Recently, there has been a lot of rehabilitation of buildings that had fallen into disrepair. Hooray! Here is a sketch of one of them. Which building is it? What was the original use of the building? And, what was business was in there when we were in school?Remember: winner gets a prize!
8 comments:
I believe the original use was a Stove Factory and when we were in school it was the Chelsea Standard Building.
Hey, Bob! Thanks for commenting! You are half right. The building was used by the Chelsea Standard when we were in school. The building was built by Glazier, but what was the original function?
Recreation facility for the workers of Glazier Stove. Called the Welfare Building.
Bingo, Ron! This means that Bob won half a beer, and you one the other half! Congrats to both of you!!
If I remember correctly that building was also the site of where the Hollier Automobile was manufactured (around 1917 I think). Anyway it was after the stove factory went out of business. Unfortunetely there are no surviving vehicles as far as I can determine. I do have a brochure with drawings if any one is interested.
I don't think the Standard moved into the building until after 1958. At the time of our graduation I remember it in another building downtown. East Middle Street I believe.
Chelsea Standard was on Middle St. and the police dept. was right next door. There was also a shoe repair/cobbler right in that vicinity....don't remember the cobbler's name.
Upon further checking, here's the facts: The building was called the Welfare Building and was built in 1906 by Glazier Stove Company for the workers of the company. Most of the stove factory workers came out for the week from Detroit on a special train. Of course, they needed to do something else besides work, so they went to the Welfare Building and used the swimming pool, billiard room, basketball court, theater, and/or the reading room. It seems that Glazier went bankrupt in 1907 and sold the building to Lewis Spring and Axle. That company made the "short-lived" Hollier Eight automobile. The building has been used by the Chelsea Standard since 1960. So, that means Bob, Ron, Jim, and Bill were all partially right! I guess only bats were in there for a very long time.
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