Along one of the waterways that runs through the town of Holland is a lovely garden area that features a favorite street organ, tulip gardens and fields, a centuries old windmill that still grinds flour, and a town that gives us a feel of the Netherlands. This post covers the tulips and the windmill. The next post takes us to the Dutch village based on an island in the province of Holland in the Netherlands. Time to see and learn.
Welcome to Windmill Island Gardens!
What a lovely view as we entered the park.
Let’s go see a ‘four columns’ street organ.
1, 2, 3, 4 columns
This organ was built in 1928 by the famous organ maker Carl Frel. It was a well loved and famous organ that played along the streets of Breda, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam.
The organ has 69 metal keys and was given to the City of Holland in 1947 by the City of Amsterdam in gratitude for all that the United States did in liberating the Netherlands in World War II.
The wheel on the wall was the original crank wheel for the organ. Now the wheel is motorized so the organ can play for hours.
As we walked toward the bridge, we saw beds of tulips. Yes, that’s Cindy in the foreground.
Wish I had dropped my purse on the ground before Cindy took our picture.
As we crossed the bridge, we were reminded of all the waterways in the Netherlands that had to be navigated by such bridges.
The first tulip field we walked by also featured these “hotels” for swallows.
walking up to the windmill
I think this is one of my favorite pictures from this day.
But before we got to the windmill, we walked by fields of tulips.
view 1
view 2
view 3
view 4
Finally we made it to the windmill. Notice it’s in 2 parts: the 3 floors of a lower brick foundation and the wooden top structure. We’ll understand why the brick structure was added when the windmill was brought to the U.S. later in this post.
tour of the windmill
During non-Covid years, the windmill operates to demonstrate how the wheat was ground into flour, packaged, and stored for purchase.
The sign on the right tells us that the 1st floor doors are opposite each other so farmers could drive in, drop off their grain, and drive out. Don’t you just love the mask notice on the left side? This is the most creative sign we’ve seen.
Grain could be dropped off by the farmers in large bags on the 1st floor and then taken to the 5th floor by use of a wind-powered sack hoist.
While we really should be showing you the windmill operation from the top of the mill downwards since this was the flow of the grain, we’ll instead show you each floor as we saw them.
The 2nd floor is where the packaging was done. Flour was sifted with the bolter to separate out the bran before it was packaged and stored in the freezer.
The bolter is the piece of equipment in the back that’s painted red and was used to sift the flour. Then the flour is poured through the machine on the left to fill the bags for selling the flour.
The 3rd floor was for storage of the flour before it was sifted and bagged. Today the floor shows off the old handmade parts that had been used in the mill.
This sign described the parts on the wall in the next picture. I’ve retyped the information in case you really want to read it.
Some of these old mill parts go back to around 1761.
The 18-pound hexagonal wrench is 51 inches long. It adjusts the horizontal position of the windshaft and blade assemblies.
The long metal bar raised or lowered the inactive upper grinding stone located 2 floors up.
Large threaded bolts fasten together Norwegian fir structural timbers on the windmill’s upper levels. Wooden pins were more commonly used.
A metal wedge was inserted in bolts with open slots to draw adjoining parts tightly together. Most of the washers and bolts were hand forged.
The windmill’s top cap rotates on 28 wheels. The one on display cracked and so had to be removed from the rotating track.
The copper lightening rod had been installed on one of the old windmill blades.
The 100+ year old blades were replaced in April 2000.
Chisel-shaped hammer heads were used to sharpen grinding stones.
Metal places anchored vertical and horizontal structural timbers together.
another look at parts used on the old windmill
This angel and sun were decorations that could go on the blades of the windmill. Blades were often decorated for celebrations or times of loss.
This builder’s plate was on one of the old blades. The sign tells us that it was manufactured in a small town in the Netherlands in the late 1800s or early 1900s. The large hole in the metal came from aircraft gunfire during WWII.
The blades were replaced in the spring of 2000 after around 100 years of service. Rusting from the inside out had weakened the metal.
These lower 3 floors were added when the windmill was moved to the U.S. Now let’s go to the original mill floor.
The 4th floor was the original floor of the mill and was where the millers spent most of their time when grinding grain.
Large bags of wheat were hoisted through is hole in the floor to be taken upstairs for grinding.
The millstones on the next floor ground the flour, and then the miller sent it down this chute.
The miller could check the texture/consistency of the flour by reaching in through the small silver flap and taking out a small handful to run between his thump and fingers.
The 2 blades on the windmill are each 80 feet long and 8 feet wide. Together they weigh 6600 pounds.
The blades are moved using the capstan wheel that is in the counterweight to the blades.
The back of the windmill shows the capstan wheel attached to the blades.
From the ledge around the middle of the windmill, we had some great views of the park.
The field on the left is ready to be planted.
This is the first field we walked by with the swallow “hotels.”
On the other side of the windmill were these fields.
This walkway will take us back to the park.
The 5th floor (not open on this visit) is where the grinding happened. One set of millstones is still used today for demonstrations, and the other set is on display for park visitors.
The sack hoist brought wheat up from the ground floor.
The 6th and 7th floors have the machinery for operating the mill,
Back down at base of the windmill are some displays that we found interesting.
This is an original piece of one of the old blades that was part of the windmill from the early 1900s through March 2000.
This windmill was also used in The Netherlands as a lookout during WWII. Remember the bullet holes in the blade that we showed you in this post?
The blades could turn the way they were attached to the windmill, but with canvas on the sails, the miller could catch more wind if necessary.
sample of a canvas sail
The cap of windmill (the top dome covered with metal shingles) was on metal rollers so it could be rotated to move the blades into the wind.
Wanted to show you this picture again so you could see the windmill cap.
The millstones grinding the flour on the 5th floor were 3.5 tons a pair. The top stone, or runner, weighs 2 tons, and the bottom stone, or bedstone, weighs 1.5 tons.
Millstones come in pairs: a convex stationary base was known as the bedstone, and a concave runner stone rotated. The movement of the runner on top of the bedstone creates a “scissoring” action that grinds grain trapped between the stones. Millstones are constructed so their shape and configuration help to channel ground flour to the outer edges of the mechanism for collection.
The runner (top) stone is supported by a cross-shaped metal piece fixed to a “mace head” topping the main shaft or spindle leading to the driving mechanism of the mill that could be wind, water (including tides), animal, or human.
See the design of the brick building behind the sign in the next picture? The bricks were laid at an angle and alternated to provide strength and allow proper drainage.
A better picture of the millstone.
close up of the millstone
Now we know why the bottom 3 brick floors were added when the windmill was moved to America: to catch the wind. In the Netherlands, this action was accomplished by putting the mill on a mound. Obviously the millers had to perform the actions on this windmill’s first 3 floors in a different way.
history of the park
In 1961, the idea was proposed of creating a public park with “an authentic Dutch windmill” since it was a symbol of Holland’s Dutch heritage. City officials began the work of getting permission from the Dutch government, which protects these windmills as national monuments. After a 3-year process, approval was given, and Willard Wichers traveled to the Netherlands to find a suitable mill that could be moved to the U.S.
In the town of Vinkel was a mill that had been built in 1884 using pieces from older mills. Named De Zwaan (the Swan), it had been damaged during WWII and had deteriorated. Dutch officials allowed its sale but required a Dutch millwright, Jan Medendorp, to supervise its relocation and restoration.
The dismantling began in June 1964. The mill’s 7000 pieces, weighing 66 tons, came to the U.S. on a Dutch steamship and arrived at Muskegon, Michigan, on October 5, 1964. The pieces came by truck from the port to this location where the city had leveled the ground, removed brush, and created canals so it would feel at home..
Over the next 6 months, the mill was reconstructed and placed on a new brick base. Medendorp restored the gears to working order so local grain could be milled into flour.
The former head gardener at Mackinac Island’s Grand Hotel, Jaap de Blecourt, planned the island’s gardens, and De Zwaan was dedicated on April 10, 1965, with Michigan’s Governor George Romney and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in attendance.
