The Bagley House is the third Wright home that I visited in Grand Beach. The W.S. Carr house and the Vosburgh house are the other two.  I described some of the history of Grand Beach, Michigan in the blog entries for the other two Wright homes. 

A big part of the vacation community of Grand Beach was the Golfmore Hotel, built across the state line in Indiana, but easily accessable from Grand Beach.  At one point there was a 36 hole golf course that gave the hotel its name.  The course has since shrunk to a 9-hole course, but it still is a big part of the town.  The hotel, however, burned to the ground in 1939.  

The resort town started to decline in the 1950s.  Unusually high water levels from the 1950s through the 70s made the beaches small and not conducive to recreation.  Wealthy families from Chicago went to more exotic resorts as transportation became cheaper and more accessible.  The 1980s brought a revival back to the community.  The old YMCA camp was turned into a gated community where multi-million dollar homes have been built. 

 

To see photos and text on the Bagley House, please go to the link below:

Joseph J. Bagley House: Grand Beach, Mighigan

Pete

The W.S. Carr house is another of the summer homes built in Grand Beach Michigan.  You’ll also see entries in here for the Vosburgh House and the Bagley House.  The Carr House had an interesting existance.  I use the term “had” because it was demolished last year in favor of a new home on the beach-front lot. 

I talk a little bit about the history of Grand Beach in the Vosburgh House post.  I’ll continue that here.  In the 1920s, there was a pier built out into Lake Michigan that had all kinds of entertainment opportunities on it.  It had great places for dining, dancing and live music performances.  The pier is no longer there, but the community lives on…. even if it hasn’t grown much in the 100+ years that it has been in existance.

You can see photos of the W.S. Carr House and a bit of history of it at the link below:

W.S. Carr House: Grand Beach, Michigan

Pete

Grand Beach Michigan started as a vacation community in 1903.  The Grand Beach Company opened it as a resort where people would take the Michigan Central Railroad to the Grand Beach station, then spend a few days in a cottage at the beach.  The cottages were rather primative at the time.  Most didn’t have any kind of heating and certainly no air conditioning.  I can’t imagine that many of the homes in that area don’t have all the modern amenities at this point in their lives. 

Grand Beach hasn’t grown significantly over the years.  The census in 2000 still has the population pegged at about 200 people.  That makes it a very small town. 

Mr. Wright designed many homes like this in Michigan.  A lot of his Oak Park customers had summer homes on Lake Michigan and some of them contracted Mr. Wright to build them.  You’ll see blog posts for the W.S. Carr house and the Joseph Bagley House too.  The Vosburgh House is the most appealing of them to me.  You can see photos and read about it at the link below.

Ernest Vosburgh House:  Grand Beach, Michigan

Thanks for reading.

Pete

I admit it.  I’m lazy when it comes to surfing and reading these days.  I have way too much going on to hunt down stuff to read.  I barely keep up with the stuff that hunts me down. 

I was going through the dashboard on this blog and found that two nice folks found my bog and posted about it.  Thank you!  That made it VERY easy for me to find and read their blogs.    I now have two awesome sources of architectural and design info.  They’re great finds too. 

 The two that found me were (in no particular order):

Prairie Mod: Written by a group of architects and designers in the Chicago area.

and

The Frank Lloyd Wright News Blog: Written by Douglas Anders, a guy that I’ve bumped into on the net a few times over the years as we both follow our interest in Mr. Wright’s work.

Both blogs are more up to date, better written and more insightful.  My blog, however, has a photo of me posing with Mr. Wright at the top. 

I look forward to reading and keeping up with these blogs.  They’ll be added to my links as soon as lunch time today.

 Pete

As I’ve said in other posts recently, I’m working on documenting the trip that I took in 2003 to the Wright Plus tour in Oak Park, Illinois.  The photos have been up since 2003, but many of the homes had no text associated with them.  I’m adding that now. 

The Schultz house is located in St. Joseph, Michigan.  It is half of the “Twin Cities”, the other half being Benton Harbor, Michigan with the St. Joseph River between the two.  I talk a little about the town of Benton Harbor in my posting on the Anthony House (S.315) in a different blog post. 

St. Joseph doesn’t seem to have the industrial area like it’s sister town across the river.  There isn’t a lot of information about St. Joseph on the web.  Wikipedia’s page for it had basic demographics and cencus information, but little or no history or cultural information.  Even St. Joseph’s own web site wasn’t up and running at the time of this writing (a clear sign that there’s a lack of history and culture).  (I’m just kidding about that last remark.  I’ve got friends who live in St. Joseph and they’re quite cultured. ).

What I do know about St. Joseph, Michigan is that it hosts the Venetian Festival each year which draws thousands of people to town and it is the home of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.  It is also home to the Harper House (one of my absolute favorite Wright homes) as well as the Schultz House.  You can read about he Schultz House at the link below:

Carl Schultz House: St. Joseph, Michigan

Pete

 UPDATE:

I did find some historical information about St. Joseph.  Their web site came back up when I was doing some other research. 

The explorer LaSalle and 14 of his men cleared some land at the mouth of the St. Joseph river to build a fort in 1679, about 10 years after the St. Joseph river was discovered and documented by non-native people.  Native Americans, trappers and soldiers made up the population for most of its early years until William Burnett built a trading post in 1785. 

St. Joseph’s city web site goes on to describe how things really started rolling with the 1828 Carey Mission Treaty that opened the area to commerce and allowed St. Joseph to grow.  That was about the time that full-time residents began settling there and St. Joseph became a prosperous deep-water port. 

Welcome to day 2 of my quest to update my web site.  If I make it a week I’ll buy myself a nice, cold beer.

This morning’s addition is a kind of neat little house.  I visited the Anthony Residence in 2003 on my cross-country trip to the Wright Plus Tour in Oak Park, Illinois.  If you’ve read my account of that trip, then you’ll know that I was a little exhausted at this point in the tour.  I’d seen a lot, I had a lot more to see, and I was eager to make it to Kankakee, Illinois, where I’d actually break my streak of sleeping in the car for a few nights. 

Benton Harbor wasn’t originally a harbor at all.  It was a swamp along the Paw Paw River.  In the mid 1800, a canal was cut through the area and the harbor was born.  The town changed names a time or two until it finally became Benton Harbor in 1865, named after Thomas Hart Benton, the Missouri Senator that helped Michigan achieve statehood.  In 1866 it was organized into a village and in 1891 it became a city.  Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, Michigan (across the St. Joseph River) make up what are called the Twin Cities. 

Demographics are an interesting thing.  When I was looking at the demographics of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, Michigan, I found information that suprised me a little.  I was looking at the census information for both towns on Wikipedia.  In the 2000 census, St. Joseph, Michigan had a population of 8789 people, 90.31% of them were White.  Benton Harbor, on the other hand had a population of 11,182 people, of which 92.4% were African American.  That interested me and I’d like to learn more about that area and understand the historical background behind such differences. I’m not making statements here about any of this. I’m just voicing a history buff’s curiousity.

These days Benton Harbor is home to the Whirlpool Corporation.  The old part of downtown has an interesting charm to it.  There are some industrial areas that look a litte run down (as industrial areas tend to after years of use) and the residential areas are beautiful and filled with trees.  Growing up in Colorado, that is the thing I appreciate most about towns in the mid-west and east.  I liked the feel of the town and enjoyed driving through it.   

This has been a long discussion of the town, history and demographics.  So far I’ve said NOTHING about Frank Lloyd Wright or the Anthony house.  You can read about the home and see photos of it at the link below:

Howard and Helen Anthony House: Benton Habor, Michigan

Thanks for reading.

Pete

UPDATE

I’ve done a few blog entries this morning to reflect some of the updates I did last night.  Hopefully you enjoyed them and hopefully I keep up with this stuff. I’d like to do a few things each night to get the web site and blog up to snuff.  I’m making this post because it’ll give a little insight into why I’m updating what I am. 

In the spring of 2003, I made a HUGE road trip to the Wright Plus house tour in Oak Park, Illinois.  I’d been many years before and I usually try and include some kind of pre-tour trip to get myself in the mood.  Well the 2003 trip was the pre-trip to end all pre-trips (though I did another doozie in 2004).  The basic idea behind the trip was that I had a car that was working very nicely, plenty of time off from work and other responsibilities, a car that was working very well and almost no money to do anything fun.  I was scraping bottom bigtime in the financial department for this trip.  I got paid towards the end of the trip, but until that time, I was living the simple life.  I kinda like it that way.  I won’t go into too much detail about that part of the trip.  The tour description does a pretty good job of it.  I had some cash for gas and enough money to spend 2 or 3 nights in hotels along the way.  That left me with a zip-lock bag full of pocket change to pay for food and sleeping in the car more often than in a hotel.

I didn’t have to stop the trip for a day because I ran out of gas and money at the same time (like I did on the 2004 trip), but I had fun making a dollar stretch as far as it could. 

With that introduction, click on the link below:

2003 Wright Plus Road Trip

Pete

This building was sad, sad, sad when I saw it last.  It is rather difficult to see from the street.  You can see from my photos that it had some major structural damage.  I was happy to hear that it had been restored.  I REALLY need to get back to see it now. 

This building is located next to the Bradley House (S.052) and next doorto the Hickox House (S.056). 

Bradley Stable: Kankakee, Illinois

Pete

The Bradley House is placed next door to the Hickox House described in the previous blog entry.  That entry talks  a little about the town of Kankakee.  I won’t repeat what I said there.  I repeat myself way too much as it is.   You can, however, find that post by clicking HERE.  You can also learn more about that entire trip by clicking HERE.

I’ll talk a little about some changes that I’m making on the site before giving you the link to the Bradley House.  I’ll start out by saying that I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.  It finally dawned on me that I post up about Storrer’s books all the time, but I don’t really give reference information to his books on these pages.  He makes it so easy for me to do so, but until now, I haven’t done it.  I’m going to fix that.  As I add to entries, I’m going to make sure that they have the appropriate “S-Number” with them.  That’ll make it easier for you to look things up in his books and tell me how far off I am in my analysis of Mr. Wright’s work.   That is what the (S.052) reference is up above. 

The Bradley House is absoluely gorgious.  It is an office now.  I really need to make it back to Kankakee and see it again.  I’d love to get some better photos.  Enjoy.

 The Bradley House:  Kankakee, Illinois.

 Pete

Good morning.  Yup!  I started getting some work done on the blog and web site again.  I was feeling like a slug for not getting much done on the web site lately and not writing in the blog for a month, so I decided to do something about it. 

This entry and site visit goes back 3 years.  Back in 2003 I made a HUGE trip leading up to the Wright Plus tour in Oak Park, Illinois.  This tour was monumental.  You can read about the whole tour HERE.  I drove from DC to Chicago via Buffalo, Canada, Detroit, northern Indiana and Iowa. 

I was very tired by the time I reached south western Michigan and the northern part of Indiana.  I’d been on the road for days and hadn’t gotten much sleep.  After many nights of sleeping in my car, I’d planned a night in a hotel in Kankakee, Illinois.  I knew about the town from the David Letterman show.  A few years back some organization rated Kankakee (a city of about 30,000 residents) as one of the worst place to live in the US.  Letterman donated two big gazebos to the town in hopes that would spark tourism and the town would someday be known as the “Home of the twin gazebos”.  I’m not sure that name ever caught on.  I didn’t see any signs of it. 

What I did see was a kinda cool little town.  There were a lot of strip malls, but it didn’t seem like a horrible place to live.  I kinda liked the town in fact.  The old part of town had a nice feel to it.  I liked the buildings and the way the streets wound around.  I didn’t really see much of it by day, but I liked what I did see.  Hopefully things will improve for the town as they build a new ethanol plant in the area. 

What does this have to do with the Hickox House?  Not much other than to describe it’s settings and the way I found the house.

You can read about the Hickox House and look at the photos at the link below.

 Hickox House:  Kankakee, Illinois.

 Thanks for reading.

 Pete