Bridge Street

State Street, looking north toward Lake Michigan in the distance, was intended to be Charlevoix’s main thoroughfare. It was wider than any other street, the site of the first churches and the town hall, and was the conduit to Brookside cemetery a mile to the south. Even Park Avenue was called Main Street until the early 1900s. But State Street lost out to Bridge Street. (At bottom left, the lean-to attached to the rear of the town hall is part of the jail.)

This photo of Bridge Street could have been taken as early as 1878. The upright rectangular outline of the first swing bridge, built that year, is barely visible at the far end. Early Bridge Street, which the Charlevoix Sentinel newspaper called “a horrid spectacle of mud, ruts, and gulches,” does not yet ascend the south hill. It stops where the camera was positioned. To leave Charlevoix in this direction, traffic turned right onto Antrim Street, where the curving wheel tracks are visible, went one block to State Street, turned left up its hill, and left town from there.

Bridge Street began as a side street. But because of its proximity to the water, commercial considerations prevailed. It soon formed its own connection to the south and became the only artery through town. This view north from Mason Street shows the downtown in late spring of 1897, a rutted mess from melting snow. Bridge Street would not be paved until 1904 after years of debate. Upon completion, Willard Smith said in the Sentinel, “ . . . the clack of horses feet upon the clean, smooth surface is music. . . .

Bridge Street circa 1890, looking south from Park Avenue. The Bartholomew block, as this structure was known, held an auditorium spread across the top floor that seated six hundred. Two men stand in the doorway of the Frank Wood Barber Shop that provided bathing facilities upstairs. Men could have “Whisker Dyeing Done in Artistic Style” here. The Charlevoix Cigar Company shared the upstairs premises. Its horizontal sign caps the barber pole. The entire building block was destroyed by fire in the winter of 1923. The auditorium was not rebuilt.

Bridge Street, 1922, looking south at the height of the summer season, also from Park Avenue. The hardware store has become Fessenden’s Drugstore. The Drugs/Books sign in the middle is on the tall wooden Clinton Street wall of the Central Drug Store. Parking then, as now, was a headache as the latest models swarmed into town, many of them brought aboard passenger liners rather than risk damage on terrible roads. Another traffic directional “button” appears in the pavement at bottom.

Bridge Street in 1929, the east side of the 300 block where East Park is today. A winter parade featured the latest snow removal equipment of the county road commission. The destruction by fire of the Hotel Charlevoix, top left, in 1935 was the impetus for creating a downtown park. All of these buildings came out by 1936, except for two holdouts on either end, when East Park began to be developed into the crown jewel of Charlevoix’s park system. The photo was taken from the second floor of the Masonic Temple building at the Mason Street corner.

The Bridge Street/Park Avenue corner in the 1930s, looking north. The tall building to the left of the bridge is the Alhambra Hotel. Adams’ Lunch Room and magazine stand occupies the north Park Avenue corner. At far left appears the popular and stylish Polly Kay store for women’s and children’s clothing. The Oddfellows Hall is above it. At the south Park Avenue corner is Dahlquist’s Five & Dime Store before it moved south to the Mason Street corner.

A quick trip up one side of Bridge Street, followed by the other side, beginning east of the channel bridge. This is the first wooden building constructed in downtown Charlevoix, in 1868. It was Amos Fox & Hiram Rose’s mercantile building, here occupied by the L. S. See & Co. grocery around 1896. The man at left holds a sign advertising the fact that the store is also an American Express agency. Below the neck of the horse at right appears the road that leads down to the main dock.

McHugh’s Bazaar at 206 Bridge Street, once Shawley’s. It was typical of a small general merchandise store of the early 20th century—Panama Coaster wagons, postcards, tin washtubs, and baseball bats. In the window at left, on top, is The Charlie Chaplin Walk sheet music. After a 1924 New Year’s Eve fire, Mr. McHugh accused the firemen of pilfering half his stock, but the police chief could discover no wrongdoing.

Martin Block’s grocery store occupied the Chaloupka building near McHugh’s. Coffee was 29 cents a pound, tuna fish 18 cents a can. This is now the Woolly Bugger coffee shop

In the early 1870s Dr. George W. Crouter came to Charlevoix from Grand Rapids. Within two years he built his drugstore and dental office (left) at 214 Bridge Street. The first telephone exchange went into its second story. The building is still in use today, the last of the downtown wooden structures of the early days. In 1882 pioneer and banker Archibald Buttars built a brick structure (right) occupied for many years by George W. Miller, clothier.

Later, George Glados operated the Sugar Bowl Café and soda fountain in the Buttars building. George, second from right, came to America from Greece in 1907 and started a candy-making business, calling his establishment the Sugar Bowl. He added a soda fountain and restaurant. George and the Sugar Bowl were known all over the country because he treated the resorters so well, ready with a greeting and a quip in his highly accented English. The Depression killed the candy end of the business, but he maintained the popular soda fountain and restaurant well into the 1950s.

The Clinton Street intersection. At far left stands the residence, then the small law and real estate office building of Charlevoix’s first lawyer, Major E. H. Green, a severely wounded Civil War veteran. In 1869 Major Green was named the first editor of the region’s first newspaper, the Charlevoix Sentinel, a post he held for two years. Major Green constructed the tall brick building in 1885, today occupied by the Maison & Jardin gift store. The corner Bank of Charlevoix building has been for many years now Murdick’s Famous Fudge.

Around 1902, Fred Cartier and friends enjoy a new cement sidewalk near Clinton Street where East Park is today. Fred, in shirtsleeves and vest, was a master tailor and proprietor of a fine haberdashery. To the right is Jimmy Conner, in white shirtsleeves and apron, the short-tempered owner of the shoe repair shop. At far right, holding a boot in each hand, stands three-hundred-pound Charlie Jeffries who owned a butcher shop up the street and served a few terms as Charlevoix’s monumental chief of police.

Next door to Conner’s shoe shop stood Bert (sometimes spelled Burt) Mason’s grocery and household goods store at 310 Bridge Street. A delivery wagon was part and parcel of the business, for any grocery without delivery service was of short duration. Dobbin never ran out of gas and was always easy to start in winter. Fuel consumption data was never recorded. Emissions, however, were difficult to control. The building was torn down in 1934. From left, in 1909: Bert Mason, Arthur Alcox, Morris Ackert, and Jimmy Conner.

Bert Mason’s interior. From the ceiling hang brass-banded oak buckets, coffee pots, washboards, brooms, lanterns, hoes, and frying pans. Does any big box store today show as much character?

Martha Ayers was an eccentric but shrewd businesswoman who arrived in Charlevoix in the early 1890s. She erected the largest building downtown, called after herself, that housed a saloon, billiards parlor, and dance hall. In the 1920s a restaurant occupied the south half of the street floor, where its window proclaimed a delicacy of the local cuisine.

Bert and Amy Beaudoin’s ice cream parlor at 330 Bridge Street. Bert stands by his popcorn machine. As a striped pole identified a barbershop, bananas hung on a doorway signified groceries for sale, just as they appeared on Bert Mason’s entryway

Egbert Carpenter gambled on Charlevoix’s future growth in early 1872 when he built an isolated store near the southwest corner of Round Lake. From Clinton Street south, woods still covered the land. It was easier to reach the back end of Carpenter’s store via Round Lake than over a rough path cut through the trees for access to the post office. But within a few months this structure became one of many, for throughout the rest of 1872 Charlevoix experienced a boom when 50% of the buildings in town went up. East Park’s new band shell now occupies this site.

After the Carpenter building was torn down in the early 1920s, an open platform was erected for band concerts, which evolved into an enclosed visitor information center, which in turn became the pagoda-like home of the Chamber of Commerce from the 1930s to the early 1960s.

On the west side of Bridge Street, the 800-seat Lewis Grand Opera House, built in 1881, occupied a prominent location next to the bridge. The opera house was the creation of Dr. Levi Lewis, the town’s first physician, at the insistence of his culturally-minded and strong-willed wife Edith. She felt that Pine River, so isolated when they arrived in 1869, was at best a cultural backwater. With the main floor chairs removed, the auditorium turned into a dance hall or a basketball court. High school graduation ceremonies were often held here.

J. H. Mullen’s Gents Furnishings occupied the south half of the street floor of the opera house. The stairs to Dr. Lewis’ office, the box office and the auditorium are at right

The beginning of the 200 block on Bridge Street’s west side. Civil War veterans line up before the parade to the cemetery on Decoration Day, 1884. Pioneer settler Morris J. Stockman, who arrived in 1857, is the tall bearded man to the left of the lamppost. Behind him appears Frank Wood’s barbershop and bathhouse, then the Sherwood store (business unknown) and Cochran’s drugstore. A bank occupied the Park Avenue corner.

The interior of Jacobs’ grocery at 205 Bridge Street around 1932, where the Sherwood store once was. From left: Henry Jacobs, unidentified, Flossie Fox, and Earl Johnson. For many years this was the site of the Polly Kay Shop for women’s and children’s clothing, then the Shop of the Gulls fine gift store.

Horace S. Harsha’s building in the middle of the 200 block next to the alley, completed in the summer of 1898. This became the van Pelt building in 1910 after Mr. van Pelt of Norwood bought it and remodeled the façade. On the left is Mrs. Levinson’s dry goods store, soon to occupy the whole first floor after her son Meyer took over. On the right is one of the many sites of the Post Office, with rural delivery wagons in front. The Charlevoix Courier, the town’s second newspaper, occupied the basement when this photo was taken.

The Charlevoix State Savings Bank, built in 1912, the only neo-Roman commercial building erected in town. During the Depression the bank was about to go under when summer resident Ransom E. Olds, founder of Oldsmobile, asked how much it would take to keep it solvent. He wrote out a check for the amount and the bank survived. The building has housed a variety of businesses since the bank moved and rebuilt on State Street.

The Charlevoix County Bank, built in 1903 at the Clinton Street corner. Offices and assembly rooms occupied the top two stories. Crane’s dry goods store wrapped around the bank, its two entrances marked by the upright awnings on both sides. The entire building burned to a shell on the bitterly cold morning of February 8, 1924. A faulty flue was thought to be the cause. No records were lost. The bank reopened the next day in a spare room down the street. A new bank, reduced by one story, was erected immediately.

Typical of the age, ornate glass, brass and wood tellers’ cages dominated the Charlevoix County Bank.

Crane’s dry goods store occupied most of the ground floor of the bank building. A dog sits on the counter at left. Light from the Clinton Street entrance appears at rear left. The Cranes did not reopen after the fire.

In the west 300 block, Mont Withers’ café and dining room provided slot machines reputed to have been brought from Chicago by Al Capone’s Purple Gang in the Roaring Twenties when gambling was wide open.

Benjamin Brown came to Charlevoix in 1898 from Petoskey where he had learned to make harnesses and other leather goods. In 1908 he established this harness and tackle, luggage and bicycle shop on Bridge Street near Mason Street in the 400 block. In 1912 Ben added a Harley-Davidson dealership. He appears at right with his mother in the sidecar. Second behind him, under the “N” on the awning, is Dan McSauba, one of the few Native Americans to wear a U. S. Postal Service uniform, and thought to be the only chief ever to deliver the U. S. mail.