Jim Reid's crew clambers on the roof of the old ('04) downtown Bay City depot as restoration begins. Stock Market Got You Down?
|
||||||||||
| Printer Friendly Story View |
Nostalgia is wonderful.
It's worry free. It's illusory.
But nostalgia relives those moments when the world was different, carefree, seemed almost perfect..
The nostalgic subject of old railroads popped up the other day, perhaps sparked by developer Jim Reid's one man campaign to save the Union Station of the Pere Marquette Railroad, built during Bay City's prime, 1904..
Every day we drive by and see the work crew making more progress on a new roof for thegrand old building. It really warms the heart to think that someone cares enough to keep this landmark alive for future development..
Yes, it was our Union Station, which meant it served several rail lines. It was our humble answer to Union Stations in Chicago, New York and other major cities.A photo in this year's calendar published by the City of Bay City shows the Pere Marquette Depot in downtown Bay City, between Adams and Jefferson, at 919 Boutell Place..
Its FrankLloyd Wright Prairie style architecture was resplendent in those days. A bell tower jutted proudly skyward (all that's left now is the base at the roof line). A hip roof surrounded the building at its midpoint, with the nameplate reading simply "Bay City" in black and white letters. The rustic stone base of Bayport limestone contrasted nicely with the flat reddish brown brick exterior. It stood out in Bay City's sea of Victorian homes and buildings, mimicking the open horizons of the Midwest, the prairie seas of waving grain stretching off, off, off into the azure skies..
Although no one can remember what the times were really like nearly 100 years ago when the depot was built, we can reconstruct it in our minds by what was going on at the time. Bay City had just become the fourth largest city in Michigan, after Detroit, Grand Rapids and Saginaw, when Governor Fred M. Warner vetoed the repeal bill backed by opponents of the merger of West Bay City and Bay City. After long and fractious debate, voters had agreed to merge the communities in 1903..
The city's population? It was nearly doubled from 27,644 to 45,166 after the merger.Teddy Roosevelt was President of the United States. (In 1904 he defeated Judge Alton B. Parker, Democrat, who few except historians have heard of since.)Civil War veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic veterans group still dominated local politics everywhere in the Northern states, including Bay City, since the war had ended less than 40 years before. Most Civil War vets were in their late 50s or 60s..
That year Sanka coffee was developed, or discovered, when a German coffee importer received a shipload of beans which had been soaked in sea water.A man named Caleb Bradham trademarked a soft drink he named Pepsi Cola that year to rival Coca-Cola.Japan launched a war with a sneak attack on Russia, tactics that would be repeated about 37 years later at Pearl Harbor.Mayor Curley was re-elected in Boston on the same day he began serving time in jail for corruption.
In Bay City we were just opening our first kindergartens in Dolsen and Garfield schools.Coal mines had just begun to operate in Monitor and Bangor townships and the Defoe brothers werebuilding fishing boats along the river. Captain James Davidson was at the height of his fame building the longest wooden ships ever made at his yard on the west bank of the Saginaw River.Bay Cityans went to the Wenona Beach Casino, one of the Midwest's finest summer resorts, for Vaudeville performances on the electric cars which ran every ten minutes weekdays and every five minutes on Sundays.
The Washington Theater was brand new at the corner of Washington and Sixth.St. Paul's Lutheran Church was about to be erected on the site of the first Lutheran church in Bay County on West Side Saginaw Road in Frankenlust.Mercy Hospital was being operated out of the old N.B. Bradley mansion at the foot of 14th Street.
The Fraser House was the city's main hotel, but there were nearly 100 small hotels for a lumberjack to stay during the summer until logging began again in the fall, although lumbering was petering out fast by 1904.Horse-drawn fire wagonswere still being used to respond to blazes as the auto was still in its infancy.
Bay City's noted architectural historian Dale Wolicki lovingly describes the old railroad building's design in his book "The Historic Architecture of Bay City, Michigan," published by the Bay County Historical Society in 1998. Reading this description opens one's eyes to the unrealized beauties of the structure which cry out for preservation.And recently Leon Katzinger has published several wonderful photos of Union Station, one with three locomotives in the scene, in a new book: "Bay City in Vintage Postcards, 1900-1940." You will really get the flavor of the times by reading Mr. Katzinger's book. (All school principals should be known as "Mister.")
It's not hard to realize that the sleek modernistic lines of the depot would jolt the sensibilities of city aldermen and local residents who were so used to Victorian styles.We have walked through the old depot several times in recent weeks since work began, recalling those bygone days of the 1940s and 1950s when young boys went everywhere, knew every alley, rooftop, nook and cranny of the old city.The names still on the wall brought back memories: Office, Rail Development Company; Ernest Matthew's, manager.
We remember Ernie Matthew's, a sophisticated New Yorker brought here by the New York Central System to head one of the first urban shopping centers in the United States. NYC's President Henry Briggs, who had married to a Bay City girl, acquired the depot and surrounding block of land, cleared out the long wooden freight building on Adams Street and installed the Rail Development Center.
It was a dramatic development for Bay City.
You may recall when the National Food Store was at one end and the A&P at the other, with Woolworth's five and dime on the corner. Shoe stores, pet shops, loan offices, etc., linked the three anchor stores. The designs were all modern, practical brick and glass "boxes" facing the street designed to attract shoppers with their inviting open look.This was a big deal in the retail field then; articles about it were featured in the national media. Bay City was the focus of a new experiment -- the urban shopping center all in more or less one building. It was the forerunner of the malls of today. The only difference was that the stores were not covered. The interior of the block was parking all in one spot.
We can see how the idea matured into today's malls. Bay City was just a little ahead of the times and the center was surpassed in the early 1960s by new concepts. It deteriorated, became outmoded and lost favor with shoppers. The supermarkets became bars and restaurants. The buildings of the Rail Development Center were torn down a decade ago after only about a 40 year life.
But Union Station, the magnificent Pere Marquette Depot, will mark 100 years in 2004. Hopefully it will be resplendent once again, restored as befitting the architectural treasure that it is and, more importantly, again serving the people of Bay City. It could be a permanent tribute to Bay City's years of glory. And a continuing source of nostalgia for us all.
| Printer Friendly Story View |
|
|
Dave Rogers |
|
|
|
Printer-Friendly Story View
0200 Nd: 04-20-2024 d 4 cpr 0
12/31/2020 P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm
SPONSORED LINKS
12/31/2020 drop ads P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm