Harbour House Museum

A really unusual house and an outstanding collection of Ojibwa baskets, beaded clothing, and other artifacts set this local house museum apart from others.
Harbour House is an unusual variant of Queen Anne house with prominent gables and towers. It's constructed of rough cement block, not wood. The museum board refers to it as done in a "steamboat style," in which twin porches, one upstairs and one down, wrap around the entire house, giving a grand view of the meadow and Paint River Valley to its immediate east.

Builders of cement block houses, in vogue before World War I, were almost always progressive experimenters and innovators in many other respects. The Harbour House, built about 1900 by master mason Fred Floodstrand, was on the cutting edge of that trend. Owner John Harbour was an area businessman who owned a saloon and several farms.

Furnishings of the parlor and dining room are typical of the area. Scrapbooks illuminate Crystal Falls life of various eras.

The upstairs rooms are given over to exhibits on mining, schools, military veterans, and children's toys including a miniature carousel. Many toys can be picked up and played with. The women's room includes clothing.

People involved in the museum have been told that its materials about Ojibwa culture the best in the Upper Peninsula, and perhaps the Middle West. They are stylishly displayed in an upstairs room. On permanent loan to the museum, they are the private collection of Dr. Earl Nyholm, who has returned to his native Crystal Falls after retiring as professor of Ojibwa culture at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, where he taught the Ojibwa language. His full-blood Ojibwa grandmother inspired his interest in the subject. He made a video for the Smithsonian on building birchbark canoes. He also builds wigwams. There's one at the Paint River Hills campground across the river.

17 N. Fourth at Spring north of downtown. Open Mem. to Labor Day, Tues-Sat 11-4 and other times and seasons by appointment. (906) 875-4341. Off-season phone: (906) 875-0217. Admission $2/person or $5/family. Handicap access: OK for downstairs, not for second floor or restroom.

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