Humphrey Block / Peninsula Building: A Kalamazoo Landmark

by Keith Howard, Kalamazoo Public Library

Don’t believe everything you read. A historical marker at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Portage Street in downtown Kalamazoo claims the building was built by Nicholas Baumann in 1874 and was originally designed for the Peninsula Restaurant, none of which is actually true. Baumann’s “Peninsular” saloon, restaurant, and billiard hall was, in fact, located across the street.

Still, the building on the southeast the corner of Michigan and Portage is historically significant. Now called the Peninsula Building, it was originally built as the “Humphrey Block” in 1855 and remains the third oldest-known surviving building in downtown Kalamazoo. At first a grocery store, the building has since housed some of Kalamazoo’s most prominent businesses. It predates every known photograph of the city and has become an iconic local commercial landmark.

Named for General Bissel Humphrey, an early homesteader and stagecoach proprietor, the three-story brick building went up during the summer of 1855. Its first tenants, William Edgar & John Dudgeon, operated a wholesale and retail grocery and provision store, where they stocked nearly every kind of foodstuff imaginable, from eggs and butter, to flour, sugar, salt, fish, tea, and whiskey.

During the Civil War years, the Humphrey Block became “a place of great importance and renown.” It served as a recruiting station, a provost marshal’s headquarters, and a soldier training facility. During the war, Mrs. J.B. Daniels operated an improvised hospital on the third floor, where she cared for dozens of soldiers who became ill due to poor conditions in their encampment.

One of the building’s most prominent and longestrunning tenants was Samuel Folz, “The Excelsior One Price Clothier.” Folz moved his well-established clothing store into the vastly larger quarters of the Humphrey Block in 1892, creating an expansive 6,000-square-foot retail space. The Folz store became locally famous as “The Big Corner.”

During the summer of 1921, the Humphrey Block was sold and Folz moved out. The new owners planned to remodel the structure, but the building was condemned instead, after inspections revealed loose bricks in the upper floors, crumbling mortar, and loose joists. City officials ordered the removal of the upper floors, leaving only the street level portion and basement from the original construction.

After the upper floors were rebuilt, a series of large retailers occupied the building during the years that followed, including Montgomery Ward, and the Kalamazoo Stove Company. A large 50-foot porcelain and steel sign atop the building carried the stove company’s motto, “A Kalamazoo – Direct To You.” The sign remained until 1970, long after the company had gone out of business.

The building sustained serious damage during the 1980 tornado, but it survived. After an extensive $250,000 restoration effort, the Peninsula Building was reopened in 1981, and earned a place on the Michigan State Register of Historic Sites.

In 1996, the first floor was transformed into a brewpub, and the upper floors were renovated as loft apartments. A victim of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Olde Peninsula Brewpub closed its doors in 2021 after 25 years in business. The Saugatuck Brewing Company currently is renovating the brewpub space and hopes to recapture the magic of the historic building with its own brewery and restaurant.

More at kpl.gov