Bay
City was once the camping ground of the Chippewa Indians, later the
community began as five separate and distinct villages. It eventually
merged into a picturesque riverfront city of historic homes and shops. It
is a city loaded with historical items related to Native Americans,
lumbering, ship building, archaeology, agriculture, commerce and
highlighted with historical architecture from 1830 to 1940. It has the
Saginaw River travelling directly through the center of the city, with
riverside parks and walkways.
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More than 160 years have elapsed since Leon Trombley accepted a federal government assignment and built a small log house on the bank of the Saginaw River. However, Leon made at least one mistake. He turned down an offer to trade a horse for a section of land, which he considered an uninhabitable swamp. Who would have thought that Bay City would some day encompass all of the section offered to Mr. Trombley.
In 1835, Trombley's nephews Joseph and Mader built the first frame house in Bay City, which also served as a trading post, thereby qualifying the Trombleys as Bay City's first businessmen. The house has been preserved in a move to Bay City's Veteran's Memorial Park in 1981. It's now being restored and will be the center of a historic village development. This first building, "Center House" , was located several miles upstream from the original log cabin on a peninsula of dry land near what is now 24th and Water Streets. In addition to the trading post, the home served as a hotel...providing you had your own bedroll...and it eventually became the headquarters for federal and state licensing.
In 1822, Saginaw County had been established extending to Saginaw Bay. Court cases for the bay side communities meant a three day journey to Saginaw, so the citizens of the area voted in 1854 to separate from Saginaw County, forming what is today Bay County.
Bay
City, nestled in the Saginaw Valley, was in those days surrounded by a
fruitful pine forest, and it was the cutting of those pines, and other
trees, that crowned the area "Lumber Capitol of the World". The
actual year was 1844 in which the lumber industry had its start in Bay
County when a mill was constructed at the mouth of the Kawkawlin River. In
the following years, lumbering became a boom industry by the time the Sage
Mill was erected in 1865. In one period, at the height of the lumbering
activity, more than 50 mills were active in the Bay City area.
In 1873, Charles C. Fitzhugh, Jr., a Bay City pioneer, and his wife, Jane, purchased land and built a home on property bounded by Washington, Saginaw, Ninth and Tenth Streets, which later became the location for City Hall. Fitzhugh dealt on a large scale in wild lands and farms, being an agent for over 25,000 acres of land in Bay County. During this time, Washington Avenue was primarily developed with residential homes. Businesses were concentrated along Water Street near the Saginaw River. As time went on, businesses started to expand along Washington Avenue. In 1891, the Fitzhugh’s sold the land to the City of Bay City for $8,500 "to be used for the erection of a City Hall and offices and for no other purposes whatever".
Back in the 1880’s, when Bay City’s population was approximately 25,000, its leaders projected a population of 500,000 by the year 2000. They reasoned a community that size would command a city hall equal in magnitude and state-of-the art architectural elegance.
Although local architects were asked to submit designs, only one firm responded - Pratt and Koeppe. According to a January 19, 1892 article that appeared in the Tribune, Bay City’s local paper at the time, "The plans show a beautiful structure of a modern Romanesque style. The building proper will be two stories in height with a high first floor and an attic story large enough to accommodate offices in the future. At the southeast corner of the building is a tower 185 feet in height. The upper section of the tower is intended for an observatory to be used also in connection with the fire department".
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