TRAVERSE CITY Traverse Citys new civic gathering space, Rotary Square, will bring big changes to the southeast corner of State and Union streets.

Big changes are nothing new to this intersection.

Over the last 150 years this area has been home to a lumberyard, a wagon works factory, gas stations, an early version of a farmers market, and numerous commercial enterprises.

Long before white settlement, local Anishinaabek regularly came to West Bay to pick berries and fish.

A trail marker on the southwest corner of Lake Avenue and Cass Streets commemorates one of the trails that crisscrossed this region. It is highly likely that tribal members moved along the banks of the Boardman River, very near the soon-to-be-built Rotary Square.

When white settlers first arrived in northern Michigan in the mid-1800s, agriculture dominated the American economy. But by the 1870s the American Industrial Revolution was well under way.

This mix of agriculture and industry was reflected in the earliest businesses arising around State and Union.With lumbering considered sometimes agricultural, and sometimes industrial, a Hannah & Lay Co. lumberyard on the northeast corner of the intersection was the perfect example of this mix.

In 1890 the corner section of the lumberyard was replaced by a saloon, although its safe to assume that a sizeable portion of the saloons customers still worked in the lumber industry.

The lumberyard was not this areas only hint of agriculture.

As late as 1919 the northwest corner housed a small clapboard building, almost a shack, where farmers would exchange crops. Perhaps it could be thought of as an early, low-key Sarah Hardy Farmers Market.

In the 1890s, just to the north of the exchanges location, stood a blacksmiths shop. And for the first couple of decades of the 20th century the southwest corner of the intersection was the location of A.J. Petertyls Traverse City Wagon Works.

By the 1920s both of these small industrial operations, as well as many of the larger industrial enterprises along West Bay and Boardman Lake, were closing down. Industry was waning. Broader commercial activities, and even tourism, began driving Traverse Citys economy.

For tourists and townspeople alike, the internal combustion engine was overtaking the horse as Americas main mode of transportation. All of this was reflected in the developments at State and Union.

By 1929 businesses on three of the intersections four corners catered to the automobile. Filling stations sat on the northwest and southeast corners. On the southwest corner the wagon works had been replaced by an auto repair shop, although the current U.S. Post Office opened at that location in 1939.

Those catty-cornered gas stations, operating under several different owners, remained in business to the turn of the 21st century.

The Rennie Oil Company occupied the northwest corner from 19401970, and was replaced by Kinneys Pioneer Service, which ran until 2007. The corner is now filled with a three-story mixed-use commercial and residential building.

Long-time resident Larry Hains recalls both the Rennie Oil Company and Kinneys Pioneer Service displaying a kind of three-dimensional public service announcement.

I remember for years the stations had the practice of placing vehicles from extremely bad wrecks right on the corner, easily seen by all. They were a warning to drive carefully, said Hains.

Across Union Street the saloon on the northeast corner at some point closed, and in the 1940s the building was occupied by The James Electric and Appliance Company. Esthers Beauty Shop served customers in that space from 1950 1979, and Strong, Drury and Elkins Architects occupied it from 19791993. Since 1993 the site has hosted Cousin Jennys Cornish Pasties.

Esther Sprague ran Esthers Beauty Shop. Memories paint a picture of a place where people felt welcomed and at ease.

Esther was a wonderful person to work for. She was so generous with all of us ladies that worked there, recalled Millie Acre Salensky.

Barbara Smith recounts a summer family tradition from the late 1950s and early 1960s: As soon as school was out, her mother would take her and her two sisters to Esthers for summer haircuts.

For years they would receive very short pixie cuts. Smith is pretty sure that was their only hair cut each year, after which they would let it grow out until the next summer.

I met my future wife there, but not while getting a pixie haircut! says Douglas Salensky.

What of the southeast corner itself? The first known building on that corner was the State Street School, which was moved there in 1877.

The school was originally built in 1869 facing Park Street, at a time when it still ran south of State Street all the way to the bank of the Boardman River. The school sat at approximately the location of todays Park Place Hotel annex.

It was an addition to the 1856 White School, named for its paint job, which was the first building built as a school within the city limits.

In the 1880s a string of four more buildings were constructed facing Union Street to the south of the State Street School. The various businesses housed in these buildings reflected Traverse Citys continuing development as a commercial hub.

Those businesses included several restaurants, grocers, a dress shop, a barber, a tailor, a crockery and furniture store, a bicycle shop, a sewing machine shop, a pawn broker, and, eventually, the gas stations that sat catty-corner from Rennies and Kinneys.

The gas station on that southeast corner belonged to Jess Letherby in the late 1930s, and by the 1960s was owned by Curley Crandall. By 1998 the building had been remodeled to house NPI Wireless and Noverr Publishing, then Northwestern Bank, and most recently, Chemical Bank.

Another big change soon will be coming to the intersection of State and Union. Over more than a century and half, Traverse City has successfully adapted to the times. Through agricultural, industrial, commercial, and tourist economies, this town continues to be the thriving little city that could.

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Tale of an intersection written in change: State and Union undergoes evolution - Traverse City Record Eagle