The Origins of the Smith Kimball Community Center
By Sky Chandler – 2021 HSC Scholarship Winner
Over time, community centers have proven to be crucial to the growth and development of towns across the country. Community centers and the social bonds created within them help to cultivate safe and strong communities. Community centers are social hubs, home to a wide variety of events open to the community, and harbor social interaction, community pride, and volunteer work within towns everywhere. This core building and epicenter of the town can create a stabilizing effect on the lives of everyone within the community. When a safe and inclusive environment is created for people of all ages, especially within small towns, to participate in activities, dances, sports, and meetings, towns thrive. And, that is exactly what happened in Clinton, Michigan.
Our story begins in 1840. Mr. Jira Payne, the operator of the Atlas Feed Company, built a home furnished with pillars of oak cut from the very trees found lining the property. The building rose from the ground with materials supplied from the town, and in 1862, a Clinton Merchant known as John Smith purchased the home from its original owner. As time passed, Smith’s son, Edwin, and daughter-in-law, Euphania, lived in the beautiful home with their daughter Blanche and her husband Leander W. Kimball. Two decades later, they chose to remodel the home and add second stories and stained-glass windows. When Leander Kimball passed in 1955, the building remained the Smith’s until 1956, where the family chose to donate the center to the Village of Clinton. It is now dedicated as The Smith-Kimball Community Center. The beautiful and historic building is available for meetings, weddings, parties, graduations, and anything that the vibrant community around it can find use for.
On 211 Tecumseh Street sits a brick building with beautiful white columns. Adjacent to the rich red bricks lays the middle school where I grew into a young adult, and behind it sits the elementary school where I would play with my friends and trek along the road to an after-school soccer game. The Smith-Kimball Community Center has hosted exercise groups, dances for former CHS graduates, celebrations of freedom during the Fourth of July, art shows every Halloween, and always participates in Christmas in the Village and donates their indoor and outdoor space to community groups, nonprofit organizations, and the general public – this community center has stood through it all, and is a safe-haven and pillar of love and synergy for the entire town.
On February 11th of 1968, a fire broke out in The Smith-Kimball Community Center. The flames centered in the rear of the building, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages. Researching this fire, I found myself wondering a single question: when the very epicenter of a town burns to the ground, what does the town do? While I cannot speak for all towns, I can tell you what Clinton does: it rebuilds. It rises from the ashes and perseveres. Flames can take down the structure that stands for our love, unity, and history, but the fire cannot take us down with it. Our strength remains, and our history is strong and rich. We are a community full of hard-working individuals, loving neighbors, and supportive friends. Our strength as a town is, and always will be, stronger than a single building. We work together, rise together, and stand together, and we will rebuild. As the community center fell, we were able to truly understand what it stood for in the first place. The Smith-Kimball Community Center was later restored as loose paint was scraped, damaged bricks were replaced, and missing mortar was filled in – with a few alterations to the second floor. As our beautiful community center flourished again, we thrived with it.
Before researching the fire at the Smith-Kimball Community Center, I failed to realize how concrete of a presence the Smith-Kimball Community Center has been in my development and core memories over the years that I have attended Clinton Community Schools. This building has always been a constant in my life, and my memories drape and surround the structure standing in the center of this town that I love. My art has hung on the inside of the community center during the Harvest Art Shows, and I can still feel my rosy cheeks from trick-or-treating on the doorstep. When the outside air was cool, warmth always radiated from behind the door. I have participated in Clinton Fall Festival events on the front lawn of the Smith-Kimball Community Center, and around the back, I have played basketball, watched my friends grow up in front of my eyes, and have said teary-goodbyes to seniors as I attended grad parties held by the center.
I think it is important, rather than to focus on the structure, to focus on what the center stands for. Even when the Smith-Kimball Community Center was damaged by the fire, we continued to stand in place of it. The community of Clinton upheld the mission statement of the center, “to foster community participation by providing a facility for arts, education, recreation, and celebration in a historic setting,” even when the center was being reconstructed. The Smith-Kimball Community Center represents our spirit, pride, and love. It stands for our strong, safe, and inclusive community, and we stand for it.