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Local History

Houses

Wheaton, 703: Martin W. Roberts House

Martin W. Roberts House, 703 Wheaton Street, c. 1980. Gary Cialdella One of the more visually striking homes built in the Vine Neighborhood during the 1870s is the Martin W.…

South Street, W., 533: Nehemiah Chase House

The exterior of this home gives little indication of the dignified Italian Revival Villa that Nehemiah Chase built for his family in 1871. Damaged by fire, the steep pitched roof with its Italianate brackets is gone. Modern insulated sheathing has...

South Street, W., 602: William DeYoe House

In the 1840's and 1850's, a taste for gothic architecture swept the country. This new style, favorite of romantic literary figures like Washington Irving, never really supplanted the dominant taste for classic temples. It did appeal, however, to...

South Street, W., 605: Frank Little House

The little brick cottage at 605 South Street is one of the oldest surviving homes in the city. It was one of the first to go up when Kalamazoo's "Plat # 2" was opened in the early 1840's. John Hogeboom, a farmer from New York, paid $.39 tax on his...

South Street, W., 610: John M. Edwards House

A noisy mob marched down South Street in the middle of one January night in 1861. Stopping abruptly in John Edwards' front yard, spokesmen for the group demanded "in the name of the Continental Congress" that Edwards, then Justice of the Peace...

South Street, W., 617: Buckhout-Austin House

Oscar Buckhout, pioneer produce merchant in Kalamazoo, shipped the first load of commercial celery from what would soon be known as the Celery Capital of the world. In 1892, he built this dignified Queen Anne home for himself and his wife, Mary...

South Street, W., 620: Albert M. Todd House

This once stately home served as residence for successful Kalamazoo businessmen for several decades before becoming the Delta Upsilon Fraternity home in 1953. It is perhaps best remembered as the home of the Albert M. Todd family who lived there...

South Street, W., 629: Edmond S. Rankin House

Edmond S. Rankin, one-time Mayor of the city, came to Plainwell with his parents in 1870 when he was nine. His father, Dr. John Rankin, served as physician and druggist there and in Richland for the rest of the century. His brother Charles turned...

South Street, W., 630: Jonathan Parsons House

The Reverend Ova Hoyt, active in developing Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches here in town, came to Kalamazoo with his family in 1840. Almost at once he bought a double lot on South Street from the State of Michigan and set about...

South Street, W., 705: Robert Burns House

Robert Burns graduated from Geneva College in New York as a civil engineer in 1851. After a period supervising railroad and canal construction in New York, Canada and Michigan, he turned to reading law. He was admitted to the bar in 1859, then...

South Street, W., 708: Lewis H. Kirby House

Things had changed a great deal in the forty years that Charity Potter had lived in the big house on South Street. When Allen Potter built it in 1870, Kalamazoo was still a village, its major industries still unborn. Now, in 1911, it was a growing...

South Street, W., 711: James Henry House

The modest classical features of this simple L-shaped Greek Revival house were duplicated in many other mid-century homes in the village. The rambling additions to the rear of the house gave it a spacious interior and the return cornices, small...

South Street, W., 718: Hon. Allen Potter House

The Honorable Allen Potter, first Mayor of Kalamazoo, is probably better-known than any pioneer other than Titus Bronson. Churches all over the city memorialized him at his death in 1885; business came to a standstill during his funeral. "Such...

South Street, W., 723: Burry Fry House

Joseph Fry came to New York from France in 1844, when he was seventeen. At the end of the Civil War, he moved with his wife, Sarah (who bore him eleven children) to Kalamazoo and went to work as a "drayman." The Michigan Census-taker found him...

South Street, W., 724-726: M.D. Woodford House

“Lot H” on South Street changed hands a number of times since the State of Michigan first auctioned it off as part of the “School Section” in 1841. Sometime in the 1840’s a house went up on the site of the present structure, and, in 1854, one...

South Street, W., 813: Hutson B. Colman House

A building boom came to South Street at the beginning of the twentieth century. Near Westnedge fine new homes went up for the Blumenbergs and the Boudemans, the Gilmores and the Lays. At the other end of the long tree-lined block rose the...

South, W., 611: Blumenberg-Wilson House

All during 1904, carpenters worked in what had been Frank Little’s side yard for half a century. Little had passed away the previous fall and his widow, Cornelia, now occupied the house with her daughter, Francis. As the new structure took shape...

Stuart, 305: Isaiah Flagg House

Isaiah Flagg and a number of relatives settled in Kalamazoo around the middle of the nineteenth century. Flagg and his wife had both been born in Canada shortly after the War of 1812. He and his relatives specialized as carpenters and joiners with...

Stuart, 323: Manly Davidson - John McKee House

Young Manly Davidson established himself as a builder in Kalamazoo's Civil War Years. In 1867, he began to construct the solid home which now stands at 319 Stuart. Davidson chose the most fashionable "contemporary" style of the day--the "Mansard" ...

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