Exhibitions

We make history accessible. The Clarke Historical Library's galleries, online exhibits and traveling exhibits display and interpret the Library’s historical and unique collections.

Current exhibitions

Build It Yourself: 
Bay City's Aladdin Company

View of the Clarke's exhibit, showing a frame for a wall being constructed.

For hundreds of thousands across the United States in the twentieth century, their American Dream involved constructing their very own kit home. Over a century later, in 2025, homes ordered through the Sears or Montgomery-Ward catalogs and built by the owners are beloved by kit home aficionados from coast to coast.  

But before Sears or the others got started—and long after they stopped offering build-it-yourself homes for sale—there was the Aladdin Company, headquartered in Bay City, Michigan. The company offered buyers the design plans, partially constructed materials and even furnishings needed to construct their own homes. For 75 years, Aladdin produced over 75,000 kits. There were bungalows, foursquares, cottages and ranch-style models—models that proved popular with people looking to build their own home with all the amenities of custom-built dwellings.

Brothers William and Otto Sovereign founded the Aladdin Company in 1906. In addition to being the site of the company’s headquarters, Bay City was the site of Aladdin’s first and flagship mill, which produced kits shipped throughout the Midwest, Great Plains and New England. As a result of the company’s early success, Aladdin opened mills in Oregon, Florida, Mississippi and North Carolina enabling quick direct-to-customer service across North America. 

Single-family residences for aspiring homeowners in the U.S. were not all that the company produced. Aladdin kits were used as the building-blocks for planned communities across the globe--the Austin Village, constructed with 200 “Special Chester” kits shipped to Birmingham, England in 1917, is just one such effort. Aladdin also helped communities rebuild after disasters, such as when they sent kits to Japan in the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake.  

The manufacturing methods, affordability, style and advertising savvy of the Sovereign family made Bay City a hub for advancements in residential construction.

On exhibit in the Clarke Historical Library through December 2025.

Online exhibitions

​Drawing from the Clarke Historical Library’s many and diverse resources, online exhibits and digital collections showcase the history of Michigan and the Great Lakes region. The mix of primary source material and interpretation allows everyone to learn more about our shared cultural heritage.

Traveling exhibitions

​Some exhibits that have been prepared by the Clarke Historical Library staff are available for loan. Traveling exhibits are available on the following topics:

The exhibits may be borrowed without direct cost. The borrower is responsible for transportation of the exhibit from Mt. Pleasant to the exhibit site, as well as for returning the material when the loan is completed, insurance of the items while on loan, and, in the case of original material, ensuring proper preservation standards and appropriate security precautions are in place.

For additional information about borrowing an exhibit, please call 989-774-3352.