Hello all!  As we move toward officialdom, we’ll be adding to our online presence (of course) and, eventually this site will be moved.  We would love to have you visit our new Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/porthuronpreservation/ ; hopefully it will prove beneficial to you.  Below, our most recent post is copied.  New isn’t always better, new is too often regressive.

“Here is a powerful example of what has happened in Port Huron, and what has happened in our country generally. This house, estimated to have been built in the mid-1890s, is a regular-sized home on a regular street in Port Huron (Willow St). It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? The owners had the builders pay attention to detail because–why else?– those things mattered. Look at the second recent photo. Detail no longer matters, and it seems clear that uglifying it (and the neighborhood) is perfectly acceptable. Today it is a rental, divided up inside.

There are many houses in Port Huron like this today. Most of them are probably rentals, reflecting what the owner thinks the residents deserve.* Just imagine how nice the homes and streetscapes were originally. Why can’t it be like this now? Can anything be done? Probably. More on that subject in future PHAHPA posts and work. (We’d like to thank Carol F. Norton for providing us the historic image of one of her ancestors’s houses – thanks! The second image is from a realty site; Google street view is not available for it and we haven’t taken our own picture yet.) *I (Vicki) live next to two rentals that are not kept up, and know the depressing quality they lend the neighborhood, both socially and economically.”