On Saturday August 13, 2011, the “World’s Largest Stove” turned into ashes after an apparent lightning strike.
Firefighters arrived around 8 p.m. that evening and secured the scene around 10 p.m. after the stove burned down to its frame.
The wooden replica of the 1890s stove was a reminder that Detroit’s industrial history and might pre-dates the automotive industry.
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In 1860, brothers Jeremiah and James Dwyer established Detroit’s first stove factory.
By 1880, Detroit was “The Stove Capital of the World” with many companies that employed thousands of workers in the city.
The Michigan Stove Company, founded by Jeremiah Dwyer in 1872, was one of the most prominent Detroit stove manufacturer during the late 1800s. The company mounted a huge display for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago with a 15-ton wooden replica of its Garland kitchen range sitting atop a platform with a display of the company’s stoves.
The company dismantled the 25-foot-tall, 30-foot-long and 20-foot-wide stove it after the fair and reassembled it next to its factory in Detroit on Jefferson Avenue near Adair Street and Elmwood Cemetery.
The stove’s new home was at “Bloody Run”, the site of a fierce battle between Chief Pontiac’s Native American forces and British soldiers in 1763.
Long-time Detroit News writer and city historian, George Stark, remembered a tree standing at the site before the stove arrived there. The tree met its end, ironically enough, due to a lightning strike, and the stove replaced it as an attraction near the old battle site.
In 1926, the refurbished stove moved up Jefferson to a site just west of the Belle Isle Bridge, close to the Detroit-Michigan Stove Company.
By 1955, Welbilt Corporation became the city’s last surviving stove company and inherited the landmark.
Schafer Bakeries leased the stove to advertise their bread from 1957 to 1965.
By 1965, the then-deteriorated stove moved to the Michigan State Fair ground on Woodward at Eight Mile (yes, that Eight Mile).
The year 1974 saw the stove disassembled and put into storage at Detroit’s Fort Wayne Military Museum.
A fundraising drive by Michigan residents, businesses and unions funded the stove’s rehabilitation and placement back at the fairgrounds with a state historical marker in 1998.
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The Big Stove post-fire
After the Michigan State Fair shut down, stove sat behind a high fence that bore a sign warning people that trespassing on the site was a felony.
I’m guessing chances are low that the community will rally to rebuild the stove, given the state’s economic woes and deterioration of other fairground landmarks I glimpsed through the fence the other day.
Want to learn more? Check out Michigan State Fair (Images of America) by John Minnis and Lauren Beaver, which has a short chapter about the “World’s Largest Stove”.
p.s.
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