Ever wondered what it was like to live during the roaring 20's? You don't have to travel further than the lakeshore to find out. The Felt Mansion in Saugatuck lets visitors step back in time and immerse themselves in a bygone era.
Pat Meyer, who was largely responsible for heading up the mansion's restoration, gives us a history lesson for this week's Weekend Adventure. "Well the Felt mansion was built back in 1925 to 28. Dorr Felt invented the comptometer. The comptometer was the first adding machine that could do all four math functions. We think of him as kind of the Bill Gates of the 1880's," Meyer explained.
She gave us a tour visitors can experience this summer. "They are all beautiful bedrooms but of course I think the most beautiful is Agnes' room," she explained. One of Agnes' beautiful gowns is on display in the room for visitors to see. "This is Agnes' sunroom. She had this because she had tuberculosis and so her husband wanted her to have a place where she had a lot of air and then she had this beautiful view of the pond."
The mansion has 25 rooms total, including a third floor ballroom. There is also a room they have dedicated to teaching visitors about Felt's crowning invention, the comptometer. "The comptometer had an incredible social impact on the world because 99% of all the graduates of comptometer school were female. Men thought the comptometer looked like a typewriter and they refused to learn how to use them. The women became so good at adding up figures that they replaced those accountants and book keepers. It broke the very first glass ceiling."
"It's such a neat part of our history because this was still the roaring 20s. You know after this the great depression came and you didn't see buildings built like this anymore so this is a little slice of history that has survived."
This summer the mansion is open for self-guided tours Sunday through Wednesday from 1 to 5PM. If you'd like a guided tour you can set that up through the mansion's website by clicking here.http://www.feltmansion.org/