Traverse City's Old Towne Comes Alive In Print

From how the neighborhood got its name to a cast of historical characters across the past century, a new book showcases all there is to know about Traverse City’s Old Towne. Resident Marty MacLeod has captured it all in her new book, All About Old Towne, Telling Tales of Traverse City’s Old South Side.

“I call it my accidental book,” says MacLeod, who insists she had no intention to become an author.

It became one through her work as president of the Old Towne Neighborhood Association. She says she wanted to “jazz up” the association’s monthly newsletter, so she set out to write up some brief articles about the area’s history and citizens. And didn’t stop. “All of a sudden I had about 25 years’ worth of newsletter articles,” she says with a laugh.

She told friends in her quilting group about her quandary, and they suggested she contact local publishing company The Jenkins Group. “I asked, ‘Is this a book?’ He [Jerry Jenkins] said, ‘Absolutely. And I want the first ten.’”

Then MacLeod had to learn how to write and design a book. She turned to a neighbor for some advice, and Chris Wendel was happy to help. “My older brother is a writer and I’d published a couple books for him,” says Wendel. “When she got serious, I thought it had some promise.”

He did some editing – including removing a bevy of MacLeod’s beloved exclamation points – and helped with the logistics of publishing, pricing and sales, including how you negotiate wholesale pricing to bookstores and Amazon, setting up credit card sales, and building a website for promoting and selling the book (unionstreetbooks.com).

While she was initially skeptical of the potential, MacLeod took the plunge. She knew she had good material to work with: Old Towne has been one of Traverse City’s most notable neighborhoods pretty much since there was a Traverse City, though its name only dates back about 60 years.

That’s among the many interesting facts MacLeod brings to the fore. It was in the mid-60s when local business owners Tony Wilhelm and Barney Deering coined the term for the Union Street commercial district. For the hundred years prior, it was known simply as “the South Side.” Soon the surrounding neighborhood adopted the name as well.

The Old Towne commercial district runs from the Boardman River on the north to Eighth Street on the south. The Old Towne neighborhood boundaries are from the north side of Ninth Street to the south side of Griffin Street and the west side Union Street to the east side of Lake Avenue.

“A lot of neighborhoods are just residential. That’s not the case with Old Towne,” says MacLeod, citing its mix of manufacturing, industrial and retail operations, all scattered among homes. As just one example, she says almost all the early undertakers were located there, along with a casket-making shop.

Of those homes, most of them in Old Towne were built between 1880 and 1930. And as she writes, the neighborhood reflects a variety of architectural styles: Victorian, Queen Anne, Arts and Craft, Art Deco, American Foursquare, Dutch Colonial, and Contemporary.

MacLeod introduces readers to a host of inimitable Old Towne characters. There’s Mrs. A.W. Peck, the self-proclaimed conscience of Old Towne, who though childless herself regularly advised neighborhood mothers on various matters of childrearing. She organized hay fever sufferers into the Sneezers’ Club in a bid to eliminate ragweed. She was a mover and shaker in the Humane Society, the city zoning board, and many other civic organizations, for which she was named Outstanding Citizen by the Chamber of Commerce in 1934, the first woman to receive the honor.

Anthony J. Wilhelm was proprietor of Wilhelm’s Meat Market. When his sister decamped for true love in Wisconsin rather than operating the millinery shop he’d built for her, he and his brother Emanuel formed the Wilhelm Brothers partnership. They opened their clothing, rug, and dry goods store for business in 1886, which operated for over a century.

Edwin G. Thirlby sold car polish from the trunk of his car, before adding wash mitts, sponges, air fresheners, and other products to his inventory. By 1959, it had grown into a full-time job, forcing him to give up college but allowing him and wife Beverly to buy a house and put the garage to use as a warehouse for auto parts. By 1963 the couple opened a store on Lake Avenue. Today Thirlby Automotive is still going strong.

Those are just a few among the many stories MacLeod unearthed and tells about in a – well, a neighborly style. The book’s 157 pages are filled with historical photos and recent ones as well. It has garnered praise from the likes of local history buffs and authors such as Richard Fidler and Peg Siciliano.

And MacLeod still can’t quite believe it. “The process has been quite an eye-opener,” she says. She’s glad it’s done and as of this writing is awaiting copies, which will be available at local bookstores and online. But there’s a chance she’s not finished. “I gave a presentation to the historical society. The first question was, ‘What neighborhood are you going to do next?’”