the location of Winsor McCay's childhood home

We've sure learned a lot since we started meeting a year ago. Here's a blurb from one of the very first posts on this blog:

Years ago I had asked someone at the Tri-Cities Museum if there was any way to know where McCay might have lived -- or even to determine a geographic location where we could say he had definitely been. She said she highly doubted it because the layout of Spring Lake is very different now because so many fires had destroyed the town since McCay's time. The fires had also destroyed most records from those days.

That post then went on to relay how excited we were to discover the site of McCay's former school... A plot of land right next door to the current site of the Spring Lake District Library:


Well since that early post, we've discovered the location of Winsor McCay's childhood home! Little did we know we were already looking at it... It was right here:


Turns out the site is right across the street, on the corner of Meridian and Tolford, in the spot where the First Baptist Church building now stands.



Here's some information about the site that librarian Chris Davis has pulled together:

Robert McKay, Winsor McCay’s father, came to Spring Lake to work in 1864 or ’65. Our collection of Assessment Rolls dates back to 1874. By that time, the McKay’s (McCay’s) owned a house at the corner of the current Tolford and Meridian Street. We do not know the date of the fire mentioned in Winsor's biography, but the McKay’s (McCay’s) owned that property throughout their life in Spring Lake. It would be logical to think that their house burned in one of the frequent fires, as Spring Lake had numerous sawmills at that time. They probably would’ve stayed with friends, temporarily, until their home was rebuilt. The house is gone by 1899, likely destroyed in the Spring Lake Fire of 1893.

Most written accounts tend to paint the McKays (McCays) as a rather transient family in Spring Lake. This is, apparently, not the case. Actually, Robert McKay was a land owner, near the center of the village (which was a status symbol in those times). He was well respected, as his service on the Village Council would attest. In 1874, he received 157 votes for Trustee, only about 90 less than the Village Recorder, who ran unopposed. Many of the people in political circles, at that time, are still known in the community today (Hunter Savidge, Aloys Bilz, etc.).

Winsor McCay's first recorded picture

I've long known about Winsor McCay's childhood/schoolhouse drawing of the sinking ship... Well apparently the Tri-Cities Historical Museum has a copy!

I was looking through David Seibold's new book on the history of Grand Haven MI, In the Path of Destiny, and was amazed to see this included in the section about Winsor McCay:

"Spring Lake's Great fire of 1893 destroyed the school and all the records which might have revealed some of the genius of the budding artist. But perhaps all was not lost. On October 15, 1880 the ill-fated Goodrich steamship Alpena left Grand Haven bound for Chicago with 46 persons aboard. It was never seen again. The event stunned everyone in the Grand Haven Area. In 1880, at age 11, Winsor McCay made a chalk drawing on a slate of his impression of the Alpena as it was sinking on a story Lake Michigan. The teacher was so impressed with the rendering she had a photographer take a picture of it, who then sold copies. A postcard appeared at that time which showed the sinking of the Alpena and, presumably, was the photo of the Winsor McCay drawing. A copy is in the Museum files."

I've never seen this photo reprinted anywhere else before... What a great find! The photo dates from the right time and is certainly white chalk on black slate. This whole story is especially interesting when one considers McCay's later animated masterpiece which depicted the sinking of the Lusitania. Perhaps the creation of that film was spurred, in part, by the emotional connection to this first moment of artistic celebrity from his childhood...

Winsor McCay Sketching

I found this photo a while ago... I thought I'd wait until today to post it since the date on the photo reads 7/17/08 -- of course that's 1908, a hundred years ago today. McCay is the fellow in the dapper hat. He's sketching his son Robert at an Actor's Benefit event.

Annecy 2008

Annecy is the world's largest Animation Film Festival, held annually in France. The event took place a few weeks ago, and there John Canemaker gave a presentation on "The Art and Life of Winsor McCay." Oswald Iten, an animator from Switzerland, was in attendance and had glowing praise on his blog for Canemaker's performance. I asked Oswald if he could expound on what made the the presentation so great, and he was kind enough to send in this report for us! Thanks Oswald!
(pictures via John Canemaker's site)

John Canemaker presents “Winsor McCay, his Life and Art” at this year’s Annecy Animation Festival

Imagine Winsor McCay’s first four films on a giant screen with live musical accompaniment (festival director Serge Bromberg on the grand piano) and background information provided by one of animation’s most accomplished historians.

John Canemaker’s highly informative and well-prepared lecture was illustrated by examples of McCay’s graphic and motion picture work on the big screen. On the basis of McCay’s first four (partly) animated films, Canemaker managed to explain not only McCay’s groundbreaking evolution in the field of animation but also how his showman skills were important to his success. In reference to the cartoonist’s extraordinary draftsmanship – he usually drew from top to bottom with almost no sketching even on poster sized pictures – Canemaker compared him Leonardo DaVinci.

With perfectly timed comments during the screenings of Little Nemo (1911), How a mosquito operates (1912) and Gertie the dinosaur (1914) the historian revealed interesting background information while helping a contemporary audience to fully appreciate and enjoy the gags and allusions. The presentation included McCay’s clearly staged live-action efforts to emphasize that he was the creator of what is on the screen. Canemaker pointed to the sense of weight McCay put into his early films decades ahead of Walt Disney. When Gertie empties the sea, for example, her body is not inflated but the ground starts giving way to the increasingly heavier dinosaur.

If you ever thought that Gertie was nothing more than a lengthy exercise of mere historical value, you should see John Canemaker presenting it the way it was intended: as a vaudeville act. Although he also showed the live-action intro that was made for “standard” theatrical exhibition, he then proceeded to take on the role of Winsor McCay and started telling Gertie to do some tricks. Whenever she didn’t follow his commands he called on the audience (almost 1000 people that afternoon) to encourage Gertie to be obedient. Suddenly strange looking parts such as back and forth loops or endless repetitions became understandable as either dancing or refusing to lift a foot on orders, for example.

While most experiments in character animation (squash and stretch in Nemo, weight and re-use of drawings in Mosquito) were applied expertly to Gertie, the background still had to be traced frame by frame. So Canemaker ended his presentation with a short introduction to McCay’s first cel animation The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918) which was then projected accompanied only by Serge Bromberg’s sensitive piano playing to bring out the sheer beauty of the film.

John Canemaker achieved the feat of transporting the audience back to the 1910s and opening their eyes for an unfamiliar experience of familiar movies. No wonder John was brought out “for an unprecedented curtain call at the end of his presentation.”

- Oswald Iten

(Wow -- wouldn't it be great to get Canemaker over here in West Michigan??? McCay Day '09... or the Muskegon Film Festival... or the Kalamazoo Animation Festival... Hmmmmm...)

For Inspiration

See Dreams and Obsessions on Shelf and Screen, in which Huib van Opstal gives an analysis of the groundbreaking innovations made over a century ago in Winsor McCay's series ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’. It's a commentary on the fantastic collection put out by Ulrich Merkl. (Spring Lake Library does have two copies now by the way. It's a Great book. It's massive... solid... it's like holding a brick)

Mad Ink Beard

If you are looking for a nice condensed overview of McCay, his comic work, his significance, his strengths (and weaknesses), Derik at Madinkbeard has one of the best summaries I've seen...

Union School

Years ago I had asked someone at the Tri-Cities Museum if there was any way to know where McCay might have lived -- or even to determine a geographic location where we could say he had definitely been. She said she highly doubted it because the layout of Spring Lake is very different now because so many fires had destroyed the town since McCay's time. The fires had also destroyed most records from those days.

Recently, at the first meeting held to discuss all things McCay, a small group of us were gathered at the Spring Lake District Library and were recounting what stories we knew of Winsor's childhood. Someone was mentioning the time McCay drew the sinking of the Alpena on his school chalkboard. Librarian Chris Davis said, "Hey, I wonder if that's the same school that was in the empty lot next door?" It turns out there is a small strip of land right next to the library where the town's one-room schoolhouse used to stand. The school was later destroyed... yep, in the fires. There is nothing on the plot to call attention to this, but the town has never let anyone build there because it's a historical site. "You can still see the foundations of the school," Chris said. "I've tripped over them while walking through on my lunch break." He quickly slipped out of the room to check some village records (good thing we were in a library) and returned with confirmation. "Yep - Union School was still there when McCay was school-aged!"

I couldn't even remember there being an empty plot of land next to the library. So right there, we all jumped up and walked outside, and sure enough, there is a nice little grassy plot with some trees and a checkerboard table the boy scouts recently built. I could just imagine little Winsor running around, all those decades ago.

Here are some photos of the lot:



Here you can see the school's foundations both on the left and also in the upper rignt corner of the image:

Spring Lake: The Birthplace of Character Animation

Think of all the animated cartoon characters running around out there. Mickey Mouse. Bugs Bunny. Fred Flintstone. Buzz Lightyear. SpongeBob. Scooby-Doo. Dora the Explorer. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of characters that have been brought into this world. Do you know who was the first - the very first animated cartoon character ever created? A dinosaur named "Gertie" holds that distinction, and she was created in 1914 by Spring Lake native Winsor McCay.

Winsor McCay was born in the 1860's and grew up in Spring Lake. His artistic talent was evident at an early age. Spring Lake historians know that the village was plagued by a number of fires in those days. One of these destroyed the McCay home. In the shelter of a neighbor's house, young Winsor drew his very first noted picture. It was a scene recounting the tragedy, etched in the frost of a window pane. Later the steamer Alpena sank in Lake Michigan, and Winsor drew a picture as he imagined the scene on the school chalkboard. It was so impressive that a photographer heard about it, took photographs, and sold them. The foundations of the school (Union School) can still be seen in the park to the west of Spring Lake District Library.

McCay knew national fame in his lifetime, first as a newspaper cartoonist. He authored several comic strips, the most famous of which was "Little Nemo in Slumberland." It is a highly inventive fantasy that takes place within the dreams of a little boy named Nemo. The artwork continues to be hailed today for its wild imagination, intricate detail, and archetectural brilliance. It was the first comic strip to enter the Louvre. Children's author Maurice Sendak says, "Little Nemo is nearly pure gold."

Later McCay became a pioneer of animated film. The scant handful of experiments in animation previously attempted were extremely crude and had been conceived as mere "tricks" or "gimmicks." McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" was the first animated cartoon character with a distinct and engaging personality. The film was an amazing five minutes long, the typical length of a one-reel film in those days. It was a huge endeavor with thousands of painstakingly full, detailed drawings and sophisticated, fluid animation.

Today both Winsor McCay and his creations are known around the world. In art, cartooning, and animation circles he is universally known, beloved, and praised. Each year at the Annie Awards, the "Oscars" of the animation world, the Winsor McCay Award is given for lifetime achievement. It is the highest honor given to an individual in the animation industry.

Although in the art world McCay is internationally recognized, in his own hometown of Spring Lake he is virtually unknown. No monument or memorial commemorates his life here.

Recently the Spring Lake District Library has expanded their collection of wonderful books and videos highlighting McCay's life and work, and has hosted programs spotlighting illustration and animation. Additionally, representatives of the community have been meeting to work on ways to recognize McCay and his work in Spring Lake.

So yes, of all the places of the world, Spring Lake could be called "The Birthplace of Character Animation," for it is the hometown of Winsor McCay, pioneer of animated film.