For a few, brief years in the 1870s the Mozart Watch Factory of Ann Arbor was on the rise to rival the best watchmakers in America. Don Joaquin Mozart was one of Michigan’s “most promising inventors.” Called a “genius” in the New York Times, he patented 11 inventions related to clockwork. Yet his business skills never quite lived up to his innovations and he died in the county poorhouse. 

A Family Missing & A Family Made

The details of Mozart’s early life are uncertain. He was born in Italy sometime between 1820 and 1826 and moved to America with his family near the age of three. His father’s occupation varies by the source: he was a watchmaker and his son took after him, or a street musician distantly related to the more famous Mozart, or a man of wealth who fled Italy for political reasons and was assassinated in America. None of these are particularly likely, but what can be said with more confidence is that he died when Don was young. 

The remaining Mozart family ended up in the Boston area. It was near the harbor there, when Don was around the age of 9, that he was lured onto a ship “by the promise of curious shells” and taken out to sea. It wasn’t uncommon for ships to capture young men or boys as crew members when they couldn’t find volunteers for arduous journeys, and they often preyed upon poor immigrants. Young Don Mozart sailed for seven years. He searched for his family when he returned, but his efforts failed and he never saw his mother or siblings again.

Fending for himself, Don found work as a tradesman where his skill at mechanics became clear. By age 30 or so he was the established owner of a jewelry store in Xenia, Ohio and filed his first patent for an “automatic fan” propelled by clockwork. The patent advertised a quieter machine that would be particularly useful for fanning the sick or sleeping, and keeping bugs away. With his profession secured, he married Anna Maria Huntington on September 4, 1854.

Don and Anna started their family in Ohio, welcoming their first daughter, Donna Zeralla, on February 28, 1857 and then their second, Estella Gertrude, on November 28, 1858. Don continued to invent, patenting an improved clock escapement (the mechanism that moves the timepiece’s hands at precise intervals) in 1859 wherein he listed himself as a resident of Yellow Springs, Ohio. By 1862 the family had relocated to New York City and welcomed one more daughter, Anna Violet. 

Career Clockmaker

As a resident of New York Don patented another improved clock and watch escapement in 1863 with Levi Beach and Laporte Hubbell credited alongside him. The three men followed this in January 1864 with a simplified and more compact calendar clock that claimed to register leap years and run for a year with one winding.

Don’s talents gained him enough recognition that a company was created to produce his patents. The Mozart Watch Company was established in the spring of 1864 in Providence, Rhode Island and the family relocated there. Capital of $100,000 was secured along with a factory and machinery. Then, before any product seems to have been produced, the stockholders pulled out in the spring of 1866. No distinct reason could be found to explain their change of heart, other than a new belief that they wouldn’t earn a return on their investment. Don was replaced as superintendent, the company was renamed the New York Watch Company and, in contrast to the name, moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. 

Less than a year later, in January of 1867, Don Mozart began anew in Ann Arbor. Advertisements for “Mozart & Co,” a dealer in clocks, watches, jewelry, and silver-plated ware, ran in the Michigan Argus. The shop was located in the Gregory Block on the corner of Huron and Main. Still tinkering with timepieces, his first patent in this new era was filed in July of 1867 wherein he listed himself as living in New York despite his new store in Michigan. Regardless of the residency, the patent was granted on December 24, 1867 and became the basis of his even greater business venture in Ann Arbor. 

Michigan’s Mozart Watch Company

By the summer of 1868 the second Mozart Watch Company was progressing in Ann Arbor. According to a July 24, 1868 article in the Michigan Argus, “the capital for testing the invention has been furnished, a building secured in which to commence operations, an engine put up, the best of machinery purchased, and a force of experienced mechanics set to work, not exactly making Watches, but making tools with which to stock the factory.” The goal was to produce watches based on the recently issued patent that contained no dead-center or setting-point and required only a small number of parts, allowing for cheaper production.

The company’s growth continued, occupying three stories of Dr. Chase's building according to the February 19, 1869 issue of the Michigan Argus. The article concluded, “We shall expect to see the company soon turning out A. No. 1 watches.” On New Years Eve 1869 a gold watch was presented to Reverend Charles H. Brigham of the First Unitarian Church, confirming that the Mozart Watch Company had managed to start production.

Just six months later the Michigan Argus was pleading with citizens to prevent the company from leaving the city. It had “turned out a number of beautiful watches,” but “the few men who took hold of the enterprise find themselves without means to prosecute the work on the large scale which is necessary to make it a success, and that they have not met the encouragement and support which they had a right to expect from the community at large.” 

Advisors to businessmen from Milwaukee and New York had visited the factory to assess the machinery and patent’s chances of success. “The agent of the Milwaukee parties – a practical man – pronounces the watch, and clock soon to come out, a perfect success…If Milwaukee men stand ready to invest $300,000 in it, cannot our capitalists be induced to invest one third of that sum to retain it here?”

The appeals went unanswered and a group from Rock Island, Illinois bought out the Mozart Watch Company, renaming it the Rock Island Watch Company. Then, like in Providence, the company failed to produce anything before the stockholders withdrew their support. A lawsuit commenced in the fall of 1871, alleging fraud in the sale. The battle concluded in the fall 1873 when it was dissolved after an appeal.

Panic & Final Patents

Just as the court case was wrapping up a greater worry replaced it. The financial panic of 1873 swept the nation and the local banking house of Miller & Webster closed its doors for good in September of that year. The Michigan Argus reported that “a large share of the losses will fall upon parties illy able to bear them,” and this seems to have included Don Mozart. 

Don had always been reliant upon his strengths in innovation. He is recounted as saying, “that he never knew the time when, if he was short of money, he could not hide himself in a hole for a month, and work out an idea that would bring him $1,000.” The article concludes that “money has come to him so easily he has valued it little, has spent it with a prodigal generosity, not to say reckless, and having, most of his life, no special occasion for what is called business shrewdness has in later years been victimized by speculators in his genius.” As he had all his life, he persisted, and that same fall the Michigan Argus included an advertisement for watch repairs by Don Mozart.  

Before the loss of his savings, Don had filed a series of three patents that were approved in July of 1873: another improved escapement, an upgrade to calendar clocks, and a self winding watch. This trio held the potential to earn his savings back. They were designed to be used together in one watch that would include dials showing the month, day of the month, day of the week, AM or PM, quarter seconds, seconds, minutes and hour. It would be wound by the user opening and shutting the watch case five or six times a day and no damage would be sustained by heavier use. He is said to have gone to New York to find funding, but the wealthy residents who would be able to offer the capital were away at their summer homes and he was told to return later.

Always seeking improvement, he took a portion of the watch apart during the interim and lost a piece of it in the process. He was never able to figure out how to put it together again. Before he could return to New York, he lost control of his mind. On December 2, 1874, Don Mozart was taken to what was then known as the “Michigan Asylum for the Insane” in Kalamazoo. Reports claimed that his “fits of temporary insanity” had been going on “for some time” and that up until his removal to Kalamazoo “he was talking extravagantly but coherently enough, of his brilliant prospects and the wealth and success that awaited him, and detailed to friends minutely the terms of an agreement that he claimed to have just made with persons in New York, though he had never gone to that City after his visit in the early Summer.”

The papers attributed his loss of reality to “the strain upon his mind made by his newly invented watch” and the failure of Miller & Webster. In 1875 he was moved to the Washtenaw County Poor House, and died there on March 15, 1877 at the reported age of 58. He was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery and obituaries were carried in papers across the country. 

Collectible Chronometers

It is difficult to determine exactly how many Mozart watches were finished. Estimates vary from 13, to 30, to only a few. The examples that were reported on or have since been located often contain personalized engravings indicating that they were made for investors and friends. They remain as exemplary samples of American watchmaking and their rarity makes them highly sought after by collectors. 

In 2016, a "Chronometer-Lever Escapement" watch signed "Mozart Watch Co., Ann Arbor, Mich., No. 7, Don J. Mozart Patent Dec. 24, 1868" was sold by the auction house Bonhams for $5,250 (the patent date seemed to be a mistake, corresponding instead with the patent of December 24, 1867). Sotheby's auctioned another in 2004 as part of their “Masterpieces from the Time Museum” group. 

Remaining watches can be found as part of the National Watch and Clock Museum, the Paul M. Chamberlain collection, which was displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1921 and found a permanent home at Michigan State University, and the Washtenaw County Historical Society.

Saline's Plymouth Rock
A playful dog rediscovers a long-lost salt spring.

Saline's name and identity are tied up with salt, yet the actual salt springs that once bubbled up along the Saline River south of town hand't been seen since the area was drained for farming in the nineteenth century. But last year, Jim Peters accidentally discovered a slat spring that is still active!

Peters and his dog Bonnie, a gentle but energetic pit bull terrier, were hiking on undeveloped city land near Saline's wastewater treatment plant. Bonnie pulled Peters toward a muddy puddle to get a drink. "As she got close, she sank in up to her chest in muck. Before I could pull her out, she had backed herself, out," he recalls.

Peters washed the grayish mud off Bonnie in the nearby Saline River, then went back to take a closer look at the puddle. “I noticed very few plant varieties growing nearby and that the mud was covered with deer tracks.” That’s when Peters, then a city councilmember, had his “aha” moment: Why were the deer drinking there when they could have used the river? And why was the puddle in a clearing with no trees and substantially less vegetation than anywhere else nearby?

Peters collected some of the watery muck in a plastic bottle he found and took it to the city lab to be tested. “When the report came back that it was as salty as sea water, I was like a kid at Christmas,” recalls Peters. He double-checked these findings using a cleaner bottle and another lab. Again the same results came back.

As soon as his suspicion was confirmed, Peters contacted Saline historian Bob Lane. The two men began working together, Peters researching the salt springs’ prehistory and Lane putting the more recent Saline history in context.

Peters research revealed that Saline’s salt springs are part of an ancient sea bed formed about 600 million years ago, which extended from present-day New Jersey to Wisconsin. (Detroit’s salt mines are part of the same system.) When the Ice Age was over, about 12,000 years ago, animals and people began moving into this area. Prehistoric animals came to drink at the salt springs. Remains of mastodons and mammoths have been found nearby.

Native Americans followed, drawn by the good hunting and also because they too liked the salt. Their remains have also been found. According to the 1881 History of Washtenaw County, Michigan, “Early seekers for relics did not hesitate to open shallow graves and the ground was strewn with the bones of departed warriors.” Lane has identified the location of two Indian burial mounds near the salt springs. One has been leveled for the Crestwood subdivision--people remember finding bones and relics at the time it was being built in the 1960s. A hill west of the DNR Fisheries is believed to be the other. The most recent Indian residents, the Potawatomi, who came to this area in the sixteenth century, used six paths, still there, that converge at the springs. They were known to trade salt with neighboring tribes.

Frend explorers gave the Saline River its name in the 1600s. The first European visitors also appreciated the salt springs. Trappers used the salt to preserve beaver pelts, which were in great demand in Europe for hats. The springs were first pinpointed on a map in 1819 by surveyor Joseph Francis in section 12 of Saline Township.

In 1826, the first permanent settler in Saline Township, Leonard Miller, built his home near the salt springs. Others built nearby. In 1829, F. A. Dewey, a pioneer travelling to Tecumseh, wrote of taking the United States Military Road “west through the Saline River near the salt springs.” This road, the first across the state, ran from Detroit to Chicago following an old Indian trail; it's now Michigan Avenue. In 1832, Orange Risdon, who'd surveyed the road, laid out the town of Saline on high ground north of the salt springs.

The 1881 County History told of an attempt by a group of local men to manufacture salt in 1863. “A building was erected, a derrick put in place, and boring commenced. After three unsuccessful attempts to sink a well, the project was abandoned. There has always existed a doubt in the minds of many whether the contractor engaged to sink the well acted in good faith. The charge is boldly made that he was bought off by rival interests,” they reported.

Evidence of this failed endeavor was found in 1944, when a farmer named Harry Finch was plowing for corn and felt his plow sink down. Investigating, the site he found evidence of the former salt wells. The late Ray Alber, who farmed on land marked as part of the salt springs, once told Lane that he remembered that he and other farmers used to pick up salt clumps that they’d give to their animals.

Lane worked out the wells' location on the west side of Macon Road and has shown it to people as part of historic tours. and has shown it to people as part of historic tours. He has also, with the land owner’s permission, gone over the ground with a metal detector but found nothing left of the would-be salt works.

The 1863 mining attempt is the last reference to active salt springs. When the County History was written eighteen years later, the authors felt the need to offer proof that the salt springs had even existed: “That salt has been made here in years gone by cannot be doubted. Iron kettles have been found which were once doubtless used for this purpose."

So Peters’ delight at his find is easy to understand. The spring presumably escaped discovery for so long because it's in an overgrown area that people rarely visit. Even if another dog had dived in as Bonnie did, only someone well versed in Saline history would have realized what the muddy puddle might be.

Last October, Peters sponsored a bill to create “Salt Spring Park” on the land where he found the active spring. It passed unanimously. “A forgotten parcel of city-owned land in the Saline River valley will now be available for all to enjoy as a unique park dedicated to our local heritage," explains Peters. “It will allow us to provide proper stewardship of our salt springs, enjoy nature and reconnect with Saline’s distant past.” Lane is equally enthusiastic, explaining “There is nothing now in town that explains why we are called ‘Saline.’”

Peters' council term ended last year, but he's continuing to work on the project as a member of the parks commission. His vision is to leave the site as natural as possible but to improve the trail and build an observation deck with signage at the spring, so people won’t get as muddy as Bonnie did. He would like someday to see the spring connected by a walking trail to Curtiss and Millpond parks-- he says that could be “a beautiful, safe, free from car traffic path, much of which is along the river.” He knows all this will take money, which he hopes can be provided with grants. The local Eagle Scouts have already volunteered to clear the overgrown path.

Peters worries that the muddy puddle would underwhelm some people. He compares the spring to Plymouth Rock: “It’s just a brown rock to some – but it’s what it stands for, not what it looks like.” But so far, the reaction fromt he public has been very positive. "People find it fascinating," he reports.

The landmark that shaped the village

Perched on the edge of the bridge in the center of Manchester, the Manchester Mill visually defines the town. Historically, the mill is the reason for the village's existence.

In 1826, John Gilbert bought the land that would later become Manchester. He contracted with Emanuel Case and Harry Gilbert to build a mill on the River Raisin in 1832. Since then, there has always been a mill on that site—although the building has burned down twice and the dam has been rebuilt twice.

According to Chapman's 1881 History of Washtenaw County, Case built a gristmill and a sawmill. Those mills, plus one on the east side of town (now the site of a Johnson Controls factory), furnished the power that made Manchester a leading nineteenth-century industrial town, served by two railroad lines. Case also built the first hotel in Manchester and was the village's first justice of the peace, office in his hotel.

Out of the three mills, the grist the only one that has survived—and it has had to be rebuilt repeated mill burned for the first time in 1853.

Though an exact cause was never determined, fires were common in mills because of the high flammability of grain dust. With wooden buildings and low-tech volunteer fire departments, they would spread quickly. The 1853 fire swept half of the downtown, destroying fourteen businesses and one dwelling before being brought under control.

In 1875 and again in 1908. the River Raisin flooded and washed out the dam. After the second flood, a temporary dam washed out again just two months later. It was replaced with sixty-foot-wide poured-cement structure, which has lasted to this day. Don Limpert, present owner of the Manchester Mill, believes the dam one of the oldest poured-cement structures in the state.

The mill burned for the second time in
By the time the night watchman
red the fire and sounded the alarm,
were shooting through the sides of
ding. The mill was rebuilt again,
it opened for business in January of 1926, it no longer ground flour, just feed for livestock.

Although Henry Ford bought most of the mills in the area, including the one on the east side of town and mills in Saline and Dexter, he decided the Manchester Mill, at a price of $6,000, cost too much. The high price probably reflected the fact that the mill was still in use, unlike the abandoned mills he usually purchased.

E. G. Mann and his two sons, Willard and Earl, bought the mill in 1940. E. G. had been in the mill business since 1927, when he bought a feed mill in Bridgewater, which is still run by his descendants. In 1976, Willard's son, Ron Mann, who had been working at the Manchester Mill, took over. Ron remembers that in the 1960s, the mill was open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and that the workers were grinding all day. But by the time he became the owner, grinding was only about five percent of the business, and more of a service than a moneymaker. The surrounding farmland was being steadily sold off until there were hardly any livestock farmers left. (Today there is only one full-time livestock farmer in Manchester Township.)

In 1981, Mann decided to end the milling part of his business; at the time, it was the oldest operating mill in continuous use on me same site in the entire state. By then, he had expanded into lawn and garden supplies and premixed animal food. He moved this part of the business to the west side of town, where it is still running, under a new owner.

After Don Limpert bought the old building from Mann, he removed the mill equipment, some of which had to be taken out through the roof by a crane. Limpert, who has restored numerous other buildings in Manchester, divided the mill into smaller spaces, starting with an apartment at the top that he calls "Manchester's high-rise." (Bill Farmer, a former member of the Raisin Pickers string band, lives there.) The remainder of the space is rented by stores and businesses. One of the turbines is still in place and could be used to generate electricity if ever needed.

A feeling of the old use still pervades the mill. One of the turbines is used for a coffee table in the Red Mill Cafe, and an original corn-shucking bin empties into the office of the Manchester Chronicle, where editor Kathy Kueffner looks out at the River Raisin while she writes her copy.

—Grace Shackman

Photo Caption: Through fire and flood, Manchester's mill ground grain from 1832 to 1981.

Pressure to meet modern needs endangers three historic landmarks.

Demand for housing and retail and industrial sites in the Chelsea area has exploded in recent years—so a lot more people are mailing letters, checking out library books, and wanting to park their cars downtown. But even as residents put the heat on village leaders to meet these needs, they are also concerned about not just paving over Chelsea's past.

Take the McKune Public Library, for example. Built in 1860, the building has immeasurable historical value as the home of Elisha Congdon, who, with his brother James, founded Chelsea. As a library, on the other hand, it's becoming very cramped and outmoded. But when the board raised the option of tearing it down to build a new, larger library, there was a public outcry. Most villagers also resisted the idea of locating a new library anyplace but downtown, according to Lynn Fox, library board president. "It's [on] a wonderful site, especially if the city moves their offices across the street."

Fox was referring to efforts by Chelsea developer Rene Papo to build and lease a government center on the Palmer Ford lot there. If Papo's successful, his new office center would solve one of Chelsea's long-standing problems. For three years, municipal offices have been temporarily housed in a bank next to the library.

Papo's plan might also solve another problem: the need for a larger post office. Last year the Postal Service declared that Chelsea's current post office is too small and lacks adequate truck access. While villagers have no control over this decision, they are demanding that the postal authorities keep any new post office downtown. Meanwhile the fate of the old building also remains uncertain, and it, too, contains an invaluable piece of Chelsea's history. In 1936 the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissioned artist George H. Fisher to paint a mural on its north wall. Villagers treasure the mural, The Way of Life (right), as an important example of original Depression-era art and as a significant part of Chelsea's past.

If and when a new post office is built, the old structure—and its mural—will be offered to other governmental units by rank. If federal, state, or county officials decide they want the building, villagers will have no formal input over the fate of it or the mural.

Meanwhile, the Downtown Development Authority is building a new parking lot on the Staffan-Mitchell Funeral Home property in response to villagers' demands for more downtown parking. But that location puts a circa-1880 home, most recently home to Serendipity Books, in the way of the bulldozers (see Marketplace Changes, p. 59).

Sensitive to the historic value of the building, the DDA has announced that it will sell the house for a nominal sum if the buyer is willing to move it. "We're not trying to make money," says DDA director Ann Feeney.

It's obvious to many people that these three landmarks—the McKune house, the post office's WPA mural, and Serendipity House—are "priceless." But saving them will come at a price, and someone will have to pay it.

So far, no one has stepped forward to save Serendipity House. The library plans to approach outside sources for contributions before going to the voters for approval of a bond issue to pay for planned additions and renovations on the McKune house. At press time, the board had no figures on the estimated cost.

The fate of the WPA mural will probably take the longest to determine. Anyone who tries to remove it, however, will face a lot of angry villagers. "They'd never destroy it," says Feeney. "People would go bananas if that happened."

—Grace Shackman

From car showroom to coffee shop

Before car salesrooms and gas stations were relegated to the outskirts of town, Ralph Kingsbury's Ford dealership stood on the corner of Main and Broad streets in Dexter. Today the building is the Clock Works Coffee house.

"It's as different as you can get in the same space," says Elizabeth Kingsbury Davenport, Kingsbury's daughter. The Clock Works, although located in the former dealership's post-Civil War Commercial Italianate building, manages to look very modem and airy with exposed brick walls, scenic watercolors, and generously spaced tables and chairs.

In Davenport's time, when her father's business included the main storefront, a garage on the east, and gas pumps on the west, this same site was anything but open: a single Ford floor model took up most of the showroom, surrounded by vats of car parts, barrels of freebies for the gas station, and cane-bottom chairs for people to sit on while they waited for their cars to be repaired.

Harvey Blanchard opened Dexter's first Ford dealership in 1911. Ten years later he started a bus line between Ann Arbor and Dexter using Fords. In 1926, in the last years of the Model T, Blanchard gave up the car business and Kingsbury took over.

"He always loved cars," recalls Davenport of her father. "He drove a Studebaker, but the Dexter Ford dealership was open and his mother bought it for him."

Kingsbury had graduated in 1912 from the U-M's railroad accounting program, the precursor of today's business school. He had been working for the Pere Marquette Railroad in Detroit when the opportunity arose. He moved to Dexter with his wife, Marian, who became the local piano teacher; their three young children, Elizabeth, Doris, and Stewart; his mother, Loretta Kingsbury; and his mother-in-law, Jennie David. They were later joined by his brother-in-law, William David—"Uncle Will," as Davenport knew him.

The new ownership was celebrated with a grand opening. The building was decorated with red and white flags furnished by the Ford Motor Company, and salami, liverwurst, cheese and crackers, and pop were served inside. According to Davenport, the fanfare was probably a bit "too much" for local residents. "They were used to a quieter approach," she explains. "It was a farming community. There were some prosperous farmers, but it was not a rich community. People lived simply. They played cards on Saturday night; they went to weekly dances or church suppers."

If the opening sparked any resistance among members of the community, it didn't affect the business, which grew big enough to employ three mechanics, two salesmen, and a bookkeeper. Davenport remembers her dad sitting at his Mission-style desk in the back of the store wearing a green visor and cooling himself with a palm-leaf fan. In front of him stood the dark green metal counter. With an old-fashioned cash register and a Philco beehive radio. Uncle Will, a short man who always wore a hat—either a fedora or, in summer, a straw boater—managed the two gas pumps (regular and ethyl), although "whoever was around did the gas. They didn't exactly line up for service," Davenport says. To keep customers coming, premiums were given for buying certain amounts of gas. Davenport remembers Depression Glass dessert plates, cups and saucers, creamers, sugars bowls, and salad plates, later replaced by lacy pressed glass that was a yellow-amber color, a light green, or pink.

The store itself was decorated in "Ford Motor olive drab," recalls Davenport. The company had a standard look for its showrooms and sent out posters of cars, large cardboard cutouts of cars, ad materials, and flyers, things that all Ford dealers were expected to use. The repair area (now a video store) was connected to the salesroom by a side door; it had roll-up garage doors on the street, an oil-change pit (hoists were rare in those days), and a back door large enough for cars to exit to the alley.

In the early days of the dealership, Kingsbury sold one car at a time—after a customer bought the floor model, he would order another. Occasionally a Fordson tractor or an additional car or two would be on display outside near the gas pumps.

Later Ford switched to a quota system, sending a car hauler with Kingsbury's assigned delivery. New models were celebrated at the dealership with blue and white triangular banners, while yellow banners were used for special sales. Davenport still remembers the day in 1927 when the Model A was introduced: "I went to the candy store and told them it went sixty miles an hour. They didn't believe me."

Once a month the Ford road man came and inspected the books, an event that Davenport recalls as "always stressful." Henry Ford's visits were even worse. He and his henchman, Harry Bennett, would park in front and "sit and watch," she remembers. "It was like God watching. We were paralyzed with fear and not allowed anywhere near them."

When the Great Depression hit, it was harder to sell cars. "Dad sold a lot of cars to U-M faculty and to his frat brothers or their friends. The repair work was for Dexter folks," recalls Davenport. Area farmers needed to keep their old trucks and tractors running and would sometimes bring them into the dealership "literally held together with baling wire. Dad had a soft heart and knew you couldn't farm without gas. Some people paid their bills with in-kind goods instead of money, a practice frowned on by Mr. Ford, but we ate very well," she says.

During the depression the car dealership was also the repository for surplus food, which was lined up against the west wall. People came in and signed for the food they took. "I was embarrassed that people had to come in and pick up food. I'd always make myself scarce when I could," recalls Davenport.

Kingsbury moved the dealership twice, each time to bigger quarters—first to the top of Monument Park in the building now home to Cottage Inn pizza, and then to the top of the hill, now an AAA office. In 1941 he sold the business to Al Gross, who had been a salesman with him from the beginning. Kingsbury took a job as bookkeeper at the Buhr Tool Company in Ann Arbor, where he worked until he retired. He died in 1976.

After Kingsbury moved out of the Blanchard building, it stood empty until 1944, when Art Lovell moved his appliance store into it from across the street. Lovell, an excellent mechanic, kept the garage as a car repair place and continued to run the gas station, although he changed it to a Dixie Gas station, supplied by the Staebler Oil Company of Ann Arbor. He used the storefront to sell Frigidaire appliances. As engines improved and cars needed fewer overhauls, he segued into doing more appliance repair.

Kate and Mike Bostic opened the Clock Works Coffee Shop in the building in 1997. They survived the first two years despite heavy construction going on around them. "Fortunately we're serving an addicted population," laughs Kate. In addition to coffee the Bostics serve morning snacks and light lunches. They are obviously filling a community need; people come in on the way to work, parents stop in after dropping their children off at school, and local merchants come in for lunch. In warm weather, people can drink their coffee at tables on the side of the building where the gas pumps once stood.

In one respect the present operation is not as divergent from the car dealership as it seems. Davenport recalls that when her father ran the place people came in throughout the day, some waiting for their cars to be fixed, others stopping in if they were buying gas or just passing by. Although the dealership didn't serve coffee (as many do now), "there were newspapers to read," says Davenport. Or, she adds, people would simply drop by, coming in to "sit and talk"—just as they do at the Clock Works today.

—Grace Shackman