SAGINAW, MI - Just over a year ago, Stone House, the house owned by the uncle of famed Saginaw poet Theodore Roethke, was being prepped for demolition. Now, a team of volunteers from the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation are hard at work restoring the home.
The Stone House, named for its field stone structure, is located at 1759 Gratiot Ave., adjacent to Roethke’s childhood home, 1805 Gratiot Ave., which is now the Theodore Roethke Museum. Although the museum is well-known in the community, Roethke House intern Tony Groulx said the Stone House is equally important to the history of both Saginaw and the Roethke family.
“When (the Roethkes) lived in these two houses, they ran a massive greenhouse operation called the William T. Greenhouse,” Groulx said. “We’re preserving the historical context that the poet grew up in because he traveled back and forth between the two houses. It really was more like one house, like a family compound.”
Although the Stone House, built in 1904, is a registered National Register of Historic Sites landmark, the Board of Trustees of the Friends of Theodore Roethke voted to demolish the home in February 2019. The board had been paying for the home’s mortgage since first acquiring it in 1998. While Dow Chemical paid off the mortgage in 2014, the home hadn’t been able to open to the public because of the repairs it needed.
Fundraising efforts began to restore the home shortly after the vote, though, and the board began a campaign to raise money for repairs. The board asked the public for $50,000, President Anne Ransford said. Recently, they finally raised $13,000, enough to start a $1 million restoration project involving both the Stone House and the museum.
The Stone House will become a community center, poetry reading space and housing unit for poets-in-residence for the Roethke Museum. Groulx anticipates the first phase to be completed by the end of summer. Restoring the entire Stone House may take a year or more. Restorations to the neighboring Roethke Museum will take longer, as a wheelchair lift and other handicap accessibility features will be added.
“Now, it’s our job as a board to write grants, do fundraisers, increase membership, all that,” Ransford said. “We’re just hoping the community we’ll see what we’re working on, and we’ll get more donations.”
Groulx, Ransford and a team of three other volunteers showed up around 10 a.m. on Monday, June 15 to start demolishing the first floor of the Stone House. The first phase of the renovation process will involve replacing the roof and windows, Groulx said. During phase two, volunteers will paint the home’s interior and exterior, insulate the attic, renovate the kitchen, restore the furnace and update the electrical.
On Monday, volunteer Rachel Worthing tore out walls and floors to prepare first floor of the house for restoration. Although she had never been part of a restoration process before, she came to volunteer because of the desire to help preserve the historical home.
“I’m looking for opportunities to give back to the community, and Tony had mentioned to me that the museum needed some help,” she said.
Groulx said many volunteers and community members are eager to see the Stone House restored and finally be opened to the public.
“There’s been a huge community gathering around restoring the house for the last couple of years," Groulx said. "think it’ll be good for the community to see where that money is being invested into and how it will be used to enrich the community.”
While crews work to create a new center of culture for the Saginaw community, the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation are still accepting volunteers and donations. Visit the organization’s Save the Stone House page to learn more.
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