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Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23
Robert Davis
Interviewed on October 1, 1971
Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com
Tape # 25, 26
Biographical Information
Robert Leland Davis was born 4 May 1894 in Grand Rapids, the son of George Albert
Davis and Alice Barnard. Robert died 21 December 1979 in Grand Rapids.
Coming to Grand Rapids in the 1880‟s from New England, George A. Davis was a
founder of the Stowe & Davis Furniture Company. He later was president of the Grand
Rapids School board for many years. George was born on 3 January 1853 in Windsor
County, Vermont. He passed away on 27 March 1935 at the family home on Fountain
Street. George was married to Alice Barnard in Springfield, Vermont in September 1882.
Alice was born on 3 October 1853 in Springfield and died at the age of 85 in Grand
Rapids on 30 March 1939.
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Interviewer: O.K. Yeah, you were saying about Fountain Street?
Mr. Davis: Well I‟m one of the few people in the city living in the same house I was
born in. There at five thirty-five Fountain Street. My father was, I can talk about it now,
came west and bought the place about eighteen oh, eighty-five or there abouts. Oh, the
next, the nearest neighbor was on the south side, a Mr. Charles W. Pike who has passed
and his family has moved out. On the east side was a vacant block and, I‟ve forgotten, I
think it was a family by the name Lamoreaux [William T.] that bought the place on the
east. The neighbors around there, across the street were the Bundys and other, which
were related to the Hollisters and Hollister was, well the mainstay of the Old National
Bank, it was called the Old National in those days. The Old Kent is the name they‟ve
taken on when they combined the Old National and the, oh I guess it was called the Kent
County Savings Bank. And they were then in the corner of, now I wonder if they moved
out of the Pantlind Hotel, that place now called the…
Interviewer: Known as the Bank?
Mr. Davis: Yeah, of course that‟s all new there, I mean when they built the Pantlind
Hotel they, they had a corner built on there, just like the oh, Kent County Savings Bank
or the Kent had the north, no the southwest corner of Lyon and Monroe. That‟s where
WZZM or something like that, are in there now. But that was a, originally a bank. That
was the one Old Kent formed they went in with them at that [ ? ] I mean it was the south
of the other place now called the Bank, which [drinking started] and see the Pantlind
Hotel, as I recall was built, the present Pantlind was about nineteen between twelve or
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eleven or maybe fourteen or somewhere along in there. And that was quite a place built
in those days. It‟s still quite a place, but on the other hand it isn‟t as new as it was, when
I remember it then. And, now as I say, my father bought the place on Fountain Street and
now I have lived there all the time since. I say that with reservations. I was an engineer
in Westinghouse, living in Pittsburg for a number of years, I lived in Massachusetts for a
number of years, but I always kept my legal residence in Grand Rapids. I might have
lived in an apartment and had all the outward appearances of being a citizen of Pittsburg
but when I wanted to vote, I voted here. Ganson Taggart our attorney, family attorney,
was city attorney and he said well if you‟re interested you better keep it here and I said
what do I have to do and he says just vote every time and I had this absent voters laws so
I could vote by remote control you might say, here in Grand Rapids. Of course I was
interested in the Grand Rapids activities because my father was on the Board of
Education. And also in, had connections with other things around here such as StoweDavis Furniture Company and things like that.
Interviewer: Did your father, was he one of the founders of Stowe-Davis?
Mr. Davis: I wouldn‟t say he was a founder but he came here and bought into it, bought,
when he moved into town in eighteen eighty-five. It was then a concern called Stowe
and Height [Haight], I think. H-e-i-g-h-t or something like that and a, Height [Thomas D.
Haight], my father bought him out and then a number of years later, I think L. C. Stowe
was, see there‟s several Stowes around town here so, sold out but then he had the major
stockholding in the company. Then of course when he retired, why that‟s now gone over
to well the Hunting family I judge. That is the Steelcase and that crowd. Hunting in
those days was one of my father‟s, associates.
Interviewer: Which Hunting was that, David or the old man?
Mr. Davis: Well, I don‟t know who you call the old man. The old man that I knew, I
meant the, I think it was Edgar Hunting. He was well quite a bit older than I was,
naturally and David Hunting I think the one you referred to, I‟m not too sure of him. I
think a, he was a little bit older than I am. He graduated in the high school a year or two
before me. But he was, and then of course was a series of other Huntings coming
along…
Interviewer: Well, your father served on the board of education. Was he connected at all
with Davis Tech?
Mr. Davis: Well, you can call it that. A, he was very much interested in promoting, a
well [whether] you call it, technical high school. But you see he had an awful time with
me. I cordially disliked school and one of the things he seemed to realize was that there
wasn‟t enough technical stuff to keep me interested. And this Latin and all that line of
stuff, well my mother who was very much, what do you call them, classical person, she
made me hang on to that and he saw to it I kept on going to school. But he realized, I
guess that it‟d be better to have a sort of technical school. I don‟t know if you call it
really technical, not in my line of thought I wouldn‟t call it that but anyway it was
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something. And I know he stated one time, it should be a type of school so if anybody
quits for any one week, he could feel that the week before he had learned something of
practical value. In other words if he had to quit at any time and go and get a job, why
he‟d picked up something in the previous weeks which would do him some good. Rather
than waiting for the Latin and the Greek and the corruption of that kind, that‟s what I
called it, to do some good. Oh I can remember back in those days. You took a lot of
English, Ancient English, what good did Chaucer do me? What good did all that kind of
stuff do me? See, I‟m an engineer. I happen to be one of the few professional, and I
don‟t say few but one of the professional, registered engineers in the city. I‟ve been a
college prof[essor] and taught engineering and I‟ve got degrees from Massachusetts
Institute of Tech and University of Michigan and I‟m an engineer inherently. All the rest
of my family are lawyers. I‟m the only black sheep in the family. I‟ve no objection to
lawyers but after all, they‟re the kind that stick to the commas and semi-colons. They
don‟t concern themselves with, well, should I say the facts of life. They‟re going go with
the law. The law. Well, I probably shouldn‟t be quoted on this but, in my mind I think
the lawyers need to have a going over somewhere. Here‟s a thing somebody said as a
joke but I can well believe it about true. It was said that one of the later states that is
new, Arizona, New Mexico came in, or applied to come in or applied to come in and they
set up their, oh what do you call it, laws and regulations and things like that. They had in
there, whatever it was, a rule that the circumference of a circle should be three times the
diameter in that area because that was convenient. Now, anybody who would do that is
just so darn dumb and I don‟t know whether they‟re going or coming because there‟s
nothing more fundamental in the universe, than that constant of pi. Just as a thing that is
rather interesting, it is said that somewhere over in Europe, some monk or somebody like
that who was secluded, he worked on a series to work out the value of pi and he carried it
on out to seven hundred decimal places. It never comes to an end and never repeats, so
trying to say it‟s going to be three times and that‟s all, why you might just as well said the
length of the year is going to be something else. You can‟t change it. And pi is more
fundamental even than the length of the year. A few million years, the length of the year
is going to change. Nothing‟s ever going to change pi.
Interviewer: Yeah…
Mr. Davis: Now of course, somebody said that that‟s a joke to show that the lawyers stay
with the as a, that‟s the law, well that‟s what it‟s going to be. They‟re going to decide
cases on that. It couldn‟t be any cases are decided on that, well what are you going to
do? It‟s not right but they have it set up that way. Just like they could go and call red
green and green, red. That‟s the law. You see, I got my background of, oh I wouldn‟t
say antagonistic to lawyers but, it amuses me how they operate. For instance, I had a
cousin who was quite a high powered lawyer, he in his days in college, he was a great
football player. And he liked to cite how he played and he won this game and won that
game and he did this and he did that. Then he got through the law, high school or college
and so on and took the law, then he liked to cite how he got to be a prosecuting attorney.
And he likes to say how he won this case and he won that case, and he did this and he did
that. Well, I said maybe you shouldn‟t have. Oh, but he says, that‟s what I got to do.
Now, what do you do? That shows my attitude towards lawyers. They‟re more
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concerned with the commas and the semi-colons than they are with the spirit of things.
Gee, whiz look, you‟re recording all this stuff. Look what you‟re going to do to me, I‟ll
be in jail…
Interviewer: …Well you were, you were just talking about change and, you know, talking
about change, how has the city changed since you know when you were [alive] growing
up?
Mr. Davis: Well, of course in those days we had practically no well-paved streets, I
mean it was, well I might call „em macadam. But they weren‟t like they are now. So
after a rain, why the streets had irregularities and a lot of puddles around. And of course
we had streetcars then. And, oh I would say they were more convenient than they are
now with the present buses. Fact is the streetcars used to run on a schedule in the middle
of the day at every six minutes. You‟d go out and stand on the corner and just like that a
car would be along for you. Of course, as an engineer I‟m very much interested in the
streetcars.. The Lyon Street Hill Line had a special breaking system because it was steep
and, oh there was a lot of things that I got interested along that line. And I think it‟s very
unfortunate that, well, what should I say, situation is not suitable for fixed transportation
like streetcars. That is you can‟t expect people to go out and stand in the street with the
auto traffic these days. On the other hand it had been much better if we had equivalent of
the street cars, well you might even say trolley-buses. They, they had those in Detroit for
a while. They‟ve had „em in a lot of cities but, oh I don‟t know the economics and things
don‟t seem to be too good. They can draw up at the curb, but of course they have the
same trouble as the streetcars, they had fixed routes and well if something happens, well
you‟re stuck on your fixed route, you can‟t go on around the block like on a regular bus
can. And, well things like that I think it‟s very unfortunate we don‟t have more
viewpoint of that type of transportation. Poor old city of Grand Rapids, well here again,
of course it‟s my native town, I feel like I can take it apart if I want to. I think it‟s about
the poorest operated engineering town of any place I know of. An illustration of that, as I
mentioned this before, I looked up the number of engineers, registered engineers,
professionals, in the city and there‟s fewer engineers per unit of population here in Grand
Rapids than any other city in the state. In other words we‟re, we‟re just, well, I‟ll almost
say a kind of an enlarged Rockford or something like that. We‟re just a bigger town.
The companies that really do business here do most of their engineering outside. Bell
Telephone Company, the other companies, they‟re all engineers from either Detroit or
some other place. Grand Rapids is just a place to live or exist or something like that.
And that‟s too bad, too much of a common attitude. We ought to have more people on
the city commission say, that have an engineering background. They don‟t. Look we‟re
full of insurance guys and oh, people [of] that kind, I was going to say, undertakers and
whatnot, the undertaker‟s gone, but that‟s about what it is. What do they know about
anything? They don‟t know anything.
Interviewer: Was it different when you were growing up, the city commission, the
composition of the city commission?
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Mr. Davis: Well of course in those days we had the city, that‟s the thing I would like to,
gee whiz you‟re getting me into awful mess. I would like to feel that we‟re going to have
a return to what we used to have, namely aldermen and a mayor. My youngest days, up
to the time I was about a senior in high school, I graduated in twelve[1912], we had the
aldermen, 12 wards, two aldermen from each ward. Well, you know how things go in
cycles. All of a sudden they got excited and they said we‟ve got to have a commission
form of government. Some of it good. But look what happened, look what we got. As
long as it went along on a good form of commission form of government with proper
people in there, I think it wasn‟t too bad. They got a lot of us young fellows in high
school to go out and stand on corners and hand out stuff and promote the city
commission. Well it apparently got in. Now I‟d work just as hard to put it back out
again, because we need more representation of the people. In those days, you had
aldermen around, two aldermen for your ward. Of course he had a smaller group to look
after, you might call it that. If you wanted something, I mean felt something ought to be
changed, you could go down and talk with him and he was, why I don‟t mean to say he
could do an awful lot, I mean he might not upset anything, he would at least be more,
well I won‟t say more polite, but I mean more cognizant of what you were, willing to be
cognizant of what you were doing. Now you go down and talk with the city
commissioner, well, that‟s in the hands of the city manager. Now I‟d have thrown that
city manager out there so far he‟d never come to surface. They have no business having
a manager like that, who‟s little king god in the glass case down there, and he runs the
town. I don‟t know which side of the fence you‟re on, I can see you‟re laughing, he acts
as if he ran the town. He, the city commission rubber stamps what he wants. Now I got
no use for that. I‟d say that maybe we need a city manager, a fellow who would be kind
of a high grade book-keeper and well not exactly a lawyer but look at the things with the
city man, the city commission tells him what to do, want the city commission to be
enough of „em so that if they‟re going to look after you in your ward when you‟re,
represent something, or want something, they‟ll say yes, we‟ll think about it, we‟ll do
what we can. We‟ll give it consideration. Now they say that‟s in the hands of the city
manager.
Interviewer: Well who ran the town? If the city manager is running the town today, who
ran the town a…?
Mr. Davis: Well, it [goes] to the city a, the alder-man and the mayor. Now of course
there used to be squabbles, and they said that the aldermen got crooked. Hell, my attitude
is, if they got crooked, that‟s just up [to] the citizens to throw „em out. You used to hear
about some petty graft of one kind or another, anything from garbage collection to what
not, which they‟re squabbling over now. They, who got it, well they‟d be saying so and
so‟s working and he was well associated with such and such and I don‟t know what [I‟m
talking] you know. Well, I‟d rather have it in the shape of somebody who‟s gonna be
interested in what you want, rather than what we got now. Now, being of course an
engineer I‟ m all strong for having better engineering. And poor old Grand Rapids don‟t
seem to have enough sense to know what to do. Let‟s cite a couple of things. I‟ve been a
member of the Engineers‟ Club for a number of years. Oh I don‟t know, about in the late
thirties when I came back here, that was because my father was in his last days and he,
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they said you got to come back, to look after some of the family affairs. So I came back
to Grand Rapids, and doing what I could of course, then I, I got mixed up in the
Engineers‟ Club and they were then getting ready for the pipe line, they were fussing
about it. And, well we said that they ought to have some engineers studying the thing
and then, the mayor then went and appealed the Engineers‟ Club and anyway he got a
committee started. I happened to be on that committee. And we recommended then to
put in at least a sixty-inch pipeline and perhaps bigger. Look what they did they put in a
forty-six. We knew it was gonna, was going wrong, but that‟s what you got. Well, I
mean the type of, remember that‟s the city commission and, and aldermen. That‟s what
they said you got to do. Another illustration of how they, they sort of needled us over it,
obviously when they lay out a pipeline you try to lay it out according to engineering
principles and grades and things like that. They said to me later on, are you working for
Frank McKay? And I said no, what makes you think so? Well you got that running
across some of his land. Well I tell „em I can‟t help the geography of the place. If the
pipeline ought to go along that place because of the grades, well that‟s where it ought to
go. Well that‟s part of Frank McKay‟s land you‟re recommend that he get some sold or
you know. They made me so peeved one time that I went and told this bird, I said look if
you, I‟ll quit the city entirely and I don‟t care whether it burns down or not. But if you‟re
gonna look at things that way.
Interviewer: Well, before they had the pipeline, where‟d they get their water?
Mr. Davis: Oh, out of the river. And it was a pretty dirty mess. Why perhaps I shouldn‟t
say that. Back in about nineteen eleven or twelve, I can remember as a youngster, they
built the filtration plant that‟s down there where it is now. And they took water out of the
river. Prior to that they‟d taken it right out of the river with no filtration. And I can
remember in my youngest days, which is about nineteen hundred when I began to
remember things, they used to have to boil all the water. It was all the health authorities
recommended, any water used for drinking, you boil. Well, I don‟t know. I guess most
of us did, at least that was up to my mother to run the kitchen department. I don‟t know
what she did but anyway that was one of the things.
Interviewer: Was there any sickness or anything that…
Mr. Davis: Oh yeah, typhoid fever was much more prevalent than it is now. I guess
we‟re fairly healthy now. But even at that, it‟s not too good a water supply because on
the basis of what we figured it, you needed a bigger pipeline. There‟s not enough water
in the city despite that, in the summer, despite that report that came in that we could get
along for a while because during the summer months, they take water out of the river, to
augment what they get over the pipeline. And of course they, they treat it some, but it
still, is much harder than Lake Michigan water would be on a normal basis if we had
straight Lake Michigan water. Well anyway it just shows that poor old Grand Rapids has
got no engineering background. Another thing that griped me [to] no end, as an engineer,
I‟m [an] electrical engineer, I believe in running everything electrical that you can. But
there‟re some things that you got to be very fundamental about. Water is one of ‟em.
You need water whether the juice fails or not. You can‟t run a hundred percent safe on
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electrical pumps. Pipeline can be, I mean the transmission lines can get knocked down,
or they can have sub-stations get knocked out, things like that. When the water works ran
by steam, and there‟s a lot of good size cities that still do that and it‟s fundamental,
you‟re independent. Maybe you can‟t furnish all the water they want but at least you‟ve
got enough so that the power company can‟t close up for half a day while the Russians
knock „em out or something like that. And you‟re dependent on the water. Of course
they say, well we got storage. Yes, but that storage wouldn‟t last ya very long if we‟re
totally dependent on outside power. A corollary end to that is that not too many years
ago all the hospitals around here, the bigger ones used to have their own power plant, I
can remember Butterworth out here, had its own power plant. Well, that‟s an ideal thing,
make juice and then you have light and they run the elevators and it gives all the service
you need and then you have heat from the exhaust when you need it and it‟s a very nice
thing. Well, that costs a little more, the cost of labor‟s getting so high to hire engineers, I
mean operating engineers to run the place is getting to be expensive. So the power
company and I guess the board of directors of the hospitals says, well alright we‟ll buy
power. And they went over and the power company went on a basis we‟ll furnish you
two circuits, if both of „em won‟t get knocked out. Sounds good, but it wasn‟t too long
before the power company and the people got together and they says look, we‟ve got to
be sure about this. The telephone company, they want to be fundamentally supplied.
They got a diesel engine down there to be used for auxiliary. Well, they recommend that
the hospital put in a diesel and I think Butterworth has one. It won‟t furnish everything
but it won‟t put „em black. Things like that, you got to think about. You might say, well
it costs more. Well gee, insurance costs you more, why have insurance? Just get along
and say I don‟t need insurance. But you buy insurance because you never know, you
might want it. And to pay a little extra for auxiliary power, that‟s like the insurance. I‟m
afraid I‟m getting off the track. I‟m just…
Interviewer: Well, talking about electrical, what kind of electrical system did they have
when you were a kid?
Mr. Davis: Around here?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Mr. Davis: Well a, the water works had an auxiliary, I don‟t mean auxiliary generator,
but a little generator and it made power for some of the, for the street light, on a, first
place it had quite a plant for making street lights. They were the old arc-light type. The
plant, when I first remember it, was down on the river way over on the east bank of the
river between Fulton and Wealthy. Down where the market is and about in there. And it
furnished juice to run all the arc-lights around. And, well at one interesting corollary on
that, somebody had the idea that you ought to light from overhead and so they had some
of these high towers. I don‟t know if you ever heard of them, towers about a hundred feet
high and they had four arc-lights up on the top of those. And they would, supposed to
cover the neighborhood. Well it didn‟t, „cause the trees covered up [?] fundamentally it
was probably a good idea. But after a while the towers got kind of questionable and they
took „em down and then they distributed the lights around the neighborhood but they still
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were lacking plenty of light. We‟re gradually improving it, but I can‟t kick too much on
that. Poor old Grand Rapids can‟t scrape up enough money to light the place the way it
ought to be but I do hate to see „em get totally, and I‟ve no objection to the power
company, I‟ve got a lot of good friends down there, I don‟t like to see a thing like a city
get totally in the clutches of a company and say look, at such and such a time we‟re
gonna raise the rates, well and , go on that kind of a basis. If they had their own power
plant down there, even though it‟s standing still, could say alright, we‟ll take over
whatever load we need and make it ourselves. Now on that basis, that‟s another thing
that gripes me to no end. They went and tore down the smokestack on the waterworks.
You probably remember when that stood up there, a big tall smokestack. They tore that
down, oh I don‟t know, somewhere in the last two-three years. It was a good
smokestack. Probably hadn‟t used it for several years because it had gone over to electric
power. But on the other hand it needed some proper touching up. That is you know,
pointing, as they call brick work. They should have been pointing up. So somebody says
oh well it‟s getting to be a hazard now. It isn‟t safe. It wasn‟t so old, there‟s lots of older
smokestacks than that around town. But they didn‟t pay any attention to it. They didn‟t
do anything.
Interviewer: What did , where did the homes get their electricity?
Mr. Davis: Oh, we bought that from the power company. That was quite common in
those days. I mean that‟s about all you could get. You didn‟t want to make a power
plant in your own home. Although I had that kind of a rig. I lived out on Silver Lake,
out here in the summer time and of course then, I‟d gotten away from town, and with
Westinghouse, and I had a chance to buy equipment. So I went and bought what they
called farm light equipment. Remember those things they used to call farm lights?
Farmers used to have those because they wanted light and power, small amounts. So I
went and bought farm light equipment, or had it shipped up here, put it in the cottage, and
for a number of years out here we lit the cottage on our own power plant. I like that kind
of stuff. I got the generator for the place down I my cellar right now. And the engine is
still out in the summer, the cottage. I don‟t know what to do with it, I‟ve been thinking I
might give it to the library, I mean the museum, a place of that kind.
Interviewer: Did you, did your family home have electricity from the time you can
remember?
Mr. Davis: Oh, no no.
Interviewer: What, what did they have?
Mr. Davis: Well, they had gas. Gas. And still, I go on the basis if I want fundamental
things in there, so the gas piping is still in the house. I think possibly I should cut it off
but I, I don‟t want to do that. I like to have it there. Now, of course we use gas for water
heating. No question about it, gas is cheaper, for just pure heat. It, you can make, I mean
BTUs per dollar are cheaper with gas than with electricity. No question about it.
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Interviewer: How did those gas lights in the home work?
Mr. Davis: Well, you see „em around the streets now. They, they‟re putting „em out
here, they‟re mantel lamps. Once of course they had the old fishtail lamps at one time.
You go down to this gas light village down here and you can see a lot of „em. Fish tail
lights were just jet on the end of a fixture you might say, a fixture arranged to be artistic
and things of that kind, glass globes and all kinds of thing on „em. But the gas lights
made a mild amount of [?]. They were better than kerosene lamps, let‟s put it that way.
We had some kerosene lamps in our house; I can remember early days the kitchen had a
kerosene lamp out there. Why, I don‟t know but it had, they never put the gas out there.
They had a gas stove for cooking and it also had a, well I guess you‟d call it, coal range.
You could cook on that and heat the oven and do that sort of stuff with a coal range in the
winter.
Interviewer: They burn coal?
Mr. Davis: Burn Coal, small [?] of coal.
Interviewer: I was talking to a fellow this morning who was involved in the fuel business
in Grand Rapids and he was saying that most of the homes at that time were, in fact all
the homes heated with coal. What was the air like in the city then?
Mr. Davis: The air? Oh you would never know it. It‟s just as good as it is now.
Probably better. We, this furor over pollution, I‟m all in favor of reducing pollution but
let‟s go at it on the basis of knowing what we‟re talking about. There‟s a lot more smoke
and stuff coming out of big places, which they don‟t fuss about, than there was probably
was in all the the coal smoking days, I mean coal burning days of the city. Now it‟s not
as bad here because they usually burn hard coal. That‟s more or less smokeless. If you
lived in Pittsburg a while, you‟d know what it is to burn soft coal domestically. It‟s
rather amusing down there, at least when I was first there. The coal is so plentiful it‟s
practically in every farmer‟s backyard. And I boarded, that was before I was married, I
boarded in a place in the, heard the man of the house say one time, along about this time
of the year. Well, we‟d better call up the farmer and have him bring in some coal. Well I
thought that was kind of funny and I asked him about it and he said oh yes he had a side
hill out here and he brings in coal. I don‟t, it wasn‟t very good coal, I know that and they,
you bring it in and dump it [in on] the sidewalk or I mean in the curb and then he‟d hire
somebody to shovel it up and put it in the cellar for him.
Interviewer: [When] hmm
Mr. Davis: And, but it was, oh I mean they got along, but it was rather interesting
though. I used to travel quite a bit between Pittsburg and New York City and they‟d
come in from New York City on this train at night, I mean the sleeper car and get there in
the morning, and as you‟d come into the city from the east, as you came into the town
there‟d be a kind of a haze over the whole city; because practically every house was,
letting out a little cloud of smoke. Not, I wouldn‟t call it smoke, but a kind of a haze.
�10
And you could definitely notice it. Very definitely as you came into town, clear outside
in the country, and as you came into the city, an awful smoke. Of course Pittsburg has a
horrible problem, or did in those days. They‟ve cleaned up a lot now. The mills made a
lot of smoke. Coal mills, I mean a, steel mills, all those things. They used to make an
awful mess around there. You got so you, well you‟re just accustomed to it. Well when I
got married and went down there and lived there awhile with my wife, well you couldn‟t
[just] go out in the evening. You‟d put on a fresh shirt, because the one you‟d been
wearing during the day time was sooty. [went up] ? ? ? wife says oh you have to clean
tonight. And things like that. I mean it showed up.
Interviewer: But Grand Rapids never had that…?
Mr. Davis: Never, never that bad, no. It wasn‟t, oh I don‟t know, the biggest problem I
had from it, of course that was after I got back here, the Central High School, was really
quite a boiler plant down there, used to burn coal. And they were very careless about it
and they used to make a lot of smoke. I worked with Boelens who was then smoke
inspector, and took pictures of the place and I don‟t know as that had any results, well
anyway, not too many years ago they changed over to gas. That‟s good, as far as the
neighborhood was concerned because they‟re not so dirty. Used to be that, under the
eaves of a house, where the rain didn‟t come down and wash it off, why it‟d always be
dark there, I mean dirty. Because the smoke had drifted in and deposited the soot and
that was that. Now they don‟t have to paint quite so often, as we used to. On the other
hand though, the gas is a big problem. Most people don‟t realize that, on the, for instance
we live in a very old house as you can appreciate, not very old, about a hundred years old
but anyway it was built before the time of chimney specifications which required a
ceramic liner. Now then, if you burn coal, the coal gas was dry. Now you burn gas and
the gas comes out with a lot of water vapor if you know how the exhaust of a car is in the
winter, a plume of steam. Well, that‟s just the nature of the stuff. If you put that gas, I
mean a burner big enough to heat your house, into an old house, with an unlined chimney
like I have you can‟t get away with it because it‟ll, the moisture in the course of two or
three years will go through the [?]
Interviewer: Ok.
Mr. Davis: And the, well I can‟t do it in my house because the chimney runs right up
through the living room. We got bookcases around it and all that sort of stuff. It‟d take
the plaster off the walls and I couldn‟t tolerate it so I‟m still burning coal but I got it all
automatic, it‟s got a stoker, as you call it, though it may be a little smudge out of it once
in a while, you can oh, at intervals between stoker firings you might call it that, why
there‟d be a little haze come out of the stack but there‟s not dirty around there like it used
to, I mean it would be if you‟re burning coal raw or with the high school burning coal, I‟d
get over to gas if I could and I have a lot of good friends down in the gas company I‟d tell
„em, will you fix me up [an] arrangement so I can burn gas without [ruining] my house.
And they say, oh no, we can‟t guarantee that. I say you‟ll have to put up a bond if you
want to do that. And oh no we wouldn‟t do that. So here I am running along with coal
for the fire and I might say it‟s something of a chore because I‟ve gotten to the point
�11
where the doctors now tell me I shouldn‟t shovel coal to any great extent, and I have to
hire a fellow in the winter to put the coal in the hopper. Well that takes effort. It‟s not
the best thing [?] I‟d switch over to gas anytime. It‟d probably cost a little more but then
I wouldn‟t have to pay a guy a, oh eight - ten dollars a week to come in and keep the coal
hopper full. Particularly when we go out of town, why it‟s something that has to be taken
care of, you can‟t just go along and forget it. But even at that I wouldn‟t recommend
any-body with a gas heating plant to go along and I hear a, people going oh I just went
south and I left it running. As an engineer I wouldn‟t let that thing run without attention
at least once or twice a day on any account. Something could fail. Then what would
happen? I wouldn‟t take long for in zero weather for the house to freeze. Then it‟d be
several hundred dollars of plumbing repair.
Interviewer: Um hm.
Mr. Davis: For example in my house, too. When we go out of town, even though we
have a fellow looking after it I have a light in the window, under the control of an
auxiliary thermostat which is set at about fifty degrees. If the temperature ever got down
to fifty degrees, that light would light, then the neighbors are supposed to gallop in and
find out what‟s wrong. Well, why not?
Interviewer: That‟s a good idea. Well, they say most of the air pollution today is caused
by the automobile. Do you remember the first car that you ever saw?
Mr. Davis: Oh yes.
Interviewer: What kind of car was it and who had it? What was the effect on the city
when the cars started coming in?
Mr. Davis: [?] it was always a novelty to see this damn thing chugging down the street.
There was a one cylinder Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles one cylinder running along
underneath. You cranked it on the side by putting the crank on auxiliary. You had a
chain drive running from the engine shaft to the rear axel, and you‟d get in there and
you‟d steer it with a tiller. They used to have the cold, curved dash, Oldsmobile had a
curve on the bottom of it, sleigh you might say. Oh they‟d run around. Sure they had,
interesting, they gradually got more and more and they got the cars so you didn‟t have
to…, there used to be the joke, every now and then they get stuck and somebody‟d go by
and yell at „em, “Hire a horse.” Oh but that lasted, the first cars I remember were oh
probably nineteen two and three and four, somewhere along in there. Some of „em were
steam cars. I had a great respect for steam cars. The old White Steamer, was a steam car.
It had a boiler under the seat. The engine in the first ones was right alongside the boiler, it
drove with a chain drive. Then the better White Steamers, I mean newer ones came out
with the engine under the hood, the boiler was still under the seat. But they were quite a
car. They would outrun most anything that you could imagine these days. I know I had a
test ride in one one time. A fellow came in the factory, a neighbor of ours had one and
went out and drove down the Cascade road. That was about the only passable road out of
here. And they used to have a lot of pumps along the dash, if you‟d pump awhile and do
�12
different things with „em and the fellow was in there and he was steering with one and he
was looking at the road and pumping these things and she was running sixty and he says,
“She ain‟t steamin‟ quite like she ought to.” Well, I thought it was just as well she isn‟t
steaming [?]the thought of goin‟ much faster over that rough road and him steering one
hand and twiddling his pumps and looking at his gage and just sprinting down the
highway.
Interviewer: What year was that?
Mr. Davis: Oh, that was probably in nineteen hundred and three or four.
Interviewer: That was a pretty fast car, wasn‟t it?
Mr. Davis: Yeah, the White Steamer was a very good steamer. They could run
anywhere.
Interviewer: Did you ever have any accidents with the boiler blowing up?
Mr. Davis: Oh no. I don‟t think so, I never heard of any. The worst thing about the
steamers, and is still the reason that prevents them from being common these days is
thefact that it takes a few minutes to get on steam. If you leave it sitting in your garage
and you want to start the next morning, you‟ve got to allow, oh I don‟t know what it
might be, ten, fifteen minutes to raise enough steam to run out of the barn.
Interviewer: Um hm. What kind of an effect on the city did those early cars have?
Mr. Davis: Oh, there were, there was just a joke, annoyance for the most part. The steam
cars, they weren‟t bad, some of „em did exhaust direct into the air but that was steam that
came out then. And, oh they‟d go along down the street leaving a fizzling kind of a
steam out behind, was kind of a joke. I know one time, even quite more recent than that
we drove east down to Massachusetts, the family places. And we used, I think it was an
Oakland then, it was a good gas car. Then it had a maximum speed of about 40 miles an
hour, and we drove down and came back, and on those good roads in Massachusetts, I
came up behind a steamer, a Stanley Steamer, that was different type, but it was a good
car, very good. But they couldn‟t maintain their speed; the boiler wasn‟t quite big
enough to keep „em running as fast as they‟d like to run. I mean they might try to run.
And I‟d come up behind „em then he‟d really open up and run away from me leaving this
big cloud of steam out behind. And then he‟d re-use up about all his steam and perhaps
my speed a run thirty-five forty miles and hour and oh, two [or] three miles, I‟d catch up
with him again. Then he‟d do the same thing again. Just run away from me like nothing.
That steam engine, well that boiler with that steam bottled up in there could run way from
practically anything that was going on in those days. Some of the world‟s records for
steam were made by the Stanley Steamer; I think a hundred and twenty some miles an
hour down on the, well the Florida beaches.
Interviewer: Daytona?
�13
Mr. Davis: Down there somewhere. Well there, they did the high speed work. It‟s too
bad the Stanley went out of business. There‟s quite a story on that. If you go to the
library you‟d probably get a book down there called the Story of the Stanley Steamer. I
think you‟d enjoy reading it. It‟s really worth while. And well I used to enjoy the Stanley
Steamer; I‟d like to see that again. I hear oh that Bill Lear is planning one. I hope he
gets it going. I‟m kind of afraid he may not because, well for what I know of Bill Lear,
he‟s a kind of, oh a, visionist guy. He can imagine doing this, and he can imagine doing
that and that was about it. I knew him, I mean I knew of him because that when I was at
Westinghouse, he was in competition with us trying to furnish government equipment.
And he didn‟t have enough background and enough sense or enough anything so when it
come to making competitive bids, he couldn‟t make „em equal to what we did. But on
the other hand he would under bid us „cause he‟d just say we‟ll make it for so much. I
don‟t know what he did. I don‟t think he ever made anything, get very many contracts.
Sometimes I know we would lose a contract but of course when you bid on government
stuff you got to turn in all your specifications. Then of course, they‟re common property.
He probably then could pick up these specifications I mean the things we had and build
around our specs and do it for a lower price, and we did, but you notice he‟s not in
business doing too much of that. I mean he didn‟t stay in it. Then he came here to Grand
Rapids and, oh then I think he got other people in conjunction with him who kind of gave
some ballast to hold him in control although he used his good ideas and they worked that
way. I don‟t know. It used to amuse me and when I was here first there were a number
of people I knew moved down there at Lear‟s and, yet every practically every year they‟d
change. They couldn‟t stand it apparently, to stay with him. I know one time was a joke
told about he had a conference in his organization somewhere, at least this was the story I
heard, that he said, that we ought to do something this way; it was rather fantastic and the
engineers didn‟t think about much of it. And a couple of days later, he went out into a
development lab and he asked one of the fellows, “How‟d you come along with what I
was outlining the other day” And the fellow apparently wasn‟t too diplomatic, he says,
“You didn‟t expect I was gonna do that fool thing, did you?” He got fired right away.
But Bill Lear was accust…, might do things which would be fantastic, which an engineer
wouldn‟t do, but he ought to be diplomatic enough to say, “Well look, we‟re thinking
about it still.” Or stuff like that He wouldn‟t go and tell the boss, look I wouldn‟t try that
fool thing.
Interviewer: Yeah, what was your family a prominent family in this city?
Mr. Davis: Oh, I don‟t know, you might call „em that. That is Stowe-Davis, and my
father being on the Board of Education for some thirty-five years. He went on the board
when, oh I was about the fourth grade in school, or fifth grade, somewhere along in there.
And I couldn‟t do a thing out of line which any youngster would do. He had a pipeline
virtually from the teachers right into him. And he knew about it when I got home that
night. He knew about it and I was in for trouble then. So it was a heck of a job, about
bad as being a minister‟s son, living with a situation like that. „Course he was on there
until, oh, well he died in thirty-five and I think technically he was still on the board when
he died. He didn‟t do much the last six months. But anyway he was on the board and all
�14
that time, when I graduated from High School And then I went on to College and stuff
like that, and of course he didn‟t have to do about the college end of things but in the high
school he, well, still had his say. The only time he ever did anything for me, you might
call it, was, I was no good in languages. It was, my mother said I had to take some
German. We had a German down here who really was German, at least she acted so
much like it. And when we‟re taking the courses in German she insisted to learn the rules
for German grammar in German. Well just imagine that. I didn‟t know anything about
German, how was I going to learn the rules? Well I, I got, passed it off as next to nothing
then I got flunked in the course. Well apparently that stirred up my mother enough, so
she talked to my father and said look, you better do something about this. Well, the next
thing I knew, he had it arranged that I would not continue with German course in high
school here. But I would get a tutor. A tutor was, well a professional tutor who‟d had,
was recognized, they had some around town, for various subjects, by the public schools
and I finished the course by tutoring with her. I got my credit for that year of German,
unofficially, but it counted. So when I went to the university I got by with it
Interviewer: You mentioned the Bundy family lived in your neighborhood.
Mr. Davis: Yeah, the Bundys lived right across the street. Bundy was, I can‟t say
positively, but Mrs. Bundy was a son of, well Hollister, I‟ve forgotten his first name. He
had a son, Clay Hollister, you may hear about. And then of course he had several sons
younger than that. I‟m not so sure but one of „em is you about him there is a Bundy
down there in Washington doing something. That might be some of the family, I don‟t
know, „cause they‟ve all pulled out of here. But I can‟t quite imagine that crowd going
over to the Democratic [?]
Interviewer: What, what kind of business was Bundy involved in here in Grand Rapids,
do you remember?
Mr. Davis: I think he was an attorney.
Interviewer: Well, the thing I was going to ask you about your family, if they were
prominent, did they a, socialize with those families that lived in the Hill District there?
Mr. Davis: Oh, I don‟t know, I didn‟t pay much attention to what they was going on. I
don‟t think they had too much contact with „em. I know they used to talk about the
Hollisters and the Bundys. My mother used to know Mrs. Hollister, and she used to talk
about Clay Hollister And he was known, see he went to the bank with his father, was
quite an official in the Old Kent Bank, not the Old Kent but the Old National. And well
they were well, they know their way around [?] My mother was quite, well both my
father and mother were active in Park Church. My father was a deacon down there for a
number of years, which added troubles to me, and my mother was very active among the
ladies societies. Oh boy you want to live in those days. You went to church on Sunday
morning and before you knew it you had to go to church in the Sunday evening. Want it?
No. I didn‟t want it. You went to church.
�15
Interviewer: What kind of organizations was your mother involved in?
Mr. Davis: Well, a lot of missionary work, she also worked with the LLC, that‟s the
Ladies Literary Club down there on what is it, Sheldon or something like that?
Interviewer: LaGrave I think.
Mr. Davis: Yeah, it‟s down there still. And my aunt was also, lived with us part of the
time. She was active in the, I wouldn‟t say active, but I mean took part in the thing. And
oh things of, they were doing their share in a mild way, around town. I don‟t mean to say
they were very prominent, like being wives of senators or something like that, but they
did their stuff around town. They were known.
Interviewer: What was living up at, what was living in that neighborhood like as a kid?
Mr. Davis: It wasn‟t so crowded as it is now, and you could do lots of things. Of course
our big lot, that‟s the thing that amuses me, now you can‟t get youngsters to mow grass.
My father says look, you mow that grass, and you mowed that grass. You raked it and
did all this kind of stuff. There‟s a lot of things that youngsters don‟t do these days. My
very youngest days, the family had a horse. They had, before I was born, had a horse that
they kept in what we call a barn now. But then they decided it was too much of a job to
keep the horse up there and so they kept the horse at a Livery stable downtown. And
when you wanted the horse, you‟d phone down - the phones had been established by then
- oh, you‟d call up whose livery stable it was, they had changed around at different
times. The one fact [?] place called Albee‟s, Albee‟s Livery Stable, and we used to keep
the horse down there and they would bring the horse up and a fellow bringing the horse
up would hitch his bike on the back of the buggy and would ride the bike back downtown
and after I got to be a little older, perhaps, a middle high school age when we got through
with the horse that afternoon or evening you‟d drive, I‟d drive the horse downtown. Then
it was up to me to my own shift to get back up the hill. Albee‟s Livery Stable was on
Crescent, oh I should say it was about where the Regent Theatre used to be. Do you
remember the Regent Theatre?
Interviewer: Um hum.
Mr. Davis: That was in, about in there. Typical horse barn and stable. They had
probably thirty [or] forty horses in there. Well taken care of.
Interviewer: Did you spend much time downtown when you were a, young?
Mr. Davis: Gee whiz. I was busy doing things around the house and oh playing with
other kids around there, and things of that kind.
Interviewer: Did you do a lot of tinkering when you were a kid?
�16
Mr. Davis: Oh yes, I always tried to do that. See, that‟s one thing that gave me a good
start on most youngsters that didn‟t have the advantage. My father was Stowe-Davis
Furniture Company, of course that was when plants ran on the steam engine, Every
Saturday afternoon, cause they ran Saturdays, except right straight through to five o‟clock
Saturdays, not only five days a week, I‟d go down to the engine room, hang around the
engine room down there and just hanging around with the engineer, I‟d get accustomed to
doing things. Starting at first, well probably just sweeping up a little bit, then doing more
things. I know one of the first things that amused me was at night, when they‟d quit,
you‟d blow the whistle. And I wasn‟t big enough then to reach up by the whistle cord so
I‟d take the stool over and stand that on that by the wall when the whistle cords came
down and he‟d signal to me and I‟d pull the cord and blow the whistle. You don‟t hear
whistles these days. I don‟t know as there‟s hardly one in town. But it used to be quite a
thing, At five o‟clock or six o‟clock, the whistles would blow here in Grand Rapids from
various power plants. Now they got practically no plants that got a whistle. That was
quite an interesting thing and then New Year‟s Eve or New Year‟s Night you might call
it, there‟d be quite a, I wouldn‟t say a ceremony, but nearly every plant that had a whistle
would blow it at midnight. No, I enjoyed my work at the factory. I don‟t call it work; I
just hung around over there. Oh but I did have to do work one time. He got, I don‟t
know if you‟ve ever been in a furniture factory much, you know they have planers, with
plane oh surface boards, like this, big wide ones long, tops of tables and oh things like
that and oh, I probably was fourteen maybe. He says, “You‟d better go to work” and so
he says. One of the jobs in the factory that I got was tending the planer. That is the
fellow runs the planer, he puts the boards in the front there and runs through the planer
then they come out the back side and you had to pick these things up. I mean they, they
just come through, they don‟t let „em fall on the floor, that‟s part of the job. And put „em
on a hand truck where they can be carried away and do something else with them. And a,
so he says, “You‟re gonna work over there this summer.” And the superintendent put me
to tend the planer. The amusing part about it was, I mean that showing how things have
changed, they had a regular kid who did it. I don‟t know what they did with him when I
was, when they gave me a job of doing it, during the summer, but anyway, he was around
there. Once or twice they had him, when they had some very heavy tops in there, they
had him help me pile these big heavy tops on a truck to get them away. Now when I say
truck, I mean one of these trucks, you know, industrial, not a power driven truck. But the
thing I think is humorous about it was that he says, “Well we‟ll pay you eight cents an
hour.” He says, “I can‟t pay you as much as the regular guy. That wouldn‟t be right for
the boss‟s son to have a salary equal to a regular guy. He was getting I think twelve cents
an hour. But we‟ll give you eight cents an hour.” So I worked all that summer for eight
cents an hour.
Interviewer: Was that, was eight, what, the guy that was working for twelve cents an
hour, he was working at what, a ten hour day?
Mr. Davis: I suppose so.
Interviewer: Was that, I mean could you live fairly well on that?
�17
Mr. Davis: Well he was just a kid in high school, just I mean in school, like I was He
wasn‟t living, I mean his family probably took care of him. I mean wasn‟t, oh the regular
rates weren‟t very high, no I should say not. Well, I can remember my father used to talk
about some of the higher paid men over there make sixty cents an hour. That was good
pay for those days. Sixty cents an hour. We used to say a penny a minute. The kids, the
rest of „em got, oh probably after they got along, thirty-five, forty cents an hour. It
wasn‟t very much, but they used to live, and be quite happy I would say. Well I got eight
cents an hour.
Interviewer: Where did the furniture factories get their workers?
Mr. Davis: Oh just all around town.
Interviewer: Was, as I understand a lot of Dutch …
Mr. Davis: Yeah, that‟s right. Oh yeah, most of the factory men were Dutch.
Interviewer: Do you know the reason why so many Dutch people migrated to Grand
Rapids?
Mr. Davis: No, I don‟t know
Interviewer: Why they chose this town?
Mr. Davis: I often wondered. They just came in here. Well why‟d the Poles come in
here? They, came in here too. I don‟t know. They just migrated West and some of „em
stopped here.
Interviewer: Where did your family come from, Massachusetts, did you say?
Mr. Davis: No, Vermont. But even a generation or two before them they came out of
Massachusetts and so on.
Interviewer: Why did your father come to Grand Rapids?
Mr. Davis: Well, I don‟t know exactly. One story I heard was that my mother didn‟t like
living in Massachusetts. It was, they were then living down near Boston, it‟s kind of a
sea-coast atmosphere. And she said the, at least the story I heard was that she told me the
general sea coast attitude and moisture and all that kind of stuff was tough on her throat.
She didn‟t like it. And so next, what she told me was she says they decided they‟d go
West and, oh one story I heard was that they thought of once about Omaha. But she did
have a brother who‟d already got into business in Detroit. There was no automobile
business then. That was just business. And he I think encouraged them to come to Grand
Ra.., come to Michigan and, oh Michigan was only probably, I mean Grand Rapids was
only about seventy thousand or something like that. And they took over, I mean they
bought in then. They boarded downtown here, I used to joke about, it was quite a fancy
�18
boarding house you might call it that. It‟s where the police station used to be. Do you
remember where the police station used to be on the, Ottawa Street down here on the
corner of Ottawa and Crescent? Alright, about a house or two up from there, of course
the police station wasn‟t there then, was where this boarding was. And they lived there a
year or so while he was looking around the town and getting started at Stowe-Davis and
stuff of that kind. I used to tell her, yeah, they kept you right close to the police station,
didn‟t they? And well she used to get kind of aggravated about that but anyway, it was
downtown then, is still, I think it was quite a place. Well, you can see kind of a remnants
of it, you know what is it Bostwick Street, the one that goes up from oh, past the front of
the Butterworth hospital? You know on Bostwick Street between Crescent and Lyon,
there‟re a couple of old brick buildings in there. They used to be more of those
downtown. They were boarding houses, I mean you could live in that. Well it was quite
a thing. People in Boston lived in, I wouldn‟t say boarding houses, I mean they lived in,
houses which were built right along in rows. Not from what you call those row houses
these days, but I mean, there‟d be individual units in a series of perhaps four or five
houses, usually built of brick, anyway pretty well put together. And you could live in
there and you didn‟t have the responsibility of a lot of stuff. It was good living I guess,
for those days. I don‟t think I‟d like it now but I mean that‟s what people did.
Interviewer: Was there very much crime in the city, when you were growing up?
Mr. Davis: Oh, I don‟t know about that. I never had any experience with it. I guess
about the way crimes were was on Halloween night us young fellows used to go out and
do out stuff of dumping garbage cans over and a few things of that kind but I don‟t
suppose you‟d call that crime. No, Grand Rapids I was satisfied? was a model city, if
you might call it that. But I suppose there must have been the usual stuff going on. But
then it was I would say a safe city. Nowadays you won‟t dare go out on certain streets
after dark. Then you could walk or drive anywhere. I wouldn‟t trust… I mean the city
isn‟t nearly as good as it used to be in those days. I don‟t know what they‟re gonna do
with the city now. It isn‟t safe. Well…
INDEX
A
C
Albee’s Livery Stable · 16
Central High School · 10
B
D
Barnard, Alice · 1
Bell Telephone Company · 5
Boelens, Inspector · 10
Bundy family · 1, 15
Butterworth hospital · 7, 19
Davis Technical (school) · 3
Davis, George A. · 1
E
Engineers’ Club · 6
�19
H
P
Hollister family · 1, 15
Hollister, Clay · 15
Hunting family · 2
Hunting, David · 2
Hunting, Edgar · 2
Pantlind Hotel · 1, 2
Park Congregational Church · 15
Pike, Charles W. · 1
R
K
Regent Theatre · 16
Kent County Savings Bank · 1
S
L
Ladies Literary Club · 15
Lake Michigan water · 7
Lamoreaux family · 1
Lear, Bill · 13, 14
Lyon Street Hill Line (streetcar) · 4
Stanley Steamer · 13
Steelcase Company · 2
Stowe family · 2
Stowe, L. C. · 2
Stowe-Davis Furniture Company · 2, 14, 16, 19
T
M
Taggart, Ganson · 2
Massachusetts Institute of Technology · 3
McKay, Frank · 6
U
O
Old Kent Bank · 1, 2, 15
Old National Bank · 1, 15
University of Michigan · 3
W
White Steamer · 12
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/132e520c7707c8a5c9a353930e1007cb.mp3
b53a818c8a514af2a475310f9e427223
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Grand Rapids Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
Oral histories (document genre)
Description
An account of the resource
Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Various
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf; audio/mp3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text; Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-23
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1971 - 1977
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RHC-23_25-26Davis
Title
A name given to the resource
Davis, Robert
Creator
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Davis, Robert
Description
An account of the resource
Robert Davis worked as an engineer for Westinghouse and was a professor of engineering. Mr. Davis had degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Michigan. He was active in the public schools and was a local historian. He died December 21, 1979.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan--History
Local histories
Memoirs
Oral histories (document genre)
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Personal narratives
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
audio/mp3
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971