The Shelden Avenue Historic District is a commercial historic district located along Shelden, Lake, & Montezuma Avenues in

Houghton, Michigan Houghton (; ) is the largest city and seat of government of Houghton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Located on the Keweenaw Peninsula, Houghton is the largest city in the Copper Country region. It is the fifth-largest city in the Uppe ...

. The district contains 43 contributing buildings (including the Douglass House and the Shelden-Dee Block, both separately listed) in an area of 22 acres. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1987.

History

The structures in the Shelden Avenue Historic District range in age from the 1870s to the 1980s, but were primarily built in 1880-1910, during the copper boom that brought waves of workers into the

Keweenaw Peninsula The Keweenaw Peninsula ( , sometimes locally ) is the northernmost part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It projects into Lake Superior and was the site of the first copper boom in the United States, leading to its moniker of "Copper Country." As o ...

Description

The Shelden Avenue Historic District contains the western Upper Peninsula's largest concentration of architecturally significant commercial buildings. The district includes primarily commercial structures, but warehouses, lodge halls, municipal buildings, a movie theater, and a railroad passenger depot are also included within the district's boundaries. The structures are built in a range of architectural styles, including Late Victorian commercial,

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanesque ...

Sullivanesque Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called a "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He was an influential architect of the Chicago School, a mentor to Frank Lloy ...

Renaissance Revival Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...

Prairie School Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in ...

, and

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

-roofed vernacular buildings. Nearly all of the most significant structures were designed by architects from outside of the immediate area—typically from Detroit, Chicago, and Marquette, including the firms of Charlton, Gilbert and DeMar and Henry L. Ottenheimer. The structures range between one and four stories in height, and are in general constructed from local materials including waste rock from copper mines and native red sandstone.

Gallery

File:Shelden Avenue Historic District Houghton MI A.jpg, Corner of Sheldon and Isle Royale, looking west File:Shelden Avenue Historic District Houghton MI B.jpg, Corner of Sheldon and Huron File:Shelden Avenue Historic District Houghton MI C.jpg, Corner of Sheldon and Huron, looking west File:Shelden Avenue Historic District Houghton MI E.jpg, Sheldon, west of Huron

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Houghton, Michigan Historic districts in Houghton County, Michigan Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan National Register of Historic Places in Houghton County, Michigan Buildings and structures in Houghton, Michigan Neoclassical architecture in Michigan Renaissance Revival architecture in Michigan Romanesque Revival architecture in Michigan