Midland Fire Station No. 1 is one of the 39 civic structures designed by Alden B. Dow during his career. He completed the working drawings on April 23, 1955, and in June the construction contract was awarded to the Charles Engelhardt Construction Company of Bay...
Alden B. Dow’s initial presentation drawing for a proposed Midland Hospital was dated August 1938, a full two years before the Midland Hospital Association was established. The Association organized the fund raising campaign to build the city’s first hospital in...
A recent Facebook post about the University of Michigan Administration Building and its demolition prompted an interesting observation about how “un-Dow-like” the design of the building appeared. While the exterior displayed a composed order of squares and...
While the initial site plan for Midland High School was being sketched by Alden B. Dow in December of 1953, one corner of the same 60-acre plot of land was soon to become the location of Nelson Street Elementary School. For the design, the Board of Education again...
Alden B. Dow began the drawings for Northeast Elementary School in December of 1951. It had a simple floorplan of five classrooms, an office, and a work room lined up on either side of a single corridor. It featured a monitor roof with glass block windows rising...
The drawings for Woodcrest Elementary School, one of Alden B. Dow’s last educational projects, were completed in January of 1969. Construction bids were due in early May of that year, and the Board of Education of Midland Public Schools approved the bids and...
Pastor D.E. Howe first contacted Alden B. Dow about the possibility of designing a new building for the growing congregation of the Midland Seventh-Day Adventist Church in early 1961. Following a period of fund raising, sketches of the exterior and interior views...
Alden and Vada Dow were long-time supporters of the work of the Salvation Army in Midland. Mrs. Dow served on its advisory board during the 1950’s and 60’s, and Mr. Dow donated bushels of apples from the Dow orchards every year to the annual Fall Harvest Festival...
The initial site plan for Midland High School was sketched by Alden B. Dow in December of 1953. Preliminary floorplans were developed in April 1954, with working drawings finalized in November of that year. Barton-Malow Company from Detroit was selected as...
Alden B. Dow began the initial drawings for the East Ashman Church of God in April of 1953. A reduced version of the presentation drawing was published a month later in the Midland Daily News with the caption announcing the launch of a fundraising campaign for the...
Dr. John Grebe was a pioneer scientist and “idea man” who worked for the Dow Chemical Company for 41 years. Upon graduating from Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland with a degree in Physics in 1924, he caught the eye of Herbert Henry Dow, who was at Case...
Work on the plans for the Robert Reinke residence began in early 1941. By April, Alden B. Dow was able to present the client with a rendering of the elevation and the floor plan. Construction began that fall. In 1947, Mr. Dow designed an addition to the house...