Posted on behalf of Callum Marquis-Carr, Head of Archives.
After a long scenic drive about an hour north of Flint, I arrived at the Alden B. Dow Home and Studio. Walking into the building, once Alden Dow’s personal home and professional studio felt like stepping back in time. Built-in the mid-1930s, Dow’s early Mid-Century Modern home, with its clean lines, open spaces, and integration with nature, feels retro and modern simultaneously (dining room pictured right). In stark contrast to other house museums of the wealthy and famous, the Dow Home and Studio is modest but fascinating, whimsical, and intricate.
Accompanying me were two large hand-drawn pictures of a cozy house. These brightly drawn, colored pencil sketches, labeled in Alden’s neat script, were nearly a century old. They were more than just architectural plans; they were a piece of history, finally returning home to Midland through Flint. Last year, the Genesee Historical Collections Center (GHCC) received a donation from the descendants of the Catsman/DuBois families of Flint. The record begins in 1907 when Pearle Catsman, daughter of prominent business leader and Russian Jewish immigrant Phil Catsman, through to the mid-twentieth century. Pearle eventually married Arthur DuBois, another prominent Jewish businessman. Pearle Catsman Dubois’s papers are wonderfully complete, including years-long correspondences, diaries, photographs, art, a hundred-year-old recording of Philip Catsman singing the Kaddish, and even some children’s drawings.
While we carefully sorted, cleaned, and placed all of the treasures in this collection into protective sleeves and folders, we came across something unique. Folded and forgotten for ninety years, two architectural renderings emerged from the chaos. It’s rare to find original architectural drawings in private, family collections. Architects typically hang on to proposals for their records and as examples for future projects. What was more incredible was that the drawings were from local mid-century modern legendary architect Alden B. Dow, adding a significant piece to his architectural legacy.
Alden B. Dow was born to chemical industrialist Herbert H. Dow and philanthropist Grace Dow in 1904 in Midland. After graduating from public high school, he spent three years studying engineering at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, originally planning on joining his father in the chemical manufacturing business. Eventually, his passion and talent drew him to Columbia University to study architecture. He graduated from Columbia in 1931 and worked briefly for a firm in Saginaw before studying with Frank Lloyd Wright for a summer in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in 1933. By 1934, he opened his studio in Midland and began building.
In his thirty-year career, Alden B. Dow designed and constructed hundreds of commercial, residential, and civic buildings. Unfortunately, the DuBois house was not one of the homes ultimately built. We may never know why the family never built this house. The family correspondence is entirely personal from this period. There are no further mentions of Alden B. Dow in the collection, and when asked, the family could not come up with a solid reason why, but they noted that they built another home in Flint in 1948.
After a thoughtful conversation with the donor, I made the decision to reunite the drawings with the collection at the Alden B. Dow Home and Studio in Midland. This decision was not taken lightly, but it was clear that since the Catsman/Dubois family never built the house, the drawings were more closely associated with Dow than with Flint and Genesee County. This transfer also ensures that researchers at the archive will have a complete history of the proposed home without having to split their time between the two archives. The Dow House and Studio also provides the perfect storage space for the drawings in sizeable flat file containers, which the GHCC lacks due to very few architectural drawings. The transfer has been duly noted in our records and will be communicated to the public, ensuring this unique historical connection for any researchers in the future.
University of Michigan-Flint
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