Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow In the spring of 1935, Midland physician Dr. Charles MacCallum asked Alden B. Dow to design a residence for the sloping lot he purchased from Mr. Dow just north of the Midland Country Club. The initial rendering...
A new synthetic product developed by the Dow Chemical Company in the late 1930s, ethyl cellulose or Ethocel, captured the imagination of Alden B. Dow for its potential as a building material. While initially developed for use in industry, the architect tested its...
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Alden B. Dow designed this modest, one-story home in 1937 for the Reverend and Mrs. A. C. Barclay, the grandparents of his wife, Vada Bennett Dow. There are no specifications and no signed contract in the job...
Location: East Lansing, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow The Charles W. Bachman Residence in East Lansing was designed by Alden B. Dow in 1936. Charles Bachman was the football coach for Michigan State College from 1933 until 1946. The two-story L-shaped...
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow The first unit block house to be built was the Sheldon B. Heath house, designed by Alden B. Dow in late spring of 1934. This four-bedroom home on West St. Andrews Road was one of the first to be located in a new...
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Alden B. Dow’s plans for the residence known as the Dow Chemical Company House 101 are dated June of 1939. No job files exist for the structure, thus its construction date and cost are unknown. Without a named...
F. W. Lewis was an accountant for the Dow Chemical Company. The first sketches for his modest house are dated 1933, with construction completed a year later for $2,500. At approximately 900 square feet, it marked the beginning of Alden B. Dow’s abiding interest in the design of low-cost housing.
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Robert Goodall was born in Oak Park, Illinois, studied journalism briefly at the University of Illinois, and after working for various Chicago architectural firms went to work with Frank Lloyd Wright. At Taliesin...
Location: Petoskey, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow A. W. Hodgkiss and H. W. Douma were business partners in an engineering and construction firm in Petoskey, Michigan. They lived close to one another in homes designed by Alden B. Dow that overlook Little...
Location: Kalamazoo, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow In the seven years after Alden B. Dow opened his practice in Midland, he built 13 houses using unit blocks, which became a kind of trademark. In the interest of flexibility and economy, he began exploring the...
Location: Saginaw, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow In 1936 Miss Mary Dow asked her nephew, Alden B. Dow, to design a retirement home for her in Saginaw, Michigan. She had purchased a narrow, sloping lot next to the First Congregational Church and just down the...
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Joseph Cavanagh worked in the agricultural chemicals sales department of the Dow Chemical Company for his entire career, at a time when the company would become one of the nation’s foremost producers of...