Occupation Carpenter | Parents Charles Harold Rounds | |
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Known for The Round Island Lighthouse, Mackinac Island carpenter Spouse(s) Rose (Rumlow) RoundsLottie Agatha (Joli) Rounds Children Harold P. RoundsEvered B. RoundsAlson Clark RoundsMary Eleanor RoundsDonald D. RoundsDale V. Gensman Died 9 September 1945, Mackinac Island, Michigan, United States | ||
Frank Russel Rounds was a carpenter on Mackinac Island and is known as the builder of the Round Island Lighthouse - one of the most photographed Lighthouses in the world. He also has many buildings on the island to his credit in cluding the Little Stone church, the boardwalk, and the Wawashkamo golf club.
Builder Mr. Rounds was a multifaceted craftsman with carpentry skills. He was also the contractor who signed an agreement in October 1898 with Dr. Lewis L. McArthur to lead the landscape construction of the new golf course, Wawashkamo, in Mackinac Island's interior. The golf links opened in 1899 as built by Mr. Rounds and his crew, and has since become the oldest course in Michigan in which golf is played on the original grounds. (Several other Michigan golf clubs are older, but these club organizations have moved their courses or re-landscaped their grounds.) Historic Wawashkamo hazards such as the "chocolate drops" on the 8th and 17th hole were raised by Mr. Rounds and his men with some of the fieldstones uncovered during the landscaping work.
During the first decade of the last century, Mr. Rounds’ expertise with fieldstones and durable mortar led to more enduring additions to Mackinac Island architecture. When the Cudahys hired him at Stonecliffe, Mr. Rounds and his crew built the safety wall at Sunset Rock, the bluff-top overlook recently acquired by the State Park. The historic fieldstone gateposts at Stonecliffe and Grand Hotel are also almost certainly Mr. Rounds’ work.
Two of Mr. Rounds’ Grand Hotel gateposts, both on the west side of the hotel facing West Bluff Road, survive. It's good that some of Mr. Rounds’ signature work is visible to the public as part of the overall Grand Hotel complex, because Mr. Rounds had actually first come to the Island in 1887 as a worker helping to build the Grand Hotel. Mr. Rounds’ carpentry skills were honed in his labor on Mackinac Island's largest wooden structure.
Mr. Rounds was a multitask participant in the Golden Age of Mackinac Island summer travel. Although the period of active building on Mackinac Island was winding down in the 1920s and 1930s, Mr. Rounds continued to operate his carpentry shop on a back street off downtown's Astor Street, helping to repair and maintain the buildings he and his neighbors had built.
The Rounds family maintains artifacts and scale models of Mackinac Island buildings at the Robert Stuart House City Museum.