Clarkston Village Historic District
Historic Photo, sourced from the National Register of Historic Places filing
Clarkston Village Historic District — historic photograph, National Register of Historic Places filing, MI 15, Clarkston Village, Detroit
National Register of Historic Places Filing
In the early 1800s, the completion of the Erie Canal across upstate New York led to a great increase in settlement in Michigan. Within a few years natives of New York and New England were homesteading the southeastern part of the state. Oakland County was one of the first areas of settlement for the immigrants disembarking at Detroit. The first settlers arrived in Independence Township in the early 1830s. The town of Clarkston did not come into being until about 1838 when a dam was constructed across the Clinton River and the waterways improved to provide a dependable source of power for a grist mill. Houses and several commercial enterprises including a store, a tavern, a shoemaker’s shop, a blacksmith shop, and a tailor shop began to appear in the vicinity of the mill after its completion in 1839. The increasing settlement encouraged Jeremiah and Nelson Clark, the brothers who had built the mill, to plat a tract of their land into the village of Clarkston in 1842. Additions were made to this plat in the 1850s. The small village flourished with the establishment of more small scale manufacturing enterprises.
Physical Description
Clarkston is located on Interstate highway I-75 about eight miles northwest of downtown Pontiac in central Oakland County. It is situated amidst rolling terrain on the Clinton River between several small lakes. The village is divided in half by the mill pond that was created in the 1830s by damming the Clinton River. The major portion of the town, including the principle residential area and the business district, is located on the east side of the mill pond on highway M-15, which is Main Street in the village. The town is typical of Michigan’s mill villages in that it is informally laid out in a straggling line along one major road paralleling the mill pond, Main Street, with a few short side streets. The streets convey a rural ambience with their tree canopy and frequent lack of such urban amenities as curbs and sidewalks. In parts of Clarkston, the lawns still extend to the dirt shoulders at the edge of the paving. The houses are situated at varying distances back from the road adding to the visual diversity of the streetscapes. The buildings of Clarkston accurately convey a record of the growth and character of this small rural mill village from its founding in the 1840s until 1930.
Architect/Builder
Various
NRHP Ref# 80001884 • Data from National Park Service • Content available under CC BY-SA 4.0
Historic Photos
(6)Sourced from the National Register of Historic Places filing
Clarkston Village Historic District — Clarkston Village Historic District — historic photograph, National Register of Historic Places filing, MI 15, Clarkston Village, Detroit
Public Domain (Michigan filing for National Register of Historic Places)
From Wikipedia
The Village of Clarkston is located in the southern part of Independence Township, Michigan along M-15. The Village of Clarkston was designated a Michigan State Historic Site on January 16, 1976 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 15, 1979. The Clarkston Village Historic District includes Buffalo Street, Church Street, Clarkston Road, Depot Road, Holcomb Street, Main Street (M-15), Miller Road, Waldon Road and Washington Street. The Clarkston Village Historic District includes over 100 historic structures.
Architecture The Village of Clarkston was listed as an historic site because of its architecture and its historical significance. There are many preserved Queen Anne style architecture homes in the village. In addition, the house styles include Bungalow, Colonial Revival, Empire, Gothic Revival, Greek Revival, Mansard, Stick Style, Tudor Revival and Vernacular architecture.
History The first land purchases were made nearly a decade earlier, in 1823, by the Williams family of Waterford Township. By 1831, early inhabitants like Linus Jacox, Butler Holcomb, John and Thomas Beardslee and Melvin Door established homesteads, and it was not long before more settlers from New York and New Jersey arrived. They included Jeremiah Clark in 1832, followed by his brother, Nelson, who built his home in 1839 in what would become the Village of Clarkston. It still stands at 71 N. Main Street. The Clarks built a sawmill and gristmill, started a fish hatchery, and opened a general store. In 1840 they platted the village and two years later, in 1842, grateful settlers voted to name the village Clarkston.
Growth By 1877, the Clarkston area grew to include nearly 1,400 residents as well as thriving farms and businesses. The village was home to several stores, including furniture, clothing and jewelry shops, as well as hotels, wagon makers, harness makers, liveries and three physicians. The first school, Sashabaw School, was built in 1834 at the corner of Maybee Road and Pine Knob Road. The Union School was built in 1840 in the center of the village. The Methodist Episcopal Church [b. 1873] on Buffalo Street and The First Baptist Church [b. 1847] on Main Street were both established in the mid 1800s.
Transformation Once the railroad was established in 1851, tourists from Detroit and Pontiac discovered Clarkston's lakes, farms and woodlands. It wasn’t long before hotels like the Demarest House, Vliets-On-The-Hill and Deer Lake Inn were built to accommodate the influx of summer visitors, and a new opera house on the top floor of the downtown Maccabees Building kept them entertained. The transformation of Clarkston was complete with the invention of the automobile. Roads that were once Native American trails were paved and widened for this new mode of transportation. The Saginaw Trail, now known as Dixie Highway, was paved as early as 1920, and Main Street (M-15) was paved around 1922. The expanding national highway system brought I-75 through the Clarkston area in 1962, spurring both business and residential development. Many farms gave way to subdivisions and strip malls as the Clarkston area continued evolving into a northern Detroit suburb.
See also National Register of Historic Places listings in Oakland County, Michigan
References
Content available under CC BY-SA 4.0
Building Details
- Address
- MI 15, Clarkston Village
- National Register
- Listed
- Ref# 80001884