If you love history, you’ve probably imagined stumbling upon a house or a room that hasn’t been touched in a hundred years, a perfectly preserved time capsule.
Local historian Ryan Gage heard there was such a room somewhere in the fifteen-story Fifth Third Bank building on Michigan Avenue in downtown Kalamazoo.
“In my current capacity as local history librarian, I had found a little bit of information on the bank and its history,” he said. “And I had always heard through the grapevine that there was some sort of intact office that looks like something you would find from the 1920s or 1930s, very Art Deco style.”
Gage asked WMUK if we could find out whether this room was real. On a windy February day, Gage and I met another local history expert, Sharon Ferraro, in front of the Fifth Third bank building to find out more. (Disclosure: Gage and I are friends, and he and Ferraro also know each other.)
A notable bank building
Ferraro is the former preservationist for the city. She used to run a tour called Hidden Kalamazoo, and one of its most popular stops was in this skyscraper. The building was completed in 1929 using the same architects who designed Kalamazoo’s city hall.
The walls are made of Indiana limestone, and Ferraro pointed out that if you look closely, you can find tiny fossilized seashells in the building’s exterior.
“It looks like a seashell like you’d pick up on the beach in Florida, only it’s little. It’s about the size of my index fingernail, so it’s not very big,” she said. “You gotta look, but they’re there.”
Her tour sometimes included the building’s bank vault and lobby as well as a small room on the very top floor.
“I was so thrilled to get it added to the tour because people had talked about it,” she said. “I had heard several people tell me about it and they were like, ‘Oh, my dad used to get his haircuts there.’”
"The view...was just glorious"
Ferraro was pretty sure the room Gage had been hearing about was not an office, but a small barbershop with just two chairs on the very top floor of the building.
“I remember going into the space and remember thinking that it probably looked exactly the same as it had in the 1940s or 50s,” she said. “And the view over downtown from that window was just glorious. I mean, what a great place to get a haircut.”
Ferraro’s last tour was in 2018, and she hadn’t seen the room since. She had no idea if the barbershop was still there, or if it had been gutted and occupied by someone else.
As we entered the building, Ferraro pointed out the Art Deco features still intact in the front lobby, including a brass letter box and drinking fountain and an old weather station.
We found out that the elevator only went to the 14th floor. Then we switched to the stairs, coming to a heavy wooden door on the 15th floor.
“I feel like I’m in a Raymond Chandler novel with these old doors and frosted glass,” said Gage.
Haircuts and hawks
We walked down a set of stairs to the elevator landing, then up another set of stairs, where we found another wooden door with gold lettering on the glass that said, “Room at the Top.”
“We had to go up nine steps from elevator level, to get up here where we are now,” said Ferraro. “Which is why this area has never been redeveloped or re-used, because it can’t be made barrier-free.”
The room was small. If you put a grand piano in it, you’d barely have room to play. It was empty except for two hair washing sinks on the far wall underneath a long mirror. Sunlight from the two windows filled the room.
“You can see all the way west to the state hospital water tower, and the old east campus building,” Ferraro said. “And then the other one looks due south, and you can see all the way out past Washington Square easily.”
Ferraro said it looked pretty close to how it did a decade ago on her tours.
“The one thing I see that’s missing is the two barber chairs,” she said. “There were the two sinks for barber chairs, and those are gone.”
She said in the skyscraper’s heyday, it would have held a variety of businesses. The barbershop was there for businessmen to grab a quick haircut on their lunch break.
The room itself was home to a few small businesses before the American National Barbershop opened there in 1960. It became “Trim at the Top” in the 80s, and finally, “Room at the Top”.
Suzanne Huffman-Chamberlin is a local stylist who worked out of the room for about a year in 2003.
“I absolutely loved the lighting and how wonderful it was to open the windows and have the fresh air in the space,” she said. “It just felt really special to be there.”
She said a hawk would frequently perch outside the window and stare inside.
“Someone would be sitting there getting their hair cut and it would be sitting there looking at itself,” she said.
She and her business partner wanted to stay, but the owner would not renew their lease. It seems the room has been empty since then. (WMUK was not able to reach the current owners for comment.)
Our question-asker Ryan Gage said he was hoping the room still had more of its early design elements.
“But it’s still just impressive to see history left behind,” he said. “Hopefully it will be reutilized and continue to have that old-timey aspect to it.”
