Flint Photos: The Old YWCA and YMCA

The old YWCA on 1st Street. (Photo by Mary Fisher)

The old YMCA on Kearsley. Note the phone booth in front. (Photo by Mary Fisher)

Mystery Shots By Mary Fisher

Here's a project for everyone. Help us identify the locations for some of Mary Fisher's great shots from the late fifties and early sixties. If you have any info on these photos, please comment.

Flint Photos: Flint Swim & Racquet Club

More great shots from the Mary Fisher Collection. These photos of the Flint Swim & Racquet Club, 1126 N. Elms Rd., in Flint Township have a fifties feel but were taken in 1967, shortly after FSRC opened. Go here for a compendium of other Mary Fisher photographs. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Before the Parking Lots

On a beautiful fall day in the fifties, Mary Fisher photographed the home of her grandfather, Frank D. Baker, who founded Baker Drugs in 1882 and also served as sheriff and postmaster at one time. The white house at 410 E. Third Street was in the heart of a leafy neighborhood near downtown. Jane Fisher, Mary's daughter, remembers her great-grandfather's house: "It had a massive front porch, and I remember a back staircase that had velvet curtains on either end so that it was completely dark in the stairwell. This house had a coal chute in the basement. It may have even had a Michigan basement, but I mostly remember the coal on the floor.

A view of tree-lined E. Third Street in the fifties.

The Baker house in 1973, shortly before it was torn down to make room for a parking lot.

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A satellite shot of E. Third Street today. The location of the Baker house is identified with a red marker. At least some of the trees are still there.

Back by popular demand...The Della Theater

A reader named Mary comments on the late, great Della Theater on Welch Boulevard and — Presto! — a photo of the theater is produced, courtesy of Mary Fisher, via Grumkin. Yes, Flint Expatriates suddenly has established a reliable supply line for great photos of Flint in the fifties. (Many of you younger Flintoids may have illegally purchased beer and wine at drive-thru party store that's just out of the frame on the right. I won't mention any names.) The Della was later replaced by a Citizens Bank branch.) As usual, you can click on the photo for a larger image.

Here's Mary's reflection on the Della: "I have wonderful memories of the Della Theater on Welch Blvd. My dad would drop me and my friends off at the theater and come back after the double feature. I felt sorry for the adults that attended those Saturday matinees. The kids were wild. It only cost 35 cents for two movies! Half the time I didn't understand what was going on in second movie — usually a drama that was geared for adults."

UPDATE: I enlarged the photo at home and the marquee reads:
Ginger Rogers
We're Not Married
Carson City

Another Update: A reader has pointed out that it was a Genesee Bank branch that landed near the spot of the old Della, not Citizens Bank. Sorry for the error, and thanks for the correction.

Hot air in Lake Fenton

Before there were beige-colored McMansions on Lake Fenton, there were cottages and, on occassion, hot-air ballons courtesy of Capt. Phogg, who's still in business. Mary Fisher took this shot in 1980.

Nude Photos of Robert T. Longway Planetarium

The amazing fifties photos by Mary Fisher, provided by her daughter Jane Hogan seem limitless. Here are two shots of the Robert T. Longway Planetarium before it got its familiar aqua marine outer layer. The Bucky Fuller-esque structural elements look suspiciously like the Mercedes logo. The Buick badge would have been more appropriate, although probably less reliable.

Flint Photos: St. Michael's in the Fifties

Another great photo of Flint in the fifties by Mary Fisher.

One building, different eras

Here's a 1952 shot of Saginaw Street taken from the second story of Baker's Drug Store looking south. The old Vogue store, which later became the second home of The Copa, is the last light-colored building on the right.

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see two giraffe heads poking over the construction scaffolding in front of the Vogue, as well as the sign for Robinson's clothing store.

Notice the trolleybus, perhaps built by ACF Brill, rolling along on juice from the overhead wires. Detroit had similar trolleys, which were eventually sold to Mexico City. After all, who needs electric-powered public transit when you can use gas?

My mom remembers that a favorite prank of the boys at Central High School was to jump on the back of the trolleybus, hit the support wires that ran down below the back window, and disconnect the big arms on top from the power lines. The boys would then "run like hell" while the driver got out to reconnect to the overhead lines and the passengers sat and waited.

Another thing she remembers about Flint is the sheer number of people who were on the streets. The photo gives you a sense of the heavy foot traffic downtown in those days. People are spilling off the sidewalks and into the brick street.

The old Vogue store was recently torn down — with no immediate plans to replace it with anything — offering a lonely view of the Capitol Theater from Saginaw Street. Uncle Bob's Diner used to sit near the trees to the left of the theater, if I remember correctly, and James Incorporated clothing store resided in the lower level of the theater building.


A special thanks to the photographers: The 1952 photo is by Mary Fisher. The shot of the partially torn down Vogue store is by Becky Pettengill. And the shot of the Capitol and the rubble is by Grumkin.

Time Travel Is a Discretionary Art

Downtown Flint, Michigan in the 1950s (Photo by Mary Fisher)

"I find these days that a wistful form of time travel has become a persistent political theme, both on the right and on the left. On November 10 The New York Times reported that nearly seven in ten Republicans prefer America as it was in the 1950s, a nostalgia of course entirely unavailable to a person like me, for in that period I could not vote, marry my husband, have my children, work in the university I work in, or live in my neighborhood. Time travel is a discretionary art: a pleasure trip for some and a horror story for others. Meanwhile some on the left have time travel fancies of their own, imagining that the same rigid ideological principles once applied to the matters of workers’ rights, welfare, and trade can be applied unchanged to a globalized world of fluid capital."

— Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books, 2016

Touch Boutique Remembered

The scene at the Touch Boutique in September 1972 From far left : unknown, Tom Coy, unknown, David J. Boyd, Bill "Woody" Woods, unknown, and unknown. Seated left: Sandy Rosen, unknown. Seated right: Jim Kitchen

This ode to the Touch Boutique has been updated several times as more info and photos have rolled in. It's worth another look. And if anyone has more photos or memories, feel free to send them my way.

Here's the original posts...

More photos of The Touch Boutique at 804 Detroit Street keep magically appearing. These are all courtesy of Flint Expatriate David J. Boyd. I've added these new shots to the original posts so we can keep the comment section intact. Feel free to give us your memories of The Touch.

Bare Naked Clothing

Co-Owner Ron Watson

Ron Watson and David J. Boyd

Middle Earth Books

Doug Boyd

Dick Dehlin "sells incense, rolling papers, specialty pipes, India imports, hippie gear, and all at a nice hip capitalist mark-up," remembers David J. Boyd.

More Bare Naked Clothing.

David J. Boyd, a Psychedelic Ranger at the 1972 Ann Arbor Jazz and Blues Festival

And now back to the original posts...

Readers have sent a few great photos and artifacts related to The Touch Boutique, so I'm adding them to the original post about this long lost Flint icon.

Mary Fisher and friends near the corner of Detroit and Fifth in 1940. The gas station and what was to become The Touch Boutique are in the background.

A more recent shot of the abandoned gas station turned pool hall by jar with most, complete with campaign advertising. To the right is the corner of the old St. Michael's School, which became Daniel O'Sullivan Model School and, eventually, Flint Schools of Choice.

Here is an ad for The Touch Boutique taken from the September 1, 1972 issue of the Flint Freedom Reader, an alternative publication created at The Touch. Thanks to jbing for passing along this great artifact.

And now back to the original post...

For the kids at St. Michael's in the seventies, The Touch Boutique was a mysterious place that most of us saw only from the outside. Here's how it looked then. It was right across Detroit Street from Merlin's Retreat. It eventually became a home to band members of Jesus Christ and the Superstars and Pincusion in the late 1980s. (Check out Aaron Stengel's Take No Prisoners for an archive of the Flint music scene.) Photo is by Jeff Holbrook and courtesy of Flintstoner80, who offers up some amazing Flint memories on his Flickr page.

A 1979 ad for The Touch Boutique courtesy of Jar With Most, who keeps the memory of old Flint alive with his photos and artifacts.

Jar With Most provides a more recent shot of what was once The Touch Boutique. The sign on the left near the roof reads: "Absolutely no God but Allah. Muhammad is His Messenger" in Arabic. You can see the edge of St. Mike's school peaking out between the trees in the middle of the frame.

Trains and cheap gas

Two more photos of Flint in the fifties by Mary Fisher via Grumkin.

Inside I.M.A. Auditorium

The late, great I.M.A. Auditorium frequently comes up in comments from readers who remember everything from dances to Alice Cooper concerts. I just realized I have some interior shots of I.M.A. by Mary Fisher, who has provided numerous other great images of Flint. The photos below are from the 1979 Carman High School graduation ceremony.

Flint Photos: Brooks Apartments

Another great shot of Flint in the fifties from the Mary Fisher Collection.

UPDATE: The location is E. Kearsley and Stevens, now part of UM-Flint. Go here to see a another shot by Tom Wirt of the Brooks with the UM-Flint campus encroaching in the seventies.

Another shot of the Brooks by Gary Custer from the venerable East Village Magazine. It's really worth checking out a great collection of the magazine's photos here.

From fruit to freeway

The oddly punctuated Jame's Fruit Market near the corner of W. Boulevard Drive and N. Dort Highway in the early 1950s. The photo is another in a series of slides taken by Mary Fisher. (Click on the photo to enlarge it.)

And now, the corner as it looks today from the air, courtesy of Google Maps.




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Flint Photos: Main Post Office in the Sixties

Flint's main post office near the Farmer's Market in the sixties. Photo by Mary Fisher.

Flint Photos: McLaren Hospital in the Fifties

Photo by Mary Fisher. View some of her other photos of Flint in the fifties here and here.