buyers, for every lot in the New School subdivision was sold during the two sale weekends. The developers, finding themselves in the desirable situation of having more buyers than available lots to sell, immediately opened another subdivision the following month.

This advertisement from the Rochester Era lists the terms of purchase for lots in the New School subdivision.

This Month in Rochester History

Do you refer to University Drive in Rochester as Fifth Street? If so, you are saying something about yourself! It was fifty-one years ago today, on January 1, 1959, that Fifth Street officially became known as University Drive. The village fathers changed the name of the street because they wanted to acknowledge the presence of the newly-founded Michigan State University-Oakland (later to become Oakland University), located a few miles west of town on the former Meadow Brook Stock Farm of Alfred and Matilda Dodge Wilson.

Rochester was eager in those days to become a "college town" of sorts. Although the MSUO campus lay partially in Avon Township and partially in Pontiac Township (now Auburn Hills), area leaders were successful in encouraging the school to adopt a Rochester mailing address and a Rochester identity. Renaming Fifth Street was part of their effort to ensure that Rochester would be considered the "home" of Oakland University.

This view of Fifth Street, from the collection of the Rochester Hills Public Library, was taken in the mid-1920s, when the boulevard still existed. The camera is looking west.

Main Street Stories: 415-417 S. Main

The business block at 415-417 S. Main might appropriately be called the Palmer Block after the jeweler and optician who built it, but the label also rightly applies to the entire row of storefronts from 405-417 S. Main.

Louis Eugene Palmer, who built his first commercial building at 405-405 S. Main Street in 1883, bought adjoining lots in the same block and was soon the landlord for several businesses on the west side of Main between Fourth and Fifth (now University Drive). The double storefront at 415-417 was built about 1896-97; when it was ready for occupancy, Palmer moved his jewelry store up the block from its previous location to 417; 415 was occupied by William J. Fraser, who ran a harness making operation there in addition to his justice of the peace office.

Palmer's son, Fred, and daughter, Pauline, followed him into the business and even operated stores in competition with their father at various times. The 417 S. Main location was a Palmer jewelry store until 1935, when the senior Palmer died in his apartment above the business.

Tenants in the 415 location have included Brownell's Grocery in the 1920s, and Baldy Benson's barber shop in the 1930s and 1940s; later occupants were Joe's Barber Shop, Wayne Heating and Cooling and Del Van Skiver's Avon Photography. The 417 side of the building was the home of the House of Custom Colors for a couple of decades, and was also a Sherwin Williams paint store for a time. In recent years, a variety of businesses have come and gone from the location.

In 1960, a major renovation of the building exterior replaced the original facade with a faux-colonial design, eliminating the cornice and the windows across the front of the second floor. The building is currently undergoing an historic restoration of the Main Street elevation which will return it to its 1897 appearance.

This postcard view of 415-417 S. Main shows the building when it was occupied by the Louis E. Palmer jewelry store and William J. Fraser's harness-making shop and justice of the peace office. Notice the clock on the pole in front of the store, styled as a pocket watch.

Vanished Rochester: The RHS Bridge

When Rochester's high school students moved from the old school at the corner of Fifth & Wilcox to their brand new school at the corner of Walton & Livernois in the fall of 1956, they had to adjust to living with a very unfamiliar building layout. Architects had designed the new RHS to be expanded as future enrollment might require, with two long wings extending eastward from a center hub. If a student had a class at the end of the south wing, which extended to the gymnasium, followed by a class in the north wing, the walk was almost impossible to make through the school corridors in the allotted time between bells.

The problem was solved as the result of a 1966 bond issue which funded the addition of a swimming pool in the gymnasium complex and an auditorium adjacent to the music classrooms on the north wing. To connect the north and south wings at their eastern ends, a covered pedestrian bridge was built from the gym to the auditorium, and it was opened to students in January of 1968. The Rochester Clarion announced the happy news:

Students at Rochester High will be saving miles of walking next week when this novel bridge is expected to open, linking two distant wings of the building. The bridge connects to the two front wings and will greatly cut congestion in the present main hall. Many students now dash through the cold across the concourse to reach classes on time.

In terms of its practical use, the RHS bridge turned out to be a short-lived feature of the building. By the time that my class arrived in the halls of RHS, only five years after the bridge had been opened, it was already off limits to student traffic. The north end of the walkway was blocked off and was used to house a student store, unimaginatively named "The Bridge." The south end of the walkway was used to store chairs, dollies and other paraphernalia needed in the gym. Once again, students were dashing across the lawn in order to make it from one wing to the other before the second bell rang.

A major expansion and renovation of the high school building in 1986 enclosed the former main courtyard area to accommodate a new media center and more gymnasium space, and that construction project consigned the RHS bridge to the pages of Vanished Rochester.

This photo shows part of the bridge as it entered the gymnasium complex at the end of the south wing.

Subdivision Stories: Belle Cone Gardens

The Belle Cone Gardens subdivision was laid out in Section 33 of Avon Township, along the Avon/Troy boundary, in late 1926 and early 1927. The development was part of a post-World War I building boom that exploded in southern Avon Township along the Auburn/South Boulevard corridor. Belle Cone was one of several subdivisions that transformed the farmlands of Avon into affordable housing lots for laborers in the Pontiac automobile factories.

The subdivision lies on land that was owned by one of Avon's pioneer settlers, Linus Cone, who first came to Michigan from points east in 1821, and purchased land in Section 33 of Avon Township in 1826. He met and married Mary Crooks (of the family for whom Crooks Road is named) in the following year, and the couple farmed their land and reared three sons there. Linus Cone was well-known in agricultural circles for espousing modern farming theories and practices, and he also served for a time as editor and publisher of the Michigan Farmer. He lived on his farm in Avon until his death in 1875; the property eventually passed into the hands of his son, Frederick W. Cone, and then later to Frederick's widow, Annabelle "Belle" Cone.

In October 1926, the first of three plats for the development known as Belle Cone Gardens was filed on behalf of Belle Cone and several investors. The names of the subdivision streets reflect the names of the project's investors and developers. Belle Cone's partners were Detroit real estate broker Leslie J. Leinbach and his wife Grace; Leslie Leinbach's partner, Harry B. Leinbach, and his wife Rose; Mildred D. Decker; and Samuel W. Smith and his wife Alida DeLand Smith. Belle Cone Gardens includes streets named for the Cone family, Grace Leinbach, Mildred Decker, Alida DeLand Smith, and Samuel W. Smith.

Samuel W. Smith is another prominent figure connected to Belle Cone Gardens. Smith served as prosecuting attorney of Oakland County, was a member of the Michigan legislature, and served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1915. During his years in Congress he was known as a champion of the extension of rural free mail delivery.

The Belle Cone Gardens subdivision is 83 years old this year.

Vanished Rochester: DeLisa's

In 1942, the area immediately north of Tienken and Rochester roads was "out in the country." National Twist Drill had only recently moved to the area from Detroit, and the rest of the Township of Avon that lay directly north of the village limits was still rural in character. Today, a wealth of dining and entertainment options are available at that very corner, but in 1942, Floyd L. and Oliver Relyea were the first on the scene.

On July 2, 1942, the Rochester Clarion announced that the Relyeas were about to open a new dining and dancing hall called Relyea Acres at 6980 N. Rochester Rd. Nine years later, in 1951, John DeLisa took over the business and changed its name to DeLisa's Restaurant. DeLisa's specialized in pizza pies, a fast-food delicacy that was just beginning to gain popularity in the United States at that time.

DeLisa's closed in September of 1968 and the restaurant building was torn down the following year to make way for the construction of a gas station.

The advertisement shown here is one that appeared in the Rochester Clarion in 1955.

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.

This Month in Rochester History

This month is the forty-first anniversary of one of the most devastating fires in Rochester's downtown business district. In the early morning hours of December 12, 1968, a fire started in the Case's Hardware building at 335 S. Main Street. The blaze was first discovered at about 4:15 a.m. when a resident of one of the apartments in the National Bank of Detroit building next door was awakened by strange noises and realized that the adjacent hardware store was burning. The apartment resident called the fire department and awakened his neighbors, insuring that everyone was safely evacuated and possibly saving several lives through his actions.

According to William A. Cahill's history of the Rochester Fire Department, the Case's fire was a three-floor attack that was difficult work for the firefighters. Additional alarms were sounded and brought the Brooklands, Avondale and Lake Orion fire departments to the scene. By 5:20 a.m., the Troy fire department had responded to a fifth alarm after Rochester's veteran 1937 Seagrave truck blew a hose line. As firefighters attacked the fire from the Main Street side of the building using Troy's brand new aerial truck, others fought the fire from the alley side, elevated in the bucket of a Detroit Edison truck.

Cahill relates that the blaze was further fueled by the flammable goods and chemicals normally found in hardware stores. The intense heat of the fire also ignited the live ammunition stored there, making the firefighters feel as though they were in a war zone.

Weather conditions worked in the firefighters' favor, as the temperature was above freezing and winds were not a factor. Firefighters were able to save the surrounding buildings and there was no loss of life or serious injury.

Case's Hardware, however, was a total loss. The inferno had completely gutted the building and collapsed the storefront. My dad remembers that the huge safe in the office had fallen to the basement when the floor collapsed, and Byers' wrecker had a very difficult time pulling it out of the rubble. The losses were estimated at more than $100,000, and the cause of the fire was never precisely determined because of the utter destruction of the building. Case's Hardware, which had been a fixture at that location since horse and buggy days, never re-opened. The rubble of the old building was removed from the site and a new, one-story structure replaced it at 335 S. Main.

This photo from the collection of Marjorie and the late Walter Dernier was taken about 1960, and shows how the building appeared at the time of its destruction. The original storefront had been covered with the "modern" facade in 1955.

Window Night

This year, on the Monday following Thanksgiving, downtown Rochester merchants will kick off the holiday shopping season with their Lagniappe celebration, an annual event since 1973. When I was growing up in the 1960s, the Rochester Chamber of Commerce encouraged Christmas shopping with a promotion called Window Night. The program started in the week before Thanksgiving, when participating stores displayed prize merchandise in their front windows, along with a poster containing a winning number that was kept covered up until the appointed time. As shoppers visited the stores to conduct their normal business, they would be given numbered tickets. The shopper retained the ticket, hoping it would match the store's number to be revealed on Window Night.

On the actual evening of Window Night, the sidewalks were filled with people waiting for the fire siren to blow at 7:00 p.m., signaling the official unveiling of the winning numbers. Merchants uncovered their numbers, and shoppers moved from store window to store window, pressing their noses to the glass to compare their tickets to the posted numbers. A shopper holding a winning number was rewarded with the prize merchandise displayed by the merchant whose number matched the shopper's ticket. There was plenty of merriment and everybody enjoyed the excitement of searching for winning numbers while browsing the shops and looking at the Christmas lights along Main Street.

Of course, the holiday light display on Main was much more modest than the one we have today. It consisted of garland and colored light bulbs strung across Main from light pole to light pole, with a three red plastic bells in the center hanging right over the middle of the street. Each bell had a light bulb inside and the bulbs were sequenced to blink off and on going from left to center to right and back again, to simulate the motion of a ringing bell. The effect was charming but sometimes made it a challenge to pick out the traffic lights that were hanging near the bells.

The Window Night promotion was replaced by Rochester's own version of the Creole tradition of Lagniappe, "a little something extra," in 1973. The garland and the bells were retired years ago, and now we are a regional sensation with the Big Bright Light Show. Lagniappe will be held on November 30 this year, and the Big Bright Light Show will open on that evening at 7:00 p.m. Click here for details.

Main Street Stories: Hills Theatre Building

The Hills Theatre Building at 412-416 S. Main Street was built in 1941 by the proprietor of the Avon Theatre, Charles L. Sterns. Ground was broken in May 1941, just a few months before the nation entered World War II. Sterns built his new theatre on a vacant parcel that had been a used car lot owned by Ford dealer Larry Jerome.

The new Hills Theatre drew its name from Rochester's slogan, "The Heart of the Hills." As opening day drew near, owner Sterns announced that the older, smaller Avon Theatre across the street would operate on Friday and Saturday nights only, offering second-run double features and serials. The large and modern Hills, on the other hand, would serve as Rochester's premiere movie palace, operating every night with early and late showings plus a Sunday afternoon matinee. The opening night program featured Fibber McGee and Molly with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in Look Who's Laughing.

The auditorium of the Hills had a seating capacity of 820, and was lavishly appointed. An article announcing the theatre's grand opening in a January 1942 issue of the Rochester Clarion described it as follows:

The wood trim throughout the theatre is of light birch wood. Fluorescent light tubes of various colors line the walls on either side of the theatre. Indirect lighting will light up the foyer and lobby which have been decorated in rich tones of blue and pink.
The flooring in the lobby is a terrazzo composition and rich, maroon carpeting will cover the flooring in the theatre foyer and down the aisles in the auditorium.
...
The seats are of maroon plush upholstery. The overdrapes around the proscenium of the theatre stage are of maroon velvet.

The front of the building was faced with Vitrolite, an opaque colored glass tile that was popular in the era and was featured on many Art Deco buildings.

The architects of the Hills Theatre building were partners Lavern R. Bennett and Eugene D. Straight of Dearborn. Bennett & Straight specialized in theatre design and were also the architects of the Main Theatre in Royal Oak, the Bloomfield Theatre in Birmingham, the Allen Park cinemas, and the La Parisien Theatre in Garden City, among others. Carl VandenBerghe was the general contractor.

The theatre building also included retail and office space. The first tenants were the Dale and Nina Martin Insurance Agency and the optical offices of Dr. H. A. Miller.

The Avon Theatre closed in the early 1950s, and the Hills became the only movie house in town. In the early 1970s, multi-screen venues began popping up in the surrounding area. The Hampton Theatre opened with three screens in 1971 in a strip shopping center at Rochester and Hamlin Roads; the Winchester Theatre opened in the Winchester Mall at Avon and Rochester Roads; and the Northcrest Cinema (which notoriously switched from Hollywood fare to X-rated films a few years after its debut in 1973) opened in a shopping strip at Tienken and Rochester. Not long after, the community granted its first cable television franchise, and the pressure on the single-screen Hills Theatre became enormous. Bowing to the economic realities, the Hills went dark in 1984 and the building was remodeled as the Main Street Plaza, housing a group of boutique businesses and professional offices.

Although the marquee and box office are long gone, the box office "coming attraction" showcases still exist on the front of the building, flanking the entrance to the Main Street Plaza. The Hills Theatre building celebrates its 68th birthday this year.

Good news! The Rochester Avon Historical Society has selected the Hills Theatre building as one of its Cat's Meow buildings for 2009, and copies will be available in December. The popular Cat's Meow series includes a number of historic buildings from the greater Rochester community. Cat's Meow collectible figures are available at Holland’s Florist, the Rochester Hills Museum at Van Hoosen Farm, Dillman & Upton, Framer’s Workshop and Lytle’s Pharmacy, or by visiting the Rochester Avon Historical Society web site. If you remember the Hills Theatre fondly, or know someone who does, a Cat's Meow figure of the building will make a great holiday gift!

Do you have memories of the Hills Theatre? Post a comment!

This 1961 view of the Hills is from the collection of Marjorie and the late Walter Dernier.

Health Care in Rochester - 1960s Style!

The recent debate about health care reform led me to think back to the way such things were handled when I was growing up in Rochester during the 1960s. First of all, Howard McGregor's cattle were grazing where Crittenton Hospital now stands, so before the fall of 1967 Rochester residents had to travel to Pontiac when they needed hospital care. Ambulance transportation was provided by the two funeral homes; in the mid-sixties the town got a regular ambulance company and Rochesterites could then call upon Frank St. Onge to haul their bones to Pontiac in one of his orange station wagons.

Needless to say, hospital visits were a rarity; most problems, even urgent ones, were handled by the family physician. When I was a kid, it seemed as though Doctors Kresge, Geist, Dayton and Siffring were taking care of most of the town, dealing with all of their patients' needs from cradle to grave.

Health insurance – if a family even had it – only covered the major expenses, like hospitalization. Visits to the doctor's office were an out-of-pocket expense, so we didn't go to the doctor for every ache, pain, sniffle or sneeze. Our health insurance for those kinds of ailments was the local pharmacy – Morley's, Hunter's or Cunningham's, depending upon personal preference – and the family medicine cabinet. (By the way, if you have any medicine bottles with these pharmacy labels in your cabinet, it's really time to clean it out.)

At the center of our medicine cabinet were two bottles that contained the cures for ninety percent of our medical problems: aspirin and Pepto-Bismol. Skin wounds got painted with Mercurochrome (it'll only sting for a minute). Other skin ailments, including rashes, scrapes and burns were treated with Mom's all-purpose tube of A+D ointment. Bug bites were covered with good old calomine lotion. Congestion due to colds called for Vicks VapoRub to be slathered on the chest. Sore throat? Pop a Parke-Davis throat lozenge (I wish I still had some of those – they were great). And last, but not least, all orthopedic problems from a strained muscle to a broken limb could be handled with an Ace bandage.

If a fever was suspected, Mom took our temperature with a glass tube mercury thermometer, and we didn't worry about it. Today, if you break one of those things the men in the haz-mat suits have to come in and decontaminate your building. It's amazing that we lived through childhood, isn't it?

Subdivision Stories: Christian Hills

The Christian Hills No.1 subdivision was platted on the north half of Section 20 of Avon Township in the spring of 1955. It was laid out on land owned by the Anchor Realty Corporation, whose president was Alfred G. Wilson. Wilson and his wife, Matilda (the former Mrs. John Dodge) owned Meadow Brook Stock Farm (which eventually became Oakland University) and the Christian Hills property was part of their extensive real estate holdings in the area. Wilson's Anchor Realty sold 265 acres between Crooks and Adams for development by Ranch Homes, Inc., of Birmingham, a company operated by three brothers named Alfred J., Thomas H. and Harry Macksey.

Ranch Homes opened Christian Hills No.1 to the public on April 15, 1955, by making four model homes available for inspection. Prices in the new subdivision ranged from $16,900 to $29,900 for the homes, depending upon the model selected from more than twenty options, plus an additional $2,800 to $5,000 for the lots, depending upon location.

Immediately after the opening of Christian Hills No.1, additional property acquired from Anchor Realty was platted as Christian Hills No.2. In August of 1955, property on the east side of Crooks Road was platted as Christian Hills No.3. Today, there are a total of 394 homes in the the three Christian Hills subdivisions.

The name of the subdivision has its roots in the earliest pioneer history of Avon Township. In 1822, only six years after the first non-native settlement in Oakland County was made by James Graham and his family, a pioneer settler named Smith Weeks purchased eighty acres of land in Section 20 and another 320 acres in Sections 19 and 29 of what would become the Township of Avon. An itinerant minister thought to have been the first Methodist clergyman in Oakland County, Weeks apparently had a very compelling personality and was known as an ardent preacher. Early settlers called his land “Christian Hills,” it is believed, in homage to the Reverend Weeks' dynamic pursuit of his vocation, and the name persisted through the years. A rural school located in the area, at Adams and Butler roads, was also named Christian Hills. Technically speaking, the land on which the Christian Hills subdivision stands today is slightly to the north and east of the property once owned by Smith Weeks, so the developers were exercising a small bit of license in adopting the historic name for their development.

Smith Weeks also served as a pathmaster of Avon Township, probate judge of Oakland County and as the first chaplain of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Michigan. He died in 1829 at the age of 69, but the name Christian Hills remains in use to this day, 180 years after his death.

This graphic is from a newspaper advertisement for Christian Hills that ran in the Rochester Clarion in the spring of 1955. I added color to the company logo to make it more readable.

Stony Creek - A Historic Community

Everyone is invited to the next meeting of the Rochester Avon Historical Society on Thursday, November 5 at 7:00 p.m., when Patrick McKay, director of the Rochester Hills Museum at Van Hoosen Farm, will present "Stony Creek - A Historic Community."

Stony Creek village was first settled by Lemuel Taylor and his family in 1823 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Come to hear stories of the founding of the community and the people who helped to establish it, and learn about the ongoing efforts to preserve it. The program is free and open to the public and will be held in the auditorium of the Rochester Hills Public Library, 500 Olde Towne Road.