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LAKE LINDEN
POINTS
OF
INTEREST
Lindell Chocolate Shoppe. A gem of a classic 1920s sweet shop, the interior all aglow with stained glass and golden oak. Currently closed, for sale. ...
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St. Joseph Church
Lake Linden's French-Canadian community was already 50 years old, with some very prosperous members, in 1910 when it was building this beautiful, twin-towered church, its fourth church building. It's a remarkable church in many ways —for its size and prominence in the townscape, akin to a European church's; for its nearly intact pre-Vatican II interior replete with heavenly scenes with clouds, and a row or two or decorative electric lights; for its windows depicting key scenes from the life of Christ and some saints, including Joan of Arc; and for its outstanding music.
The large Cassavant organ was expanded by noted Michigan organ builder James Lauk. Organist and music director David Short has successfully developed competent congregational singing, not mumbling, and the Mass is actually sung! It's all a treat for Catholics who look back fondly on the church in the 1950s. (The homilies, it should be said, are quite up-to-date.)
The church has two facades. The east façade was designed to face the lake. (That part of the lake is now the high school football field.) In 1910, the fledgling Michigan Highway Department changed the highway route to its present location, to eliminate some twists. So the church built another, even more impressive facade on the west.
St. Joseph is one of those Michigan parishes that are the historic hearts of ethnic communities now widely dispersed. Thus it was possible to raise some half a million dollars for the church's and organ's recent renovations.
701 Calumet/M-26. (906) 296-4191. Visitors welcome weekdays after Mass until about 2:45. Sunday Mass 8 and 10 a.m. Weekday Mass at 7 a.m. in summer, 8 a.m. otherwise. Wheelchair-accessible.
Houghton County Historical Museum. Lots of interesting old stuff here, from miining relics to old snowmobiles ...
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Lindell Chocolate Shoppe
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Currently closed, for sale.
This elaborate sweet shop has survived pretty much intact from 1922, in the glory days of that restaurant genre. The marble counter on the soda fountain has given way to Formica, but the back booths and paneling are perfectly preserved. The interior is all aglow with stained glass and golden oak, accented with little lamps. Quick lunch counters and soda fountains like this thrived in newly industrialized areas, where workers had cash for inexpensive treats.
Italian and especially Greek immigrants latched onto the sweet shop as a business opportunity which could employ the whole family, making hand-dipped chocolates and ice cream, and it didn't matter if their English was rudimentary. Here the simplified Greek owners' names, Grammas and Pallas (for Louis Grammatakasis and Jim Pamatopallis), are proudly spelled out in tiles on the entryway. The Lindell's name comes from a combination of Lake LINDen and HubbEL, where their two original lunch counters had been.
Many Michigan restaurants once had interiors on the order of Lindell's, but most succumbed to the shifting winds of fashion or changes in ownership. Lindell's survived because of two preservation-minded owners, the Gekes family (1937 to 1977) and, from Clawson outside Detroit, the Grunows. They bought it in 1977 and restored the 1920s neon sign a few years later.
(—July, 2009)
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