Waterford Village Historic District

Waterford Village is significant as an intact rural hamlet dating from the mid-nineteenth century when the labors of the pioneer settlers of the 1820s and 1830s were culminating in the establishment of a flourishing agricultural community. The town as a whole is more significant as an illustration of the small town life of a century ago than for the architectural qualities of the individual buildings. Waterford derives its name from its strategic location at the spot where the old Saginaw Indian Trail crossed the Clinton River. By the 1820s the Saginaw Trail was an important highway for settlers traveling west from Detroit in search of new homes in the interior. In 1819, two easterners, Alpheus Williams and Captain Archibald Phillips, established a saw mill at the ford by damming the river to create a mill pond. Phillips also operated a small store and trading post from his dwelling and served as postmaster for the region. This small settlement soon became the focal point for the surrounding farming community. In addition to small shops and craft industries, including a blacksmith shop, cooper's shop and harnessmaker, by the 1840s Waterford boasted a hotel, a carding mill and a grist mill. A school was constructed in 1848 on the site of the present school and the town had both Methodist and Baptist congregations. Although Waterford was always essentially a service center for the agricultural region in the vicinity, the construction of the Detroit and Saginaw turnpike about 1835 stimulated the growth of the little town by bringing new settlers and encouraging its small waterpowered industries. The haphazard growth of the village was regularized in 1845 when the central part of the settlement at the intersection of Andersonville Road and the turnpike (today's Dixie Highway) was first surveyed into lots by William T. Windiate. More lots were laid out in 1849 and 1851 by Nathaniel M. Martin. The 1850s saw the first extensive construction on the new plats as many similar, small, frame cottages were built. Residential construction continued until about 1873 by which time the village was largely built-up and population growth was tapering-off. By this time, the town boasted several new industries including a foundry manufacturing plows and cultivators, a sash-and-blind factory, a beanery where white beans were cleaned and sorted and an apple dryer where apples were dried over heat for export, although the grist mill and local stores continued to be the mainstay of agricultural Waterford. The construction of the impressive First Baptist Church in 1869 and the two-story brick, Union School in 1871 (demolished) marked the zenith of the village's prosperity. In the later nineteenth century, Waterford remained a prosperous, but somewhat stagnant, farming hamlet. Practically no new construction occurred in the village itself after 1873 although occasionally an older house was enlarged or given some fashionable new trim. In the 1890s and early twentieth century Waterford benefitted from a modest resort boom as the lake shores in the nearby countryside were dotted with the summer cottages of middle class Pontiac and Detroit residents. The summer hotel at Windiate Park contributed to the area's importance as a resort. Nevertheless, the year round population of Waterford continued to decline until, by 1907, there were only about 350 permanent residents. The summer tourism and the lingering agriculture sustained the remnants of the village through the first five decades of the twentieth century without encouraging much new construction. During these years many of the commercial buildings, including the old Waterford Hotel and most of the stores, were abandoned and disappeared. The handsome old Waterford store, built in 1854, was spared this probable fate when it was purchased and moved to Henry Ford's Greenfield Village Museum in the later 1920s. A few modest houses were built in the 1920s but these did not seriously alter the nineteenth century character of Waterford. After World War II, the pressures for suburban development increased as the automobile industry in nearby Pontiac boomed. By the 1960s the farmland around Waterford was being subdivided for new housing tracts right up to the edge of the village. Today, the historic residential heart of Waterford village, although robbed of its traditional setting of open farmland, survives much as it was in 1875. The community has recognized the importance of this reminder of the town's origins by instituting a local historic district ordinance to help ensure its continued survival. The residents are seeking National Register status to add a further measure of protection against the pressures of modern development that are encroaching on all sides.

Waterford village is located eight miles from Pontiac in Oakland County. The historic heart of the town is comprised of a single line of lots on both sides of Andersonville Road between Airport Road and Dixie Highway and on Steffens Road and Pontiff and Dubay streets. In addition, the district includes the east side of Airport Road from Andersonville Road south to Cambrook Lane. These boundaries comprise the compact part of old Waterford village containing about thirty nineteenth century structures mostly dating from 1850 to 1873. The houses are set back from the road at varying distances on large, neatly tended lots with mature trees. The tree canopy extends over the roadway along Andersonville Road and Pontiff and Dubay streets enhancing the parklike quality of the village center. Andersonville Road is the most urbanized part of the village having low concrete curbs and sidewalks separated from the street by wide grassy parkways. These features are absent throughout much of the rest of the district. The houses form a harmonious grouping of similar, wooden, vernacular, mid-nineteenth century dwellings. They are generally devoid of ornamental features although a few have modest brackets, turned port posts, or scrollsaw gable trim. The majority of the houses are similar, 'L plan' dwellings composed of a 1½-story, flank-gable-roofed portion fronted by a porch sheltering the entrance abutted by a narrow 2-story, end-gable-roofed, two-bay wing that often projects forward from the flank-gable section. Although this is the most prevalent house type, there are also some simple rectangular, 2-story houses as well as several plain, 1½-story cottages. Only 5897 Andersonville Road which is a small Greek Revival house with a deep classical entablature and a bold door enframement and 4116 Airport Road, a small, cubical, hip-roofed, Italianate dwelling with a heavy, bracketed cornice treatment are direct expressions of any of the major architectural styles of the period from 1840 to 1880. The rest of the houses are good examples of the simple, functional, architecture of rural Michigan in the mid-nineteenth century. Although some of the houses have had modern siding applied over the clapboarding and a few have had their porches altered over the years and exterior chimneys added, the majority retain their essential features, including a surprising number with their original sash. The First Baptist Church is the most imposing landmark in Waterford as well as the most architecturally distinguished individual structure. The church remains much as it was built in 1869 except for the loss of the wooden steeple which was removed sometime between 1945 and 1956 because of its serious state of deterioration, and the addition of a 2-story, brick, flat-roofed, educational wing at the rear in 1949. It is a brick, end-gable-roofed, Italianate bracketed structure on a high, coarsed ashlar foundation. The central entrance tower projecting from the facade extends a full story above the roof peak where it terminates in a modern flat roof edged with a plain railing. Inset into the shallow indented arches which articulate the exterior wall surfaces are tall, narrow, roundhead windows with wide, panelled, brick, hood-moulds and corbelled label-stops.