WALKING WITH THE GERBERS
In the days
when Douglas was still a port town, one of the best known families in
Douglas was the Gerber family, the founders of the Gerber’s baby food
company. While they later moved off to Fremont to found the company that
would feed generations of our nation’s young, their fortune began in
Douglas. Like many others, the Gerbers were interested in cutting down
trees—particularly the hemlocks from which they harvested bark for use in
making hides into leather. They operated a leather tanning factory on
Tannery Creek at about the site of present-day Wade’s Bayou Park along Water
Street. They also operated a lumber mill at the foot of Center Street, owned
part of the local Saugatuck bank, and (later) were partners in the Douglas
Basket Factory, located at the foot of the bridge on the Douglas side. Much
of what the Gerbers produced here in Douglas—leather, lumber, baskets—was
shipped to Chicago, but many of their real estate holdings were at one time
or another destroyed by fire: the tannery, the mill, the basket factory and
their big house on Center Street. In fact, even one of the Gerber cargo
boats was lost in the great Chicago fire of 1871.
A number of
local houses are remembered as Gerber houses, including several on Union
Street and a rather grand house called “Harbor View” at the corner of Ellis
and Center Street (lost to fire in 1984) where, it is said, Thor Heyerdahl
penned the last chapter of his book Kon Tiki. Daniel Gerber (1820-1890) was
the founder of the Douglas Gerber clan, and one of his last ventures in his
life in Douglas was to build the store pictured here. It was one of the few
brick buildings in the village, and in 1896 the west half of the building
housed L. W. McDonald’s general store, called “The People’s Store.” The east
side of the building was Mr. Norton’s drug store and soda fountain (seen in
this feature in June). The upper floor had various uses, including the
meeting place of a lodge called the Maccabees. It is perhaps best remembered
in recent years as part of St. Peter’s school—and still later (from 1982)
the Township offices.
Little did Ed
Sisk and Ed Strange know when they began the restoration of the neglected
Commercial Italianate structure in the mid-1990s—uncovering the original
fronts and the fine cornice and brackets at the roof line to reveal a
splendid facade—that their project would give birth to what would become the
“Douglas Renaissance,” which would result in a broader movement to restore,
reconstruct, and revitalize the historic village of Douglas. Since then, the
McDonald Building has been home to a number of shops—today housing the
Rocking Bear shop and Johnny Blue Gallery. Few who walk down Center Street
today could know the long, historic lineage of the present-day structure
that was at one time the seat of modernity for the village: the first modern
grocery and (behind the building, still standing) the Ford automobile
garage. This leaves us with quite a bit to think about.
Baby food?
Well, some say it was invented here in Douglas in the family kitchen and
from fruits from Douglas orchards—but the official Gerber Baby Food company
spin on it is that the first of the baby food was invented in Fremont, where
the Gerbers had settled in 1901.
by Jim Schmiechen
|
