A Peek Behind the Curtain - Restoration Highlights Sept. 11, 7 p.m.
Tony and Karen Cipolla will share their expertise gained through the restoration of historic homes in the area.
Stories From the Sidewalk
Book Features History of Arsenal and Riverbend Neighborhoods
Stories From the Sidewalk, a hefty hardcover book at nearly 380 pages published by the Museum Guild of Dearborn, is on sale now at the Dearborn Historical Museum gift shop or available online at https://thedhm.org/books.
To say the least it is an oversized stocking stuffer for the holiday season that every fan of architecture and devotee of history will treasure.
Three years in the making, it is the work of a passionate group of history buffs and researchers. This coffee table book documents over 360 houses and buildings in Dearborn’s Arsenal and Riverbend neighborhoods. With the belief that every house and building has a story to tell, the editors organized the book by neighborhood and street address along with a full-color photograph and details on the history and architecture of each historic resource.
Subtitled, A Walk Through 137 Years That Shaped Dearborn (1833 – 1970) the book is designed as a walking tour of these two charming and historic west Dearborn neighborhoods. It surveys and preserves for future generations the story of Dearborn’s growth from a village on the Chicago Road (Michigan Avenue) to a bustling and thriving city as the area became the automotive capital of the world and the manufacturing epicenter of the Ford Motor Company.
Co-authors and editors Christopher Merlo and L. Glenn O’Kray undertook this project with a sense of urgency to document and preserve the stories of these historically significant houses and buildings before they are either razed or drastically renovated – a fate that has befallen several houses and buildings in the Arsenal and Riverbend neighborhoods.
All income from the sale of the book will go to the Museum Guild of Dearborn.
Historic Highlight
A Model Home - 1940
A Ladies Home Journal model home in 1940, 22920 Wellington, designed by Architect Lewis Welch and built by Gerhardy Construction Company has both Dutch-Colonial and Cape Cod style. Featured in The Detroit Free Press as a “distinctive home,” a June 1940 article highlights many new advances in building materials used in its construction. “The exterior is finished in oyster white asbestos siding and the roof is in contrasting green asphalt shingle and window shutters are in matching color. All windows are of the wood casement type.” At the time it was built, at a cost of $5000, the house consisted of six rooms and one bathroom. Today, the home is well-preserved, looking much the same after 84 years, just with updated shutter color and and the covered porch removed.
First owners Stanley and Edith Case became local celebrities. The popular series “How America Lives” in the Ladies Home Journal documented the Case family’s move from their $35/month rental on Audette Street into their newly built Wellington Street home on Stanley’s $1,600/year salary as a tool inspector in the Cadillac plant. The Cases even starred in a film about themselves, called What So Proudly We Hail, produced for GM. They were shown to be a “typical” family, economizing during the war years and striving for the American Dream.
In 1953, The Detroit Free Press followed up with the family 13 years after they moved in. The family reminisced about when they first moved to Wellington Street, their home felt like it was out in the country. There were only 5 other houses on the block and they picked wild blackberries in nearby fields. In 1953, the Cases acknowledged that the wild blackberries were gone and houses lined their street, but by that time, they were close to paying off their mortgage and had a mature garden of their own.
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