Restoring Clara and Henry’s House
Join us on Mon., Feb. 6 at 7 p.m. for an update on the restoration work going on at Dearborn’s most famous house -- Fair Lane
Stories From the Sidewalk
New Book Features History of Arsenal and Riverbend Neighborhoods
Stories From the Sidewalk, a hefty new 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
Sterling ‘Ma Cherie’ Kit Home / Craftsman Bungalow / c.1918
You’ve probably heard of Sears kit homes – kits including pieces for entire homes, as well as the instructions to assemble them, delivered to your site of choice by Sears Roebuck & Co. But have you ever heard of equally beautiful Sterling kit home?
“Sterling System” home kits were manufactured by the International Mill & Timber Company of Bay City. Introduced in 1916, they were beautifully crafted, and Sterling “aggressively marketed” their kits by offering their own mortgages at 1.5% interest with 50% cash down. Unfortunately, this system failed to consider the cost of a buildable lot, and Sterling fell into bankruptcy just six years later, in 1922. If purchasers defaulted on bank loans for land, they simultaneously defaulted on the home loan – which Sterling could not foreclose on. Sterling was later reorganized, but their product was quickly outpaced by the popularity of Sears’ kits.
Thus, the two matching Sterling homes that stand today on Cleveland Street historical rarities. Both are mirrored “Plan D” versions of Sterling’s “Ma Cherie” style kit, which notably lacked the chimney included in other Ma Cherie plans.
This home’s first occupants appear to have been August and Minnie Parchert. August, who immigrated from Germany in 1881, founded a farm near Monroe and modern-day Outer Drive in 1895. Their farm became the Parchert Home Subdivision in 1919, whose earliest attractions would have been these mirrored kit homes fronting Pardee Ave.
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