Main Street Stories: The Curtis Building

The building at 307 S. Main was built in 1907 by Lewis W. Curtis (1879-1976). Curtis was a 1902 graduate of the University of Michigan College of Dentistry, and after receiving his degree he returned to his home in Rochester to establish his dental practice. By 1907, he was successful enough to build a new brick building on Main Street which housed his offices on the second floor and provided retail space on the first floor.

Several different businesses have occupied the ground floor of the Curtis building. It served as the first home of the A & P grocery store after the chain located in Rochester in 1923. In 1926, Alvah N. Dean opened a feed store there, and a feed business would occupy 307 S. Main for over half a century thereafter. Dean asked one of his employees, Al Michalka, to manage the feed store in 1927, and Michalka added a line of pet supplies to the store on his own. By 1933, the Dean feed store and the hatchery business that he also operated were suffering from the effects of the Great Depression; manager Michalka was no longer being paid and his only income was that which he earned from his pet supplies side line. When Dean's business failed completely in the summer of 1933, Al Michalka decided to take over for himself. Al's son, Robert Michalka, shared this story with me:

...he met with the owner of the building, Dr. Lewis Curtis, and offered to rent the building at a reduced rent. Dr. Curtis said, "how do you think that you can make it when Dean couldn't?". My Dad said that he could and Dr. Curtis agreed to rent him the building with my Dad setting his own rent and raising it himself as conditions improved, which he did until he bought the building in 1960. The counter had been removed and my Dad went to see Mr. Dean and told him that he needed the counter as he was going in to business for himself. Dean said that he couldn't as he needed it. My Dad told him that he had not been paid for two months and that Dean was going to give him the counter and have one of his men and a truck deliver it. He then opened his jacket to reveal a gun. Mr. Dean provided the man and a truck. ... Those were different days.

Main Feed and Seed, the name by which Al Michalka's business was known, operated at 307 S. Main until March 1982, and is fondly remembered by several generations of Rochester residents. Even though Dr. Curtis may have questioned whether Michalka could make a success of the store, Michalka himself apparently had no such reservations. For the 1935 Double Jubilee festival held in downtown Rochester to celebrate the centennial of Avon Township, a commemorative program was printed which included an ad for Main Feed and Seed. That advertisement carried the tag line "we'll be here when your kids grow up." Al Michalka kept that promise. Main Feed and Seed was still there when I grew up, and my own father hadn't even been born yet when that Double Jubilee ad was printed!

Since Main Feed and Seed passed from the scene, the Curtis building has been occupied by a coffee house and several boutique businesses. The ground floor is currently occupied by the Dragonfly Boutique. The Curtis building celebrates its 102nd birthday this year.

Robert Michalka took this photo of 307 S. Main in June 1968 and kindly provided it for this post. The man shown in front of the store is Ernest "Red" Ennis, who worked for Sutton's Market and later, for Main Feed and Seed.

Rochester's Famous Scientist

On 16th Street in Washington, D.C., stands a house that is a National Historic Landmark. This building is not a national landmark for its age or architectural significance, but for its connection to a man born in Rochester, Michigan who was an important historical figure in the field of science. The house on 16th Street is listed because it once served as the residence of Robert Simpson Woodward (1849-1924), noted American physicist and geologist.

Woodward was born in Rochester on July 21, 1849, the third of five children of pioneer farmer Lysander Woodward and his wife Peninah Simpson. Although Lysander Woodward was a progressive farmer who applied scientific agricultural principles to the operation of his farm and served as president of the Oakland County Agricultural Society in order to urge others to do the same, he nonetheless did not believe that university education had any real merit and had to be convinced to allow his son to attend the University of Michigan after he completed his basic education in Rochester.

Robert S. Woodward was graduated from the University of Michigan in 1872 with an engineering degree. He worked on the United States Lake Survey and also served as an assistant astronomer with the United States Transit of Venus Commission. He then moved on to the U.S. Geological Survey, where he was chief geographer in charge of the Division of Mathematics, and there conducted research and published numerous scientific papers.

In 1893, Woodward became Professor of Mechanics and Mathematical Physics at Columbia University. He remained at Columbia for a dozen years and then accepted the position of president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, at which time he made his home in the District of Columbia. He retired from the Carnegie Institution in 1921, three years before his death.

Robert S. Woodward also served as associate editor of the journal Science - still published today - from 1889 to 1924. He was regarded as a leading authority in his field, and the list of his publications, honors and awards goes on for pages. He died in Washington D.C. on June 29, 1924 at the age of 74, from lingering ailments after a bout of influenza.

A lengthy professional biography of Robert Simpson Woodward, prepared in 1937 for the National Academy of Sciences is available online here. A photo and information about his residence in Washington, D.C., a National Historic Landmark, is available here.

Main Street Stories: First National Bank Building

The building at 339 S. Main Street has been occupied by the same type of business for its entire history thus far, and is one of only a handful in the downtown district that may claim the distinction. In 1924, directors of the First National Bank of Rochester, which was then located at 338 S. Main (in the Opera House block now occupied by Lytle Pharmacy), decided that the bank needed larger quarters and purchased property across the street on the southwest corner of Fourth and Main.

The Bond-Hubbard Company of Chicago designed and built the new bank block, which included office, retail and apartment spaces in addition to the bank quarters. Dillman and Upton supplied the building materials, including brick, hollow tile, cement, plaster and lumber for the $100,000 project.

The new bank opened its doors to the public on February 14, 1925. A few years later, during the banking crisis of the Great Depression, First National Bank of Rochester was liquidated and re-organized as the Rochester National Bank. When the bank re-opened, under the leadership of Milton H. Haselswerdt, community members showed their confidence by opening more than 400 new accounts. Haselswerdt was commended for restructuring the old bank without any harm to depositors.

In May 1955, Rochester National Bank merged with National Bank of Detroit, so the name on the front of the building changed, but not its purpose. National Bank of Detroit then became known as NBD Bank after its merger with First National Bank of Chicago in 1995. Four years later, another merger changed the name of the institution to Bank One, and in 2006, Bank One became part of J.P. Morgan Chase, the current occupant of the building.

The First National Bank Building will celebrate its 85th birthday this coming February.

This ca. 1961 photo shows the building wearing the National Bank of Detroit name.

Listening For the Calliope

When I was a youngster growing up in 1960s Rochester, Trick-Or-Treat was the main event of the autumn season. As stores broke out the Halloween displays, our minds mulled over costume ideas and we kids bugged our parents to buy us just the right mask for the event. Kresge's had a seemingly endless selection of the hard plastic masks held in place with a skinny elastic band that always broke before the Halloween night festivities could end.

A week before Halloween night, there was a special event in town that served to build our anticipation of things to come. The Monday prior to Halloween was Kiwanis Flare Night. The Rochester Kiwanis Club and the fire department came through the streets of town selling packages of road flares to be used to illuminate the sidewalks on Halloween night. Some years, they used a calliope mounted on one of the trucks to announce their presence in the neighborhood for the flare sale. Our ears strained to hear that music pipe up and we would immediately announce to Dad that "they're coming down our street!".

On Halloween night, Trick-Or-Treat was officially begun when the fire siren blew at 7:00 p.m. A few minutes before the appointed time, every father in the neighborhood was sitting on his front porch or stoop with a bundle of road flares in hand, patiently waiting for the siren to blow. Everyone was very obedient, and nobody ever lit their flares until the siren was sounded. Promptly at 7:00, we heard the long-awaited wail, and flares simultaneously lit the sidewalks up and down the street. The whole neighborhood was soon eerily alight with a pinkish-orange cloud of sulphur dioxide smoke, and kids raced out their front doors with plastic jack-o-lanterns or pillow cases at the ready to begin collecting their loot. Trick-Or-Treat was on!

Vanished Rochester: Talley Motor Sales

In March of 1946, the Rochester Era announced that construction of an ultra-modern automobile dealership had begun on North Main at the corner of Drace. Talley Motor Sales had been founded in Rochester six months earlier, quartered temporarily at 115 East Third Street, in a building that had been used for storage by McAleer Manufacturing. President and majority owner in the firm was Charles W. Talley, who had previously worked for Community Motors and National Twist Drill. Other principals were Glenn Warren, vice-president; George Hillman, vice-president; and J. William Davis, secretary-treasurer.

Talley's success as the area's Chrysler-Plymouth agency led to the need for a new building. The garage and showroom at 1001 North Main was 90 feet wide and 165 feet long. The five-car showroom was of Art Deco design similar in lines to the D&C building at Fourth and Main, which was built during the same era. The construction cost of the new facility was estimated at $35,000.

The building served as an automobile dealership for its entire useful life. The firm later became known as Talley-Warren Motor Sales; in 1957, Ray Rammler and Les Dallas bought the company and added the Dodge line to the showroom floor. In the 1960s and 1970s, the company was known as Town and Country Chrysler-Plymouth, and after that Meadowbrook Dodge. After Meadowbrook Dodge removed to the corner of Auburn and Rochester roads about 1999, the Talley Motors building was demolished to make way for the Flagstar Bank branch office which currently occupies the site.

Photo: This photo of the Talley Motor Sales building at 1001 North Main was provided by Rod and Susan Wilson.

Subdivision Stories: W.C. Chapman Addition

One of Rochester's early real estate developers was William Clark Chapman (1866-1946), who with his older brother, Charles Sherwin Chapman (1864-1912), brought the Western Knitting Mills to Rochester in 1891. Both men made their home in Rochester after locating the WKM here, and both built fine residences in the village. In March 1899, William C. Chapman platted and sold land lying north of Fifth Street (now University Drive) near Paint Creek as the W.C. Chapman Addition. This plat consisted of six lots facing Fifth Street and seven pairs of lots lying to the immediate north of Fifth Street along a side street to be named Ludlow. This street was named in honor of the Vermont birthplace of William C. Chapman's wife, Ada Josephine Barney Chapman. William Chapman himself was born in Cavendish, Vermont, the town neighboring Ludlow. (The Chapman family had many friends and relatives in Ludlow, Vermont, and visited there often. At their deaths, both Chapman brothers were interred in a Ludlow cemetery near their parents' graves.)

At the time that the W.C. Chapman Addition was laid out and sold, there was great economic potential in developing land on the north side of the village. The Detroit Sugar Company was in the process of building a huge beet sugar processing plant on what is known today as Woodward Street, and an interurban streetcar line was laying track toward Rochester at the same time. Chapman's 1946 obituary commented that, having experienced a housing shortage for workers when he and his brother brought the Western Knitting Mills to town in 1891, he decided to invest in real estate and housing development when the Detroit Sugar Company faced a similar situation nearly a decade later.

Ludlow Avenue was extended to the north by two later plats of the land adjoining the W.C. Chapman Addition, and eventually ran all the way to Paint Creek, where it was connected to Woodward Street.

This Month in Rochester History

This month we look back at a catastrophic fire on Main Street and a Rochester tradition that was born from it. On October 20, 1926, the newly-built Phillips & Jerome Ford showroom and service garage at 215 S. Main Street caught fire. An acetylene torch being used at the back of the garage ignited gasoline in a tractor tank and the resulting fire spread quickly, feeding on the various combustibles normally found in garages. An alarm was turned in, but the village fire siren failed to sound, and the members of the volunteer fire department responded only as word of mouth alerted them to the situation. The Pontiac Fire Department was also called to assist, but by the time firefighting resources could be assembled at the scene, there was little to do but contain the blaze and prevent it from spreading to neighboring buildings. Employees of the dealership saved a few automobiles by pushing them out to the street through the showroom windows, but in the end, the building and most of its contents were a total loss.

Local legend has it that the fire siren failed to sound because a bird had built a nest in it. A week after the Phillips & Jerome fire, the Rochester Village Council ordered that the fire siren be sounded weekly at noon to insure that it was in working order. That order was soon amended to make the siren test a daily event at noon, and that tradition has continued for the past eighty-three years, and counting.

Phillips & Jerome rebuilt their showroom and garage at the same location, and occupied the building at 215 S. Main until the mid-1960s. The fire department has installed more sophisticated communication equipment as the years have passed, but we still hear the noon whistle every weekday to remind us of that long-ago fire.

Selfridge Airplane Crashes in Avon Township

On a Thursday afternoon in March 1940, residents of Avon Township and the village of Rochester were looking up to watch two pursuit aircraft from Selfridge Field practicing dog-fighting maneuvers in the skies over town. The pilots of the two airplanes were assigned to the 39th Pursuit Squadron based at Selfridge, and they had been performing pursuit tactics in the area all afternoon when, at about 4:30 p.m., the P-35 airplane piloted by 2nd Lieutenant Wilmer W. Munzenmayer went into a stall. Having lost control of the craft, Lt. Munzenmayer bailed out, but plummeted to the ground when his parachute failed to open. His P-35 exploded upon impact and was destroyed by fire. The accident occurred over the Ferry-Morse Seed Farm in the area of Rochester & Auburn roads, and the wreckage was scattered over the entire seed farm area, the largest intact piece being the landing gear. Lt. Munzenmayer, age 23, was killed in the mishap and his body was removed to Selfridge Field by military ambulance. His remains were returned to his home in Kent, Ohio, for burial.

If you are interested in the history of Selfridge Field and the base's impact upon the history of southeastern Michigan, you are invited to attend the regular meeting of the Rochester Avon Historical Society on Thursday, October 1 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium of the Rochester Hills Public Library. Deborah Larsen, co-author of the book Images of Aviation: Selfridge Field, will present the program on the history of Selfridge, illustrated with photographs and newsreel footage of the historic airfield. The program is free and open to the public. Please join us.

Subdivision Stories: Woodward Addition

The second-oldest addition to the original plat of Rochester is the Woodward Addition, platted on April 20, 1874 on part of the farm of Lysander and Peninah Simpson Woodward. Lysander Woodward was born in Connecticut in 1817, the same year in which the village of Rochester was first settled, and arrived in Rochester with his wife in 1843. He was a prosperous farmer and one of the most influential men in Oakland County. He served variously as Avon Township supervisor, justice of the peace, state representative, Oakland County treasurer, and president of the Detroit & Bay City Railroad. He was chiefly responsible for bringing the first railroad line to Rochester. Lysander Street in the Woodward Addition is named for him.

This map of the Woodward Addition from 1896 shows the streets as they were laid out in the official plat that was approved in 1874, but this is not how the subdivision was eventually built out. High Street does not go through from Romeo Road to Terry Street, as shown on the map; it dead ends at the top of the bluff overlooking Lysander Street. Likewise, Short Street, living up to its name, runs only from Romeo to Lysander and not beyond. After the original plat was made, a large 10-acre plot of land in the middle of the subdivision was sold to August Thoel, and was not replatted until 1915, when the Avondale Park subdivision plat was created to the north of the Woodward Addition. The new plat, developed by Thoel along with Isaac Terry and J.B. Mahaffy, created the street configuration that we know today.

An Unsung Hero

During World War II, industries across the United States converted to war work, and the factories of Rochester, Michigan were included in their number. National Twist Drill and McAleer Manufacturing were two of the larger companies in the area holding critical defense contracts. The civilian men and women employed in these factories were called “soldiers without guns,” and their collective workplaces were dubbed the “arsenal of democracy” because the products that they built were crucial to the overall war effort.

Often overlooked is the fact that a large number of civilian defense workers also gave their lives for that war effort. A March, 1944 article in Popular Mechanics magazine, entitled “More Deadly Than War,” reported National Safety Council statistics on industrial casualties for the first sixteen months of American involvement in World War II. The numbers were startling: 64,500 Americans were killed on the home front in industrial accidents, the count actually outstripping the number of U.S. military deaths during the same time period. (Although the total number of Americans working in home front industries was far greater than the total number serving in uniform, the civilian death count is still shocking.)

At McAleer Manufacturing in Rochester, Michigan (the site of today's Rochester Mills Beer Company), dangerous but necessary war work was underway. McAleer produced military flares and the M46 Photoflash bomb, and industrial accidents involving the mixing of explosive metals in its bunkers on the east side of town resulted in injury and death for several McAleer workers.

One of those workers was Virginia Ann MacLeod. Virginia was born on November 17, 1920, one of four children of Alexander and Edna Parmenter MacLeod, residents of Willard Street in Avon Township (now Rochester Hills). She attended Rochester High School and was graduated with the class of 1938. A member of the National Honor Society, Virginia was labeled by her classmates as “honest, upright and dependable.”

After McAleer Manufacturing opened its doors in Rochester in 1941, Virginia got a job there. She and two other workers were seriously injured in an explosion at one of the bunkers on December 19, 1942. Virginia suffered second- and third-degree burns and died from her injuries at Pontiac General Hospital on December 24, 1942. She was 22 years old.

Virginia's brother, Kenneth W. MacLeod, was serving with the United States Army at the time of her death. If you visit the World War II Honor Roll located at the east end of the Rochester Municipal Building, you will find Kenneth MacLeod's name listed there. But don't forget his sister, Virginia, who was also a patriot and gave her life in the service of her country, even though she didn't wear a uniform.

Photo: This portrait of Virginia Ann MacLeod is her senior class picture from the 1938 RHS yearbook, courtesy of Rod and Susan Wilson.

Main Street Stories: Tienken Building

The building at 333 S. Main was built in the summer of 1916 by William Tienken. Born in 1869 in Avon Township, Tienken was the son of pioneer Henry Tienken, Sr., whose large farm in Avon fronted what is known today as Tienken Road. As a young man, Will Tienken gained business experience by working in New York City and Detroit, then returned to Rochester in 1899 to form a partnership with Charles W. Case in the hardware business.

The hardware firm of Tienken & Case was dissolved in 1915, and the former partners continued in business separately. C.W. Case became sole proprietor of the hardware store that would bear his name until it was destroyed by fire in 1968. As for William Tienken, the Rochester Era reported in March of 1916 that

Will Tienken builds a new store this season, adjoining the Case block on the south.

The new store was the home of Tienken Plumbing & Heating until 1932, when Henry Feet's Red & White Grocery Store moved into the building. The Red & White store changed hands and was renamed Sisson Market in January 1942; it moved to another space on the block and a Western Auto store moved into the Tienken building. Western Auto continued at that location throughout the 1950s. From the 1960s until the mid-1980s, 333 S. Main was the home of the Rochester Optical Center, and after that, the Rochester Vision Center. Today it is the home of a women's clothing store called Boutique Angelique.

The Tienken building at 333 S. Main celebrates its 93^rd birthday this year.

Vanished Rochester: Dr. Rollin Sprague Residence

The Dr. Rollin Sprague residence formerly stood at 134 West Fifth Street (now W. University Drive). The exact date of its construction is unknown, but a 1923 Rochester Clarion article estimated that it had been built around 1849, the same year in which Dr. Sprague built his stone store on the northeast corner of Third & Main (now known as the Home Bakery building at 300 S. Main). Dr. Sprague was a prominent pioneer businessman and physician in Rochester, and was also active in township politics.

Dr. Sprague died in 1872, and his widow, Adeline, sold the house about 1884. After passing from the ownership of the Sprague family, the building served as the residence of the Daniel Curry family. Fred M. Shinnick owned the house in the 1920s, and donated it to the village for use as a community house. The community house operated for only a few years before the house was sold to St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church, which intended to use the building for a school until Depression-era economics forestalled the plan. Dr. Robert A. Woodruff operated a hospital in the house from 1935 until 1946, when the Homer Wing Post of the American Legion purchased the building.

The handsome residence may have been of timber frame construction, judging by a comment made by Wilson B. Severance in 1964. Severance, who had handled the purchase of the building for the Legion post, wrote of the house:

“I would say the building, particularly the framework, is the same as when originally built … the fact that it is the old time barn type of support. The lumber is thick sold oak. It is almost impossible to drive a nail into it.”

In 1966, the Rollin Sprague house was razed to make way for construction of the office and retail building that currently occupies the site at 134 W. University Drive. At that time, the American Legion moved its post headquarters to the former Michigan Bell office building on the southeast corner of Walnut and Third streets.

Images: The first image is a drawing of the Rollin Sprague residence which appears in the 1877 Durant history of Oakland County. The second image is from a postcard view of the house taken in the late 1920s, when it was serving as the Rochester Community House. Notice that the foundation of the house is of the same coursed cobblestone construction that was used to build Dr. Sprague's store at Third and Main (now the Home Bakery).

Vanished Rochester: Western Knitting Mills Boarding House

We can still see a portion of the former Western Knitting Mills building at Fourth & Water streets if we visit the Rochester Mills Beer Company, but in its early twentieth-century heyday, the WKM complex was much larger than the surviving building indicates. A now-vanished part of that industrial site is the boarding house area. Western Knitting Mills was a major employer in its day, and advertised for workers far beyond Rochester. Women came from all over to take jobs in the knitting mills, and in 1912 the company began building dormitories to house them. The Rochester Era described the first boarding house as follows:

The building is 80 feet long and 28 feet wide, is of cement blocks and is situated just south of the mills, enabling both heating and lighting to be furnished by the machinery in the mills. Fifty girls can easily be accommodated there.

The newspaper went on to say that the kitchen was furnished with a "large automatic dishwasher, the pride of the building." Quite a luxurious feature, for 1912!

Photo: This postcard photo from the collection of Rochester Hills Public Library shows the first boarding house, located along Water Street on the south side of the knitting mills building, just after it was built in the summer of 1912.

This Month in Rochester History

Forty years ago this month, Rochester was gearing up for the biggest party in her history as the Rochester Centennial celebration culminated in a week of festivities during the second week of September, 1969. The centennial commemorated the 100th anniversary of Rochester's incorporation as a village, and was kicked off on Memorial Day weekend of 1969 with a regatta on Paint Creek known as the Floatable Boatable. The next month, to encourage the men of the town to grow beards and mustaches, a funeral was held for a giant straight razor. The Razor lay in state in a wicker coffin in the lobby of the National Bank of Detroit branch (now Chase) at the corner of Fourth and Main until the appointed day of the burial, when a funeral procession made its way through town. I was only nine years old at the time, and I remember thinking the whole thing was pretty bizarre!

The centennial also featured a huge pageant called "Hills-A-Poppin!" on the Rochester High School football field. The festivities wound up in September of 1969 with a parade that included well over 100 units. It seemed as though everybody in town participated in some way, and it was not uncommon to see folks on the street during that summer wearing their costumes - including hoop skirts for the women and beards and mustaches for the men.

If you remember the Rochester Centennial, you are invited to join the Rochester Avon Historical Society for their regular meeting on Thursday, September 3 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium of the Rochester Hills Public Library. The free program will feature slides, pictures, stories and artifacts recalling the 1969 centennial celebration, and everyone is invited to come and share memories. This meeting will also mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Rochester Avon Historical Society, which was organized during the centennial year. See you there!

Photo: My dad took this photo during the 1969 Rochester Centennial Parade. Notice the parade spectators in costume. The building in the background, located on North Main at the foot of Drace, was a furniture store at the time, and had previously been the home of Davey's Market. Today it is the Rochester Elks Club.

Vanished Rochester: The Charles K. Griggs Residence

The Charles Kelley Griggs residence was located at 210 West Fifth Street (now West University Drive), on the northeast corner of West University Drive and Pine Street. C.K. Griggs, a prominent Rochester businessman who owned and operated the Rochester Elevator, built the house in 1886 immediately after his marriage to Martha "Mattie" Kidder. Griggs lived in the house until his death in 1917; the house was later sold and became the home of the Avon Township Library in 1928. Terms of the sale allowed Mattie Griggs to occupy upstairs quarters until her death, which occurred in 1929.

The former Griggs residence served as the home of the Avon Township Public Library for two decades. It was razed in August 1949 as the library prepared for a new building on the same site. That building, the Woodward Memorial Library, opened in 1951 and was used by the library until 1992. Today it houses several small businesses.

Note in this 1907 picture of the Griggs residence the Camperdown elm trees which are visible in the front yard. The Camperdown elm is an unusual tree. In 1640, the Earl of Camperdown in Scotland discovered a branch growing along the ground in an elm forest. He produced the first Camperdown elm by grafting the branch to the trunk of a Scotch elm. As the tree is produced through this grafting process and cannot reproduce itself, every Camperdown elm tree in the world is part of that original tree.

The Camperdown elms on the Griggs property were spared when the house was demolished and the library was built. When the library moved to its current location on Olde Towne Road in 1992, it was hoped that the old elms could be moved there, but this was not feasible. A new Camperdown elm was donated to the library and now stands in front of the building, and the library uses a drawing of a Camperdown elm as part of its letterhead. Meanwhile, one of the two Camperdown elms that are seen on the Griggs lawn in this photo from a century ago still stands today on the lawn of the former library building at 210 West University Drive.

Next time you pass by the old library or visit the current library, be sure to take a moment to admire the Camperdown elms.

Main Street Stories: 303 S. Main

The building at 303 S. Main is one of the younger kids on the block. It was built in the spring of 1959 to house the Doris Hayes dress shop, and featured apartments on the second floor. For many years before the dress shop was built, the site had been a vacant lot where a large billboard stood.

The Doris Hayes shop gave way to Alvin's dress shop in the seventies, and the building was connected for a time to 301 S. Main during the time that Alvin's occupied both storefronts. Today, 303 is the home of Mixx Salon and Spa.

The building at 303 S. Main celebrates its 50th birthday this year.

Photo: This photo from the collection of Marjorie and the late Walter Dernier shows the building at 303 S. Main in the early 1960s, not long after it was built.

Subdivision Stories: Albertson Addition

The first twentieth-century addition to the original plat of the village of Rochester was known as the Albertson Addition, the plat of which was approved by the village council in June 1900. Located east of North Main Street and north of Paint Creek, the new subdivision was laid out on the fifty-six acre former Albertson farm. The principal investors in the development were Albert G. Griggs and his wife, Minnie, and Frank Drace and his wife, Minnie. Streets in the new subdivision were named for the Albertson family, on whose farm it was created, and for the principal investors, Griggs and Drace.

On June 30, 1900, an auction sale of available lots was held in the Rochester Opera House. Advertisements for the sale boasted the advantages of the development: large lots with a 16-foot alley in the rear that allowed one to "drive to barn or garden without passing through the front yard," and the convenience of having the brand-new interurban line passing the property. "You have only to step from your door," the flyer commented, "onto the finest electric car in the country, running to Detroit, Romeo, Orion, Oxford and in the near future to Flint and the Saginaws. The time is not far distant, when 30 to 40 trains will pass this property daily."

On the day of the sale, all 136 lots offered were snapped up, and all but one of them sold to residents of the Rochester area. Superintendent of schools Abram L. Craft bought the first lot in the Albertson Addition sale for $200.

Main Street Stories: The Reimer Building

The building at 418 S. Main is the oldest structure standing on the east side of Main in the block between Fourth Street and University Drive, and has some ties to one of Rochester's best-remembered local businesses. It was built in the summer of 1885 by Joseph Reimer, who was associated in the hardware business with his son, Cyrus Reimer. According to accounts in the Rochester Era, Joseph Reimer moved into his new store in November of 1885, but sold out to his son, Cyrus, and a partner, Alvin S. Bliss, in June of the following year. Cyrus Reimer was a traveling hardware salesman for the Detroit firm of Buhl & Sons, and because he spent so much time on the road he left the management of the store to partner Bliss. In 1888, Bliss sold his part of the business to Harvey J. Taylor, who eventually bought out Reimer and moved the hardware store to a new building on the west side of Main in 1890. Taylor subsequently sold out to Charles Case, and the company, by then located at 335 S. Main, became known as Case's Hardware.

Meanwhile, the building at 418 S. Main hosted many businesses, including the Drace & Bartholomew meat market. In 1903, it became one of the early locations of George Burr's hardware and implement business. Burr remained there until 1914 when he built a large new store on the west side of Main (the location today of Green's Art Supply). In 1923, the Buchanan & Kemler pool room occupied 418 S. Main. By 1925, it was home of the McKinney Lunch & Billiards establishment. In 1929, Bruno Perna was operating a fruit and produce market there, and in the 1940s Young's Grocery was located in the building. McCotter's Lunch and Grocery and Gerda's Restaurant were there in the 1950s, and Stapp's Shoes was the tenant in the 1960s. During the 1970s and early 1980s, 418 was the home of Trackside Hobbies, and in 1998, The Gilded Rabbit was there. The Sumo Sushi & Seafood restaurant is currently located at 418 S. Main.

The Reimer building celebrates its 124th birthday this summer.

Photo: This view of the Reimer building was taken sometime after George Burr bought it for his implement business in 1903. Over the years, the building has had a least three different brick veneers on the Main Street elevation and the second-floor windows have been completely re-worked at least twice.

Vanished Rochester: Walnut Boulevard

Walnut Street is still with us, of course, but the boulevard islands that once defined the roadway vanished more than half a century ago. Walnut was once a picturesque thoroughfare lined with mature trees, private homes of leading citizens, and churches - seven denominations were represented in a three-block area. The streetscape featured a boulevard down the center even before the street was paved. And when it finally was paved, in the summer of 1931, the boulevard was incorporated into the streetscape. At various times, the island held both the 1917 Harris fountain and the World War II honor roll, both of which are now located at the east end of the Rochester Municipal Building.

Automobiles were the death of the boulevard on Walnut Street. In 1951, the village of Rochester was trying to come to grips with a serious downtown parking shortage. The village council voted to install metered parking on Main Street, and to offer free parking on Walnut. For parking on Walnut to work efficiently, the boulevard had to go. Besides, both the Walnut boulevard and the one in Fifth Street (now University Drive) were taking a beating from the increasing traffic in the downtown area. Drivers were regularly crashing into, or driving over the landscaped medians. In the spring of 1951, the village began the work of reconfiguring Walnut to accommodate higher traffic and more parking. The Harris fountain was moved to the intersection of Second & Main, and the Walnut boulevard vanished from Rochester's landscape.

Photo: This 1940s postcard view from Rochester Hills Public Library's online collection shows Walnut Street looking north from the intersection of Fourth Street. The First Baptist Church of Rochester (now the Village Shoe Inn at 401 Walnut), is seen at left. Note the Harris fountain standing on the boulevard island.

This Month in Rochester History

During the month of August, it is appropriate to reflect on the Rochester community's newspaper heritage. Rochester has been fortunate to have three long-running newspapers in her history, with a few short-lived upstarts sprinkled in along the way.

The first successful title was the Rochester Era, published by T.B. and W.A. Fox, which burst onto the scene with its salutatory edition on May 22, 1873. The weekly Era ran without noteworthy competition for a quarter of a century, until Charles S. Seed's Rochester Clarion launched its inaugural number on August 19, 1898. The Era and the Clarion went head-to-head for another fifty-one years, but gradually, it became clear that the Clarion was winning the competition for advertising. The Era shrank and took on an increasingly shopworn appearance until finally, on August 28, 1949, it surrendered the field and was bought out by the Clarion.

The Clarion soldiered on as a solo player with little competition for twenty-three more years. On August 3, 1972, the Observer & Eccentric chain of newspapers brought the Rochester Eccentric to town, and Rochester once again enjoyed the benefit of two weekly newspapers. Sadly, in October 1997, just a few months short of its century mark, the Rochester Clarion conceded defeat and was purchased by the Observer & Eccentric chain. For a brief time, the remaining newspaper styled itself as the Rochester Clarion-Eccentric, but the Clarion name was soon thereafter dropped and the newspaper went on as the Rochester Eccentric.

In the spring of 2009, the Observer & Eccentric chain reacted to the economic pressure that all print newspapers have been feeling in the digital age, and scaled back its print products. Among the casualties was the Rochester Eccentric, which ceased publication on May 31, 2009, in its thirty-seventh year. The community is poorer for the loss of its newspapers, but I fear historians of the future will feel the effects even more deeply than we do today.