Fourth of July Fun

When I was a little kid, Fourth of July was all about fireworks and sparklers. In those days, there was a local fireworks display that was staged somewhere in the vicinity of the Rochester High School campus at Walton and Livernois. My grandparents lived on the hill at Romeo and High streets, and their front yard was a good vantage point from which to view the show, so the family always gathered there to watch the fireworks.

It seemed to take forever for dusk to come, and the anticipation grew and grew while our ears strained to hear that first, experimental BOOM that told us the show was about to start. We'd turn our lawn chairs to the west and prepare to be dazzled. There was no orchestration to accompany the fireworks in those days, but we were thrilled nonetheless.

After the big show was over, we were allowed to put on our own little spectacle with the sparklers. Grandpa would haul out the garden hose and fill a couple of buckets with water, then we kids were allowed to jump around with our sparklers, after listening with one ear to the standard speech about keeping them away from our faces and not throwing them. Soon the yard would be filled with a smoky haze and the aroma of sulphur dioxide as we wound down for the evening.

This year, the Festival of the Hills fireworks will be held in Borden Park on Wednesday, July 1. Click here for details.

The Rochester Era Building

The Rochester Era was the community's first successful newspaper, established in April 1873, just a year after the first railroad line connected Rochester with the outside world. Truman Buell Fox and his son, William A. Fox ran the newspaper together until the death of the elder Fox in 1893; Will Fox continued on his own for decades after that. The Era of July 10, 1885 announced that “Will A. Fox of The Era has commenced the erection of a two-story brick office and residence on H.M. Look, Sr.'s homestead, between Main and Walnut sts. It will be 20x34 feet.” The new building was completed in November of the same year, when the editor crowed from the front page that the newspaper was now settled in the new quarters and would entertain visitors. An accompanying article explained that “for nearly thirteen long and rebellious years we had paid office rent,” and tiring of changing locations at the whim of landlords, father and son Fox had decided to put up their own building. A newspaper item that ran two months later with a review of recent construction activity in the village put the price of construction of the Era building at $1,000.

The building has worn a number of color schemes over the years, but one in particular was noted in an October, 1909 newspaper item which reported that the Era building had just been painted: "the brick red and trimmings colonial yellow."

The 1885 Rochester Era building still stands at 114 West Third Street, across the west alley from the Mind, Body & Spirits restaurant. It has housed a number of boutique business in recent decades, and is currently the home of the Talulah Belle Boutique.

The Rochester Era building celebrates its 124^th birthday this summer.

Summer Fun in Avon Park

I grew up in a neighborhood bordering what is now the Rochester Municipal Park, known in those days as Avon Park. The park was both our playground and our family picnic area. Today, the playground is located in the same general area as it was when I was a kid in the 1960s, but it looks a bit different now. We didn't have engineered "playscapes," but we did have the monkey bars, jungle gym, teeter-totter, merry-go-round and the ever-popular swing set and slide. No environmentally friendly, non toxic, low-impact structures, these; most were constructed out of iron or galvanized pipe. They didn't have a foot of rubber mulch beneath them to cushion our falls, either. We landed on the concrete-like ground - beaten hard by thousands of kids' feet over the years - got up, brushed off our skinned knees and got on with the game. The seats on the swing set were rubber, and after few hours of heating up under the summer sun, they reached a temperature that could peel the skin from the backs of our legs. Likewise the slide, which was constructed of shiny sheet metal - not plastic - was hot enough to scorch our backsides.

We learned some of life's little lessons on that playground in Avon Park. The teeter-totter was a terrible danger; more than one kid took a smack from that 2x10 piece of lumber when bailing off the end of the board. The sympathy that we got from our parents ran something along the lines of "well, you've learned not to do that again, haven't you?" I suppose they figured that we were learning a lesson in physics - the use of the fulcrum, or maybe that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Anyway, kids had to be tough to hang out on the playground. It's a wonder we survived without helmets, knee-pads, elbow-pads and direct adult supervision!

Main Street Stories: The W. Harvey Greene Building

The building at 311 S. Main currently houses a custom jewelry store, but for the first four decades of its history it was the location of a furniture and undertaking business. W. Harvey Greene began construction of the store in the summer of 1882 and the Rochester Era reported in August of that year that “the cellar-wall of Harv. Greene's new block is completed and brick-work will soon commence.” By the next spring, the Era was carrying advertising for Greene's Furniture Emporium at his “new brick store on Main Street.” Undertaking services were also available. (W. Harvey Greene was the son of Calvin H. Greene, the Avon Township man who commissioned an 1856 daguerreotype portrait of Henry David Thoreau that is now part of the National Portrait Gallery collection.)

In 1887, P.M. Woodworth announced in the Era that he was the successor to W. Harvey Greene and invited the patronage of his furniture and undertaking parlors, noting that the undertaking department furnished the free use of a hearse to customers. In 1896, Woodworth's widow took a partner and the business became known for a brief time as Woodworth & Lintz. In September of 1899, Woodworth & Lintz sold out to Thomas C. Severance, who advertised that W. Harvey Greene would once again be associated with the firm. Severance died in 1903 and his widow sold to Edward R. Metcalf in December of that year. E.R. Metcalf ran the furniture and undertaking business (adding a Ford automobile agency in 1910) in the 311 S. Main location until early 1911, when he left the state and sold to Dr. Vernor M. Spaulding.

Between 1920 and 1925, the building became the home of the Terry Sanitary Bakery. Terry was succeeded in 1931 by the Service Bakery, operated by C.C. Terrell, who remodeled the building. In May of 1936 the Clarion reported that 311 S. Main had been leased to Mrs. Edwin Behm, who held the grand opening of Behm's Dairy and ice cream parlor on May 23, 1936.

In the 1960s, 311 S. Main became home to David's Salon, which occupied the space for nearly three decades. In 1997, Paul R. Haig moved his custom jewelry business into the building and completed an award-winning restoration of the exterior, returning it to its 1918 appearance.

The W. Harvey Greene building celebrates its 127^th birthday this year.

The Heart of the Hills

Have you ever wondered how the "heart of the hills" motto came to be? If you've been around Rochester for more than a decade, you may recall the red heart that always appeared on the nameplate of the late Rochester Clarion, along with the newspaper's motto, "your hometown newspaper in the Heart of the Hills."

That slogan came about in the autumn of 1940, when the Kiwanis Club was planning to erect gateway welcome signs at the outskirts of the village (these signs still stand on Rochester Road and Walton Boulevard). The Kiwanis Club and village of Rochester sponsored a contest, promoted by the Clarion, for the best slogan to describe the community on the new signs. The winner was 12-year-old Russell Clanahan, whose suggestion "The Heart of the Hills" won him the first prize of $10. The Clarion also took up the slogan and added it to the front page of the newspaper.

Almost seventy years later, the Rochester Clarion is no more, but Russell Clanahan's ten-dollar idea lives on in some of our business and organization names. We have the Heart of the Hills Swim Club, Heart of the Hills Church, Heart of the Hills Barber Shop and even the Heart of the Hills Players.

It was a great idea in 1940, and it's still a great idea today. Here's to the Heart of the Hills!

Making the Elevator Shine

Yesterday's painting bee at the Rochester Elevator was a wonderful community event. More than 100 people turned out to pick up a brush and help to preserve an important piece of Rochester history. Standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder along the building, they all pitched in to put the finish coat of fresh paint on a structure that was once central to the town's agricultural economy. Professional painters supervised and sign painters worked on restoring the advertising on the gable end. Meanwhile, the Lions Club and members of the volunteer fire department served lunch for the workers.

Additional photos may be viewed by visiting the Detroit News coverage of the event, and video coverage from CMN News is available here.

Next time you are in town, be sure to check out the new paint job on the Rochester Elevator, and take a look at the new River Walk signage that was dedicated yesterday as well. The sign located in front of the old railroad depot on East University contains information about the depot as well as the elevator, and includes vintage photographs.

Main Street Stories: The D & C Building

Saturday, June 29, 1940 was a red-letter day in Rochester - literally. It was on that day that the D & C Store, a fixture on Main Street since 1926, opened to the public in its brand new building at 401 S. Main. The sleek Art Deco design complete with the big red D and C letters over the entrance replaced the old Lambertson block which had once housed George Dennis's store and following that, Axford's Sport Shop.

The advertisement for the grand opening of the new store welcomed customers to a "greatly enlarged modern daylight store, complete with new fixtures, sanitary candy department and many new and enlarged lines of merchandise." That candy department was hard to miss, being located right inside the door where it tantalized the kids of the town. On opening day, according to the ad, the special was cream nut fudge for 19 cents a pound.

Other opening specials were souvenir needle books for the ladies and yardsticks for the men. A quart of Aerowax floor wax could be had for 35 cents, and clothes hampers (choice of 3 colors) were on sale for 89 cents.

At first, the D & C Store did not occupy all of the space in the new building at Fourth & Main. The back of the building, with a separate entrance off Fourth Street, housed at various times the Tot to Teen store, Plassey's Market, and Mason's Market. Eventually, the D & C expanded to use the entire space.

Rochester's D & C Store was part of a chain founded in Stockbridge, Michigan in 1926 by brothers James and Paul Dancer and their partner, Glen Cowan (hence the D and C name). Their business expanded to 54 stores across Michigan at its high point, but by 1993, the giant discount retailers had taken their toll and the D & C chain closed its stores, including the one in Rochester.

After the D & C faded into memory, the building was remodeled for restaurant use. The first tenant, opening in late 1994, was America's Pizza Cafe; it was replaced in 1998 by Andiamo's, which currently occupies the space.

OK, readers: most people remember the squeaky wood floors, the candy counter, and maybe the legend of the ghost. What do YOU remember about the D & C?

Photo: A view of the D & C building about 1950.

This Month in Rochester History

On the 18^th of this month, we mark the 63^rd anniversary of the day that Rochester's downtown landscape changed forever. On June 18, 1946, the earthen berm around the Western Knitting Mills dam on Paint Creek - already waterlogged by unusually heavy rains - gave way when it was placed under tremendous pressure by the failure of the upstream dam at Rudd's Mill in Orion Township. When the WKM dam failed, it unleashed a torrent of floodwater from the mill pond on to the east side of Rochester.

The Western Knitting Mills built a new factory at Fourth and Water Streets in 1896 (the building is occupied today by the Rochester Mills Brewing Company). The WKM improved the dam and mill pond formerly used to power the old Rochester Woolen Mills which once stood on the site, and in 1901 the company further expanded the pond. It was approximately 12-14 acres in area, and featured a small island which was used by area scout troops for camping exercises. The pond was variously referred to as Chapman Pond or Chapman Lake, as WKM president Charles S. Chapman had an elegant home that stood on a bluff overlooking the water. A 25-foot fall provided power for the knitting mills, but after the knitting operation closed and McAleer Manufacturing took over the building, the dam was no longer used to generate power.

The flood that ensued when the dam gave way on June 18 washed out the New York Central railroad tracks on the east side of town. It also swept up two women who were leaving their Third Street home for higher ground, when the porch of the house collapsed beneath them. One of the women was able to hold on to the post of a child's swing until the fire department could rescue her, but she was unable to help her companion, Mrs. Alice C. Garnett, who was swept away by the current. Mrs. Garnett's body was recovered downstream later that day.

Following the flood, the first recovery efforts concentrated on restoring railroad service on the New York Central line. A train was stranded at Goodison because the tracks in Rochester were washed out. A temporary trestle was fashioned to carry the trains through the flood area.

Paint Creek was unwilling to be forced back into its old channel, and the dam was no longer needed to generate power, so later in the summer of 1946 some filling was done in the lake bottom, and the Chapman mill pond disappeared from Rochester's map forever. Today, the former lake bottom is occupied by the Rochester Post Office, Rochester Hills Public Library, and the Royal Park Hotel. The library stands approximately where “Scout Island” was once located.

Map: This 1908 plat map of Rochester shows the location of the Chapman Pond, lying along the east side of Water Street (hence the street name). Note the location of the Rochester Elevator and today's University Drive, marked for reference.

Tienken Road Widening - 1940s style

There's been lots of coverage of the proposed work on E. Tienken Road in the news lately (if you aren't up to speed on this issue, check out this story from today's Oakland Press), so it's no wonder that the following item caught my eye while I was scanning a copy of the Rochester Clarion from 69 years ago. The article is quoted in its entirety from the October 11, 1940 issue of the Rochester Clarion:

County Makes Repairs on E. Tienken Road

Narrow Bridges Are Torn Out; Curves Cut and Road Widened

East Tienken road from the Van Hoosen farm store to Rochester road M-150 is closed to traffic. The road is under construction by the Oakland County Road Commission and is undergoing great improvements.
Near the Van Hoosen store the road is being ditched on both sides to give better drainage off the road bed. The two narrow bridges that have been in use for many years at the entrance to Stoney Creek have been torn out and the one bridge is being replaced with a much wider structure and in place of the small bridge a large culvert will be placed to take care of the water.
Furthur up the road near the Gehrke pond the sharp curves are being cut down and will improve visibility for the motorists. In some places the road is being widened and shoulders built up so as to properly drain the road and ditches. [end quote]

If you are wondering where I come down on the current Tienken Road controversy, here's my two cents. I'm all for safe roads and bridges, and East Tienken and the Stoney Creek bridge definitely need some work. That said, the integrity of the Stoney Creek Historic District has to be maintained and the village needs to be recognized for the treasure that it is. That means some accommodations will have to be made by motorists. Tienken cannot serve as an east-west throughway into Macomb County. Traffic looking for that kind of avenue can take a short detour to the south and use M-59. That's what it's there for. End of soapbox.

The Rochester Elevator

One of the last remaining icons of Rochester's agricultural heritage will get a fresh coat of paint on Saturday, June 6 when the Rochester Avon Historical Society will partner with the building owner and other community members and organizations to hold an old fashioned painting bee. The purpose of the project is to help stabilize the historic structure and protect it from deterioration. A professional paint contractor has prepared the building and will apply a primer and first coat over the entire building, and a finish coat on the upper portion of the building. Community volunteers will gather on June 6 at 10 a.m. to apply the finish coat to the lower ten feet of the building and the door and window trim.

Most of the historical assets of our community are privately owned, but the entire community owns the heritage that is associated with them. We can all take pride in helping to make the elevator shine; by doing so, we help to make sure that it will stand for generations to come.

Residents of the Rochester area are invited to join the Rochester Avon Historical Society and all community friends of history in painting the Rochester Elevator. You can read more about the elevator project in this news article. To learn more about the elevator's history, play the short video accompanying this post.

Memorial Day

This coming weekend, there will be plenty of opportunity for fun and recreation in our area. If you are in town, be sure to check out the 32nd annual Rochester Area Heritage Festival, held in the Rochester Municipal Park on Saturday, May 23 and Sunday, May 24. The festival offers a wide variety of activities for the whole family, including food, music, a pioneer village, Civil War re-enactments, crafts, vintage baseball and car shows. While you're there, don't forget to stop by the Rochester Avon Historical Society booth! (A full schedule of events is available on the Festival web site.)

The Rochester community has faithfully observed Memorial Day ever since it was first set aside for the purpose of honoring the memory of the nation's war dead. Summer fun is great, but Memorial Day in our town is more than just the official opening of the summer season. On Monday, please take time out to participate in the community's formal observance of this solemn holiday. The Memorial Day parade will depart from Mt. Avon Cemetery at 10 a.m., after a brief wreath-laying ceremony. The parade route will follow Harding and Livernois Roads to the Veterans Memorial Pointe at Avon & Livernois, where a Memorial Day service will be held. I urge you to attend if you are in the area.

I am a military wife. During my husband's 20 years of active duty with the United States Air Force, neither I nor any member of his family had to accept a folded flag from an honor guard member, offered with the thanks of a grateful nation. But I am keenly aware of all of the military spouses and parents who have done so, and it does not seem like too much to ask of me to set aside a small portion of my time on Monday to remember the sacrifice of their loved ones in defense of my liberty. I hope you will join me in doing the same.

If you can't make it to the parade or service, try to stop by the restored World War II Honor Roll at the east end of the Rochester Municipal Building, and spend a few minutes reading the names of the members of the Rochester community – more than 1,100 of them – who served in uniform during that war. Take special note of the names marked with a gold star, denoting those who lost their lives in the conflict.

Remember them and their sacrifices.
Respect their final resting places.
Reflect on this.

Main Street Stories: 405-407 S. Main

The merchant block at 405-407 S. Main has been standing since Chester A. Arthur was President of the United States. Jeweler Louis E. Palmer broke ground for the building in the spring of 1883, not long after he moved to Rochester from his childhood home in Lenawee County and established his business here. After reporting a few weeks earlier that the brick for Palmer's new building was being laid up quickly, the Rochester Era commented on June 28, 1883 that “Palmer's cornice is being put up on his new brick block, and it 'beats 'em all'.” Vintage photos of the building, such as the one displayed here, show us the ornate, medallion-crowned cornice that was long ago stripped from the facade.

In 1896, Louis Palmer decided to build a new building up the block at 415-417 S. Main, and moved the jewelry store to that location. After Palmer moved out, 405-407 S. Main hosted a wide variety of tenants. The 405 address was home to Hiram H. Stalker's shoe store, then in the 1920s, Zimmerman's Shoes occupied the space. McNally & Clark's Men's Wear followed the shoe stores, and in the 1950s and early 1960s, Gebert's Hardware was located at 405. Since 1969 the address has been the home of Molnar's Tuxedo.

The Wilcox & LeBlond Pool Hall occupied 407 S. Main during the 1920s, and in 1950 it was Harold's Tavern. In the mid-1950s, Pontiac Federal Savings & Loan moved into the building, and remained there, under various successive names, until it failed in 1991 and was bought out by TCF Bank in 1993. 407 was most recently home to Michael Foran Interiors and is currently listed for sale.

The building at 405-407 S. Main celebrates its 126th birthday this spring.

Photo: A view of 405-407 S. Main as it looked about 1910.

Vanished Rochester: Hotel St. James

Predating the Home Bakery building by two years, the Hotel St. James was erected in 1847 by John V. Lambertson and was originally called the Lambertson House. The hotel was located at 439 S. Main, on the southwest corner of Main and today's University Drive, known in those days as Fifth St. J.V. Lambertson came with his parents to Avon in 1834; in addition to the hotel, he also ran a mercantile business with his brother, Hiram.

The Lambertson House was one of two commercial houses operating in nineteenth-century Rochester, the other being the Pavilion Hotel at the corner of Third and Main. An 1888 directory of hotels tells us that the room rate at the Lambertson House at the time was $2 per day.

One of the Lambertson's claims to fame was its role as the birthplace of Rochester's government. It was within the parlors of the hotel that the official organization of the village of Rochester took place on April 12, 1869, when the eligible townsmen met to conduct the first village election and voted to incorporate the village and govern it separately from the Township of Avon.

James W. Smith, a Dubliner who had settled in Avon in 1880, bought the hotel in 1892 and renamed it the Hotel St. James. The St. James offered 21 guest rooms, and if the promotional literature of the day is to be believed, it was “famous all through Michigan for the excellence of its cuisine.” Smith was a prominent business leader in Rochester; he built a merchant block at 436-440 S. Main (known today as the Crissman block) and erected the Idle Hour theater adjacent to the hotel. Jim Smith also fancied himself a lookalike of President William Howard Taft and once entertained himself by posing as the chief executive when Taft was expected to make a visit to the Hotel Ponchartrain in Detroit in 1914. According to a Detroit Tribune account, Smith sauntered around the lobby of the Ponch before Taft was scheduled to arrive and enjoyed being greeted as "Mr. Taft" and "Mr. President."

Smith's widow continue to operate the hotel for a time after his death in 1933, but by the 1940s the hundred-year-old structure was showing signs of neglect and decay and was home mostly to some small businesses. A lunch counter, appropriately named Rochester Lunch, served as a local hang-out there, and the waiting room for the Martin Bus Lines was also located in the hotel. By the time the once-proud building's demolition was ordered in 1962, it was generally considered to be an eyesore, and there was little interest expressed for saving it.

After the St. James fell in December 1962, a new brick building replaced it, serving as home at first to the Frank Shepard real estate offices, and later the Weisman medical offices. The new building was substantially rebuilt and expanded in 1996, and housed a Starbucks coffee shop for a time. The Bean & Leaf Cafe is the current occupant of the former hotel site.

Photo: My Dad took this photo, documenting how the hotel looked on the day it was demolished, December 4, 1962.

The Floatable Boatable

During the summer of 1969, Rochester marked the 100th anniversary of the incorpora-tion of the town with a gala centennial celebration. There were events and activities for young and old and the town took on a bit of a carnival atmosphere, with women in hoop skirts and men in whiskers on the streets. One of the first big events of the season was a regatta on Paint Creek called the Floatable Boatable. Contestants manned their homemade boats and rafts and floated them into Avon Park, where a large crowd lined the banks of the river to cheer them on. Everyone had such a good time that the Floatable Boatable was turned into an annual Memorial Day weekend event for the next 16 years. Unfortunately, it had to be discontinued in 1985 when liability insurance for the race became prohibitively expensive.

Photo: My Dad took this photo of the 1969 Floatable Boatable from the banks of Paint Creek in Avon Park.

Main Street Stories: Detroit Edison Building

The first electric power provided to Rochester came with the streetcar lines in October 1899, but only a few weeks after, the Rochester Electric Light & Power Company was incorporated. A decade later, on May 14, 1909, the Rochester Era announced that “the Edison people are in full possession and control of the Rochester Light & Power Co.” and that they had purchased a lot at the corner of Third and Main on which a power station would immediately be built. Two weeks later, the newspaper reported that ground had been broken for the promised substation. The building plan was described as having three parts: a high tension room, a machine and switchboard room, and a front office. The $12,000 stucco-over-concrete block building went into service in October 1909.

Rochester residents visited the Detroit Edison office to pay their electric bills, to have small appliances repaired, or to exchange spent light bulbs for new ones at no charge. The light bulb service (it wasn't really free – Detroit Edison actually factored the cost of the bulb replacements into its electric rates) was ended by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1976. In Cantor v. Detroit Edison Co., a druggist who sold light bulbs in his store argued that Detroit Edison violated federal anti-trust laws and restrained his trade by its monopolization of the light bulb market. The high court found in his favor.

Detroit Edison used the building at 234 S. Main as its office until the late 1980s, after which a number of retailers occupied the space. It is currently home to The Beauty Corner, Ros's Cabinets and some professional offices. The Detroit Edison building celebrates its 100th birthday this year.

Photo: This circa 1912 postcard from Rochester Hills Public Library's online collection shows how the Edison building looked not long after it was built.

This Month in Rochester History

Seventeen years have passed already, but it seems like just yesterday that I came home from work on a sunny spring afternoon to find Main Street closed to traffic and choked with emergency vehicles and debris.

On Wednesday, May 20, 1992, downtown Rochester was rocked to its foundations by a powerful natural gas explosion that killed one man and reduced to rubble the J.W. Smith/Crissman block at the corner of University Drive and Main Street. Construction crews had been working on a streetscape beautification project and were digging in the area when they accidentally punctured a gas line. The building was destroyed in a violent explosion before gas company crews could arrive.

James Nelson, a civil engineer for the firm of Hubbell, Roth & Clark, which had designed the project, had stopped by the site minutes before the explosion. He was believed to have been assisting construction crews in evacuating the building when he was killed in the blast. Seventeen other people in the immediate area suffered lacerations and other injuries from flying debris.

The building, which had been built in 1901 by James W. Smith of the St. James Hotel, was more commonly known as the Crissman block after the family which still owned it and had operated the Crissman pharmacy there until 1966. The southernmost portion of the block, housing the Paul R. Haig jewelry store, was spared, but the remainder of the building was a total loss and was immediately razed. The building was rebuilt with careful attention to its original design, including the ornamental stepped-out brickwork on the facade. Although its capstone says 1901, the portion of the building comprising the addresses 438-440 S. Main was actually built in 1992-93. The portion of the building at 436 S. Main, now occupied by Morley Candy, is part of the original 1901 structure.

Photo: This image was lent to me by my uncle, who snapped it minutes after the 5:20 p.m. explosion occurred.

Vanished Rochester: Hilltop Lanes

When the new Hilltop Lanes building opened for business in October 1950, the Rochester Clarion referred to it as a bowling “palace.” Compared to the less spacious Rochester Recreation bowling alley located in a Main Street basement (more about that one in a future post), the modern, new 12-lane center perched on the top of South Hill probably did seem palatial to local keglers.

Ray Ludwig was the general manager when Hilltop Lanes opened to the public at 893 S. Rochester Rd. on October 11, 1950. State-of-the-art Brunswick equipment was in place to greet the league bowlers in the brand-new building on the first day of business. Today, we wouldn't think of a 12-lane bowling alley as large, but as a kid, Hilltop seemed like a pretty big place to me. I recall accompanying my Dad on a few occasions for his Wednesday night league games there, when he was bowling for Jack Long Ford Sales. What seemed a bit incongruous to me (and still does), is that after a night of bowling (and in some cases, drinking), customers of Hilltop would head out to the parking lot only to be greeted by posted signs demanding QUIET because the Avon Center Hospital was located just over the fence and didn't want its patients' rest disturbed by noisy revelers.

The growing area was soon served by additional bowling centers, but Hilltop was the first in the community designed and built specifically for bowling. The bowling lanes closed in the late 1970s when House of Denmark bought the property for a retail store offering Danish modern furniture. The furniture store, later operated under the names Contemporary Furniture and The Desk, continued until about 2005, when the property was sold to Russell Shelton, owner of the adjacent Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealership. The building was razed in 2008 to make more lot space available for the dealership.

Parking Meters

Under the heading of “nothing new under the sun” we file the recent stories about parking meters in downtown Rochester. According to published reports, the city council is discussing whether the business district might be able to get along without the gadgets, given that the parking program runs an annual deficit of about $70,000. Shoppers, of course, wouldn't miss having to feed the meters, but there is concern that parking spots will not turn over in a timely fashion if parking is not regulated. Council is considering a test program during the summer months, eliminating parking fees on Saturdays.

This debate reminds me of the one that happened in Rochester 59 years ago, when the post-war boom in population and automobiles was causing an acute parking shortage in the business district. There were no meters then, and few municipal lots off Main. To make matters worse, most spaces were being occupied by business owners and their employees throughout the day. The village council's first attempt to address the problem was a two-hour parking limit, enforced by Chief Sam Howlett and his officers, but business owners just made a routine of swapping spaces every two hours to avoid the police officer's chalk stick. Parking meters were suggested, but some merchants and village officials felt that the devices would deter shoppers. Others responded that a lack of parking was already turning potential customers away, and that parking meters would help to alleviate the problem, not make it worse.

After considerable discussion, parking meters were installed on Main, and the village council fretted over the considerable expense involved. The meters went into service on July 16, 1951, and the price of parking was a penny for every twelve minutes. The Clarion reported that a regular turnover of downtown parking spaces was immediately evident. Critics backed off when the meters generated $808 in revenue during the first two weeks of operation and collected more than $15,000 in the first year, making it possible for the village to recover its investment in the equipment more quickly than originally expected.

If you're interested in the origins of the parking meter, check out this interesting video showing public reaction to the installation of the nation's very first parking meter in Oklahoma City in 1935.

Main Street Stories: 406 S. Main

In the summer of 1927, excitement was bubbling over in Rochester as all eyes watched the progress of the construction of the new South Hill bridge. Business owners were looking forward to the completion of the new concrete span, which would finally provide easy access to town for autos approaching the village from the south. A flurry of fix-up and modernization projects erupted along the Main Street store fronts, and one of the projects was a brand-new brick building at 406 S. Main.

The Clarion announced on July 1, 1927 that the old frame building adjoining the Masonic block to the north was being razed to make way for the construction of a modern building. The old building had been the home of the recently-departed Joe Fabiano fruit market. The new structure, a project of Milton H. Haselswerdt and Louis E. Becker, was designed to house a new restaurant. Haselswerdt and Becker were both officers of the First National Bank of Rochester, and doubtless saw the opportunity for business growth that the new bridge would provide.

In February 1928, the formal opening of the Merchant's Restaurant was advertised. Charles W. Asher was the proprietor, and promised excellent service, wholesome food, and as an added bonus, a powerful receiving set installed in the building so that patrons could enjoy the best radio programs on the air as they dined.

After the Merchant's Restaurant departed, several others followed. 406 housed The Village Grill, one of Harold Bebout's eateries, and was also one of the locations of the Four-O-Six Bar. (Not to confuse its regular patrons, the Four-O-Six kept its name when it moved on to another Main Street address.) In the 1960s, the address was the location of Wilhelm's Bavarian Rathskeller. Later business tenants included The Learning Ladder, Sunny's Hallmark, and most recently, the Wild Wings Gallery. The building is currently vacant, and celebrates its 81st birthday this year.

Photo: This photo from the early 1960s shows 406 S. Main as it looked when Bebout's Restaurant occupied the building.

Vanished Rochester: The Billboard

It's hard to imagine billboards in downtown Rochester nowadays, with sign ordinances in place to regulate the size, shape and location of advertisements, but there was a time that several large ads could be found along Main Street. One of the best remembered stood on an empty lot at 303 S. Main (currently the location of the Mixx Salon). It was not until 1959 that the building at 303 S. Main was erected, and before that a large billboard occupied the space.

Robert Michalka lent me this great photo, taken in front of his father's store at 307 S. Main, which shows the billboard next door. That's Bob with his bicycle in front of Main Feed & Seed at 307 S. Main, and behind him is the billboard standing on the neighboring vacant lot. The billboard is featuring an ad for Koepplinger's bread. Remember the slogan? Koepplinger's - how do you spell that? B-R-E-A-D!