Fieldstone's Historic Book Author!
December 12, 2015- there will be a gathering of local history buffs at the Michigan Building located at 220 Bagley Street, Detroit. This year, the Local History Lovers Holiday Book Fair will be featuring one of Fieldstone Architecture and Engineering's very own!
Vice President of Commerical Architecture, Bruce Kopytek, the author of several books on historical places and architecture will be selling, signing and speaking about his books.
Here is an exerpt about our very own employee from the Holiday Book Fair event facebook page taken from The History Press Introduction, that describes his accomplishments in publishing (written by Bruce Kopytek):
Who would have thought intrigue, murder and Harry Houdini would have been part of the legacy of one of Detroit's premier department stores?
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Introducing Bruce Allen Kopytek, author of several books documenting department store history and participating author in the first Local History Lovers Holiday Book Fair on Dec. 12 in Detroit, Michigan. Mr. Kopytek came to be an author almost accidentally, while searching for new opportunities when his career as an architect imploded as a result of the Great Recession.
This gleefully unrepentant “book-a-holic” received a completely unexpected offer to write his first book, the popular and award-winning Jacobson’s: I Miss It So! The book enabled Mr. Kopytek to focus his attention on another of his favorite subjects: the life and times of North America’s great, beloved and long-gone department stores. Photo below- Bruce Kopytek at Fieldstone Architecture and Engineering's new Auburn Hills office.
Jacobson’s: I Miss It So! was honored with a Michigan Notable Book award in 2012, and Kopytek followed it up with Toledo’s 3 Ls: Lamson’s, The Lion Store, and Lasalle’s in 2013. The next year Kopytek expanded his research and writing activities across the border to Canada, and the result was 2014’s Eaton’s: The Trans-Canada Store. The book tells the history of Canada’s lost but beloved national department store chain begun in 1869 by Timothy Eaton. Photo below- book cover design.
The story reads like the well-known PBS Downton Abbey drama, for the store’s dynastic owning family were considered Canadian royalty, and Lady Eaton, the family’s crusty, long-lived matriarch, was as famous for her off-the-cuff remarks as she was for her leadership and charity – as well as Eaton Hall, the huge estate north of Toronto from which she ruled over her family’s vast commercial holdings.
This year, Crowley’s: Detroit’s Friendly Store was released. It's a reminiscence about the long lost – and under-appreciated family-owned department store that was founded in Detroit in 1909. The story doesn’t just reveal that Crowley’s remained a local, family owned business almost until its 1999 demise. Along the way, intrigue, murder, the Irish Home Rule movement, and even Harry Houdini show up to add color and interest to the story. Photo below- book cover design.
Mr. Kopytek curates an enormously popular web site dedicated to these, and many more once-famous department stores across the United States and Canada called approprately- The Department Store Museum - the web page is found at
www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org and he is continuously searching for anecdotes, artifacts, and history of these stores, which, at one time, attained the status of beloved civic institutions in our culture.
Now vice-president of commercial architecture at Fieldstone Architecture & Engineering of Auburn Hills, Michigan, Kopytek credits his parents and his close-knit family with his passions for travel, history and art.
He and his wife, Carole, enjoy traveling, ballroom dancing, lecturing on topics related to his books, cooking and doing volunteer work through his local Roman Catholic parish, St. Lawrence, in Utica, Michigan. He cherishes his family and remains not only close with his sister, Mary, and brother, Patrick, and their children but also takes delight in his relationship with Jesse and Jennifer, the adult children he inherited when he married again after living as a widower for ten years.
-The History Press
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