Owosso Historical Commission
2016 Annual Historic Home Tour – Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Woodard
September 17 – Owosso, MI
515 N. Washington St., Owosso, MI 48867
989-725-0736
www.owossohistory.org
https://www.facebook.com/owossohistorichometour
https://www.facebook.com/curwoodcollection
https://www.facebook.com/Curwood-Castle-735705456513277
The City of Owosso has a long and prosperous history of recognizing, renovating, restoring, and saving our architectural treasures. Downtown Owosso, which had been laid out by the ambitious Williams brothers as a potential state capital, began to reflect this prosperity, with substantial commercial structures built of brick and featuring ornate Gothic, Italianate and Victorian embellishments. The city boasted of streets lined with grand and elegant homes in a wide variety of architectural style – Italianate, Victorian, Gothic Revival, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, Second Empire…and later American Folk, Georgian Revival, Colonial Revival and Craftsman. All of these styles of homes, churches and museums have been featured in past historic home tours.
This year, the Owosso Historical Commission will be celebrating the 150th Year Anniversary of the Woodard Company, who have been manufactures of first wooden furniture, then caskets and after the depression outdoor metal furniture. A surprising number of the outstanding homes built by the Woodard family still survive – from an oversized Victorian filled with original rare wooden finishes from the Woodard lumber yard, to Usonian-style, low slung brick homes on one level hugging the Shiawassee River – all of these homes speak to the wealth and aesthetic influence of one of Owosso’s early manufacturing pioneers.
Curwood Castle Writing and Conservation Studio Museum, the Comstock Pioneer Cabin and the Woodard Paymaster Building are all part of The Curwood Collection, maintained, supported and preserved by the Owosso Historical Commission, whose vision, “To Foster Appreciation and Discovery of Owosso’s Heritage,” is supported by their mission “To recognize, preserve and bring public attention to the historical treasures of the city and to promote a historical interest in the arts.” The Curwood Collection also includes the Amos Gould House Museum which houses the offices of the Owosso Historical Commission, the Ivan Conger Archive Room - the papers, memorabilia and movie ephemera of James Oliver Curwood, and the Curwood Collection Archives.