From Laurium to Detroit

(Under Construction)

Gipp Memorial, Laurium

Besides being the tiny Northern Michigan town where M.E. O'Brien and Nell Harrington settled down after their 1903 marriage, and the place where all but one of their seven children were born, Laurium has another claim to fame: It's the hometown of Notre Dame football legend George Gipp ("Win one for the Gipper"). The above memorial to Gipp stands at the corner of Lake Linden Avenue and Tamarack St. in Laurium. (Note: Tamarack St. is just one block from Pewabic St., where the O'Briens lived at number 123 from 1903 until 1911 or so.)

Old Detroit

Detroit's old City Hall, as it appeared in the 1890s. Woodward is at the front of the building, Fort St. to the left, and Michigan Ave. to the right. Sadly, the structure was razed in 1961, but its companion edifice, the Wayne County Courthouse, survives to this day (see photo and caption below). In fact, when we were downtown recently on probate business, I unexpectedly came upon the old Courthouse while looking for parking, and was blown away by its grandeur. Foresight would have help keep the above structure in place as well, as such buildings in aggregate help give a city its character. In this case, unfortunately, the preservation faction, led by the daughter of former mayor Hazen Pingree, Mrs. Wilson W. Mills, president of the Detroit Historical Society, fought but just couldn't beat Mayor Louis Miriani's city hall.

Detroit in 1912

This was about the year that the O'Briens left the Keewenaw for Detroit. And here's what was happening in the city at that time...

- Navin Field (current site of the abandoned Tiger Stadium) is dedicated for baseball.

- Governor Osborn convinces state legislature to put the question of women's suffrage before the all-male electorate; proposal is defeated in general election.

- Detroit Library Commission selects Woodward Ave. property (at Kirby) for new site of main library.

- Detroit businessman J.L. Hudson dies in Europe; department store taken over by his four nephews, the Webber brothers.

- J.L. Hudson Co. Department Store at Gratiot and Farmer St. completes its first site expansion.

Wayne County Building, 1915 (aka Wayne County Courthouse)

This massive rectangular plan, four-story Beaux-Arts behemoth is one of Detroit's landmark structures. Prominently located near Woodward Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare, the courthouse originally held all of Wayne County's courts and offices. Designed by John Scott and built from 1897 to 1902, the building stood opposite the late, great old city hall, gone from the scene some 43 years now. The Old Wayne County Building Limited group purchased the courthouse in 1984 and completed a $25 million restoration in 1987. It is currently leased to the county, a children's daycare center and other businesses.

This is a look at Detroit's main drag, Woodward Avenue, heading north in 1918, a few short years after the migration of the O'Briens and Harringtons to the city from Copper Country. Among the highlights: lots of horseless carriages, trolley tracks running right down the middle of the street, a woman crossing in the foreground in hat and "car coat," and an early version Hudson's department store (on the right).

Fast forward 95 years or so…

October 20, 2006. The Copper Country is littered with fascinating remnants of the bygone mining era. Ruins abound -- the decaying, roofless shells of company buildings; towering rockhouse shafts standing tall over abandoned town sites; crumbling brick smoke stacks, silhouetted against the grey sky; modest miners' shacks, slowly giving way to time and the elements.... This sign, painted on an immense rock foundation we came upon just north of Hancock, is fading fast. Still, it would be hard not to remember the way it was up here with so much history so evident along the roadside. This is where both the O'Briens and the Harringtons settled back in the 1860s, and while both families left the Keweenaw for good in 1911, traces of their lives here still exist....

Relic of the past

The Keweenaw, October, 2006 - I found this old wooden crate on the porch of an antique store in downtown Laurium. I had a hankering to buy it, but took this photo instead and saved myself $20 (it wasn't in as good a shape as this brilliantly-composed picture seems to indicate; this was its good side). For those who are genealogically challenged, Laurium is the town the O'Brien family lived in from 1903-1911 before they picked up lock, stock, and barrel and skedaddled down to Detroit, which was a happening place at the time. The automobile industry was just getting revved up, opportunity abounded, and there was no time like the present...even back then. The Harringtons, who were living in nearby Lake Linden and who were linked to the O'Briens by their daughter Nell's marriage to M.E., also migrated downstate at about the same time. (If you don't know who the O'Briens or Harringtons are, feel free to ask a responsible adult, but first go to a corner of the room, face the walls, and remain silent for 30 minutes....)