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Bay County
- University of Michigan Press
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19 bay CIty—bay County throughout its history has shunned subservience as it sought ascendancy. From casting away the name lower saginaw for its county seat to erecting an eight-story art deco county building, action and aim coincide as upward they point. bay County was organized in 1857 in spite of opposition from saginaw and midland Counties, who stood to lose territory in the process. bay County found itself in the opposite position when arenac County was carved out of bay’s northern reaches. by 1883, bay County’s boundaries were settled. bay City took on its name in 1857 and dropped lower saginaw. From 1858 to 1868 it paid James Fraser $200 in annual rent for a wooden building on Water street as its courthouse. the county’s population in 1860 grew from 3,164 to 15,900 by 1870. the county laid a cornerstone for a new courthouse on may 6, 1868. Cyrus Kinne Porter of buffalo, New york, designed the building, which cost about $42,000. It was a square-domed structure almost identical to its younger twin in st. Johns, Clinton County’s seat. the dome was about eighty feet from the base of the building, and the roof was slate. the basement was Kingston stone while yellow brick with sandstone trim made up the superstructure. George Watkins of bay City was the general contractor. the two-story building, which also had an attic, had an interior of mainly white pine. the courtroom measured forty-eight by seventy-one feet, with a ceiling twenty-two feet high. this building made way for the wrecking ball and its skyscraper art deco successor in 1933. the new county building came during difficult economic times as a jobs Bay County bay CouNty and public works project. the county invested a $375,000 bond plus a $165,000 sinking fund in the building. local architect Joseph C. Goddeyne, whose grandfather had done masonry work on the previous courthouse, designed the county building. bay City stone Company was the general contractor. Despite the headline-stealing escape and death of John Dillinger, the completion of the building on march 10, 1934, was also front-page news. It was said at the time of unveiling that the first-floor space went to offices the public most frequented and that welfare offices were in the basement near doorways to spare visitors undue embarrassment. the building’s steel frame supports limestone and granite. the lines of the outside walls emphasize a vertical effect, with upper stories set back from lower stories. the rectilinear design is unmistakably art deco. the stylized geometrics characteristic of the art deco era appear liberally throughout the building’s interior and exterior. bright bronze elevator doors on the first floor welcome visitors. a small plaque with a map depicting the county and its townships appears on the elevator doors on the other floors, despite a typo that left the third “n” out of Pinconning township. Fixtures such as wall-mounted lights invoke visions of Gotham City. Goddeyne placed four ornate vault doors from the old courthouse in the new building. a recent visit revealed that a break space with a refrigerator is behind one of them. the building underwent about $2 million of renovation in 1984 through 1986. It included stairwell work and elevator modernization, new windows, revamping of wiring , and installation of a fire sprinkler system. the work 20 bay CouNty stemmed in large part from sixteen fire code violations in 1981. Despite its size, the building was not tall or wide enough to house all county functions. some were already located in an annex, which was once a commercial center, a few blocks away when plans to relocate court functions emerged. a retired judge complained in a local article that the structure was more office building than courthouse. Its acoustics particularly concerned him, from invading outside noise that interrupted proceedings, to a lack of privacy for jury deliberations and privileged attorney-client communications. security was another primary concern, as the public, the accused, and employees had to share entrances, exits, hallways, and other space. there were also concerns that the books in the law library, which were accumulating at a rate of about five per day, would cave in the top floor, which was weak in the middle and not designed for such weight. librarians were forced to disperse shelf weight away from the center to the perimeter walls and to remove an older book for every new...