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Detroit history tour (in FLORIDA!): The Edison-Ford Winter Estates

February 1, 2012 in History, Travel | No comments

We recently went to Florida to see my parents, who — after 124 combined years of life in Michigan — called it quits on winter and moved there in November.

We were looking forward to a few days of sunshine, alligators, and paperbacks by the pool, but when we arrived at the airport in Fort Myers, we were greeted by blown-up photographs of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, just palling around in super-size next to the Chili’s. In the atrium we found a Model T flanked by a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Henry Ford.

Momentarily it was a little horrifying. Where were we? Had we come so far, only to be followed by the challenging inheritance of our beleaguered city?

Edison and Ford in Fort Myers, 1916. The guy with the beard is naturalist John Burroughs. Source.

We came to our senses. There had to be a good reason for these guys to be hanging out at the airport together like it’s no big deal, branding Fort Myers with their portraits of industry, friendship, and snowbirding.

There was only one option: A history tour.

In 1885, Edison bought some land between an old cattle trail and the banks of the Caloosahatchee River in the yet-unincorporated town of Fort Myers.  He built a pier to have raw materials for his house delivered.

The population in Fort Myers was about 350. For 11 years there would be no electricity there. But when power, telephone service, hotels and railroads come to town during the turn of the century, an outpost supported by the cattle trade turned to the more refined business of fishing and summering.

Thomas Edison brought exotic plants to his estate: prehistoric cycads, cinnamon trees and persimmons from China, stately royal palms shipped in from Cuba which now define the landscape of Ft. Myers.

Oh, yeah. There’s also this banyan tree. When Harvey Firestone gave it to Thomas Edison in 1925, it was four feet tall. Today, it’s the largest in the continental U.S., and covers over an acre of land.

Edison conducted botanical research in Fort Myers — he was seeking an efficient, quick-growing latex crop that would solve an impending cost-of-rubber crisis — along with his regular-old experiments and inventions, which he practiced in a laboratory that is no longer there. You know why? Because it’s in DEARBORN! (Of course.) Henry Ford had it relocated in 1928.

(Ford: “Hey bud, I’m taking this building. For my museum.” Edison: “Whatever.”)

Thomas Edison

via The Henry Ford. Source.

Here’s Edison in that laboratory (inspecting the dynamo) at the grand opening of Greenfield Village.

The Edison summer house — ”Seminole Lodge” — is a place I would be happy to spend a summer, or the rest of my life. The walls are white, the air smells like old wood and the sea, and every room opens a set of French doors to the wrap-around porch.

Lest you think our grandfather genius was all work and no play, Edison found time away from conducting experiments on the latex properties of exotic plants to spend with his family, fishing, canoeing, swimming, camping in the Everglades and hanging out on the beach.

THIS dynamo, Edison’s daughter Madeleine …

… penned some “rules of the house:”

If you don’t think Seminole Lodge is the loveliest spot you ever wore your rubbers in — don’t let on to Father.

Don’t cabbage unto yourself all the fish poles. This has been done by guests thereby incurring the grave disapproval of the entire family.

Don’t fail to retire to your room during part of each day — so that the family may squabble without embarrassment.

And don’t capsize the sailboat if you can help it.

In 1916, Henry Ford bought the estate next door. Buddies! His summer home, christened “The Mangoes,” is darker and less breezy than Seminole Lodge. (To me, it actually looks a little more like a lodge.)

via the Edison & Ford Winter Estates 

But it has one thing to recommend it: Ford had benches built under the windowsills, because he was fond of shoving aside all of the furniture and turning the living room into a dance hall. He wanted a place for the wallflowers to hang out where they wouldn’t be in the way. And I think that was very thoughtful of him.

I’m glad we visited the winter estates, if only to be reminded that the history of Detroit isn’t pinned to the map: it spans tremendous distances, from this cold corner of our friendly peninsula to the extreme southern coast of the continental U.S., and to every city that ever had a Ford factory in it. (Not to mention: St. Nicolas de la Grave, France, where Antoine Cadillac was born; Radnor, Pennsylvania, where Mad Anthony Wayne is buried; London, England, where Hazen Pingree died; Niagara Falls, where Hugh Brady fought in the bloody battle of Lundy’s Lane. We could play this game all day. Also, I need to travel more.)

And because the estates and their eccentric collection of botanical marvels are beautiful, the Caloosahatchee River is beautiful, Florida in general is beautiful, and because even though I don’t like the thought of problematic Henry Ford following me around, it was kind of nice to see a familiar face.

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History Tour: Garden City

September 23, 2010 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History | 2 comments

This is going to take some exposition, so I hope you can bear with me. It starts like this: when I was born, my mom lived in Garden City, Michigan.

My mom was born in Detroit, but she grew up in Garden City, and after she graduated from college, she got a job with the Garden City Police Department. So she moved back to Garden City. To this day, my mom has her hair done in Garden City by a man she’s known since he was a toddler. Her dentist was a high school theater rival. Even though we moved out when I was very little, I went back to Garden City all the time, mostly to get my hair cut, my teeth cleaned, and to visit relatives.

Garden City appeared briefly in the nonfiction honors thesis I wrote about my family (hold your groans). I think I said something about how in the post-War years, Garden City was a place where the Ford Motor Company promised its employees an acre of land for a garden. It turns out that my research was shoddy and I was confusing a few different eras of Garden City history. I guess I didn’t really do any research, but that’s why they call it creative writing, right?

After that, I didn’t think much about Garden City until this blog came to life. And then, of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Garden City I never thought about.

So my gracious mother, who had endlessly driven up and down Garden City’s blocks when she was on patrol, agreed to take me on a little tour. We started at the Garden City Historical Museum, which is housed in the Straight Farm House on Merriman Road.

As it turns out, the story of Garden City shares the narrative thread of many of Detroit’s suburbs: in the 1820s, settlers from the east starting wandering out here in search of better/cheaper land, investment opportunities or just a change of scenery.  Then they stuck around. Proximity to Detroit turned out to be pretty helpful. Then came cars. And then World War II, and then the idea of the suburbs as a city-centric entity. The “garden city” concept that gave Garden City its name was a late-19th century British urban planning movement that has its own Wikipedia page. It is hilarious that I thought  it was Ford’s idea. RESEARCH!

Early settlers came with land deeds signed by Andrew Jackson. They include the Reverend Marcus Swift:

Marcus Swift, a traveling Methodist preacher and agitating abolitionist, lived in a hardwood forest near the mighty River Rouge a century before Henry Ford ever had his eye on Garden City.

Anyway. The Garden City Historical Museum is a treasure box of quirky historical joys, from the township’s settler days to the very recent past (sighted: high school yearbooks from the ’90s) — and their curious intersections:

Like this 300-odd-year-old Elm tree, a slab of which is just relaxedly leaning against a wall at the Museum, that was cut down to make room for the generations-old Santieu funeral home, which has buried many of my family’s loved ones. The Santieus still print their own prayer cards — in-house.

We found some relics from my mom’s high school:

And, in a tiny room that housed military and fire defense memorabilia, on a tiny shelf of police department knick-knacks, we found a framed photo of my mom’s colleague Lisa with a caption that read: Garden City’s First Female Police Officer.

My mom turned to our sweet docent and said: “Actually, that was me.”

Lisa and my mom had been sworn in on the same day; Mom got out of the training academy first.

Our docent, after promising to talk to the curator about correcting the record, grabbed a binder out of a closet and asked if she wouldn’t mind taking a look at the G.C.P.D. archives.

My mom obliged.

It was really something amazing to spend an afternoon there with her — so much richer than it would have been to see it alone. That quizzical collection of artifacts — a wedding dress from the 1880s, some antique typewriters and adding machines, a room cluttered with children’s toys from the turn of the 20th century to the near-present day — is amusing.

But it was great to see the Garden City Historical Museum function as more of a historical community center, a place to look yourself up in a binder of newspaper clips, see the switchboard that used to be in your high school’s front office, or read up on the history of your dentist’s practice. (Yes, there is some exhibit space dedicated to our family’s dentist.) When my mom pulled from its binder sleeve a typewritten “Guide to Starting a Neighborhood Watch” with a photocopy of her badge on the cover, she said, “I wonder if I wrote this?”

My whole sense of what belongs in museums, who tells the stories of our communities, and where time goes pretty much fell in on itself.

I just loved it. I wonder if there will be a place like this for me to visit in 30 years.

After we left the Museum, we went on a short driving tour. We found Henry Ford’s Honeymoon Cottage, nestled adorably behind the world’s first K-Mart.

HOW CUTE IS THIS HOUSE? Don’t you want to LIVE IN IT? Someone actually does! How does one become the person who lives in Henry Ford’s Honeymoon House? I would love to know.

Ford built this house himself after his wedding in 1888. It used to be in Dearborn, but the Ford company bought the land it was on and its owner had it moved to Garden City.

For whatever reason. Maybe just because it is such a surprising place.

(Oh, and have I mentioned my mom? And how she’s amazing?

All daughters should be so lucky.)

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Housekeeping

September 7, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

Hi everyone. Guess what we’re not going to talk about today? Summer being over.

Let’s talk about a few other things.

1. For two weekends in a row, we had visitors in town. As you know, I love visitors. Some things I would recommend based on this recent round of visits, in case you ever find yourself crafting a visitors’ agenda, include:

Renting bikes from the Wheelhouse and riding to Belle Isle. Clamoring to the top of the ziggurat on the Riverwalk. The DIA — open late on Friday night. As always, and forever, the People Mover. The Guardian Building. Scott’s Folly.

(Photo by Emily C. Eagle, great visitor, and great friend.)

Late-night donuts from Dutch Girl at 7 Mile and Woodward. A shot of Jezynowka and a pony of High Life in Hamtramck. (A jumbo pierogi and a ride on a Ferris wheel also recommended, but Hamtramck Labor Day Fest comes but once a year.) Wait at Slows is like 2 hours? Try El Barzon. Build your own bloodies at the Bronx, or just order a few rounds of Blatz.

The planes at the Henry Ford. My lord.

2. Have you heard about the National Preservation Trust’s “This Place Matters” Community Challenge? Whereby a $25,000 grant will be awarded to the community preservation project that gets the most votes online? A number of Detroit sites are on the ballot, including Historic Fort Wayne, the Highland Park plant, Michigan Central Station, and Clark Park. You have until September 15 to vote, if that’s your kind of thing.

I kind of have mixed feelings about it, mostly because voting on the website is goddamn impossible to figure out, and also, I’m not sure any one of those places matters more than any of those other places, not to mention all of the hundreds of participating places across the country. Still, I guess it’s just $25,000, so why get gray hairs about it? Are you voting? Anyone want to make any endorsements?

3. Put this on your calendar right now: The Lost Detroit release party is at City Bird on Thursday, September 16, from 4 to 9 p.m. Buy a book at the event & get a postcard! Plus, Dan (author of Lost Detroit) and the Linns (proprietors of City Bird) are really nice people who do good things. I am also a nice person, by the way. And I’ll be there. In case you want to say hello.

4. Fun fact, apropos of nothing (except, perhaps, a successful, gun-casualty-free Arts Beats & Eats Fest):

Lewis Cass gave Royal Oak its name when he found a big oak tree there that reminded him of the famed “Royal Oak” beneath which King Charles II hid from Oliver Cromwell during the Battle of Worcester in 1666.

Who knew that Lewis Cass was such a dweeb?

Come back tomorrow for Michigan Governors & more.

Fondly,

The Night Train.

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Biking Detroit: A brief history

June 22, 2010 in History | No comments

Wouldn’t it be terrific to know how this book …

… ended up at Powell’s Books in Portland, OR? Quite a journey for a children’s book self-published in 1935.

However it fulfilled its own Manifest Destiny, it’s back where it belongs now, thanks to a very nice man in my life who was out of town on a business trip for several days and returned home with this book (!!!) as a souvenir.

You know how I feel about this book, right? Of course you do.

***

Tonight I set out for a bike ride at dusk (maybe inspired by reports from the USSF group ride this afternoon).

(Bike aside: I ride a vintage Ernie Clements Falcon that I bought for $10 at a Goodwill in Beloit, Wisconsin.  This bike was built under a bad sign. Days after I bought it, after a long ride through mint fields, my front wheel collapsed, hurling me to the street. I had it shopped at least four times after that until finally, in Milwaukee, I brought it to a friend who ran a punk bike collective for a total rebuild. He was evicted from his warehouse a week later and my bicycle, in pieces, mouldered in his boarded-up work room. He broke in to save it and then left on a six-month train-hopping vision quest across the country. I finally retrieved it from him, still in pieces, days before I moved back to Michigan, where I shipped it off to another secret bike laboratory so it could at least meet the glory it so badly deserved. It’s been fully restored and I’ve never ridden a better bike. It’s amazing that I haven’t given up on this bike. I actually don’t even know why I was so bent — and so lavish with cash — on saving it.)

Didn’t make it more than two miles before my back wheel made a hideous kerchunk. Everything stopped. The wheel had buckled. All that was left for me was to wait in the 7-11 parking lot for my ride to come get me, then get home and nose around for something to blog about.

***

[Source]

This is Norman Conger. He was with the National Weather Service. Here he is in 1880 on top of his High Ordinary.

Writes Florence Marsh:

During the [18] seventies the bicycle was a low-built contraption with the pedals on the front wheel and was sometimes called a “Bone-shaker.” This was followed in the eighties by the “Ordinary,” with one high wheel and one small one in the rear. A short stepladder or horse block was used for mounting, and the driver was above the heads of foot passengers and rode at great peril. With the improved wheel, the number of cyclists increased rapidly. Gay parties were now seen on [Belle Isle] where wheels could be rented.

Marsh is quick to clarify that the bicycle craze in Detroit didn’t really blow up until the 1890s, lest you think that “the old-time feeling for fast horses and racing on the ice had gone.” Oh, no.

Bikes in Detroit were a big deal, as I’m sure many readers know far better and more thoroughly than I do. The bicycle’s popularity in Detroit, as I’ve gathered from a few reliable accounts, contributed directly to the development of the car. Henry Ford’s first functional automobile, the Quadricycle, was basically a bicycle with four wheels and an engine. The Dodge brothers started in bicycles. William Metzger, who opened one of the first automobile dealerships in the country, was a bicycle enthusiast and entrepreneur first. His bicycle shop, Huber & Metzger, opened in 1891. Metzger was also a founding member of the Detroit Wheelmen, a prominent cycling club that P.N. Jacobsen wrote about in Outing that same year:

Wheeling has attaineda height of popularity in Detroit heretofore unknown.The vilest of cedar block pavement in the last stages of decay on the principal streets until recently retarded that natural growth in wheeling interest that almost all American cities experienced during the last few years.
… Although this general improvement in the city pavement has been a great factor in the wonderful increase in cycling, there is another which has been equally potent in this respect, and that is the existence of a large and active wheel club.
A year has scarcely passed since this club, active in cycling as well as socially, was formed, yet it is now in a position to properly entertain visiting wheelmen, and when visiting other cities to have a representation creditable to a city of such importance as Detroit. The formation of the club resulted in a concentration of all cycling interests in the city into one large vigorous organization under the name of the “Detroit Wheelmen.”

The Club, Jacobsen wrote, was one of the largest the nationwide League, and its membership was growing rapidly. That year the Wheelmen organized a 300-mile ride to Niagara Falls.

The frenzy for cycling in Detroit reached fever-grade in the last decade of the 19th century. Again from History of Detroit for Young People:

The city streets were crowded with men, women, and children on wheels … High school boys prided themselves on century runs to Port Huron and back on the Saturday holidays. As you may imagine pedaling a hundred miles gave a boy a strenuous day. Cass Avenue was so crowded with wheels after dark that the street twinkled with the tiny headlights and the air was filled with the clanging of bicycle bells. Foot passengers waited in vain for a chance to cross the road.

(I know this is a coincidence, but this was during the Pingree years. Golden. Age.)

Bike fever coincided with vast improvement to the city’s streets, which were being paved and mended like never before. The Detroit News writes that many historians “attribute the automobile’s explosive growth in Detroit to the network of superior roads built for bicyclists.”

A century (and change) later, the bike is a big deal in Detroit all over again. David Byrne loves to bike here. The Metro Times loves to bike here. The Hub, the Wheelhouse, Tour de Hood and Charlie love to bike here. I like to bike here too.

Part of me wonders if this is just dumb luck: the automobile — which the bike, in some way, made way for — widened, flattened, smoothed over, and made necessary, Detroit’s thousands of spidery thoroughfares. Now we don’t need so many of them and we can safely bike our hearts out.

But don’t you want to believe that it was bikes that made those roads possible in the first place? And now we’re just taking back what’s rightfully ours?

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Computer Perfection at the Ford Piquette Plant

April 27, 2010 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

Here they are in Henry Ford’s “Experimental Room.” More tremendous videos, photographs, and some nice introductory words from ME! at singlebarreldetroit.com.

And here’s more on the Ford Piquette Plant from your friend The Night Train.

Last night I had a dream that, while a forest in Detroit burned down, I met and befriended an elderly General William Tecumseh Sherman at a veteran’s home in the city, long forgotten to the world. Today I keep catching myself wondering, “What if he really IS still alive somewhere?” The General would’ve turned 190 this February.

I guess I’m not out of the crazy, stressed-out, weird-history-dreams woods yet.

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In which Henry Ford tells me to take it easy for a while

April 25, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

This weekend I had a dream that I found an old safe in some empty house. When I cracked it (somehow), I found a bunch of Henry Ford’s old papers and letters (including his high school diploma?) as well as several original documents relating to Anthony Wayne.

So … so … dweeby.

I clearly need to clear my head of local history a little. Luckily for my freelance roster, unfortunately for dorky blogging, I am working through a few tight deadlines this week and next (with a vacation to Milwaukee, my heart’s other home, in between). We’ll be around, but posts will be shorter, sweeter and possibly farther between for a spell.  The Facebook page should be hopping, though. (And we’ve been ONE follower short of 100 for like a week! Come ON!)

Meanwhile, here are a few items of interest that have captured our fancy of late:

No one needs to tell you to visit Sweet Juniper, right? But recently Jim has been writing a lot about this dog cart he built, and his chronicle of their  jaunts around town has really been yanking my heart. I love it. You should read about it.

Perfect Laughter, Detroit’s best art blog, featured one of my dad’s old Opening Day photos in their Starred series.

I heard a rumor on Twitter that Matt Novak of Paleo-Future, a terrific blog about visions of the future that never came to pass, will be on All Things Considered tomorrow. I am hoping that telling you this will help me remember to tune in when 4 pm rolls around tomorrow.

(EDIT: Forgot to mention that, in a counter-intuitive move that just thrills me, Paleo-Future is starting a real, hold-it-in-your hand magazine. You can pre-order the first issue here.)

On Saturday, the fiancé and I old-person’d out and stayed in to watch How the States Got Their Shapes on the History Channel. It was endearing and smart. Today we were totally insufferable at brunch where we yammered on to our helpless dining companion about the skinny part of Idaho, the Oklahoma panhandle, the Mason Dixon line, the diagonal line on Nevada’s western border, Fort Blunder on the Canadian border and OF COURSE, The Toledo War. (Don Faber, who wrote this book, was a guest on the show. And charming.) We would highly recommend you watch this so that the next time I try to assault you at the bar with the story of the lost state of Deseret, you can just say “Yeah, I know Amy, I already saw that.”  It’s based on a book by the same name.

And this article about mammoths, mastodons and the 18th-century American “fossil craze” — and how it reflected European attitudes about North American “degeneracy,” and how American archaeologists, artists, science lovers and hobbyists shot back — was a good read in April’s Smithsonian Magazine, which I tend to keep on my night stand for a month at a time, planning to read it before bed. I never really read before bed, so I have no idea why I do this.

In between deadlines, I’m hoping to spend some time getting back on track with blog research and planning, so if there’s anything you’re curious about, history-wise, in and around magnificent Detroit, please do get in touch.

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The Ford Piquette Plant (… Opens Today!)

April 1, 2010 in History | 3 comments

In 1908, the first Model T rolled off the assembly line in Detroit at the Ford Motor Company’s Piquette Plant. The plant, which opened in 1904, was only open for a few years — in 1910, Ford moved production to its bigger and more famous Highland Park Factory — but history pushed forward pretty irrevocably in that skinny brick building at Milwaukee Junction.

piquette plant

I did not know a thing about the Piquette Plant until a couple of weeks ago, when Single Barrel Detroit asked me to come down there for a video shoot with Computer Perfection. And it especially surprised (and delighted) me to learn that the Piquette Plan today is lovingly kept in shape and open for visitors as the Model T Automotive Heritage Complex — T-Plex for short. And it’s full of gleaming Model Ts and other Piquette-era Fords. It hasn’t been repainted since 1910, the floors are original, and its 350+ handcrafted triple-pane windows have been loyally restored. (You can even adopt one.)

piquette windows

I have started to think of this blog as a blog about pre-automotive Detroit, for lots of reasons. One very honest reason is that I’ve never been interested in cars. Another might be that I don’t come from a Detroit auto-industry family; my grandparents and great-grandparents were poorer than that — immigrant farmers, scrap cart pushers, flop-house builders, sugar runners and professional holders of odd jobs. And I think this is a history that is told far less often —settler-era Detroit (and its suburbs), a wilderness tamed by venturers, gamblers, and the pioneer imagination.

But it was hard to walk the long, chambered halls of the Piquette Plant without feeling a little reverent. This was the place, the incubator of Detroit industry, the beginning of Detroit as an idea, the spot that all of those photo essays of our broken-ass fallen city flow back to. Without the Model T, it never would’ve come to this. I may not be descended from car-building stock, but would my ancestors have bothered to come to Detroit at all without Henry Ford? I don’t know. And even though I don’t know anything about these cars, they’re beautiful to look at and the building itself is a gem.

piquette model t 1914

I don’t want to expound too much, since I will be writing more about this when the videos come out, and since there’s not a lot to expound upon when it comes to Ford. If you’re a Detroiter, you probably have a lot of mixed-up crazy feelings about Ford — the man, the myth, the motor vehicle — and I’m not going to sway them for you too much.

So here are a few photos I took, and a reminder that the T-Plex opens for the season today.

piquette longshot

A Piquette Factory long shot, featuring some friendly members of Computer Perfection.

piquette model t firetruck

This 1921 Model T firetruck! is pretty much the best. Close up:

piquette model t firetruck

spokes

Parts and labor.

piquette parts fw

piquette ford tractor

A Model T Pullford conversion tractor. Henry Ford, born on a farm, thought machines were better suited for the back-breaking hard labor of agriculture.

piquette 1915 maxwell

A 1910 Maxwell Model AA. Maxwell Motor Company was an early forerunner of Chrysler Corporation.

piquette ford experiment room

At the back of the factory floor is Henry Ford’s “Experiment Room,” where designs and developments were cooked up, blueprints were unfurled, schematics were scribbled on a chalkboard and Henry Ford sat in this rocker and came up with his best ideas.

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