#9 Cemetery Office and Trolley station
The building at the entrance of forest lawn cemetery was constructed in 1913 as a public service building with an art deco interior it contained a sexton’s ( the person who maintains the cemetery) office and housed the records of the city cemeteries, when the trolleys rode the rails in the streets of Saginaw it served as a trolley station also. Due to budget cuts this building is no longer being used by the city.
#8 Second National Bank Building
the 12-story building was erected in 1925 on the corner of Genesee and Washington for the Second National bank. the 178-foot building now occupied by the First Merritt Bank was the tallest in Saginaw. Until Michigan Bell Telephone Co., now AT&T, erected its addition to the roof of the building at South Washington and Janes in October 1973,
#7 Saginaw’s Oldest Service Station
Underneath the artwork painted by artist Eric R. Schantz is Saginaw’s oldest service station built in 1924. the a gas station located on the corner of Atwater and Washington Avenue operated until 1955, a barber shop until 1983 and a drive-thru party store until it closed in the 1990s.
#6 Forest Lawn Chappel
The Chapel was constructed by the city in 1901, at a cost of eight thousand nine hundred dollars. In 1881 the limited number of lots in Brady Hill made it necessary for the city to secure additional burial grounds, and for this purpose the D. L. C. Eaton farm at the southerly limits of the city, containing ninety-seven and a half acres, was purchased at a cost of about seventeen thousand dollars. Currently the chapel is not being used.
#5 Saginaw County Fairground Gate
The gate located on the corner of Gensee and Webber streets which served as the main entrance to the Saginaw County Fairgrounds, since it was erected in 1929. The gate was designed and by prominent local architects Clarence B. Merrill and Carl E. Macomber, who also designed Saginaw’s original city hall and an addition to the Castle Museum. you can view the original drawings for its construction at the castle museum.
#4 Saginaw Waterworks
Constructed in 1929 the gothic building was designed by Victor A Matteson of Chicago, He was a member of the American Institute of Architects, and the American Water Works Association. Mr. Matteson had accumulated twenty years of experience in designing water plants before he undertook the task for Saginaw
#3 Castle Museum
The Castle Museum was designed by William Martin Aiken, the Supervising Architect of the US Treasury, and built in 1898 as a United States Post Office. In the 1930s, the post office was becoming too small and a movement was started to get the post office out and into another building. An uproar arose because no one wanted their beloved castle to be torn down. The building was remodeled by local architect Carl Macomber, who enlarged the building, tore down one of the three turrets, and added a large sorting room on the back of the building . In the 1970s, a new post office was built and the building was almost demolished once again, but local citizens and the Saginaw County Board of Commissioners took steps to list the building on the National Register of Historic Places to ensure the preservation of the building and the local heritage it represents
#2 Potter Street Train station
The station was designed and built in 1881 by New York architect Bradford Lee Gilbert and is the largest victorian era train depot of it’s type.. In 1964, the last passenger train departed the Potter Street Station. The rail line would continue to be used for freight until the station was closed in 1986. As of November 26, 1996, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
#1 Hoyt Library
In 1882, Jesse Hoyt of New York bequeathed $100,000 to the City of East Saginaw “for a suitable and substantial building to be used as a library.” An early design of the library was done by noted architect Henry Hobson Richardson but Frederick Poole, one of the nation’s most outstanding librarians of the time and consultant for the Hoyt project, thought his library designs were “too monumental, wasteful of space, and not functional as libraries. After the design was altered by Van Brunt & Howe of Boston, construction of the library began in 1887. The exterior walls consisting of limestone quarried locally at the Bay Port mines and Lake Superior red sandstone trimming the edges. The interior of the old building consists of oak throughout, including the staircase to the second floor, along with interior door and window hardware consisting of iron and brass. The reference section opened in 1891, and the rest was opened to the public in 1895. At its full opening, it contained more than 20,000 volumes of material, a lecture hall, a meeting room, and a trustee’s room. In 1920, the first expansion of the library took place, and another expansion happened in 1960. The library was renovated in 1977 and again in 1994,
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