Looking Back: A newspaper/print shop/post office combo in Charlevoix
CHARLEVOIX — One hundred and fifty years ago, Charlevoix Sentinel editor Willard A. Smith proudly announced, on March 7, 1874, that he was about to move into bigger quarters.
“ANNOUNCEMENT. We announce to our readers and the public that during the coming week we shall remove the Sentinel office building, and the Postoffice wing, to Bridge Street, immediately adjoining the store of Fox, Rose & Buttars where we have leased thirty feet front. (This was not exactly true. The space of a road leading down to the waterfront, now the Beaver Island Boat Company area, separated the two buildings. The Sentinel had been occupying quarters on Clinton Street.)
We propose to enlarge our business by securing more help, and adding to our printing material, and shall renew our effort to furnish a paper that shall be a credit to the place.”
Smith had been granted responsibility for the postal business in 1871, hence the date shown in the photo. Where exactly was this newspaper/print shop/post office combo located? Directly across Bridge Street from today’s My Grandmother’s Table Park Avenue corner café.
It is believed the post office occupied the one-story rear add-on, reachable through the Sentinel’s office and commercial printing area. This photo was taken many years later, showing its sagging condition, probably just before all the aged buildings in the immediate area, where most of Charlevoix’s first commercial structures had been located, were removed in 1941 for the anticipated construction of a new bridge. But Pearl Harbor in early December put a hold on that for the next six years while World War II intervened. By that time the post office had been long gone to another location, and it looks like the wooden addition that faced Round Lake was hardly usable for any purpose before its demise.
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Same issue, a column filler: “An editor, who speaks with the air of man who has discovered a new fact by experience, says that the new way to prevent bleeding by the nose is to keep your nose out of other people’s business.” Wise words in this era of hair trigger tempers.
Also, the correct method for making mustard plasters. These self-remedies were quite popular for the treatment of pain from rheumatism, arthritis, sore muscles and even coughing, said to be able to draw the culprits right out of the body. “MUSTARD PLASTERS. Not one person in a hundred knows how to make a decent mustard plaster. You should use no water whatever.—Just mix the mustard with the white of an egg, and the result will be a plaster that will draw perfectly, but will not produce a blister even upon the skin of an infant, no matter how long it is allowed to remain upon the part.” Any takers willing to experiment?
One item grabbed my attention. Smith, downtown merchants Amos Fox and Archibald Buttars, a man named Aldrich, and another man named Gunton from Traverse City had been invited to Petoskey by Hiram Rose, Fox & Buttars’ business partner who was based in Petoskey. The purpose was to inspect the readily evident impact the recent arrival of the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad was having on the “embryo city,” and what this city’s prospects and potentials were. Smith wrote a large, multi-sectioned article on the discovery trip, done by horse-drawn sleigh on a beautiful day. They arrived about 1 p.m., ate at a new hotel, “after which we took a circuit of the place.”
One section was titled “Little’s Hotel,” a “building 24 x 40 and three stories high, yet in an unfinished state.” Two rooms on the ground floor would be given over to a post office and drugstore. But this is what caught my eye. “The proprietor, Dr. Little, is a regular M. D., and has a considerable practice here.”
This odd phenomenon of medical men branching out into the hotel business is one that happened frequently in Charlevoix, with both physicians and dentists veering off into the commercial sector. They either continued their practice while the hotel was under hired or family management, or actually gave up medicine to devote their time to the hospitality industry. Was this only a local or regional happening? Was it (or is it still maybe perhaps, tongue in cheek) part of the med and dental school curriculum?
“Just in case you eventually find you don’t like treating sick, injured or sore gums people anymore, have we got an alternative for you! Get a second degree at Hotel School! Give a thought to providing them a good night’s sleep instead!” Does it happen, has it happened, everywhere? Inquiring minds need to know.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Looking Back: A newspaper/print shop/post office combo in Charlevoix
