Stickney Summer House-Bowers Harbor Inn

About this property

The Bowers Harbor Inn is a restaurant located at 13512 Peninsula Drive in Peninsula Township, Michigan. It was constructed in 1928 as a private house, the Stickney Summer House, and renovated into the restaurant in the late 1950s; it now houses the Mission Table and Jolly Pumpkin Restaurants. The site overlooks the waters of Bowers Harbor, an inlet of Grand Traverse Bay. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. Charles Francis Stickney was born in 1868 in Groveland, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Stickney and Julia G. Noyes. He married Jennie E. Worthen in 1891. By 1900, the couple were boarding in Chicago. Charles Stickney's career was as a shoe and boot manufacturer- a family business for several generations. He engaged in that business in St. Paul, MN for several years, having ended that career in the late 1890s. They soon began travelling to the Grand Traverse area, likely taking advantage of the Pere Marquette Railway summer trains that ran from Chicago to Petoskey, Michigan. In 1909, the Stickneys purchased this property that had been in the family of Chester and Anna Hartson for over 40 years- then a typical Old Mission Peninsula farm with a rather large orchard. They continued the farming use of the property and canned preserves from the orchard harvest, offering them for sale. Charles started the canning business with the Howe brothers in 1910. After a chimney fire in 1927, the Stickneys hired Jennie Stickney's nephew, Kenneth B. Worthen, to design a new summer house, built around the old farmhouse, for their property. Worthern was at the time a principal of Bentley-Worthen Architects in St. Paul, Minnesota, and had made a name for himself by designing many large Twin City residences, many in a distinctive storybook English Cottage style. Worthern designed this 26-room stylized, "a period style house with picturesque elements.... meaning somewhat modern and progressive in approach." Storybook style house for the couple. The house was built at a cost of $175,000, and the Stickneys dubbed it the We-Gwa-Se-Min Ranch. Jennie Stickney died in 1947 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Charles Stickney died two years later in Traverse City. In 1958, Jim and Fern Bryant purchased the Stickneys' property and converted the main house to a restaurant they called the "Bowers Harbor Inn." The restaurant opened in 1959. In 1974, Howard A. Schelde and three business partners purchased the restaurant and renovated it. In 1978, they renovated the previously abandoned east portion of the structure to become a separate casual restaurant, "The Bowery." In 2006, the property was purchased by Jon Carlson and Greg Lobdell, who again renovated the property. They added a microbrewery, turned the Bowery restaurant into The Jolly Pumpkin Restaurant, Microbrewery & Distillery, and turned the Bowers Harbor Inn Restaurant into the Mission Table Restaurant & Tasting Room. The building continues to house the two restaurants, one for fine dining and one casual.

Location

Categories

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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