Saturday, October 9, 2021

Thank You Michigan Questers!

This past week, I had the opportunity to present to the annual conference of the Michigan Questers that was held in Bay City. The conference draws members of Questers chapters from across the state. As kit house fans know, Bay City was the home of the Aladdin company which produced the first mail order kit houses. Bay City was also home to two of Aladdin's competitors in the kit house business - Lewis Homes and Sterling Homes. All three companies had long histories and numerous examples of their homes can be found locally. As an homage to the host city, the conference theme was "Kit Homes: From Catalog to Curb" and I was asked to speak about the history of kit homes. 

In keeping with the Questers motto of "It's fun to search and a joy to find", a portion of the presentation focused on the research process that I follow to locate and identify kit houses. It's the first time that I've done a presentation with that as the focus. But from the feedback I received, the audience found it quite informative. As for the audience, they were delightful, attentive listeners (after a delicious lunch, no less!) had a lot of good questions and I believe is the largest group to hear my kit house presentation. It was nice to get back in front of a crowd and tell the story of Michigan's kit house history and share examples from our state. Thank you Michigan Questers for having me and happy kit house hunting! 

No comments:

Post a Comment