Charles K. Shand (?-1945) worked in the Copper Country for less than ten years and designed many important buildings in the area. Most of these buildings were civic, such as the Calumet Opera House, Red Jacket Fire Station and the Lake Linden Village Hall. He partnered briefly with George D. Eastman, who had briefly been in partnership with Clarence L. Cowles.

Biography

Charles K. Shand was born in Scotland and immigrated to the West Coast of the U.S., working for architectural firms in Tacoma and Seattle.¹ He came to the Copper Country in the mid 1890s. At first Charles Shand worked independently, designing some of the major buildings in Calumet from his offices in the Shelden Block in Houghton and the Borgo Block in Calumet.² In 1903-04 he worked in association with George D. Eastman. Charles Shand advertised in the Houghton, Hancock, and Calumet directories from 1895 to 1904. He then moved on to the Mesabi Range, where his obituary hailed him as a “pioneer Mesaba Range architect.” He died in a rooming house in South Hibbing.³

George D. Eastman was a draftsman who ran a branch office in Calumet for a Saginaw architect by the name of Clarence L. Cowles.⁴ In 1903-1904 George D. Eastman briefly worked with Charles K. Shand in the Quello Block in Calumet.⁵

Clarence L. Cowles (1869-1925), a Saginaw architect, headed the Cowles and Eastman architecture firm located at 12-13 Quello Block, in Calumet, in 1901-02.⁶ Cowles had worked as a draftsman in Detroit as an employee of E. E. Myers, the architect of the state capitol. Cowles then began practicing in Saginaw. His works included St. Andrews Church, the Central Junior High School (1923), and the Doherty Hotel in Clare, Michigan.⁷ Other than the Peter Contralto Block, described below, Cowles & Eastman also designed the Gately-Wiggins Building on 6th Street in Calumet in 1900; it has been demolished.⁸