My Kind of Sights

I ought to know better than to pick up a book like Michigan: Off the Beaten Path, but for 12.5¢ at a resale shop over the weekend, even the 1999 edition of this book was too good to pass up. Its age is hardly a problem, since it’s easy enough to check via the Internet if a site still exists. I own a copy of the Illinois book in the series (even a little older), which has pointed me to some interesting sites over the years, such as the Egyptian Theater just off Main Street in DeKalb, a rare surviving example – I don’t think there were many in the first place – of Egyptian revival architecture.

While visiting DeKalb one day a few years ago, I was going to content myself with checking out the exterior of the Egyptian, but noticed that a live theatre performance was finishing. So I took the opportunity to go in swimming against the current, as if I’d forgotten something, to peek at the interior. The only other place I’ve seen like it is the First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, an Egyptian revival design by William Strickland, who also did the Tennessee State Capitol.

A book like Off the Beaten Path, whatever the state, has the unfortunate effect making me want to see the places I happen across while browsing its pages. After all, who wouldn’t want to go to suburban Lansing to the Travelers Club International Restaurant and Tuba Museum? Or, a little closer to where we live, ride the Saugatuck Chain Ferry across the Kalamazoo River, which has been in operation since 1838? Or see the very first roadside table in the nation (1929) in Ionia County?