Family
My family started coming to the Belvedere in approximately
1898. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother on my father’s side were James
M. Houston and Mary Louise Houston. When she learned her doctor planned to
vacation at the Belvedere Hotel in Charlevoix, she (as a hypochondriac) felt
she needed to follow him to be close just in case. So, my family’s connection
to the Belvedere stems from her paranoia. My family stayed at the Belvedere Hotel
each summer until 1911 when they began renting cottage #1. They rented this
cottage each summer until 1919 when my great-grandfather purchased it from the
Bishop estate for his son-in-law, Leonard Matthews, Jr. On Leonard’s death in
1945, cottage #1 passed to his wife Elvira, and on her death in 1950 it passed
to my father. My sister Jane, her daughters Amelia Peltz and Erica Spraker and my sister Bettie and her children Paul
Vodra and Katie Schwabach and I now
share ownership of cottage #1. Now the next generation, Gavin and Olivia
Spraker and Oliver Lazlett (Amelia’s son) and Noah Schwabach are learning to
enjoy the charms of the Belvedere.
Cottage #1
In 2009-2010 my sisters and I decided to undertake a major
upgrade of cottage #1, by adding three new bedrooms a bathroom and a library/computer
room over the garage and extending the kitchen layout to the north. The west
side of cottage #1 was a hodge-podge of architectural quirks, generated by
previous additions to the cottage made in 1920 and 1956. In 1920, bedrooms were
added on the south side of the cottage on both the first and second floors. In
1956 the existing lattice-enclosed woodshed was replaced with an attached
garage with a flat roof. The garage addition required removal of a very large,
prolific apple tree whose branches covered the entire back yard. Once this tree
was gone, the original gable of the west side of the cottage was exposed to prominent
view, truncated abruptly and awkwardly to the south because of the bedroom
additions of 1920. I thought the appearance might be improved with a judicious
choice of design for the planned addition. Our good friend, Charles Bell, a St. Louis architect was hired to draw plans. A
large false chimney to cover the awkward-looking gable (the false chimney to
double both as a skylight and a place to re-locate a large exhaust fan that had
been on the west wall of the cottage) helped improve the look from the west. One
of the best outcomes of the addition turned out to be the new expanded kitchen
with a wonderful view out the new bay window onto Moerland Park.
Another big improvement was the addition of a long workroom on the north side
of the garage. Many of the furnishings for the new addition came from my
parents St. Louis home. I rented a U-Haul and Darcie and I drove a truckload of
furnishings from St. Louis
to Charlevoix in March of 2010.
In 1986 my sister Jane helped me transplant three small
birch saplings we found growing along the old railway right of way south of the
Kiddie Koop to the front and back yards of #1. The birch now in the front yard replaced
a huge basswood tree that had succumbed to disease and old age after a
lightning strike. Keeping these birch trees healthy has proved
to be a challenge. They need to be treated with insecticide, poured around
their roots, every year in order to prevent serious damage from leaf miners. Now
the trees may be entering their last few years of viability. Birch trees do not
live as long as maples. In general the trees on the Belvedere are quite old, many
of the maples and oaks being over one hundred years old. So, judicious planning
for tree replacement on the Club will be needed. The ardent affection that
members have for the Club is typified by a generous monetary gift from the
estate of Louise Rolwing, which the
Board of Trustees, in its wisdom, decided to dedicate to tree replacement on
the Club grounds.
Some of the signature
trees on the Club are the large white pines along the old railroad right of
way, the tall blue spruce on the Yacht Club grounds (unfortunately its twin was
damaged by a storm and needed to be cut down several years ago), and several
large beech trees, many of which have been cut down and removed in recent years
because of disease.
Every year, as a Christmas gift from Bettie and Roland
McElroy, family members eagerly anticipate
receiving a Belvedere calendar for the coming year featuring Charlevoix photos
that Roland had taken during the previous summer. This helps keep the joys of
the Belvedere front and center even during the bleak winter months.
Sailing
Several years ago, due to Darcie’s increasing infirmities,
we had to curtail our sailing adventures to the North Channel on my sailboat, Algonquin. I remember how Darcie used to
be able to go below and prepare lunch in rough conditions, which would have
been impossible for me to do without getting seasick. I remember clambering
with her over rocky islets while collecting blueberries in the Turnbull island archipelago
and rowing over to the small islet that was the site of an active bald eagle
nest. Darcie became quite interested in identifying and recording the passage
of the large freighters we encountered on these trips.
Coupled with increasing challenges to Darcie’s health and my
advancing age as well, in the fall of 2017 I decided to downsize to a more
manageable sailboat. That September I bought,
at auction, a Herreshoff 31 cat-ketch sailboat, Harmony, from the Chesapeake
Bay Marine Museum and had it shipped to Charlevoix.
Harmony is a rather unusual sailboat
--- no jib, with free standing carbon fibre masts. She was in sad shape when I
bought her, but I had commissioned Bettie and Roland, who live near the Chesapeake, to conduct an
informal survey for me before I bid on the boat. I judged from their survey that
she was within my capabilities of restoring to reasonable condition. It turned
out to be a much bigger challenge than I thought, but working on her has been satisfying
and rewarding. In the summer Harmony
resides in slip #2 in the Belvedere Bayou, replacing Algonquin that had called this spot home since 1966.
I served as Commodore of the Belvedere Yacht Club for
several years. In 2001, the Club replaced part of our fleet of ten Pearson Hawk
16’ sailboats, which the Club had owned since 1963, with six Catalina 16.5
sailboats. We still kept two Hawks for those members that preferred the old
boats. There were some plusses and minuses with the Catalinas. They are faster
and sportier than the Hawks, but also less forgiving. They can capsize just as
the Hawks could, but the Catalinas, with a good and agile crew, could be
self-rescued. Unfortunately, usually capsizes occurred with an inexperienced
crew, so in practice self rescue was seldom possible. The biggest problem when
capsized was their tendency to quickly turn turtle, which also would happen
with the Hawks. It was very difficult if not impossible to rescue a capsized
boat from a turtled position without assistance from another source. To help
solve this problem we stuffed the top of the Catalina masts with pool noodles
as far down as the spreader. This enabled the masts to float, but barely. But
still when a boat capsized, the shape of the hull and the windage on the hull
would cause the boat to turtle. So the next step was to install flotation
panels in the head of the mainsail. Finally this was sufficient to overcome the
turtling problem. However, the Catalinas still did not prove to be a rousing
success for the Club, because many users thought the boats were too unforgiving.
In 2015 the Club saw an opportunity to purchase a Precision 18.5 keel boat to
provide a more comfortable sailing experience. This boat is not susceptible to
capsize like the Catalinas and it also has an outboard motor making it easier
to take in and out the channel. So, when this boat’s advantage over the
Catalinas became apparent, A couple of years later another Precision 18.5 with
motor was purchased by the Club.
Nuisances
Bats have been a perpetual problem at many cottages on the
Belvedere. At #203 several years ago, an exterminator was hired to rid the
attic of bats. A smoke bomb was planted in the attic and we stood watching as
swarms of the critters escaped from the attic through a crack in the louvered
vent. This vent was then sealed with wire mesh to prevent further access.
At cottage #1 about year
2011 I discovered a couple of bats caught behind the screen across the
fireplace. This astounded me because I knew that the chimney cap already had a
mesh screen to prevent just such access to the cottage. So, I devised a plan to
get up on the roof behind the chimney where I could stand up to inspect the
chimney cap carefully. What I found was an ever-so-small gap that I doubted a bat
could get through. But there was no other way. So, I purchased some even finer
wire mesh, measured it precisely bent it into shape and secured the new mesh to
the chimney cap. We have had no more bats at #1 since making this fix. But it
was not just those couple of bats that I found behind the fireplace screen that
had gotten into the cottage. More were observed flitting through the cottage that
evening. When I heard rustling on the top of a bookshelf I pulled down a 3-ring
binder and could see bat wings protruding from pages of the binder. Quickly I
put the binder on a chair on the front porch to get the bats out of the house.
Another flock of bats were discovered hunkered down behind a wall mirror in an
upstairs bedroom. An old unused pot-bellied wood stove in that room that had a
stove pipe connected to the chimney, mentioned previously, was discovered to
have several dead bats in the stove when the stove was relocated to the new kitchen.
Trying to hit the bats with tennis racquets proved futile. The bats could sense
the racquets and dodge them effectively The night when the bats were discovered
was very warm, so we had several ceiling fans operating, and the fans were left
on all night. The next morning we were surprised to find three dead bats on the
floor beneath one of the ceiling fans. Apparently the speed of the fan blades
was sufficient to avoid detection by the bats, and the bats were stunned by hitting
the fan blades.
We had a very large bat in cottage #210 in the summer of
2019. The ceiling fan in the kitchen was left on that night. The next morning
the bat was found in the sink, stunned apparently by a fan blade, but still
alive. I grabbed its leg with a pair of pliers and carried the bat, wings
flapping wildly, to be released outside.
Dave Grumman
tells of success using his skill as a star lacrosse player catching bats using
his lacrosse stick.
Bats are not all bad. They occupy an important nitch in the
ecosystem, and are instrumental in controlling mosquitoes and other insects. So
some folks have placed bat houses high on tree trunks around the club. One of
those bat houses is on the big oak tree between #210 and #212. Hopefully we can
keep bats happy but outside cottages.
The swimming pier at the Belvedere beach had long been a
haven for resting seagulls, and an annoyance to beachgoers trying to navigate
along the pier amidst the numerous seagull droppings. When the reconstruction
of the pier was completed in the early 1990’s some ingenious person found that
stretching monofilament fishing line at about 8’ above the pier would deter the
seagulls. Apparently, once a seagull had encountered the unwelcome monofilament
line on attempting to land on the pier it learned never to attempt that again!
And apparently the message soon got passed to its friends as well.
Geese droppings have also been an annoyance at both the
beach and other areas on the club grounds. In 2019, Glenn
Mueller discovered a solution that has proved to be amazingly
effective at the club boat slips. The solution is simply a large cutout image
of a dog attached to a swiveling post driven into the ground. The wind causes
this dog to swing and bounce, thus scaring away the geese. Geese droppings near
the shoreline has been one of the primary causes of “swimmers itch.”
In the spring of 2017 the infestation of gnats at the beach
was truly amazing. Looking toward the beach from Ferry avenue one could see large black clouds
of the swarming critters hovering over the cedars behind the cabanas. Trying to
do any work on a cabana with these pests in the air was virtually impossible;
painting was out of the question. Fortunately, as the summer wore on this
nuisance diminished.
Zebra and quagga mussels, invasive species, have been a serious
problem in recent years. The mussels attach to any thing --- pilings bottoms of
boats, intake pipes. They are causing major changes to the Great
Lakes ecosystem. By filtering the water they make the water
clearer, which might be thought of as a positive, but this allows sunlight to
penetrate deeper thus encouraging marine plant growth and large algae blooms
that are harmful and can lead to other health problems
Band Concerts
For several years Darcie and I have enjoyed attending the
city band concerts on Tuesday evenings in downtown Charlevoix. In advance we
usually order sandwiches from Scovies and have a picnic at Michigan beach before returning to Kilwins
for ice cream before the concert. When children and grandchildren are with us, this
has been a standard weekly event.
Cottage 210
In 2015 Darcie decided to upgrade cottage #210 by adding a
bedroom to the expanded garage, connecting the garage directly to the house
while making a more-friendly, handicap accessible entrance to the cottage, reconfiguring
and expanding two upstairs bedrooms to make them more useful, and adding
another upstairs bathroom. Again, our friend Charles
Bell was retained as the architect for these improvements. In
the process, several existing aesthetic issues were addressed and improved. Also,
a supporting structural issue was discovered and resolved. This modification to
#210 has proved to be invaluable.
Cabana #21
Cabana #21 is now the only one to retain the original design
four-panel bi-fold doors. Many cabana owners, frustrated by dragging, ill-fitting
doors, opted to switch to a three panel style. On Cabana #21 I solved the problem
by using some high-tech, low stretch
cord to support the doors under constant tension, adjustable occasionally as
needed by means of a simple Spanish windlass. The cabana may be opened up
completely and easily by folding the doors back against the cabana walls.
Buildings and Grounds
For several years I served as a member of the Buildings and
Grounds Committee. This Committee is one of the most important on the Club. It
is charged with reviewing any plans for modifications of any physical feature
on the Club grounds. It is a time-consuming job and one that requires study and
thoughtful deliberation. During the course of my role on this committee several
controversial projects were considered, probably the most notable one, that ultimately
was rejected, was plans for the virtual tear-down of cottage #143, and
replacement with another massive structure. It is often difficult to reconcile a member’s
desires for his/her cottage with the Club’s desire to maintain the historical
architectural integrity of the Club. The prevalence of modern building
materials, and the desire to use some of these products in lieu of more
traditional materials has also been an issue. A list of the major cottage
upgrades that have occurred since 2000, as I recall, follows:
#1
#3
#9
#21
#29
#45
#47
#109
#111
#119
#124
#135
#143
#202
#206
#210
#213
#217
#222
#226
#403
#407
#503
#508
#517
#519
Photos
Several years ago, when large freighters were still transiting
the channel to deliver coal to the Advance power plant, Darcie saw a wonderful
opportunity for a photo. Her picture shows the backside of ten-year old Garrett
Hellman standing on the sailing dock, with one arm akimbo on his hip, seeming
to supervise the passage of the huge freighter Myron C. Taylor in the
background as it slipped silently past the Belvedere bayou. I understand that
Peter kept a copy of this precious photo of his son on the desk in his office.
Darcie always has had a gift for recognizing unique photo
opportunities. On the south side of cottage #210 there is a spigot with an
orange handle for a garden hose. One year a vine just happened to be growing at
the base of this spigot, and when Darcie saw the vine entwining its tendrils in
the orange spigot handle, she snapped a picture which makes it appear as if a
beautiful zinnia is growing in the garden.
On another occasion one of the Adirondack chairs at the
Belvedere beach had been randomly tipped on its side propped precariously
against one of the other chairs. Darcie snapped a picture of this improbable
amusing situation, which is now a framed conversation piece displayed on the
wall of cottage #210.
Accidents
The high water on Lake Michigan
in the summer of 2019 came very close to matching the record high water of
1986. It made access to the boathouses
and the slips very difficult, with improvised catwalks necessary. When I
stepped on the end of a board that had been slightly displaced from its cement
block support, the board promptly gave way, flipping me, fully clothed, into
the water of slip #3. Although I was able to climb out ok, a blow from that
board or perhaps the dock caused a hematoma to develop on my left knee. Despite
my best efforts my cell phone, that went in with me, could not be saved. I was surprised and
relieved to be able to order an exact replacement phone, receive it two days
later and then easily recover all my contacts from the cloud! The even higher
water in 2020 set an all-time record and made use of the boathouses and slips,
and also even the beach more problematic. Coupled with the prospect of global
warming, perhaps the pattern of high and low water levels that has prevailed in
the past is changing for the worse. It is noteworthy that the geological record
shows that at some time in ancient history the first and second terraces of the
Belvedere Club were actually beaches of pre-historic Lake
Nipissing. During my lifetime highwater marks have occurred at
about 33 year intervals --- 1953, 1986 and 2020.
Several scary accidents involving people slipping on wet,
slimy docks at the Yacht Club, also occurred during the summer of 2019.
Occasionally it was necessary for me to be hauled to the top
of the masts on my sailboat, Algonquin,
to make repairs. On one occasion Darcie was my helper in cranking me to the top
of the mainmast using the halyard winch provided for hoisting the sail. This
winch has a handle brake which can be pulled down to release the brake when it
is time to descend. But it is tricky to operate safely since one has to apply significant
pressure and a sure grip on the crank handle while at the same time releasing
the brake lever. Darcie was well acquainted with the procedure. But this time,
when I gave her the signal that I was ready to descend, her grip on the crank
handle was not sufficient to keep it from spinning rapidly, dropping me like a
rock. Fortunately, I had my knees and arms gripping the mast tightly to slow my
fall. After recovering from this close call, when I got back down to the deck,
I discovered that Darcie had helped retard my fall by thrusting her hands into
the path of the rapidly spinning handle. Her hands were badly bruised by her
selfless action.
A more serious accident occurred in the fall of 2004. Darcie
and I were closing cottage #1 for the winter. At that time Cottage #1 had a
flat roof over the garage, on which I had stored some old sheets of plywood
that I used in the winter by placing them along the edge of the front porch to protect
the porch from winter weather. Darcie, standing on the garage roof, was handing
the plywood sheets one- by- one over the railing to me on the ground below. Not
realizing, that the wood railing around the edge of the garage roof was not
absolutely secure, she leaned over the railing too far, losing her balance so
that the full weight of her body was pressing on the railing. The railing gave
way, splintered into pieces with long nails exposed, showered down toward the
ground beside where I was standing, with Darcie falling close behind. When she
hit the turf, basically a belly flop from ten feet up, she was knocked out
cold. Immediately I rushed in to call 911. When I got back to attend to Darcie
she was coming to, but I didn’t want her to move until help arrived. Skip Schumacher and Dave Scoular were passing by
about the time the paramedics arrived and offered their assistance. Darcie was
attended to by the staff at Charlevoix hospital, and released, but she had
suffered a serious concussion and broken bones in both hands, requiring surgery.
Animals have accidents, too. In the summer of 2019 some
women playing tennis at the east end of the tennis courts heard a loud thud
nearby. Looking to the east they saw a large raccoon that had fallen from a
high limb of a maple tree onto the slanting sidewalk running beside the
backyard of cottage #1. That evening the injured raccoon was still in the same
spot, still alive, but clearly severely injured. The next morning it was still
in the same vicinity. Club workman were able to coax it into an animal trap,
where it could be transported to another area, safer for all concerned.
For many years the lakeside bayou boathouse eaves have been
attractive locations for swallows to build nests. One summer, the hatchlings must
have had some innate defect, maybe from exposure to a pesticide. They all
seemed to hatch together and almost immediately drop into the water. The young
hatchlings did their very best to swim to a nearby piling, clutching it for dear
life. But swarms of seagulls soon sensed their opportunity, swooping down and
grabbing the hatchlings in their beaks and swallowing them whole in one gulp.
Observing this cruel law of nature at work was quite sobering.
Geyser and waterfall
Who would have guessed that the Belvedere has its very own
version of a geyser and a waterfall! These phenomena appear regularly and
predictably in heavy downpours.
The tennis court steps, between cottage #109 and #111,
becomes a virtual white water Niagara during
heavy downpours. Also the lawn north of the tennis courts and behind cottage
#508, sprouts a little geyser during heavy downpours as the water from the
tennis courts seeps down below the surface and due to a build-up of pressure then
erupts from the turf as a geyser. The obvious large lumps in the turf in this
area are evidence of this geyser activity. Probably not many folks are aware of
these phenomena since most folks aren’t out and about during heavy downpours,
but observation of these events from the security inside cottage #1 during
downpours has always been an amusement to be anticipated.
Frogs and Toads
There used to be a
railway underpass for an abandoned road to the beach situated due east of
cottage#45. With the high water in the early 1950’s the depressed ground under
this overpass was flooded and formed a fabulous pond, occupied by many
varieties of frogs. My mother, being a former biology teacher, encouraged her
children to capture frogs from this pond to examine more closely on the front
porch of cottage #1. You could wrap a frog in a wet rag and gently rub its
belly that would sort of hypnotize it and make it very docile. We would treat a
subject frog accordingly and then place its webbed foot under a microscope to
observe first hand the blood corpuscles flowing in its blood vessels. In those
days the Club was not only home to many frogs but also toads. One would have to
be very careful walking the pathways at night to avoid squashing a toad! Now
frogs and toads seem to be extremely rare on the Belvedere, perhaps mirroring
the precipitous plunge in amphibian life throughout the world..
Mammals seen on or
near the Belvedere
Beaver
Otter
Muskrat
Nutria
Groundhog
Red fox
White-tailed deer
Ground squirrel
Gray squirrel
Black squirrel
Cottontail rabbit
Mouse
Dogs
Cats
Raccoon
Porcupine
Skunk
Bear
Bat
Black bear (tracks observed in snow by Lee Moerland)
Birds seen on or near
the Belvedere
Robin
Blue jay
Song sparrow
Cat bird
King bird
Killdeer
Cardinal
Bluebird
Crow
Grackle
Ruby throated hummingbird
Rose-breasted grosbeak
Thrush
Thrasher
House finch
Flicker
Goldfinch
Barn swallow
Cliff swallow
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Pileated woodpecker
Sandpiper
Caspian tern
Common tern
Loon
Double crested cormorant
Bald eagle
Turkey vulture
Cowbird
Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Baltimore oriole
Great blue heron
Long eared owl
Saw whet owl
Great horned owl
Kingfisher
Starling
Yellow bellied sapsucker
Hairy woodpecker
Mallard duck
Black duck
Mute swan
Cedar waxwing
Sparrow hawk
Merganser duck
Merlin