When
Port Huron civic leaders began planning for the community's future after
World War II, wide support emerged for a convention facility. Proponents
argued that such a community addition, playing up the area's water
attractions and easy access to Canada via the not-yet-ten-year-old Blue
Water Bridge, would bring tens of thousands of dollars into the area. In
1953, however, Port Huron taxpayers dashed the hopes of
convention-center planners when they turned down a proposal at the polls
for a city built facility.
Two years later, an entity then unknown to most residents-The McMorran
Foundation, set up in 1955 By Andrew J. Murphy; his wife, Emma McMorran
Murphy, and her sister, Clara McMorran Mackenzie-offered a gift of $1.2
million to build a municipal auditorium in downtown Port Huron.
The announcement by the family
members and the two other foundation trustees-Alex J. Theisen and J.
Grant Moore-electrified the community, and a wide area beyond it. The
foundation had been named for business pioneer and early-century
Congressman Henry G. McMorran, father or Mrs. Murphy and Mrs. Mackenzie.
Mr. Theisen was a long time business associate and counselor to the
McMorran family. Mr. Moore was a local insurance broker.
The
auditorium gift announcement seemed too good to be true, yet it was
true. It also was the beginning of a series of gifts from the McMorran
and Murphy families, individually and through the foundation, that would
total $3.5 million ($21 million in 2001 dollars) over the next decade to
provide a facility that would evoke envy far and wide. McMorran Complex
today consists of one of the finest community auditoriums in the country
and two arenas that not only provide ice for hockey and other skating
but which have become centers for a myriad of non-ice programs and
activities.
McMorran's Main Arena was home to the Port Huron Flags of the
International Hockey League from 1962 to 1981. It has been the home of
North American Silver Stick Hockey finals since 1963, drawing youth
hockey teams from all over the continent each January. It also has
served as the training camp for the Detroit Red Wings and St. Louis
Blues of the National Hockey League & the (UHL) Port Huron Border Cats
for 6 years. The Main Arena is currently the home ice for the
Port Huron
Flags
of the United Hockey League,
Port Huron Minor Hockey Association
& the Port
Huron Figure Skating Club.
Among the entertainment headliners who have appeared at McMorran Place
are: Trace Adkins, Montgomery Gentry, World Championship Wrestling,
Collin Raye, Spirit of the Dance, Lorrie Morgan, Gallagher, Willie
Nelson, Liberace, Andy Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Bob Seger,
Journey, Engelbert Humperdink, Kiss, the Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey
Orchestras, Frank Mills, David Copperfield, Tammy Wynette, Tom Jones, J.
Geils Band, Ted Nuggent, Ozzy Osborne, Diamond Rio, Ricky Scaggs, Soupy
Sales, John Anderson, Holly Dunn, Wayne Newton, Pam Tillis, Dan Seals,
George Jones, Chubby Checker, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Barbara Mandrell, Rick
Trevino, Tracy Lawrence, Billy Ray Cyrus, Mark Collie, George Carlin,
Sesame Street Live, Stars on Ice, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Royal
Hanneford Circus, Smokey Joe's Cafe, A Christmas Carol, Steel Pier,
Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Miss Michigan USA & Miss Michigan Teen
USA, Miss Michigan United States, Forbidden Hollywood, the Three Irish
Tenors, Copacabana, South Pacific National Tour, Ain't Misbehavin, Bryan
White, Sammy Kershaw, and the Royal Lipizanner Stallions.
Luminaries brought to McMorran by Port Huron Town Hall have included
Eleanor Roosevelt, President Ford, Heloise, Gregory Hines, Capitol
Steps, Betty Ford, Henry Kissinger, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Julie and
David Eisenhower, Larry King, Alex Trebek, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Ann
Landers, F. Lee Bailey, Vincent Price, Eva Gabor, George Plimpton,
Martha Stewert, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Jessica Tandy, Rex Reed,
Ginger Rodgers, Pat Boone, Richard Simmons, Mitzi Gaynor, Vicki
Lawrence, Pearl Bailey, Debbie Reynolds, Henry Winkler, Phyllis Diller,
Barbara Bush, Jane Seymour, and James A. Lovell Jr.
McMorran Complex is also a community center. The Auditorium Lobby was
designed to accommodate art exhibits, after-performance receptions and
similar activities. The complex is home to the Port Huron Minor Hockey
Association and provides facilities for such varied activities as
International Symphony Orchestra concerts, Port Huron
Civic Theatre
presentations, Port Huron Figure Skating Club programs, Festival of
Trees hospital benefit, high school and community college graduations,
craft and recreational shows and a host of other events and activities
for audiences of all ages.
ABOUT
THE ARCHITECT - Alden B. Dow
Alden Dow's sense of
design didn't stop with architecture and landscape planning. He also
involved himself in interior design. The integration of potted plants,
paintings, sculpture, furniture and woodwork, with all their colors and
textures, is a discipline Dow calls Composed Order. The stage curtain,
designed by Alden B. Dow, is an example of Composed Order.
Aesthetically, its form is satisfying, and being abstract, it stimulates
both the imagination and articulation of the audience. It is freedom
within a discipline, a pattern of circles and rectangles executed in
appliqué.
"The real objective of
architecture should be to inspire constructive creativeness in those
that use our buildings. This means that our buildings must aim for
something more than pure utility. Just as important, and at times even
more so, is compatibility. By this, I mean that a building, in addition
to serving its fundamental purpose, must also be compatible with its
surroundings, the ground it's built on, the planting, the people that
pass by, the automobile, and finally, the individual person." - A. Dow.
ABOUT THE
SCULPTOR-Marshall Fredericks
Fredericks designed
these over-life sized figures for the NIGHT AND DAY FOUNTAIN outside of
the McMorran Auditorium in Port Huron. The fountain is beneath the 22
ft. diameter sculptural clock, which was also designed by Fredericks. He
chose time as the theme of the auditoriums exterior ornamentation
because the donors of the building put great value in punctuality. In
keeping with the long tradition on western art, the sculptor personified
time with figures representing night and day. NIGHT has long, smooth,
graceful curves which are repeated in the lines of the swan in flight
beneath her. In comparison, DAY is more angular and its muscles are more
pronounced, as are the veins in the arms and hands. DAY rests upon an
otter hunting in a school of pike. The stout otter and elegant swan echo
the character of the human figures just as the male and female figures
invoke the active and passive parts of the 24 hour cycle. Fredericks is
also know for THE SPIRIT OF DETROIT in front of the City County Building
in Detroit, CHRIST ON THE CROSS at the Indian River Catholic Shine,
GREAT SEAL OF THE UNITED STATES at the American Embassy in London, and
HENRY FORD MEMORIAL at the Centennial Library in Dearborn, Michigan.
