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BUTLER STREET -
WINDOW SHOPPING BECOMES PART OF LIFE
The history of
Butler Street, Saugatuck, is interesting from the viewpoint of daily life
and consumerism in small-town America in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Unlike today whereby most local people purchase their everyday food and
household goods at distant malls and ‘superstores’—or catalogues and the
internet—the village folks (and country folk) of these days were largely
engaged in what was happening on Butler Street in Saugatuck or Center Street
in Douglas.
These Butler Street buildings, several of which still exist, hold a good
deal of Saugatuck’s varied and interesting social and economic history. Join
us in checking out the merchandise—and the merchants. We will continue with
part two next week. All of these images and stories are included in the
current Saugatuck-Douglas Museum exhibition and book, Raising the Roof.
STIMSON’S BUILDING
“Prices Cut in Two. At the new store in the Stimson building, Saugatuck,
Mich. It Will Pay You to come and buy Shoes, Dry Goods, Clothing, Hats,
Caps, and Notions there. They are Given Away at half the usual price.”
(Commercial Record July 7, 1898)
A combination drug, clothing store, and doctor’s office. The wide roof
overhang and paired cornice brackets are typically “commercial Italianate”
but the first floor is unusually tall. Note the advertisement signboards—for
clothing—set between the upper windows. Dr. Stimson is to the right of the
door while Mrs. Stimson is to the left. Many early druggists were also
doctors. Stimson lived in Saugatuck from 1858 to 1916. The Commercial Record
in 1886 called it the most “elegantly furnished building in Saugatuck”
(including the apartments on the second floor). It also served as the
Saugatuck Post Office in the 1870s and 1880s. This hunk of a building was
destroyed by a great fire in July 1886 that swept away nearly the entire
village block—and then rebuilt to become Friedman’s Discount Clothing.
FRITZ WALZ’S BUTCHER SHOP – EAST OF THE SUN
In 1889, the Walz Butcher Shop (now East of the Sun) was a new building on a
disreputable site—replacing an old “eye sore” known as the Nicolas Building
that housed a prostitution and gambling den. The new owners, the Walz
brothers, were well known local butchers. The building’s interior was
praised as being modern for its 13’ceiling and giant refrigerator. By the
1950s the site had regained some of its old notoriety—as a lively bar,
called “The Cabin” that attracted a mixed straight-gay crowd and at one time
had an organ that, it was said, made the place jump.
LANDMARK—KILWIN’S BUILDING
In 1878, the Landmark building (now Kilwin's—corner of Mason and Butler) was
Saugatuck’s largest building to date—the top two floors being the home of
several of the local fraternal organizations, including the Odd Fellows and
the Masons. The street floor was Saugatuck’s best known clothing “dry
goods-store,” first Taylor’s, then Goshorn’s, then Flint’s. Flint & Co. had
existed elsewhere in Saugatuck and had been in the clothing business since
1857.
Fur coat anyone? The story goes that the store’s first owner had a guard dog
that ate the store’s stock of fur coats. The upper floor included a popular
dance hall—its first event being a benefit dance in 1878 for yellow fever
sufferers. In the 1880s it housed the Arbeiter Verein orchestra and the
Saugatuck Dancing Club. Some of the Italianate details now removed. The
arched windows are typically “Italianate.”
by Jim Schmiechen
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