For years, my wife and I would drive by the abandoned 11th Street South Shore line train station in Michigan City, Indiana, and dream. It was a big, beautiful old building, made up of crumbling white tiles. It was the kind of building that we used to build in America all the time when we still appreciated things like classical architecture and design.
The station has been out of use for decades, it was falling down, and it needed rescuing. Located in a part of Michigan City desperate for regeneration, the station was one of those beautiful old buildings, long empty, that was abandoned in plain sight. Ignored by the people who owned it, and ignored by the people who lived around it.
I always thought the old station would make a perfect secondhand bookstore. It was big enough that it would be a massive store; you could have shelves and shelves of thousands of books. You could call it South Shore Used Books or something to that effect. It would attract people to the area, like Lowry’s Books attracts people to Three Rivers. You could ride the train right to it from Chicago!
Time and tide wait for no one. When NICTD announced its plans to redevelop the areas around the South Shore Line Station on 11th Street, the plans included tearing down most of the buildings around the station and building a new development. But in honor of the beautiful building that once stood there, the facade of the station would be saved and integrated into the new development.
I was sad to see the station building go, but I was pleased that they wanted to at least save the facade and protect a little bit of heritage. During construction, they painstakingly took the facade down and put it into storage.
Fast forward a few years, and construction has continued on the giant building. The new parking garage for the station is complete, and crucially, the new train station is complete. Well, more of a waiting room. The station is still outside, but they’ve taken the facade and made it the new entrance to a massive new waiting room for passengers to stay warm (or cool in the summer). You’re able to park your car and walk right to the station platforms through the new waiting room.
The waiting room is airy, clean, and has bathrooms. There’s also a ticket machine to buy tickets for the South Shore Line (there’s no ticket office; none of the stations along the line have those anymore since most people buy their tickets electronically these days). There’s some beautiful new art they commissioned that shows off the history of the South Shore Line (and there’s a timeline showing the history of the rail line). It’s all really well done.
Generally, I’m against ‘facadism’ – taking the front of an old building and then building something completely new behind it. But in this case, when it was either use the facade or throw it out, I’m fine with it. My only real complaint about the whole thing is that because of the placement of the actual train station, you can’t get a good view of the facade or photograph it properly without the new station being in the way.
A minor gripe.
But I’m so very glad they saved this little bit of heritage. So much is going to be changing in Michigan City in the coming years; a lot of blight is going to be swept away, so I hope this stands as an example of a sensitive reuse, respecting what came before while still doing something new and innovative. It will be so easy to just sweep everything away and build anew. It takes effort to preserve something, anything.
I’m glad this got preserved, even if I can now never open that bookstore inside.
On a recent visit to Kalamazoo, Michigan, I was sad to learn that an icon of Southwest Michigan letters had closed. Whenever I was up that way, I was always sure to stop in at the Michigan News Agency; it was a lovely place to pick up newspapers and stock up on magazines (it was also a nice bookstore as well).
If I were in Kalamazoo, I would always do two things: pick up some donuts at Sweetwater’s Donut Mill and visit Michigan News Agency.
So, when I knew I was going to be in Kalamazoo on other business, I planned to stop in and pick up some new magazines (I have been making an effort lately to read more magazines, and my phone less). When my son and I showed up, there was a handwritten sign that said closed, and “thanks for everything, Kalamazoo.”
I peered inside and saw that all the magazine shelves were empty, but the books were still there. A single light provided sad illumination.
When we sat down for lunch, I opened up my phone to find out what happened and was sad to learn that the owner, Dean Margaret Hauck, had died, and her business died with her, as her children weren’t interested in running a newsstand. Dean Hauck died in February 2025 at age 86, which is a ripe old age, and it was surprising to realize she ran the place practically until she died. In pictures, I recognized her; she was always the one to check me out when I bought magazines. I didn’t realize all this time that she was the owner.
Her children have plans for the storefront, but they don’t appear to involve running a newsstand.
Which is a real shame. There are very few real newsstands anymore in the Midwest. In fact, Michigan News Agency was one of the last. According to my cursory research, the last ones left are the Chicago Main Newsstands in Chicago and Evanston (which I have been to and love as well). There was a time when every town and city had a news agency. Even LaPorte, Indiana, had a news agency where you could buy newspapers from all over the world (but it closed shortly after we moved here).
It’s blindingly obvious that we currently live in troubling times, and one of the fundamental, wonderful things about America is its vibrant print media tradition. Many people don’t read print magazines today, preferring their phones over everything else, but they’re still being printed and not just about politics. There is quite literally a magazine for every interest – whether it’s tattoos, model trains, airplanes, geography, or even British country life. Newsstands are a treasure trove to discover these wonderful niche publications that are still going at it, despite all the forces against them.
I’ve recently started reading print magazines again. Like most people, I’m obsessed with my phone, but I’ve found that it’s broken my brain in ways that I’m only starting to understand. It’s destroyed my attention span when I used to love reading long-form writing in the media. So, for the last few months, I’ve been going to bookstores and newsstands and buying up stacks of magazines, and reading those instead of reading my phone. It’s really done well to repair my brain a bit, and it’s lovely to have the tactile feel of a magazine with the printed word on the page.
So, I was very excited to go up to Kalamazoo to stop by and get another stack of magazines.
Oh well.
Chicago Main Newsstand is just as close as Kalamazoo for me, so I guess I’ll just go there more now. There are also a few regular bookstores around that have decent magazine selections – like Reader’s World in Holland, Michigan. Even my local Barnes & Noble has a passable collection. But the nice thing about Newsstands, is they keep old magazines on the shelf until they sell out, so it was a good way to get, say, a stack of a month’s worth of Economist magazines at a time.
I feel sorry for Dean Hauck; her life was dedicated to her newsstand, and it’s now closed for good. Like I said recently on another matter on Ephemera, once we lose these things, we won’t get them back. People aren’t opening new newsstands these days. I can’t imagine why anyone would bother, which I suppose explains the thought process of Hauck’s heirs.
Goodbye, Michigan News Agency. Goodbye, Dean Hauck. You both will be missed dearly.
Recently, I was a volunteer parking attendant for the annual Dunebrook Dragon Boat Races, which took place on Stone Lake in LaPorte, Indiana. My task was done once most people had actually arrived for the event. While directing traffic into a baseball field, I realized that I was actually on a paved trail, and, wondering where it went, I looked it up on my trails app.
It appeared that I could actually follow the trail all the way around the lake. As my wife still had a few more hours to volunteer, I took this as an opportunity to go on a nice, long walk around Stone Lake. For those who don’t know me, I’ve been trying to improve my health by walking every day (and I’m training for a much longer walk – walking Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, an 84-mile walk that takes a week).
My own ignorance was guiding me here. For some reason, I thought the paved path went all the way around the lake, and I thought it was only two miles.
I was wrong on both counts.
So, I set off on the walk, following the nicely paved path along the southern end of the lake.
Stone Lake is not one of LaPorte’s largest lakes, nor is it one of the most popular (that would be Pine Lake). But it’s this lack of popularity that makes it a bit more sedate. There are well-developed beaches here, with bathrooms and facilities in the summer to serve beachgoers. You can even rent a kayak. I’ve never swum in the lake; there have been far too many contamination warnings for that (I won’t even swim in Lake Michigan).
It’s not even particularly clear whether Stone Lake is a very natural lake, Indiana classifies it as a reservoir because it is linked by a small channel to Pine Lake. Either way, it’s about 140 acres in size and only a few feet deep. Most of the shoreline, which was wise of the city planners, is parkland, though there are a few streets with houses that line the lake. But again, it’s far less than on Pine Lake. There are a few boats, but not many like in the volume on Pine Lake.
I passed the beach facilities and headed on the newly paved path that passes along the Lakeshore. I followed it for about a mile and enjoyed looking at all the beach cottages, a few of which look like they have recently been renovated (and a few that were clearly renovated with Chicago money because they follow a similar style – usually painted white with black trim and shutters).
Screenshot
And then after about a mile, I found myself at the end of the paved path, which unceremoniously ended at a dock. This was where I learned the paved path didn’t go all the way around the lake. But my trail app said there were trails to follow. So, I followed along the road, which would lead back to trails through the woods that would follow the lake shore.
I considered packing it in and walking back the way I’d come. If I did, it would be at least a two-mile total walk for the day, but I thought, well, I’m a mile in, and it’s only another mile around the lake, you’re halfway, keep going. Then at the end of the day, you can say you walked around the lake (I was wrong in my distance calculation here).
I walked to the boat landing area where fishermen put their boats in the water. I found the trailhead and followed it as best I could. This was not an enjoyable part of the walk. I generally like walking through the woods, but this was clearly a well-developed mountain biking track, and I kept worrying that I would be in the way of an angry biker trying to enjoy the paths.
This is where I would start to criticize the haphazard nature of the paths around Stone Lake. I don’t have a problem with the mountain biking tracks. And I was lucky that I didn’t encounter any that day, but there should be at least one dedicated foot traffic-only path around Stone Lake.
One reason is that I don’t want to get run over by someone moving too fast on a bike, and the other reason is that the paths were designed for biking; they do not go straight through the woods, they zigzag and go up and down in a way that makes walking unpleasant. I just wanted to walk around the lake. But I found myself zigzagging back on myself several times, while also watching out for bikers. I just kept dutifully following the trail app, which thankfully didn’t guide me too far away from the shoreline. For large parts of this section of the walk, you can’t even see the lake. It’s right there, but none of the trails allow you to see it.
Finally, I got to a section I’d walked on before and realized that I needed to get out of these biking trails before I got hurt. So, I cut through the trails and found myself in the middle of a neighborhood. The map indicated that further down the street, a proper hiking trail would start up again.
So, I followed the street, again, no sight of the lake at all, and found the trailhead. There were a few kids riding, I think, hoverboards through the woods, and we would end up crossing paths several times (or rather, I would be in their way as they were trying to hoverboard their way through the woods). Even though this was meant to be a hiking trail, it zigzagged very much like the biking trails I’d just left, and these teens were using the trail as such. It was… annoying.
Other than this group of teens, I mostly had the whole walk to myself, only occasionally encountering another person or a dogwalker. It was quiet in the quiet bits, and it was lovely to walk through and only hear nature as my companion on the walk. I just wish I hadn’t been in constant fear of being run over by a bike.
Eventually, I found myself back on the main trail next to the lakeshore. Clearly for walkers now. I crossed the neat metal bridge of the channel linking Stone Lake to Pine Lake and found myself in a parking lot next to Pine Lake. Then, I found the paved trailhead and walked the rest of the way to where I started.
In total, by the time I was back at my car, I had walked three complete miles, much more than I’d intended to walk that day.
I’d managed to walk around the lake, and I was rather proud of myself. But if I had to ‘review’ my walk, I would say that it was only moderately successful. LaPorte has spent a lot of money in recent years upgrading its parks and trail systems. But if they really need to take the initiative and either pave the trail all the way around the lake, or develop a hiking trail that’s separate from the biking trails (or develop a clear separation of the two). Then you have one singular experience that someone can tackle in a morning or afternoon.
Frankly, I’m not sure if I’ll do the walk again. I like the distance of it, but I was very well aware that I was walking in places or shared spaces that were not ideal for walking. I wish to encourage the LaPorte Parks Department to develop a walking trail around the whole lake. It’s also, and I should admit this, completely likely that I followed the completely wrong trail. Very possible since I’d never done the walk before.
It is nice that you can even walk around the whole lake, for the most part. The shoreline for Pine Lake is practically 95% controlled by private landowners, so there is absolutely no way to walk around LaPorte’s biggest lake (which, at one point, was two lakes made into one lake). I think I will try walking around Clear Lake next; it’s a similar size to Stone Lake, and it has public trails all the way around it.
After my walk, I waited in my air-conditioned car for my wife to finish her volunteering work, and I fell asleep. So, I guess the walk tired me out!
Michigan City, Indiana, has several notable landmarks along its Lakeshore, and most of them are industrial or institutional. There’s the cooling tower that everyone thinks is a nuclear power plant (it is not). There’s the NIPSCO generating station. There’s the State Prison, with a history going back to the Civil War. There was a lot more industrial heritage in Michigan City, but most of it has been swept away (for example, Pullman rail cars used to be made here). We’re about to lose something else, and I’m afraid that no one seems to be cut up about it, and that bothers me. I’m talking about the Coal Tower over the railroad tracks along Route 12.
It is not exactly what many would call beautiful. It’s a hulking mass of concrete sitting over some railroad tracks. It has been out of use longer than it was ever used. But it has been part of our built landscape since it was constructed about 100 years ago. It was purpose-built – and state-of-the-art technology – to drop coal into steam engines quickly and efficiently. But by the 1950s and 60s, steam was a thing of the past, and it wasn’t needed anymore. But because it was built of reinforced concrete, it wasn’t going anywhere, so it was easier to just leave it than do anything about it.
So, the structure has rotted in a way that concrete crumbles, bit by bit, but never in any real danger of falling. But in the time it became redundant, until today, it has become a landmark, and not just for locals. It’s no secret that this area is enjoyed by people who aren’t from here, especially those from Illinois who come to Indiana and Michigan to spend their summers along our lakeshore (this is primarily because Illinois doesn’t have the good beaches, while we do). The coal tower was a way marker. Since everyone had to pass by it, everyone knew where it was. If you were going up to, say, St Joseph or Holland, Michigan, from Chicago, then the tower would be your halfway point. If you were staying in Beachwalk in Michigan City, you could tell people to turn before the coal tower.
This hulking mass is now a part of the built landscape of this area. It’s been made beautiful by many artists who have painted it or photographed it in the right light. It’s been romanticized in a way that can only happen when something has just been around and is not going anywhere. We don’t really build things to last in this country, but this coal tower has survived a century, even while being completely useless for half a century.
And now, it’s being torn down.
It’s a simple math equation. The nature of the concrete structure meant the authorities that own the tracks (Amtrak), could ignore it. But the condition of the structure is getting worse, and with several passenger trains a day passing underneath it, Amtrak has a choice. They can either start maintaining the structure to arrest any further decay – a structure they don’t use or need at all, or they can tear it down and never have to worry about it again. They’ve chosen the latter. I don’t expect the people who run Amtrak in Washington, DC, to understand what a landmark the structure is. But I wish they did.
It’s coming down. Soon. This week, I saw the demolition crews surveying the scene to plan how they were going to take it down (and I’m very curious as to how they intend to do it – will they just blow it up?). It’s a major operation to remove the coal tower. They will have to close a critical cross-country rail line for five days to bring down the tower and clean up the mess it’ll cause. I suspect they’ll be working around the clock to make it happen. And then, in a few weeks, there will be no sign at all that it was ever there.
In the United Kingdom, a country I admire greatly, partly because they go to great lengths to protect heritage and the built landscape, if something was torn down and was considered a historically significant building, they would require whoever tore it down to rebuild it brick by brick. We don’t have laws like that here. Once something is gone, it is gone forever.
No one is ever going to build a coal drop tower over the railroad tracks again. There will be a lot of change coming to the Michigan City lakeshore in the coming years. The NIPSCO plant will be shutting down and demolished. The State Prison should be shutting down (though recent policy changes indicate that might not happen), and new buildings are being constructed with funding from Chicago developers. I hope that in the process of this new renaissance in Michigan City, we don’t completely sweep away the heritage and landscape that made this place unique.
Did you know that Lighthouse Place Mall used to have a restored building from the Pullman Factory? It was a gorgeous and smart reuse of an old building that respected the heritage of the place while coming into new use. Then one day, practically in the cover of night, the owners of the mall deemed it unprofitable and tore it down before anyone could object. There’s only a field of grass now where that beautiful old factory building stood. It’s been a field of grass for twenty years now. Once these things are gone, we never get them back.
When 37Signals launched Hey.com a few years ago, I was intrigued. I liked many of the ideas that underpinned it, but I also tend to like the way the owners of 37 Signals – Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (aka DHH) – think about and solve problems (I’m an avid Basecamp user). I was not put off by the cost.
The only thing that stopped me from trying it outright was that you were declaring ‘Day Zero’ for your email, and they didn’t support your own domain name. I really didn’t want a hey.com email address. They solved that latter problem within a year (but you still start over when you move to their email).
My situation changed for my personal email, so I decided to give it a try. A few years ago, I started forwarding my longtime Gmail address to a new email on my own email domain that I’d started using (it was easier to give out than my full name, which is hard for some people to spell right, @gmail.com). I used Google Apps for this email’s new address. But I wasn’t happy with it – I quite like Google Apps/Workspace for my work email, but I found it too much for personal email.
It seemed like the perfect time to try Hey.com. I could keep my longtime Gmail address, which forwards all my email anyway, and try it on my new domain.
I signed up and tested it out. It took a few days to get used to the way Hey.com worked, but from the start, I liked it. I’m coming up on six months of using it, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on it – and whether or not I plan to keep it or start using it for my business.
Things I Like:
I like sorting my email into buckets with the irritatingly named ‘Imbox’ – it took a few days of training to get it right. But six months on, it pretty much sorts my email for me without having to think about it.
I love the thumbs-down feature for never hearing from someone/something again. This, to me, is the killer feature of Hey.com, and I can’t figure out why Gmail hasn’t stolen it yet. Gmail has a block function, but it only works sometimes. Hey.com’s block function works all the time. You never hear from them in your “Imbox” again (but there is a folder where you can find all these emails you blocked, just in case something was mis-sorted).
I like the automated bin for receipts and confirmations. I didn’t realize how many of these stupid things were crowding up my inbox. Happy they just get put somewhere for storage, and I don’t have to mark them as read or anything.
The calendar is nice, and I’m happy it’s included in the price, but I don’t use it. My life isn’t busy enough that I need hardcore calendaring. iCal suffices for the few things I need to be scheduled and reminded of.
Things I didn’t like:
I already mentioned having to start from scratch. Six months on, I’d love to be able to search my 20-year email archive in Hey, but I can’t. So when I do need to find something, I still have to go into Gmail and look for it (they recommend backing up to your computer, but nothing really beats Gmail search when you need something fast). I’d never give up the Gmail address anyway, as it’s connected to so many registrations and accounts (I’ve had this Gmail account since you needed to be invited).
The Feed. In principle, I like the concept of the feed. But what I learned after a few weeks is that it just made it really easy to ignore all the newsletters I was subscribed to, even the ones I cared about. Putting them all in one place showed me that I was subscribed to too many, and it quickly became apparent that I couldn’t keep up with them. The Feed has become another ‘to-do’ list of things to go through. But since it’s in its own tab, I don’t go through it at all. There’s pretty much six months of newsletters I haven’t read or looked at. Which I guess means I didn’t want them in my life anyway. Not sure what ‘solution’ I’m looking for here. But maybe I should go through the feed and rethink my favorite newsletters so I at least see those (or move them to RSS).
I also learned that for personal email, I don’t actually send many emails. 99.99% if my Hey usage is just receiving email. I barely send any.
Set Aside is another useful feature on paper, but in practice, since I don’t live in Hey.com, I forget about the things placed there anyway.
Verdict
I like Hey. It’s well thought out, easy to use, and I like the price. Really, it’s just helped me ignore a lot of unimportant email, which I suppose makes it worth the price in time saved. I’ll probably keep using it for the foreseeable future.
I really wanted it to work out enough to entice me to use it for my business email, but I don’t think I will. I’ve used Google Apps on my own domain for Anglotopia for almost 20 years. My email archive is a very valuable business asset on its own, and it’s important to my daily operations as I’m constantly searching through it for things. Having to start over with Hey just does not appeal. The search in Google Apps/Gmail is amazing (so is Hey’s).
Google’s lackluster attempts at email sorting are good enough (I use the Primary, Promotions, and Social Tabs). I just wish it had a screener like Hey. I get a lot of email from people I never want to hear from again, and the block function just doesn’t work properly. I also use the entire suite – I use Google Meet for calls and Docs for files, etc. I get good value out of the $7 a month I pay for it. The thought of starting over and moving to something new just doesn’t appeal to me right now. But that might change if I feel like my email is overloaded. But it’s really not.
Have you used Hey.com? What do you think about it?
