A Unique Snow Flake, and the Highway of the Red Arrow

Out of all the abandoned motels in Michigan, the Snow Flake Motel at 3822 Red Arrow Highway in St. Joseph stood apart from the crowd by virtue of the fact that it claimed the pedigree of being a rumored Frank Lloyd Wright-designed structure, which in the architectural world is typically worth its weight in gold. I personally dislike both motels and Frank Lloyd Wright structures—abandoned or otherwise—but something about the Snow Flake was appealing, and it hit me the first time I saw it on Google Maps from above.

I figured this place was definitely worth checking out if I ever made it out that way, but sadly it was torn down long before I got that chance. Its ruined snowflake-shaped outline however is still discernible even after demolition, so I decided to go see what was left. In fact I ended up camping in my truck there one night while on a road trip through southwestern Michigan, and waited for dawn to see the ruins.

The Michigan city of St. Joseph in Berrien County has long served as a weekend-getaway town for FCPs (Fuckin' Chicago People), and the Snow Flake was opened near Lake Michigan in 1962 to cater to that market. According to Buildings of Michigan by Kathryn Bishop Eckert, it was designed in 1960 and cost $1 million to build.

There are some good photos of the Snow Flake Motel in its prime at motel-register.com, which also has a good writeup of its history. Commissioned by Sahag Sarkisian "at the height of Wright’s influence and popularity," the motel "promised to be the most luxurious accommodations in St. Joseph." There was a total of 57 rooms, 17 of which had built-in fixtures. Each room came equipped with color TVs however, and even their own ice makers—perhaps a little pun there on the snowflake theme. There was also a cocktail lounge, called the "Flake." Eckert writes that a rectangular pond with jet fountains connected two hexagonal swimming pools in the courtyard.

An article in The Believer by Suzanne Snider gives some more background on the Snow Flake. It was mainly designed not by Frank Lloyd Wright himself, but by the "shadowy" William Wesley Peters—Wright’s apprentice and son-in-law—about whom comparatively little is known. Peters worked with Wright quite a bit, and he was even the one who made the engineering calculations for Wright’s famous "Fallingwater" house and the Guggenheim Museum.

The Snow Flake was also one of the last commissions that Frank Lloyd Wright ever worked on before his death. According to Snider's article, William Peters was wedded to Wright's adopted daughter, who later died in a car accident. Peters subsequently took a second wife—the daughter of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, no less.

Motel-register goes on to say that despite its eccentric theme the Snow Flake was functionally the same as any other motel—it had rows of units enclosing a courtyard, all accessible from the outside. "In some sense," it goes on, "motels are the opposite of snowflakes: homogeneity is their defining characteristic." But the Snow Flake was a little extraordinary.

...the 1960s were the height of motel culture in the United States, and the idea that one could create a bonafide destination out of a truly unique bit of architecture wasn’t so far fetched.

This was a time when the road signified not just the American dream of freedom and mobility, but also economic power and technological prowess. If the highway promised opportunity and adventure, the vehicle that propelled such exploration was the product of American ingenuity and determination. That the world’s most architecturally significant motel was built in Michigan is completely fitting given the crucial role the state played in fostering road culture.

But just like a snowflake this unique motel's lifespan was to be fleeting, and it soon melted away. The article says that because it was an unconventional, almost experimental design, its popularity soon faded once the novelty wore off. Message board posts at savewright.org indicate that the motel's Douglas Fir-plank roof was also literally the ceiling of the rooms, and the heating units were inadequate for the space, so I can only imagine that there were more than a few snowflake-related euphemisms and epithets hurled against the motel's pedigree back in the day because of drafty conditions in wintertime.

According to roadarch.com, the Snow Flake was added to the National Historic Register in 1998, and was bought by a Mr. Patel who had plans to restore its glory but ran into roadblocks and gave up. It was torn down by early 2007. Supposedly the snowflake-themed front gates were sold off, so they are probably still out there somewhere. Some more good photos of the Snow Flake while it was abandoned can be found at roadarch.com, flickr.com, and lighthousepictures.net.

From St. Joseph / Benton Harbor I continued along the historic Red Arrow Highway down to New Buffalo. The highway was started in 1911 as part of a strategy to bring auto tourists from Chicago to Michigan, and eventually stretched from New Buffalo to Mackinaw City.

At the end of an older post I showed and talked about the Grand Trunk Railroad coaling tower in Lansing. In New Buffalo there is the still-standing relic of the Pere Marquette Railroad's coaling tower. It was standing next to a railroad museum actually:

According to michiganrailroads.com, this coaling dock was built in 1942 and only used until about 1956 when steam locomotives went out of general use in Michigan. It held 250 tons of coal which was dropped to locomotive tenders on the tracks below, via two chutes. Coal was raised from the storage bin below by an electric conveyor.

Here's a closer view of the vintage signs on it:

The small sign on top simply says "NEW BUFFALO, MICHIGAN," while the one below it with the Chessie System logo on it says, "SAFETY TODAY—YOUR INVESTMENT FOR TOMORROW."

Up on top was another sign indicating that the tower was designed and built by the Roberts-Schaefer Co. of Chicago:

The reason I was passing through New Buffalo is because I wanted to visit Michigan's southwesternmost corner, where the Indiana-Michigan state line hits the shore of Lake Michigan. So here we transition from one incredibly nerdy and eclectic topic to another.

This street in the hoity-toity border town of Michiana follows the state line, as it comes down a hill to the beach:

Well, here it is, Michigan's bottom-left corner:

And now that I've been here, all I have to do is post up my visit to the remote westernmost corner of the state, and I can say "I've been to every corner of Michigan."


References:
Buildings of Michigan, by Kathryn Bishop Eckert
http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/CoalFacilities/PMNewBuffaloMI.htm
http://motel-register.com/post/127660122464/snow-flake-motel-michigan
http://www.roadarch.com/modarch/mimotel.html
"Motel," The Believer, September 2003, by Suzanne Snider
http://www.savewright.org/wright_chat/viewtopic.php?p=46143&sid=6f44c6853dd5fcf976de91ec93dd118d

The Weirdest Hotel in Michigan

You may remember when I wrote about exploring the ruins of the House of David religious colony on High Island in Lake Michigan, back in 2013. Well the House of David's base of operations was in the city of Benton Harbor, in Berrien County, Michigan's southwestern-most county, where they had an extremely popular amusement park and a strange hotel downtown, which is now abandoned.

The city of Benton Harbor is not much different from Detroit or Flint, in that it has suffered greatly from population loss, crime, and poverty, and its downtown is often like a ghost-town. My visit came early on a weekend morning, so there was not a single other soul about on the streets. There weren't even any cars moving through, and I was able to stand in the middle of the road to casually compose a shot:

I've only really experienced this strange deserted downtown ghost-town effect in three Michigan cities--Detroit, Calumet, and Benton Harbor. I guess Gary, Indiana falls into that same category too.

In fact Benton Harbor has the dubious distinction of being known as "Michigan's poorest city," but it is also the hometown of the Whirlpool Corporation since 1911, the largest household appliance manufacturer in the world (as of 2006 when they acquired Maytag).

Most of what I know about the so-called Mary's City of David Hotel I learned thanks to my colleague David Kohrman, a longtime scholar of southwestern Michigan history, and of hotel history in general. He researched and posted much of the following information on one of those impenetrably elite, ultra-underground secret urban exploring forums that you've probably read about in flashy counterculture zines, where heavily vetted members trade war stories anonymously. In fact I'm probably breaking the first and second rule of Fight Club by posting this, but oh well.

Again, this hotel was built by a cult--or, rather, a "religious communal society," called the Israelite House of David founded by Benjamin Purnell and his wife Mary in 1903. They were those guys with the long-bearded baseball team. The House of David actually became pretty successful thanks to their amusement park and bearded baseballers, and they built a large complex on the outskirts of Benton Harbor, which (according to a chicagotribune.com article) included their own dairy, foundry, cannery, hospital, three vegetarian restaurants, and a resort that "attracted non-adherents who wanted to escape the summer heat of the cities." There was also the aforementioned farm colony on High Island, several miles out into Lake Michigan, which seems to be where "King Ben" (as he was dubbed by the media) allegedly did all of the creepy stuff.

This hotel was to be another expression of the House of David's prosperity in Benton Harbor. In 1919 they planned it to be seven stories tall and occupy the entire block, but it ended up much smaller than that as you can see. David Kohrman tells me that this particular section was always intended to be four stories tall, and the seven-story part was never built. It had 90 rooms according to the book Buildings of Michigan by Kathryn Bishop Eckert, and nonetheless became one of the commune's best revenue streams, one which was designed to bring income year-round, as opposed to seasonal activities like amusement parks and baseball.

The exterior was cast in "Hematite," a special form of concrete made of 17 different minerals that sparkled in the sun, a distinctive feature of the House of David's architecture, Kohrman said. Naturally, it had to be cloudy when I arrived, but I imagine the effect should look something like this. According to author Christopher Siriano, the hotel was designed by George Whiffen and William Wright--the House of David's favored architects, though to be fair Siriano is persona-non grata with the City of David, since his book is half fabrications and he is known for starting rumors about secret tunnels, hidden rooms, and other sensational things about the organization.

Another book by Robert C. Meyers said the hotel was "remarkably modern" for its day, because there were two windows for each room, and two-thirds of the rooms boasted private baths. The House of David also advertised the hotel as fireproof--going as far as to paint the words "FIRE PROOF" on the front windows in big red letters--because of its solid steel and Hematite construction.

By itself, Hematite is a commonly occurring mineral compound of iron, but I don't think I've ever heard of Hematite being used in concrete or architecture before. A quick internet search however yields some interesting results that name it as the material of choice for nuclear reactor chamber shielding, or other barriers required to be resilient to high neutron fluxes.

Strange...I wonder if the House of David architects took any tips from Ivo Shandor, because "FIRE PROOF" is a bit of an understatement given the fact that its outer walls are for some reason built of material that can withstand not just flame, but extreme levels of nuclear radiation. Maybe there was more to this little vegetarian "commune" and their sparkly hotel than meets the eye?

The earliest mention I can find of Hematite concrete is in an article in a c.1918 trade journal, which mentions it among other types of slag that could be used as aggregate to produce unusually heavy concrete for the purpose of making counterweights for bascule bridges, and use as ballast in ships. At the time the use of metal for such purposes was outlawed by the government, because it was needed for war materiel production.

David Kohrman told me that he believed the first use of Hematite concrete was in 1916, when the House of David built their "Diamond House," Purnell's fanciful mansion on the colony grounds, which still stands today and where his coffin still sits on display.

Mr. Kohrman's own impression after exploring this hotel was that it was "very very odd," and that much of its design was cobbled together, with strangely-proportioned hallways, inexplicable stairway placement, things like a closet built out into a hallway, and the rather utilitarian main lobby that looked as if it were added as an afterthought:

"My initial reaction," he said, "was that this building had no architect." It certainly was a bizarre building, but I surmise that the end product was the result of the architects' original plan being taken over and independently completed later, by City of David builders who modified it as they saw fit, perhaps to save on cost after the court case derailed the society. Then again, they may have been out to design a structure for some higher, as yet unforeseen *radiation-proof* purpose, heheh.

Under the stairs was the vault, whose door had already been taken off the hinges for me:

Construction on the hotel started in 1921, with House of David members performing all the work themselves. The job was halted in 1923 however when Brother Benjamin Purnell was faced with multiple allegations of forced sex with minors in his commune, tying up the House of David (and their revenue) in the courts for several years. At that point only a four-story shell of the rear half of the building had been completed. Benjamin Purnell died in 1927 before his abuse case went to trial, and the House of David splintered into two factions. His wife Mary Purnell headed one faction, called "Mary's City of David."

The House of David properties were fought over and divided up between the two factions. Mary's City of David ended up with the hotel (hence the name), and work finally resumed in 1931, though it had to be scaled back from its original conception. Keep in mind the Great Depression was in full effect by that time as well. Another reason why this hotel was scaled back was because the Vincent Hotel was also opening on East Main Street around that time. Mary's City of David followers used this hotel as housing while they built new dwellings for themselves on Britain Avenue.

According to what Mr. Kohrman was able to find out, since the public common areas were intended to go in the unbuilt section on Main Street, the aforementioned "makeshift lobby" was added in what was to be one of the storefronts. I'm not sure if this next shot shows one of the storefronts, or another room open to the hotel guests, but the vintage fluorescent light fixtures hanging from the tin ceiling were pretty snazzy:

The building opened in August of 1931 as "Mary's City of David Hotel," and prospered for 40 years. It was noted for its vegetarian restaurant, according to the book Resorts of Berrien County.

In the next room, yet more bizarreness...a 1969(?) Cadillac just chilling out. There was a pallet leaning up against the back of the car, so I moved it out of the way to get this photo--and when I did the trunklid sprang open suddenly, nearly scaring the f@#$%ing shit out of me.

This bizarre niche in the building was awfully mysterious too...

The stairways gave access to the compartmented basements under the hotel's storefronts, while there also seemed to be some sort of draft-ventilation system at play in this area as well, perhaps? David Kohrman actually took a closer look at the windows up there and wrote that they did not appear to have ever had any glass in them, and that this space was apparently designed to be open to the elements.

I also noticed on my own that the decorative columns on the facade of the building seemed to be hollow with small square vents at the bottom, as if they might've served as free-flow ventilation shafts ala Kirkbride hospital design.

Notice the glass-inset metal grille over the floor here...it's covered in dirt, but it was no doubt meant to help let natural light into the basement from above:

I think some of these windows did indeed belong to guest rooms. What a cheery view!

Mary's City of David continued to shrink over time, and the commune divested itself of the hotel in 1974 in exchange for property on Lake Chapin. The amusement park closed too, in 1975. By that time the baseball team had already faded into the history books, having quit in 1956. The policy of celibacy among followers resulted in a notable lack of new generations of acolytes to keep the commune going--despite the supposed promiscuity of its founder.

David Kohrman said that after the Mary's City of David sold off the hotel it continued as the "Landmark Hotel" for many years, but by the 1990s was mostly used as senior citizen housing. I believe the main floor also housed a tire shop for some time as well.

It was finally closed by the city in 2001 after a newspaper article described a visit by city inspectors who discovered that the residents had cut open one of the boilers in the basement and were using it as a makeshift wood-burning stove, because apparently there was no steam heat anymore. Kohrman said there was frequent talk of renovating the hotel throughout the early 2000s, but it has been little mentioned in the papers since then.

Damage to the structure was evident on my visit, but by no means is this place beyond salvaging.

This room was full of old 1950s refrigerators:

A strange courtyard with a very different appearance than the outer walls of the hotel:

Down below you can see the glass-less windows of that bizarre open-air section where the basement stairs were.

This weird courtyard reminded me somewhat of a 300-year-old hostel I once stayed in in France.

Only the guest rooms on one side of the building had balconies overlooking the courtyard:

The view down the alley from a hallway window shows a row of more apparently vacant buildings:

On the top floor I went into the corner suite to see if it was as sumptuous as one might expect, but it was rather plain:

Last thing to do was check out the roof.

Even though I had been here for about an hour, it still seemed I was the only human being in town today.

References:
The House of David, by Christopher Siriano, p. 44
Buildings of Michigan, Kathryn Bishop Eckert, p. 237
Resorts of Berrien County, by Elaine Cotsirilos Thomopoulos, p. 124
Millennial Visions and Earthly Pursuits: The Israelite House of David, by Robert C. Meyers, p. 23
"Mary's City of David Hotel," February 2013, by David Kohman
Concrete, Vol. 13 (1918), edited by Harvey Whipple, p. 161
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-07-29/travel/0707260596_1_benjamin-purnell-king-ben-tours

http://www.whirlpoolcorp.com/history/
http://archive.freep.com/article/20100716/COL06/7160377/Whirlpool-stays-true-Michigan-85-million-headquarters
http://www.unt.edu/LAPOM/publications/pdf%20articles/Kevin/Concretes%20Containing%20Hematite%20for%20Use%20as%20Shielding%20Barriers.pdf

Wooden Shoes, Kitty Litter, Hydroelectric Power, and Cement

Written October, 2008

Wait--is this something out of upstate New York or Pennsylvania? Nah, this is in southwestern Michigan, in the old Dutch farm country not far outside Kalamazoo.

I was out innocently cruising M-60 toward Three Rivers one day in an area that I'd never been to before, when suddenly something eye-popping arrested my attention from the periphery of my vision, practically making me slam on the brakes and throw my car into a drifting tactical turn to get off the highway in time to catch it.

The architecture one can find out in the farm boonies is often quite amazing. I was passing through a tiny village by the name of Vandalia when I spotted this beauty...

Doesn't it just look like it was ripped out the Legend of Sleepy Hollow? It has a very Dutch look to it, which is not uncommon in west Michigan. My only question was, "what is it?" I thought church, for obvious reasons, but then saw the sign above the door saying "F and A.M. No. 290 Lodge," and the cross that's there looks added-on as a later afterthought.

I searched the name and came up with a list of Masonic lodges in Michigan...apparently Lodge 290 has moved to new quarters, off US-12. The lodge was chartered in 1871, but this structure at 17932 Mill St. was originally built as a Quaker meeting house in 1879, according to an article in the local paper. It was built by prominent members of the Underground Railroad so that Quakers in Vandalia wouldn’t have to travel to Prairie Grove; they were the only Quaker Anti-Slavery Society in Michigan (the question of abolition caused a divide in the Quaker society). The Masons started using this structure in 1917, but they vacated it in the 1970s when it became "infested with bees."

 

Did I go inside? No. It looked like it might not even have floors anymore, and let's just say the locals were...aware of my presence. Not in a bad way though; in an overly friendly way. Plus it was practically in two different people's backyards, and directly adjacent to the sardine-can-sized post office. My Kalamazoo colleague David Kohrman did manage to get inside a few years after my visit, and here is a LINK to his photo of what I missed.

After the structure lost its exempt status and Penn Township returned it to the tax roll, it was acquired by the Cass County Land Bank and torn down in November  of 2012.

 

Past Three Rivers, I spotted a few minor things in Cassopolis that got me to pull over. This one was downtown, possibly under renovation, and the lake is just out of sight at lower-left:

On my way out of town, I came across this, which I wandered into for a moment:

Cassopolis has distinguished itself amongst the great civilizations of human history as the hometown of both the inventor of kitty-litter, and of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer. I wonder if this factory was where they made Fresh Step?

I continued through to Niles, a city in Berrien County, near the Michigan-Indiana border. I knew of an old dam there that was sitting abandoned, called the Niles Hydroelectric Light Dam.

Niles, nestled on the St. Joseph River, is unique because it has been claimed by four different nations during its long history. According to Dunbar & May's Michigan, A History of the Wolverine State, Niles was the site of Fort St. Joseph, established in 1691 by the French. The British held it after 1761, but it was captured during Pontiac's Rebellion in May 1763, by Native American warriors. The British reclaimed the fort but did not garrison it, instead continuing it in more of a trading post capacity. 

Fort St. Joseph saw some action during the American Revolution. In December 1780, the post was raided by a small French party from Cahokia, who were then waylaid on their return journey by British troops. This in turn spurred retaliation from Spanish-commanded militia at St. Louis, Missouri, who then marched on Fort St. Joseph (with a few additional French) in early 1781. They took the fort and held it for a day, raising the flag of Spain over it while they looted.

Though no known official order came from Madrid, one reason that has been offered as to why the Spanish would make such a military move into Michigan is because they were plausibly concerned over threats of British encroachment into their holdings west of the Mississippi River, and that such a campaign might be mounted from Fort St. Joseph.

After the war Fort St. Joseph of course became an American holding, earning Niles the nickname, "City of Four Flags," making it the only place in Michigan to have been held by four powers. It makes five actually, if you count the Potawatomi as a legitimate race of people, ahem, even if they didn't have a pretty flag to raise.

Niles was also the birthplace of the Dodge Brothers, John and Horace, who went on to Detroit and into automotive history.

Here is a note that I saved from a webpage which I can no longer find:

Also known as the Pucker Street Dam, the Niles Hydroelectric Light Dam is actually two dams on the same site. Converted in 1891 by the Niles Electric Company from an old wooden dam made up of whole trees and mud initially built as a grist mill dam at the site. It was intended to power the Niles municipal street lights and was soon acquired by the city. A concrete dam was constructed in 1928 over the existing wooden structure. 

After 1908, a larger utility company, the Indiana and Michigan Electric Co. took over most of the city of Niles' electric power needs. By 1981 the Pucker Street Dam supplied only 2% of the city's electrical needs and was used primarily during times of peak needs. At this time the dam is no longer producing electricity.

According to the HAER, the Niles Public Works took over the old Pucker Street Dam in 1895. The only extant parts of the dam that date to the original construction are portions of the exit raceway leading from the old powerhouse. I made my way to a deep overflow basin(?) next to the spillway. This one as you can see has been out of service for some time, and has filled in a bit:

I got down in it by jumping down onto some broken up car-sized chunks of concrete that were being digested by the rising foliage. I was freaked out when I landed and heard a hollow thud from below...underneath this mess was a chamber that I soon saw into by noticing a couple huge round openings, and saw that it was filled with deep water. 

 

Glad it had not collapsed and sucked me down, I made my way to the other side of the two foot-thick wall and saw the mouth of the outlet:

This was the second time in a month that I had explored some kind of abandoned dam/spillway (stay tuned for an episode from Hines Park). I made my way toward the turbine house, hoping for some coolness.

With a hop a skip and a jump (and some painful squeezing through steel window sash while one-leggedly stretching myself across a 30ft drop to the concrete spillway below), I was in the generator room. And yeah, the generator was still in there. 

It was an awesome old school affair that reminded me of the units at Henry Ford's house. Everything (while filthy) was intact, and I even found some old forms from the Niles Electric Co. for logging the dam's daily operation reports.

Underneath the generator housing was an opening where the shaft went down to the actual turbine element. 

 

On the wall was a huge gauge that had verniers for indicating depths in the various reservoirs:

There was one more thing I saw while I was out there in southwestern Michigan, which is commonly known as the "Bellevue Ruins," in Eaton County:

I've known about them since forever, but they were so far off my usual beaten path that it was seemingly never worth the side trip. The ruins' were of what was originally called Dyer Kiln. It was one of three perpetual lime kilns that operated in the village of Bellevue from 1875 to 1899. According to the HAER, this kiln was constructed in 1875 by Thomas Roberts. The four openings at the base of the stack were used for feeding lime and probably charcoal into the furnace. The adjoining portion you can see that no longer has a roof was probably used for storing coal.

 

This decrepit structure is all that remains of them. The cement business still seems to thrive on some scale in this town, as far as I could see. According to the Michigan DNR's Geological Survey Division, Dyer Kiln "is distinguished by having manufactured lime for the production of the mortar used in construction of the State Capitol," which was built from 1872-1878.

Today, it is a windswept ruin of sun-bleached limestone in the middle of southern Michigan farm country. The only thing telling its story is a broken wooden sign. A roof structure has been added to cap the top of the chimney, to protect it from water damage.

For more exploration of Eaton County's ruins, see: Hittin' The Bricks

References:

Lower Peninsula of Michigan, An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, HAER (1976)

Michigan, A History of the Wolverine State, by Willis Dunbar & George May
http://www.leaderpub.com/2012/11/08/vandalia-landmark-lost/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/statlerhotel/5766576820/in/album-72157626710581151/