Lowell’s Ponte Vecchio

By Joel Thurtell

Lowell bridge and dam. My paternal grandmother had a dress shop in the white building at center-left. Joel Thurtell photo.

The bridge that spans the Flat River at Lowell is easily more than a century old.

It’s a model and a cautionary tale for me in my quest to turn my recently-acquired property — the Ambassador Bridge between the US and Canada — into a shopping mall.

When I found out the former owner, Manuel “Matty” Moroun of Grosse Pointe, no longer wanted the bridge, I was quick to pounce.

Now I’m hearing from people who think I’m nuts to want the bridge and even nuttier to turn it into a major consumer emporium.

It will be the only shopping plaza suspended over international waters.

One giant duty-free store!

People tell me, “If this is such a smart idea, why didn’t Matty think of it?”

Well, I don’t want to answer that.

The guy’s a billionaire, therefore he must be smart.

Right?

I don’t want to go there.

Ambassador Bridge. Joel Thurtell photo.

I’ve got the bridge, and you won’t believe how many factory outlet stores I’m planning!

For those who think this is totally far-fetched, let me point out that the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, has supported (literally and litorally!) retail shopping since the Middle Ages.

In fact, the expression “high middle ages” tracks back to the Ponte Vecchio which in its youth, when it was the Ponte Adolescenza, was much taller than it is today! For the Middle Ages, the Ponte was really high. (Wikipedia fans, please check this fact — I don’t have time — I’ve got a bridge to sell!)

But we really don’t need to go to Europe to find a business model for my scheme.

My home town of Lowell, Michigan, has its own Ponte Vecchio, and while it can’t match the Italian version for age, the Lowell version is no spring chicken. A wooden bridge over the Flat had stores in the 1800s. It burned and was rebuilt in 1904. That’s 108 years, plus additional time served in the 19th century.

At some point in this essay, I plan to reprint a story I wrote for The Detroit News in 1979. But before I get there, I want to mention that I said it’s a “cautionary tale” for a reason.

In 1958, I watched several stores on Main Street go up in flames. A fire in one swept through its neighbors. On one hand, the Flat River is a great source of water for fighting fires. But Lowell’s fire department didn’t have a fire boat, so the rear walls of the stores could not be reached by firefighters.

That seems kind of dangerous, so I’m assigning my urban planner to devise a solution to the fire access problem.

Okay, here’s the story I wrote for The Detroit News. It was reprinted in my 2010 book, Shoestring Reporter: How I Got To Be A Big City Reporter Without Going to J School and How You Can Do It Too! with permission from The Detroit News. I’m reprinting it here with permission from Hardalee Press, publisher of Shoestring Reporter.

This story proves I’m not nuts for turning the Ambassador Bridge into International Shop America.

Lowell bridge during 2010 reconstruction. Part of bridge can be seen in center. Building on right is store built on concrete pilings in Flat River. King Milling Co. silos in background. Joel Thurtell photo.

Scenic bridge in Lowell spans colorful past

By Joel Thurtell

LOWELL, Mich. — It doesn’t attract as many tourists as Italy’s Ponte Vecchio, but Lowell’s Main Street Bridge bears a certain similarity to that 14th-century pedestrian span over the Arno River in Florence.

Lowell’s bridge, barely 100 years old (remember, folks, I wrote this story in 1979!), not only links separate halves of the Kent County town but serves as a retail district for its 3,000 residents.

The Ponte Vecchio is lined with small stalls specializing in jewelry and souvenirs, while the Lowell structure supports two barbershops, a dress boutique, a television store and an auto-parts outlet.

A visitor intent on window-shopping here might not even notice that M-21, Lowell’s main artery, crosses the Flat River 15 miles east of Grand Rapids.

Facing the bridge, the stores extend north and south from Main Street and are supported by concrete and wood pilings planted in the river bottom.

Although a central location is important to merchants anywhere, it is difficult to understand why Lowell’s pioneers erected shops over water, unless perhaps they anticipated a fire and wanted a ready source of water.

That hasn’t always been helpful, however. An early wooden span was swept by fire in 1904.

Shops were rebuilt in the same locations, but a year later the Grand River backed up over a wide region of western Michigan and forced tributaries such as the Flat to rise so forcibly that sections of the bridge were torn away.

Historians cannot determine why Lowell’s elders constructed stores along the bridge in the first place, then rebuilt there after two disasters.

One explanation is that in the 1880’s real estate prices were relatively high, so some merchants chose sites where they would not need land titles.

Another guess goes like this: In the mid-19th century the Flat River was a narrow, shallow, fast-running stream, but just before the Civil War grain millers began damming it for a source of power. One dam went in where the bridge now stands (and a successor mill remains there).

As the water level rose, shopkeepers who had built close to the embankment faced gradual flooding and either moved their stores or put pilings under the buildings.

Despite all the water below, a big mill was gutted by fire in 1943. In 1958, six stores and a tavern burned out.

Nor is fire the only hazard. In 1955, old pilings under the Kroger store collapsed from rot and caused the entire sugar stock to float away in the Flat.

Some shops could become a nuisance to the millers, too. At the turn of the (20th) century, the owner of a produce store sold bananas picked from tough, many-branched stems. When these were empty, he tossed them out a back window into the river, forcing a nearby mill to open its dam, lower the river and remove the debris from turbine machinery every few weeks.

Norton Avery, who operated a photographic studio on the bridge before World War I, recalls sending an assistant to the front door to make sure no horse-drawn carriages were approaching when he was about to make portraits.

The vibration of buggies on the plank roadway of that era caused his equipment to tremble and could ruin his pictures, he said.

Now 85, Avery (again, recall I wrote this in 1979; Norton Avery is either very old or very dead) saw his former shop razed recently, after its roof began sagging away from an adjacent building toward the river.

But enough others survive to make a trip to Lowell an interesting diversion for tourists.

So, I ask you: If Lowell can have a shopping bridge, why not Detroit?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com