Chelsea Commercial Historic District

About this property

The Chelsea Commercial Historic District is a historic district located along both sides of Main Street from Orchard to North Street in Chelsea, Michigan; the district also includes the adjacent 100 blocks of Jackson, East Middle, and West Middle Streets, as well as structures on Park, East, and Orchard Streets. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. The land where the village of Chelsea now sits was first settled in the 1830s by brothers Elisha and James Congdon. In 1848, the Congdons offered the Michigan Central Railroad a plot of land along the rail line on which to build a station. The railroad accepted, and the first structure built at the site was a freight station, completed in 1850. The Congdons platted the village of Chelsea in the fall of that year, and the first public buildings - a blacksmith shop and a hotel - were built soon after. A series of freight stations was built on the site, and the resulting freight business through the town spurred the growth of Chelsea in the mid-1800s. Additional schools, churches, and businesses were built in the area around the depot in the 1850s and 1860s. As the village grew, a thriving commercial district sprang up south of the railroad tracks. The early buildings were wooden, but after a series of disastrous fires in the 1870s, the current brick structures were built. The Chelsea Commercial Historic District begins on the north side of Main Street at the Michigan Central Railroad tracks and the Glazier Stoveworks, and continues southward. to include the bulk of the historic downtown area of the village. The district is primarily commercial in nature, but also includes public and religious buildings and a few private homes. The Chelsea Commercial Historic District contains 61 contributing structures on or near Main Street. It significantly includes the Longworth Complex, a commercial building housing the Chelsea House Livery Stable, the Daniels Showroom, The Merkel Block, and the Mack Building. The district also includes the Glazier Stove Works, the McKune Memorial Library, a structure that formerly served as the post office, the Rockwell Building on East Street, the First United Methodist Church on Park Street, and several other churches. === Glazier Stove Company Warehouse and Clocktower Building === The Glazier Stove Company Warehouse and Clocktower Building is an industrial building located at 310 N. Main Street. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1997. The Warehouse is a three-story rectangular Jacobethan Revival structure built of dark red brick. It was constructed using the Kahn System of reinforced concrete building construction. The prominent clocktower, originally designed as an architectural feature to hold the building's industrial water tower, is one of the most visible landmarks in the city.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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