ADRIAN — Brad Maggard grew up in a historic building — a Victorian home on College Avenue in Adrian. 

“I can remember, throughout my childhood, the smell of heat guns and stripping paint throughout the house,” he said.

So when he and his wife, Casie, moved their business into the former Odd Fellows Hall on South Winter Street, he had some idea what he was getting into.

In early 2015, Maggard Razors — a business that has gained a national reputation as a seller of traditional wet-shaving supplies — was running out of room. When Maggard found out that the building at 124 S. Winter St. was for sale, he couldn’t resist.

“I love our downtown, and so when I found out that this building was available, even though I might not have been ready to take it on, I decided to go for it,” he said.

The result was a restoration project that, one piece at a time, restored this Second Empire-style architectural gem to its original beauty.

And, in one of the most unusual things about this project, it was accomplished without any grant money.

Maggard knew that historic restoration projects are often grant-funded, and when he first bought the building, he spent some time looking into that possibility. But he encountered several obstacles. The available grants all required the owner to put up matching funds — not necessarily a problem in and of itself, but they also required the project to be completed in a short timeframe. 

“The bids were $1.2 million, and if grants had covered half, I’d be looking at having to come up with $600,000 in 18 months,” he said.

He was willing to put money into the project, but spending that much in a short span of time just wasn’t in the cards. So he switched to a different tactic. He went to local contractor Kirk Valentine, owner of Sphere Project Management, and said “I need you to make $125,000 a year matter.”

Valentine was up to the challenge, and they came up with a plan to tackle the project one piece at a time over the course of several years. The project started in 2020, the work wrapped up in 2025, and the final price tag was $612,557.

One of the biggest tasks was restoring the mansard roof, a style of roofing that originated in France. Another was the building’s balcony.

“The balcony was completely rebuilt from scratch, by hand,” Maggard said.

The decorative elements were crafted from sheet copper, to make them longer-lasting than the original tin, and painted so they wouldn’t develop a patina over time. 

Maggard and his mother, Lisa, personally took on the task of stripping the paint from the woodwork. “We spent about 200 hours doing that one summer,” he said.

The original brick was completely covered with white paint, and that was chemically stripped, since the brickwork would not have been painted when the hall was first built.

In addition, about 1,000 bricks on the south and east sides of the building had to be replaced. Those bricks had to be custom-made because they were slightly smaller than standard bricks today.

“Most of Adrian’s downtown built before 1910 was that size brick,” Maggard said. Although he doesn’t know for sure, he guesses that they were probably made at the Adrian Brick & Tile Works on Water Street.

A lot of the work was aimed at removing things that had been added over the years, such as paint and asphalt shingles, that covered up the building’s original beauty.

Clark Memorial Hall was originally built with money from the estate of Elihu L. Clark, a former state legislator and president of the Lenawee County Savings Bank. Upon his death in 1880, he willed $10,000 to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge No. 8, on the condition that at least half of the money be used to construct a new meeting hall. 

The hall was built in 1888, its Second Empire-style architecture a nod to Clark’s own home. The Adrian Daily Times & Expositor described it as having “the handsomest front in town.”

The building has three stories, although the third only covers part of the footprint due to the Odd Fellows meeting hall on the second floor having an 18-foot ceiling. 

Maggard Razors and its six employees are on the first floor, where the company operates a retail store even though the vast majority of its business is online, with 30,000 orders a year being shipped to customers in 80 countries. Upstairs is an apartment where the Maggards live themselves, plus another that they’ve converted into an Airbnb. 

A history of the building, along with photos of the renovation, can be found at clarkmemorialhall.com. The project was recently honored with the 2026 Building Award at the Michigan Historic Preservation Network’s annual conference in Grosse Pointe Shores.

At the end of the 19th century, Clark Memorial Hall was lauded as one of Adrian’s most handsome buildings. 

Now, thanks to a whole lot of work, it can claim that title again.