Once the height of local luxury, the vintage apartment building has a new lease on life.

When Cathy Nowosielski was a U-M medical student in the 1970s, she passed Observato­ry Lodge, at Observa­tory Street and Washington Heights, every day as she walked between her sorority and the old University Hospital. A panoply of almost every Tudor detail ever used, the 1930 apartment building has turrets, oriel windows, half-timbering, a slate roof, cooper eaves, and stained-glass windows.

Nowosielski admired the building, and when she learned that it was owned by the U-M and rented to employees and grad students, she decided to investigate living there. Directed to the second floor of the LS&A Building, she was told that she could have the one available unit if she took it right away. She gasped but agreed. "It reminded me of walking into an ele­gant mansion," she recalls. It was not only (in her words) "phenomenal" but also a much better deal than her sorority.

On a recent visit to Ann Arbor, No­wosielski asked a friend to drive her by some old haunts. When they got near Ob­servatory Lodge, her friend, Alicia Marting, couldn't believe it—the building Nowosielski wanted to see was the same one Mcirting's division, kinesiology, was moving into. They were even more amazed when they figured out that part of Nowosielski's top-floor apartment had been preserved just as it was—vaulted ceiling, textured plaster, phone alcove, and all—as the dean's office.

Observatory Lodge was the last in a string of eight ele­gant, multistory apartment houses that various devel­opers built near campus in the decade before the Great Depression. Six are still standing, but two were recent­ly torn down—the Planada on Ann Street was replaced by a parking structure, and high-rise apartments are currently going up on the site of the former Anberay on East University.

An elegant entrance foyer and lobby set the tone of Observatory Lodge, with a fire­place, art-pottery floor tiles, ornate wall panels, and antique furniture. The thirty-four apartments included efficiencies and one- and two-bedroom units. A hair salon and barbershop, entered from an outside door on the northeast side of the building, was convenient for residents but was also open to the general public. Both a manager and a caretaker lived on the premises.

Observatory Lodge's location made it perfect for hospital employees. City direc­tories from the 1930s list a hospital phar­macist, social worker, stenographer, and cataloguer, as well as doctors, interns, and nurses.

The main U-M campus was also well represented, with every level of academia from full professors to stu­dents. From the town side came Otto Haisley, superintendent of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, and Julius Schaffer, the manager of Kline's depart­ment store. Several women residents re­ported their occupa­tion as "widow." Former Washtenaw County sheriff Doug Harvey knew the building well: after World War II, his fa­ther, also named Douglas, was hired as caretaker by the Ann Arbor Trust Company, which owned the building. The family moved into a rent-free one-bedroom garden-level apartment on the east side. The fu­ture sheriff and his brother slept in the liv­ing room on roll-away cots.

"A grand old place" is how Harvey re­members the building. Most of the residents were "people of high stature, who lived there for years. It was hard to get in—you didn't just ask. It was rented far in advance; you had to wait until someone died." Harvey describes his father as a "jack of all trades—whatever he was asked, he knew how to do." He could paint, put up wallpaper, and repair plumbing, along with more mundane chores like stoking the furnace and keeping the hallways clean. He was so capable that his employ­ers soon combined the jobs of caretaker and manager.

Since people lived there for years, the caretaker knew them all well. "He used to coddle them. They loved him to death," Harvey recalls. For instance, his father used to walk the Irish setter belonging to Edgar Kahn, the famous neurosurgeon, and feed the dog an egg when they re­turned.

No one was allowed into the building without being buzzed in—certainly a plus for the widows. If no one answered a buzz, the elder Harvey would go to the door and interrogate the visitor. Not even the paperboy was allowed in; he just dropped the newspapers in the foyer and rang the buzzer. The manager then deliv­ered them to the apartments.

The younger Harvey was in high school when his dad took the job. He en­joyed going up on the roof and looking at the view out over the Huron River valley. When his buddies came over after school, they used to see whether they could get the elevator to stop short of the second floor and then climb on top of it to ride the rest of the way up. "Dad would get mad, but we thought it was the best thing since canned beer," he laughs.

Celebrated Observatory Lodge residents included U-M neurosurgeon Edgar Kahn, Kline's department store manager Julius Schaffer, and Ann Arbor Public Schools superintendent Otto Haisley. As a teenager, future sheriff Doug Harvey "surfed" atop its elevator—angeringhis father, who managed the building.

The university bought the building in 1966. By the time Cathy Nowosielski lived there, students made up about half of the resi­dents. They tended to be assigned to the top floors, she recalls, probably because they could deal better with the stairs when the elevator broke down.

Nowosielski remembers the building as being "very quiet. There were no parties. It was a place to come back to and call your own." The units were unfurnished and there were no group activities, but the young med student loved it—she enjoyed eating in the breakfast nook in the turret and having the sun shine in on three sides through casement windows. But much as she enjoyed living in Observatory Lodge, she admits that even then, more than twen­ty years before it closed, the plumbing, the elevator, and other parts of the building were showing their age.
Noreen Clark, professor and former dean of the U-M School of Public Health, lived in Observatory Lodge in its last dec­ade as a residence. She was first drawn to the building by the location—it's literally in the shadow of her school. She had to get on a waiting list before she could move in, and once she was in the building, she got on other lists to move into bigger apartments. Eventually she had a two-bedroom unit with a terrace. But even the smallest unit was fine, since she has a commuter mar­riage (her husband works in New York).

Coming from the UK, where professors often live "in college," Clark enjoyed see­ing students wandering around on evenings and weekends. She also loved the old building details—"the old gesso still intact, the arched doorways, the accordion-door elevator."

Toward the end of her stay, though, Clark was the only faculty member in the building. In 2001 she was the last resident to move out.

When the university closed Observatory Lodge, it cited concerns about the building's safety—specifically, the poor condition of the electrical system and fire alarms. By then over seventy years old, it still had its original knob-and-tube wiring with horsehair insulation, as well as as­bestos. People who loved the place held their collective breaths, fearing the univer­sity might demolish it as it had the Planada. They were delighted when, in 2005, the U-M announced plans to convert it to of­fices for the division of kinesiology.

Kinesiology desperately needed more space. As the division's mission expanded, it was spilling out of its quarters in the Central Campus Recreation Building into an annex next door. Besides its traditional curriculum of teaching people to be gym teachers and physical education administrators, kinesiology now helps communi­ties use sports as a tourist attraction and does research in "movement science"— studying, for instance, why certain activi­ties can control diabetes, or how exercises can reduce developmental delays in babies with Down syndrome.

The university's exterior renovations enhanced the building's historic character. The slate roof and copper gutters and downspouts were repaired, and new win­dows were installed that mimicked the original small-paned casements. The origi­nal squirrel weathervane was preserved, and a duplicate was made of the original wooden sign. The only visible "change is the addition of a retaining wall in front, which should provide ft pleasant place for students to sit in warmer weather.

The changes inside were much more extensive. Because total rewiring was needed, and because the thirty-four bath­rooms and kitchens were not needed, the inside was pretty much gutted, except for load-bearing walls. But the new offices and labs have been largely furnished with older-style wooden furniture, in deference to the building's history.

Two places were kept much as they originally were—Cathy Nowosielski's top-floor apartment, now the dean's office, and the lobby and foyer. The hope is that "someone can walk in and get a sense of what the building was like," explains Jim Mclntyre, development director of kinesiology.

To redo the front entry the university hired Saline-based Ron Koenig, who has done restorations all over the country, in­cluding several state capitols and the Detroit Opera House. Koenig's goal was, in his words, "to have the lobby look old but well maintained. It's key to reading the building."

Luckily all the design elements were still there, although some were in bad shape or painted over. Koenig started by taking samples of the lowest layers to dis­cover original colors and finishes. He then brought everything—the raised decorations in the wall panels, the floor tiles (a mix of Pewabic, Moravian, and possibly Flint Faience), the wainscoting, and the stained glass—as close as possible to its original condition.

Kinesiology began moving in last Oc­tober and completed the transition during the semester break. A few labs and class­rooms remain in the CCRB, but everything else is finally under one roof. "Because of the location, we're also talking about more collaborative work with public health, medicine, and orthopaedic surgery," Mclntyre says.

After kinesiology moved in, Noreen Clark was given a tour by dean Beverly Ulrich, a friend of hers. "I'm really happy it's occupied by a group who has respect for the building and are happy to be there," Clark says. But she admits she misses her apartment. If she could, she says, "I would move back in a New York minute."

The U-M is holding a grand opening of Observatory Lodge on April 3. The public is invited to take tours and hear opening remarks by U-M president Mary Sue Coleman and kinesiology dean Beverly Ulrich.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Kinesiology dean Eeverly Ulrich (left) now has her office on the building's top floor—in the same turreted corner where Cathy Nowosielski (right) lived as a medical student in the 1970s.

The garage at the center of the greenway debate

When the Washtenaw County Road Commission built a garage at 415 West Washington in 1925, no one dreamed that its future would ever be so hotly contested. But today, the Arts Al­liance of the Ann Arbor Area, Downtown Kiwanis, and the Allen Creek Task Force have all taken an interest in the crumbling masonry structure.

When the WCRC began operating in 1919, its offices were in the County Court­house, and the site on West Washington was a storage yard. By 1921, when former U-M All-American football player Ernie Allmendinger began working there, the commission maintained 104 miles of roads, only 8 miles of which were paved.

By 1925 it could afford its own build­ing—a simple concrete structure with of­fices above a garage. Three years later, the commission added a one-story workshop, and in 1930 the complex took on its pres­ent form with the completion of an addi­tional, brick garage.

By 1937 the WCRC staff was main­taining 1,411 miles of road. In an article written ten years later, Allmendinger re­called how three-person crews would go out and determine road and fence lines, of­ten with the help of property owners who showed them markers or deeds. The commission would then make im­provements, such as straightening roads, extending culverts, reshaping steep hills, and digging drainage ditches.

During the Great Depression, there was never enough time or money to do all that was needed. Then, in World War II, it was impossible to buy new equipment, or even parts for old equipment.

"We didn't have tools. We would work by hand, by shovel," recalls Thomas Kittel, who worked at the road commission after graduating from high school in 1944, and then again when he came back from the war in 1946.

In spring the challenge was to make muddy roads passable, mainly by spread­ing gravel. Then the crews had to grade the dirt roads to smooth out the ruts and potholes. If they didn't finish the road surfaces fast enough, "they would dry up harder than the devil," remembered one worker.

In the summer the challenge was the re­verse—keeping them from becoming too dusty. Washtenaw was the first county in the state to use liquid chloride to solve this problem. John Rayburn and Ernie Schel­lenberger worked on the first chloride truck. Rayburn recalls that he opened the tap that let out the chloride while Schellenberger drove.

Winter was the most challenging time. The crews would mix sand with flaky, sol­id chloride to keep the sand from freezing. During snowstorms, Carl Thayer's job was to stand at the back of the truck and push the sand onto a wheel that spread it onto the road. When Thayer got too cold, he would bang with his shovel on the back of the cab, and the driver would stop and let him come in to warm up.

WCRC employees fortunate enough to have indoor or part-indoor jobs—surveying, engineering, bookkeep­ing, purchasing, and personnel—worked on the second floor of the main building. Two other small county of­fices were also there: planning, with two full-time employees, and building inspections, with one. Eileen Westfall Gondak worked half time in each.

Gondak, who start­ed as a teenager in 1948, recalls that her boss, planner George Hurrell, "worried about the strip [on Washtenaw] between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. He said if we don't zone better, with greenways, we won't be able to tell when one city ends and the other begins." According to Gon­dak, "Everyone laughed, saying, 'Where are you coming from?'"

Road crews ran the gamut from foot­ball star Allmendinger to someone who couldn't read. Many were farmers who worked their fields in their off hours. Sum­mer help often included football players recruited by Allmendinger.

Thayer—who, like Rayburn, went to work for the WCRC in 1947 after serving in World War II—recalls that they alternat­ed between working fifty-five and forty-five hours a week. Every other Friday, when the men got their checks, many would go drinking at Prey's Cafe on West Washington and not be in shape to come to work on Saturday.

After World War II, the road commission slowly be­gan replacing its equipment. One acquisition was a truck that sprinkled sand automati­cally, so that the only crew needed was a driver sitting in a warm cab. The delighted Thayer was the first to use it. The old trucks, which were just barely functioning, were sold for scrap.

In 1965 the road commis­sion moved to a modern garage on Zeeb Road. It was right in the middle of the county and much closer to the areas where work was needed, especially after the freeways were finished.

The City of Ann Arbor took over the Washing­ton Street build­ing. Upstairs are offices for parks and recreation, forestry, parking, traffic engineer­ing, and Fairview Cemetery, along with the sign shop.

The first floor is still garage. Community Standards—the former parking enforce­ment office, now expanded to include neighborhood parking regulations and "clean community" violations—is also in the building.

This summer most of the building's op­erations will move to a new garage now being constructed on Stone School Road south of Ellsworth (Community Standards will move to the former Fire Station 2, on Stadium near Packard). There is a broad spread of opinions on the best future use of the building—or the site if the building is torn down.

The Allen Creek Task Force is divided three ways on the site's future use—be­tween tearing the complex down to form a park, tearing it down and building some­thing new on the highest portion of the land, and restoring the 1925 building for another use. Several groups are interested in the building, including Downtown Ki­wanis for its sales, and the Arts Alliance of the Ann Arbor Area for artists' studios. (See "Land War: The Three-Way Fight over the Future of Downtown," October 2006.) The final decision will be up to city council.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Above): Arts advocate Tamara Real and Kiwanian Dan Dever both want the eighty-one-year-old garage for their nonprofits. (Right) The building under construction in 1924, just five years after the Washtenaw County Road Commission began operating. (Below) Ernie Schellenberger and John Rayburn sprayed liquid chloride on dirt roads to keep down the dust.

A Century at State and Huron
The Union School and Ann Arbor High were once the city's pride.

Ann Arbor's first public high school opened on October 5, 1856. Known as the Union High School, it stood on State Street be­tween Huron and Washington. Destroyed fifty years later in a spectacular New Year's Eve fire, it was replaced by what is now the U-M Frieze Building—a structure that many Ann Arborites of retirement age still think of fondly as Ann Arbor High.

Earlier this year, the regents voted to demolish the Frieze Building to make room for a new dormitory, con­signing to memory the public schools that oc­cupied the site for a cen­tury. But the hopes and headaches that surrounded their construc­tion remain surprisingly current today.

The path to the Union High School was tortuous, slow, and often contentious. At least fif­teen communities — from Flint to Tecumseh —opened public high schools before Ann Arbor did. The reasons for the delay were time­less: money and politics: Ann Arbor's first schoolhouse, built on land donated by village founder John Allen, opened in September 1825. By 1830 the township of Ann Arbor was divided into eleven school districts, with District 1 including the village. The first report of District 1's commis­sioners, in 1832, sum­marized the situation briskly: "No. of children between 5 and 15 years of age in the district, 161. Average No. in school, 35. No public moneys received."

Support for publicly funded education was slow to develop. Many residents, especially the wealthy who could af­ford private schools, op­posed any tax for oper­ating public schools. As a result, complained the Michi­gan State Journal in 1835, "a neglect of schools has be­come almost a proverbial reproach upon our village."

The situation was complicated by the multiplicity of school districts. By 1839 the eleven districts of Ann Arbor Township had been consolidated into four, and in 1842 those were consolidated into one. But in the 1881 History of Washtenaw County, Michigan, W. S. Perry, superin­tendent of schools from 1870 to 1897, records that in 1845, "a petition, which secured the names of nearly all the solid men of the town north of Huron St., the aristo­cratic part of the village, was presented to the school in­spectors, praying them to divide the districts 'before any expenses incurred in preparing to build a mammoth school-house, as we prefer the system which experience has proved to the visionary and costly experiments.' Counter petitions of those living in the south and west portions of the town were made, but nevertheless the divi­sion was made, and for eight years the town supported two schools and two sets of officers throughout."

The two school districts were finally unified in No­vember 1853. Within days, a committee was appointed to develop plans for the "Union School." By the end of De­cember, the school board had decided on a site—one and three-fifths acres, bounded by Huron, State, Washington, and Thayer streets. The property, owned by Elijah W. and Lucy Morgan/cost $2,000.

The board presented plans and construction cost esti­mates for the building at a public meeting on February 4, 1854. After a long and vehement debate, it was resolved "that the District Board be, once it is hereby authorized and directed to erect and furnish at the expense, and on the faith and credit, of this District, a brick building for a Union High School."

The board voted to raise $10,000 by tax to cover the anticipated cost. "We do not like to pay taxes better than others, but when we know that we are paying for school purposes the money goes freely and without regret," the Michigan Argus editorialized. "We must have good schools or big jails."

The Morgans' land was on the extreme eastern end of the village—so far from the center of town that it had been used only for pasture and the occasional circus per­formance. But once the school was sited, development soon followed. "Many new houses are being built and yet the demand is not supplied," the Argus reported in Sep­tember 1857. "People are moving here to take advantage of the University and our model Union School."

In its haste to get the school under way, the board had badly misjudged its cost. In addition to the $10,000 voted at the meeting in February 1854, the Argus reported in September that a "tax of $7,000 was voted to be raised the present year, and to be appropriated toward the erection of a new School building. A tax of 70 cents per scholar was voted for School purposes, and other small amounts for contingent expenses."

The following January the Argus reported on a bill, just passed by the Michigan Legislature, that seems to have been aimed at removing all possible obstacles to progress on the building. The legislation gave school boards the "power to designate sites for as many school-houses, including a Union High School? as they may think proper, by a vote of two thirds of the le­gal voters present, at any regular meeting." Boards were also grant­ed the power to pur­chase land, raise taxes upon property within the district, fix tuition for nonresident schol­ars, make and enforce bylaws and regulations, borrow money, and re­pay loans.

Ann Arbor's board now could proceed in the knowledge that its actions bore legal sanc­tion—a timely reassur­ance, as construction funds were once again found insufficient. In addition to the $10,000 voted in February 1854 and $7,000 in Septem­ber of the same year, a meeting in September 1855 authorized bor­rowing $10,000, bring­ing the total appropria­tion for the building to $27,000. The following January, another public meeting approved bor­rowing a final $8,000 to complete and furnish the building and fence and grade the grounds.

School records do not provide a total cost figure for the building.
However, from 1855 through 1863 the district issued 167 individual bonds, ranging in value from $50 to $1,100, and totaling $32,637.50. That matches closely with the expen­diture figures given in the Argus, which add up to $35,000—more than triple the original estimate.

For its money, though, the city got a show-place—a building a railroad publication called "the crowning glory of the town." Built of brick on a fieldstone foundation, the handsome Italianate school stood three sto­ries tall, set well back from the street, with a curving driveway in front. The third floor was one huge assembly hall, used for public gatherings of all sorts, including the U-M graduation exercises. The basement, wrote the state superintendent for public instruction, "contained living quarters for a janitor and his family, a writing room, a recitation room, and a primary school room."

The following January, the Argus published a long story praising the new facilities--as well as the orderliness, efficiency, and spirit of the student body and faculty. The paper reported that the curriculum included:

"Four classes in Latin, two in Greek, two in French, two i%,German, two in Bourdon's Al­gebra, three in Elementary Algebra, one in Geometry, one in Natural Philosophy, tour in Arithmetic, one in Book Keeping, and three in English Grammar. . . . Instruction was also given regularly to both departments in Writ­ing, Drawing and Vocal Music; and private les­sons are given in Instrumental Music."

Noting that the number in attendance was 356, the report concluded:

"Our school is well organized, well disci­plined, and well instructed; thus far it has more than answered our most sanguine expec­tations, and it now gives the most cheering promise or continued prosperity."

Though the U-M would not admit women until 1870, the Union School was coed from the start. The Argus noted in fall 1857 that residents paid nothing for the basic course of study, aside from a "modest fee" for those wishing to pursue foreign languages, art, or music.

"For the information or our friends residing in adjoining Towns, we give the terms—per quarter or 11 weeks—on which non-resident scholars are admitted: Higher Dept., English Studies, $4. Higher Dept., English and Lan­guages, $5. Intermediate English, $3. Inter­mediate English and Languages, $4."

The high school was still educating many nonresidents when superintendent Perry wrote his history of the school district, circa 1880:

"It is one or the largest preparatory and aca­demical schools in the country, and its reputa­tion has become well nigh national. Or its 400 to 500 pupils, about 60 per cent are non-residents. Its annual tuition receipts go far toward cancelling the cost or its support, while many families become temporary residents or the city in order to secure the advan­tages of its superior instruction. Since 1861, the date or its rirst graduation class, the school has graduated 870 pupils, a large portion or whom entered the University of Michigan. It is doubtful if any other enterprise of the city has contributed more, even to its material prosper­ity, than has the Ann Arbor high school."

The initial curriculum was divided into two sections—classics and English. They covered similar material, but the former was more rigorous for college preparation. In 1872 a commercial course was started, and two years later, Horatio Chute was hired to teach science. He designed some of the first comprehensive courses in high school physics, astronomy, and chemistry, which were copied all over the country.

As enrollment grew, so did the build­ing. A portico was added to the west side in 1857. In 1872 the school was extended on the east side by about forty feet, nearly doubling in size. That same year new heat­ing equipment, seats, and bells were pur­chased. In 1889 a final expansion nearly doubled its size again, extending the school all the way to Huron Street.

The Gothic-style addition was no soon­er completed than it was nearly destroyed: on September 10, 1889, smoke was seen pouring out of a window on the first floor. Fortunately, firemen and a group of about 100 boys were able to extinguish the fire in short order. Afterward there was discus­sion of taking steps to fireproof the build­ing—but nothing was done.

Fifteen years later, on New Year's Eve 1904, the entire school was consumed by flames. Because water pressure was low and the fire was well advanced when it was discovered, the firemen could not save the building. Even though the blaze occurred in the middle of the night, most of the town came out to watch.

Principal Judson Pattengill, science teacher Horatio Chute, math teacher Levi Wines, and school superintendent Herbert Slauson organized a rescue mission. Aided by about 100 students, they were able to save much of Chute's prized physics labo­ratory equipment and most of the 8,000 li­brary books. But much more was lost— textbooks, botany and chemistry equip­ment, school records, teaching aids, and sports equipment.

"Friends of mine who were high school students at the time tell me that they stood with tears running down their cheeks, cry­ing unashamed as they saw the flames break out in one after another of their classrooms," local historian Lela Duff wrote in 1956. Overnight, the city had lost its showplace, the anchor of the develop­ment of a large section of the local real es­tate market, and a trendsetting educational institution.

Christmas vacation was ex­tended just two days. With an outpouring of community support, classes resumed on January 12. The eighth grade moved en masse to Perry School, while high school classes met in borrowed churches and student religious centers, Moran's School of Shorthand, and the basement and storerooms of the new Hamilton Block at Thayer and North Uni­versity.

Efforts to replace the school started the morning after the fire with an emergency meeting of the school board. A bond issue to fund a new building passed in March, 370-42. The district hired Malcomson and Higginbotham of Detroit to design both the new school and an adjoining library facing Huron (the district had already re­ceived a Carnegie grant for the library be­fore the fire). Both are neoclassical de­signs with pillars, multisectioned win­dows, and arched main entrances. But the school is made of brick, while the library has a stone facade, and details differ subtly on the roofs and entrances.

The new school opened for classes on April 2, 1907, and was dedicated in a community ceremony ten days later. "That Ann Arbor now possesses the finest public school building in Michigan, if not in the United States, is admitted by all who have visited whether residents of the district or of other sections of the country," the Daily Times enthused.

If students entered at the side doors on Washington or Huron, which most did since they had their lockers there, they were on the bottom floor. About a third of that floor was the domain of Chute, who had been allowed to design it for science instruction. The gym was in the middle. At the back, on the Thayer Street side, were rooms equipped for vocational classes — wood and metal shops and drafting rooms.

Students who came in through the grand entrance on State Street could go down half a flight to the gym or half a flight up to reach the auditorium. The top floor had two big session rooms—combi­nation study halls and places for students to be when not in class—facing State Street. Divided by sexes at the Union School, in the new school they were sepa­rated by alphabet. Longtime (1946-1968) principal Nick Schreiber was hired in 1936 to be the session teacher for L-Z. His counterpart, Sara Keen—called "Miss Kerosene" by the school wags—took care of the first part of the alphabet.

As in the Union School, the curriculum centered on subjects needed to get into college. But the new school also offered greatly expanded vocational courses—the state's 1905 compulsory school attendance law required the school to serve more stu­dents who weren't college-bound.

Many alumni remember the school as­semblies. Veteran local radio personality Ted Heusel heard a broadcast of one of Hitler's speeches at an assembly in 1938. In another assembly he saw the chief archer from the movie Robin Hood stand in the balcony and hit targets on the stage. Another assembly featured U-M football star Tom Harmon. "He came down the aisles with everyone screaming," says Heusel.

Ted Palmer never forgot the assembly at which his history teacher played a trick on the students. "Miss Perry came from the right side and another Miss Perry came from the left and met in the center. It as­tounded everyone to see two Miss Perrys. It turned out she was an identical twin." Three years later, the sisters played a vari­ation of the same trick on Dick DeLong and his classmates.

In the gym underneath the auditorium, students took physical education and played indoor competitive games. Palmer ran track by circling the gym, twenty-two laps per mile. "It wasn't much straightway, but some schools had less," he recalls. To practice the forty-yard dash, students ran the length of the hall that connected the Washington and Huron street entrances. This practice was halted when one student didn't stop in time and went right though the glass, seriously injuring himself.

For cross-country, Palmer jogged to West Park and ran there, returning to school for showers. Students participating in football or baseball ran to Wines (now Elbel) Field but were lucky in having a little building there where they could change and shower. Kip Taylor, who scored the first touchdown in Michigan Stadium, was one of their coaches. Begin­ning in 1938, Ann Arbor High's teams were nicknamed the Pioneers. A 1962 school booklet explains that the name was appropriate because the high school was "a pioneer in the true sense of the word, being one of the first schools in the state to have an organized athletic program."

At lunchtime students could eat at school, but "we liked to mingle with the college kids on State Street," recalls Palmer. The area was full of lunch places, well remembered by high school alumni — Kresge's counter for hot dogs, next door at Granada's for hot beef sandwiches, Betsy Ross in Nickels Arcade for deviled ham sandwiches, Toppers on Division for 150 hamburgers.

The lures of the neighborhood included the State Theater. In his memoirs, princi­pal Nick Schreiber recalled a day, after a heavy snowstorm, when other schools closed but the high school remained open. In protest, a large number of students left for the matinee at the State. "When I learned of the exodus to the theater, I went over and asked the manager, a Rotarian friend, if I might have the theater lighted while I took the stage and announced that those students who did not return to class­es were in for disciplinary action," Schreiber remembered. "They left the theater in haste."

The high school served well through the city's explosive growth in the 1920s, the De­pression, and World War II. But after the war it was increasingly overcrowded. Built for 800 students, it was serving close to 1,400 by the time it closed in 1956. "The wood floors were creaky when we went there," recalls Bob Kuhn, a student in the 1940s. "The school seemed old. The cement stairs were worn."

The U-M, too, was growing rapidly and needed more space. So the city and uni­versity worked out a swap: the university got the high school, while the public schools got a large university-owned par­cel diagonally across from Michigan Sta­dium—the site of the present Pioneer High. Included in the trade was Wines Field, now renamed Elbel, after Louis Elbel, author of "The Victors"; today, it is used for U-M band practice.

The university renamed the old high school the Frieze Building, after an es­teemed nineteenth-century professor, and built an addition on the back. Even though people thought the building was run down during its last years as a high school, it last­ed fifty years more with very little mainte­nance. But this year is likely to be its last.

In January the U-M regents voted to de­molish the Frieze Building to make room for what they are provisionally calling "North Quad." Preservation activists and Ann Arbor High alumni argued for saving the building or at least the facade, but U-M planner Sue Gott rules that out, saying the university needs to use the entire site, in­cluding the State Street lawn. Still on the table is the possibility of preserving the Carnegie Library—if it can be combined successfully with the new building.

This article is based in part on Wil Cumming's history of the Ann Arbor Union High School. The complete text is aailable in the Ann Arbor Public Schools collection at the U-M Bentley Historical Library.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: When Ann Arbor High was dedicated in April 1907, the Daily Times declared it "the finest public building in Michigan, if not in the United States."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: After the fire on New Year's Eve, 1904. Overnight, the city lost its showplace, the anchor of the development of a large section of the local real estate market, and a trendsetting educational institution.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The city and university worked out a swap, trad­ing the old school for a large parcel diagonally across from Michigan Stadium—the site of the present Pioneer High

Ann Arbor's first suburb recalls the golden age of landscape architecture.

Barton Hills Village is a 140-home enclave set on rolling hills between the Huron River and Whitmore Lake Road. Ann Arbor's first suburb was a financial dis­aster for its developers, but a century af­ter it was conceived, it remains a master­piece of the landscaper's art. Designed by the Olmsted Brothers, whose father created New York's Central Park, it was carefully planned to preserve and em­phasize the land's natural forms. Today, its winding lanes and thoughtfully sited homes recall a moment in American his­tory when landscape architecture was an important cultural force.

Apparently, the area has always been recognized as special. In 1998 a builder working on a new home uncovered human remains at a site on Barton Shore Drive. He called the Washtenaw County sheriff's office, which called the U-M Museum of Anthropology. Archae­ologist John O'Shea came to investigate.

In a subsequent talk to Barton Hills residents, O'Shea recalled that he and his colleagues at first doubted whether the site was of archaeological interest: the remains seemed too fresh, and the bones seemed too long to be pre­historic. But further analysis of the bones, soil, and arti­facts established that the first recorded person at the site of what is now Barton Hills was a tall, slim young woman who lived more than 1,000 years ago. She must have been something of an aristocrat, because when she died, she was buried in a stone-lined grave instead of being left ex­posed to birds, insects, and weather, the usual practice at the time.

Even after white settlers cleared the trees from the hills early in the nineteenth century, the 1,000-year-old grave lay hidden and forgotten. Then, a century ago, the land­scape underwent another dramatic change.

In 1905, Detroit's Edison Illuminating Company pur­chased Washtenaw Light and Power, which had been fur­nishing electricity to Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti from a hydroelectric plant on Dixboro Road. Edison also bought other properties along the Huron where hydropower could be developed or improved, including the river be­low Barton Hills.

In Kilowatts at Work, a 1957 history of Detroit Edison, author Raymond C. Miller writes that the company wanted the sites mainly to eliminate competitors like Washtenaw Light and Power. Even then, it was clear that hydropower couldn't meet the area's demand for electricity. Nonethe­less, Edison went on to build the dams and generating stations that still define the river all the way from Belleville to Barton Hills.

The company's president at the time was Alex Dow (1862-1942), a Scottish immigrant who taught him­self science. According to Miller, Dow was a well-read man with many interests. "No one could ignore the fact that the introduction of dams and power plants would as­suredly alter the scene," Miller writes. "Dow himself was too much a lover of nature to do unnecessary violence to natural beauty, and the contemporary national emphasis on conservation and the protection of natural resources at­tracted his approval and interest."

Miller's book, commissioned by Detroit Edison, wasn't likely to portray Dow in any but a flattering light. But there's no question that Dow was a visionary. To ob­tain the property for its dams and flowage area, Edison of­ten had to buy larger parcels, including entire farms. In 1913 the company combined all the excess property, total­ing 2,000 acres, into one entity, the Huron Farms Compa­ny, and hired William E. Underdown, a 1904 Cornell graduate, to manage it.

The original idea had been to sell off the excess land, but soon Dow was full of plans to use it. He created a demonstration farm on Whitmore Lake Road, opened a resort for the company's women employees on Huron River Drive, and donated land on Argo Pond to the city for a boathouse and municipal beach. But his most lasting impact came when he hired the nation's leading landscape architects, Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts.

Frederick Law Olmsted and his then partner, Calvert Vaux, were the first people ever to describe themselves as "landscape architects." Their signature creation was the vast and innovative design of New York City's Central Park. The park's "natural design" was not natural at all: it was a carefully engineered replacement for what was then a swampy lowland. Beginning in 1857, Olmsted and Vaux changed it to a glorious centerpiece of the city by adding hills and meadows, massive plantings, curving pathways, and stone walls and bridges.

Olmsted founded his own firm in 1883. Driven by the conviction that beautiful settings would improve the health and welfare of ordinary people, he and his associ­ates shaped such beloved American landscapes as Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.; Detroit's Belle Isle; the spacious grounds of Stanford University; and Boston's "Emerald Necklace" of linked parks. The firm even con­tributed early designs for Yellowstone National Park.

Under Olmsted's son and stepson, who took over in 1895, the firm continued to win high-profile assignments, including the National Mall and the White House grounds in Washington. (In 1918 Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. ex­cused himself from a Barton Hills trip, writing that he was "continuously employed in Washington upon government work.") But during the "City Beautiful" movement of the early twentieth century, many smaller communities also sought guidance from the prestigious firm. Before World War I, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and the U-M all commissioned master plans from the Olmsteds. The firm's list of Ann Ar­bor projects also includes plans for nine east-side sub­divisions and landscapes for an equal number of individual property owners. (Its landscape plan for Harry and Carrie Earhart's mansion on Geddes has been re-created by the building's present owner, Concordia University.)

Edison president Alex Dow oversaw construction of the company's power dams on the Huron River. Dow's wife, Vivienne, chose the site for their sprawling shingle-style home for its view of Barton Dam.

Dow sought the firm's advice on the entire Huron Fa^ms project. But its biggest contribution was its design for Barton Hills. Dow envisioned stately homes, a country club, and even a hotel on the rolling hills north of the newly created Barton Pond.

Some skeptics had trouble imagining the transformation Dow proposed. Be­cause the area had been cleared for graz­ing long before, they jokingly dubbed the planned community "Barren Hills."

On December 22, 1915, Underdown reported to the Olmsteds that he was surveying the hill land north of Barton Pond and "would like to arrange with you to lay this out for [a] subdivision ... for fairly high class private homes." By April 1916 the firm had delivered a preliminary plan. The lots were large, from one to eight acres, and a cover letter explained that each had been laid according to "impor­tant views, and with the shape of the land."

The letter noted that the country club was sited high on a hill, "in a most com­manding position" on Barton North Drive. Deceptively rustic, the roads were actually carefully engineered for optimal grading and drainage. The Olmsteds added that Barton Shore Drive, which roughly paral­leled Barton North Drive at a lower eleva­tion, would "undoubtedly prove the most attractive when built as it will follow com­paratively near the water and will command an uninterrupted view over the pool."

"It's that drive along the shore that does it," comments Realtor Ed Surovell, who lives in Barton Hills. "On most of the recreational lakes in this area (and almost everywhere else for that matter) roads have been placed behind the houses (usually seasonal cottages) so that there is no road between cottage and water; here, the mo­torist or pedestrian gets the benefit."

The site was not entirely empty. While the dam was being constructed, several unassuming, traditional houses had been built on the shore for Edison employees; they are still there, now used for Barton Hills staff. During World War I a few grander homes were built by individuals with Edison connections. Underdown, the Huron Farms manager, began work on a house for his family in 1916. He consulted with a "Mr. G. Gibbs" of Olmsted on the construction of the access road, later named Underdown.

Infrastructure work began in earnest af­ter the war. In 1919, by special action of the Huron Farms board, Dow's wife, Vivienne, was given her choice of any lot in the subdivision for $1. She chose a centrally located sixteen-acre site, halfway between the high road and the shore road, that had an excellent view of the pond, so her hus­band could look out and see his dam.

Designed by U-M architecture dean Emil Lorch (who probably also did the Underdown house), the Dow home was started in 1921 and occupied by 1922. It is large, with twenty rooms, but feels com­fortable and homey. In the manner of the British rural gentry, the Dows gave it a name, "Brushwood." (According to their granddaughter, the name came from one of Vivienne's favorite poems.)

After the house was completed, Alex Dow commuted to Detroit, sometimes staying the night or part of the week. For many years Vivienne continued to consult the Olmsted firm, asking about such things as where to locate the rose garden, the configuration of the path to the beach, and how to add a stone wall in front. In Febru­ary 1927, Ferris Smith, who had replaced Gibbs as the Olmsted representative, visit­ed the Dows and reported, "Met Mrs. Dow at 10 o'clock, also Mr. Dow. He left after a few minutes and said that Mrs. Dow was boss of the place."

According to a reminiscence written by former resident Ole Blackett in 1974, the developers first focused on selling multi-acre sites to buyers seeking "large houses suitable for country estates." But if Dow had hoped to lure other Detroit executives to Barton Hills, he was disappointed— most of the early buyers came from Ann Arbor. "For several reasons, among which are the rapid expansion of the University and the great amount of heavy traffic along Washtenaw Ave., it seems that sev­eral people have already decided that they wish to move further out," Smith reported in June 1922. "And while I was in Ann Ar­bor, among those who came out to Barton Hills to look at property were the Dan Zimmermans, Dr. R. Bishop Canfield, Dr. and Mrs. [Breakey], and Dr. and Mrs. Loree." Drs. Breakey and Loree both lived near Central Campus, while Canfield and Zimmerman, a businessman who had in­vestments in everything from artificial ice to ball bearings, were neighbors on Wash­tenaw. (The Canfields' home later became the Women's City Club.)

As lots were sold, architects began con­tacting the Olmsted firm for site informa­tion. For instance, a July 1922 letter from Cuthbert and Cuthbert (William and Ivan, local architect and engineer respectively) asks for specifics for lots 7 and 8. Because each site plan needed detailed drawings, the Olmsteds suggested hiring a full-time architect; they recommended George Babson, who had done similar work for them at Forest Hills Gardens on Long Island.

Detroit Edison completed the first nine holes of Barton Hills Country Club in 1919. In 1922 the clubhouse was built and the course extended and redesigned. "The idea of the country club was to embellish the subdivision," explains Edmond DeVine, who today lives in the Underdown house and as a boy often came to the golf course with his father. The club's original mem­bers constituted a who's who of the com­munity; among them were U-M regent Junius Beal and Walter Mack, owner of the town's largest department store. (Member­ship is not linked to residency—of the 540 current member families, only fifty-six live in the village.)

The first two houses, Underdown's and the Dows', were in the shingled Arts and Crafts style. In the 1920s the English Cot­tage style was popular, with its steeply pitched roofs, casement windows, stained-glass windows, and curved entrances. Cuthbert and Cuthbert excelled at this style, winning an honorable mention in an architectural magazine for the Vernau home on Underdown.

According to Ole Blackett, however, "suddenly the sale of lots stopped....Ap­parently the demand for expensive country estate had run out and Edison was forced to alter its sales policy." Blackett believed that Edison then subdivided larger lots to produce more affordable parcels. How­ever, even the earliest Olmsted maps show many relatively modest homesites of an acre or so. More likely, the developers simply changed their focus from multiple-lot blocks to individual sales.

The first clue that Edison might be lowering its sights came in 1924, when Under-down asked Frederick Olm­sted Jr. his opinion of Henry Flagg houses, which, Underdown ex­plained, were "built low to the ground without cellars." Olmsted was out of the office when the letter arrived, but his staff answered, "We know that Mr. Olmsted has been more or less acquainted with the 'Flagg' house for some time, and while we cannot quote him we understand he is not enthusiastic over them." Nonetheless, three Flagg houses were built near the east end of the development.

Edison's hopes for Barton Hills peaked in 1925, when the company had Olmsted sketch out a possible extension of the de­velopment all the way west to the Foster Bridge on Maple Road. But there weren't enough buyers to fill the original subdivi­sion, much less the extension. Edison stopped consulting the Olmsted firm after 1927, presumably to rein in expenses.

The 1931 advertising brochure empha­sized that "homes need not be pretentious" and invited future buyers to "notice the di­versity of architecture and to see how har­moniously the smaller homes blend with the larger residences." Even many of those larger houses seem relatively normal to­day. "The houses that I remember were not fancy," says Sarah Riggs Taggart, who as a child spent a lot of time at Barton Hills because her grandparents on both sides, Henry and Emma Riggs and Grace Walzer, and her aunt Lizzie Oliphant all lived there. "I remember the Breakey house as comfortable, the Riggs house likewise. Gram [Walzer]'s big house was the fanciest, and the fact that subsequent owners haven't tampered with it suggests that everyone has loved it as it is."

Barton Hills grew slowly but steadily even through the Depression. Instead of executives, many of the new arrivals in the 1930s were U-M faculty, such as Bill Haber and his wife, Fanny; William and Louise Trow; and Ole and Ruth Blackett. Helen Underdown built a smaller house on Juniper Lane after William was killed in a car crash in 1930.

In 1941 Dr. Howard and Cecilia Ross built a multipillared house that neighbors sarcastically dubbed "Tara," after the man­sion in Gone With the Wind. That same year, at the opposite end of the architectur­al spectrum, Otto and Eleanor LaPorte built the first Modern-style home in Barton Hills. Designed by U-M architecture pro­fessor George Brigham, "it was so modern, Otto and Eleanor had a difficult time get­ting financing," reports Adele LaPorte, Otto's second wife. "It was so outre, the bank said they'd never get their money out of it." A year later Gene and Sadie Power also built a Modern house, designed by Birmingham architect Wallace Frost.

Home building stopped during World War II, when materials were needed for the war effort. That may have been the final straw for Detroit Edison. As early as 1931, financial people at the company were com­plaining that Huron Farms, as the develop­ment was still called, had cost roughly $234,000 and produced only $22,000. There were also ongoing costs, with Edison employees often siphoned off to do chores at Barton Hills and the other properties.

So in 1944 the company essentially gave the property to the residents. "They contacted the people who lived here and wanted them to take it over," recalls Walter Esch, the village's maintenance superintendent. But according to Esch, "the people didn't have any money, and they didn't want to take it over. So Edi­son put ten thousand dollars in the bank for them to take it over and left Charlie Gallagher, one of their employees, to stay on the premises."

According to Blackett, who was in­volved in the negotiations, the transaction was carefully crafted to allow Edison to write off its losses on the development without creating any new tax liabilities for the residents. Edison sold out to the newly formed Barton Hills Improvement Associ­ation for just $20,000 —and gave the group a mortgage for the entire amount. Though Blackett was on the U-M faculty, he writes that after the transfer, "I went on the road myself and sold lots in order to meet our mortgage payments and our share of the employment payrolls."

By 1949 Gallagher needed help in maintaining the subdivision's 500 acres. He talked Walter Esch, then twenty-three, away from his family farm on North Terri­torial to take the job. Walter and his wife, Mary, moved into one of three three-bedroom employee houses, where they raised ten children. One of those children, David, and his wife, Jan, now live in one of the houses, too. David is the village's assistant maintenance superintendent, and Jan is the village's assistant clerk.

Walter Esch recalls that one of the more colorful postwar residents was Edgar Kaiser, son of the industrialist Henry Kaiser, who had taken over the Willow Run bomber plant to build Kaiser Frazer cars. Edgar enlarged the Riggs home and added a swimming pool. Every year he put up 3,500 outdoor Christmas lights that drew viewers from all around, and ended the hol­iday season with a big New Year's party. "If they [the guests] had too much to drink, Mr. Kaiser would come and say, 'Walt, take one of the cars'—he always had five or six cars from the factory sitting there—'and take them home,' " remembers Esch.

When he started, Esch says, there were still only about thirty homes in the village. The Detroit Edison people were all gone, and most of the residents were profession­als—doctors, dentists, and professors. But the postwar construction boom was start­ing, and after thirty years of delays, Barton Hills was about to fill up.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many new homes were Modern designs by forward-looking U-M professors, such as Brigham and Bob Metcalf. Architects Fran Quarton and Herb Johe built houses for themselves, and Johe designed four others. David Osler, son-in-law of Emil Lorch, also built sever­al Modern houses, and the Colvin Robin­son firm designed a home for George and Elizabeth (Libby) Langford. Generally, these were flat-roof designs that blended in with the landscape and made economi­cal and respectful use of such materials as glass, wood, and concrete. They probably averaged about 2,800 square feet—consid­erably smaller than the mansions that had preceded them.

Multitalented Walter Esch became, de facto, the landscaper of Barton Hills. Olm-sted had laid one-lane gravel roads. Over time, Esch oversaw their widening to two-lane asphalt roads that retain the Olmsted contours. "Oh, Juniper Lane was gravel," he recalls. He and another employee "blacktopped it by hand because they [the residents' association] didn't have any money." Using rubble from city of Ann Arbor demolitions, he widened the shoul­ders where the river sometimes washed out the road.

Over the years, Esch has also been, de facto, fire chief, chief of police, water commissioner, road maintenance adminis­trator and crew, garbage department head and crew, mailman, rescue squad for household emergencies, and bus driver. "Because Walter came at the time the community was just finding its identity," his daughter-in-law Jan says, "many of the current traditions were his idea, and the two just grew up together."

From 1944 to 1975, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every day, the Barton Hills bus was available for trips to and from Ann Arbor. "We picked up the maids and everything," Esch says. "There was a family, we had to sit there until the maid had the dinner on the table before we could take her to town, and the board backed her [the lady of the house] up. Charlie and I, we used to argue with the board all the time about that."

The older Esch children went to the two-room Hagen School on Dhu Varren Road. As the district grew, the younger ones went to various elementary schools.

"I think most Barton Hills kids went to University School," Mary says. Walter re­calls that the Barton Hills bus delivered kids to seven schools, including, besides the now defunct University School, St. Thomas, Angell, Tappan, and eventually Greenhills. Ann Arbor school buses now take kids to Wines, Forsythe, and Pioneer.

In 1973 Barton Hills became the first home-rule village in Washtenaw County. This status protected the subdivision from what residents saw then as potential incur­sions of other governments that might ne­cessitate difficult and expensive water and sewage linkups.

"My two best friends," says Libby Langford, a critical player in establishing the village, "were Conrail and the Foster Bridge"—the high-speed tracks and single-lane bridge discouraged traffic from Ann Arbor. "Nobody bothers us; we do our own thing; we love it."

The village has its own well on a cleanaquifer. Each home has its own septic sys­tem, and the village requires periodic in­spections. Residents pay taxes to both the village and Ann Arbor Township, currently totaling about 13.5 mills. (The correspon­ding rate in Ann Arbor is 16.9 mills.) One curious legacy of the village's past is that the Barton Hills Maintenance Corporation owns the roads and therefore is able to limit access to the village—signs at the en­trances announce "No thoroughfare" and "Private road."

Only a few empty lots remain, and most of those belong to families who own two. So, for the most part, if a new house is to be built, an old one must come down. In the past ten years the village has seen about half a dozen "teardowns." The long-forgotten stone grave was discovered during one of these projects, for Domino's Pizza president and U-M regent David Brandon.

These new homes vary in architectural style, but all of them are several times larger than the buildings they replaced.

That's become an issue for the mainte­nance corporation, which must approve all building plans. "As I look to the future," says president Chuck Bultman, "one of the struggles of the corporation is to find a way to work with the larger house typical today, sited on lots designed for a more modest house size."

The first generation of residents were, like Alex Dow himself, wealthy white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But unlike some developments of its era, Barton Hills never had restrictive deed covenants that barred minorities. Today, residents include African American, Middle Eastern, Indian, Kashmiri, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and East Asian families.

Prosperity, however, remains a require­ment. According to the 2000 census, Bar­ton Hills' median household income was $149,000, more than triple Ann Arbor's $46,000. And while Ann Arbor posted a healthy median home value of $181,000, it paled next to Barton Hill's $710,000. Real estate agent Nancy Bishop, who lives in the village, estimates that house values start at about $600,000 and run all the way up to $5 or $6 million.

Since 1949, Walter Esch has done whatever needs doing in Barton Hills. His wife, Mary, raised ten children in a bungalow originally built for workers on Barton dam. Now their son David and daughter-in-law Jan work for the village, too, and live in another of the houses.

There have been a few minor adjustments over the years, but overall, Barton Hills' layout remains remarkably faithful to the parklike de­sign worked out by the Olmsteds more than eighty years ago. The biggest change is that hills once barren are now almost covered with trees.

The Olmsteds recommended trees as early as 1916, and the U-M forestry school oversaw plantings in the 1920s. The firm was never commissioned to develop a maintenance plan for the village, but to judge by its work elsewhere, it would al­most certainly have provided for glades, dells, and long clear views between group­ings of well-tended trees. Instead, coveted and cosseted, the trees have multiplied into a thick forest that presents a major challenge to the Olmsted plan.

The original country club building nes­tled into the landscape yet offered a lovely view of the river from its long covered veranda. Over the decades, however, trees grew and blocked the river view. In the late 1980s the original clubhouse was torn down and replaced by a large, traditionally columned building placed right up against Country Club Road. The site described by Olmsted Brothers as the best in Barton Hills is now occupied by a parking lot.

Knowledge of Dow's Olmstedian vi­sion died out with the first generation of residents. Many present residents inter­viewed for this article hadn't even known of the Olmsted connection when they bought their houses. As the years went by and trees continued growing, people living away from the shore forgot about the views and instead enjoyed the closeness to nature and privacy that the trees provided.

"When the view died, the plan died. Views only exist for the fortunate few," says Ed Surovell, adding that people today are attracted by the trees instead. "It was a change in social values. Trees were good, positive. City folks can't tell good trees from bad."

They're trying to learn. In 2003 the vil­lage's board of trustees hired Clark Fores­try to conduct a study of the state of the woods. (Though the firm is based in Bara-boo, Wisconsin, owner Fred Clark grew up in Barton Hills.) Commissioning of the study "is an indication of the awareness that the trees need to be managed and plans made for the future," Jan Esch says. "It has been supported by consistent, if limited, budgetary funding. Some funds were spent last year on garlic mustard control and ash tree removal, with contin­uing efforts under way for this year." There are other environmental issues as well, such as plant growth in Barton Pond and the village's resident deer herd, which has grown so large that it has to be man­aged by professional sharpshooters under a state permit.

Although it has acquired more and big­ger houses, Barton Hills hasn't become a mere house museum. The rolling hills, al­luring roads, and general focus on the pond remain intact. A century after Alex Dow started buying up property along the Huron, the Olmsted Brothers' work has held up well.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Above) An Olmstead Brothers blueprint shows the signature stone pillars at the entrance. (Left) The country club was set on the hilltop overlooking Barton Pond - one of the many views lost as woods grew up throughout the subdivision (below).

[Photo caption from original print edition]: As early as 1931, Edison's financial people were complaining that the development had cost roughly $234,000 and produced only $22,000. There were also ongoing costs, with Edison employees often siphoned off to do chores at Barton Hills and the other properties.

The stone which the builders rejected

When architect David Byrd was building the chapel that bears his name, he put a quotation from Psalm 118:22 over the front entrance: "The stone which the builders rejected." Joe Summers, vicar of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, which now occupies the building, finds the message very apt, since the church was built from discarded construction materials and by people who were in danger of being passed over because of their race. "It's a metaphor for all the outcasts that society rejected," explains Summers.

Finished in 1987, just months before Byrd died, the chapel at 3261 Lohr Road was the culmination of his career as an architect and a teacher. A simple rectangular design with a cupola, the chapel looks much like a traditional New England church, except that it is made of concrete blocks rather than wood or stone.

In 1966 Byrd gave up a career as an architect in Washington, D.C., to start WCC's construction technology program. Born in 1921, he was educated at Hampton Institute and Howard University, and later earned a master's and worked toward a doctorate in architecture at the U-M. According to his widow, Letitia Byrd, a retired teacher and a community activist, the job at WCC appealed to Byrd's idealistic side. "He wanted to use architecture to help people," she explains. "He wanted to stimulate black students to study--to create new opportunities, lines of vision."

By the 1960s construction unions were no longer officially segregated, but they were hard to get into if you didn't have connections. One of Byrd's main goals was to get more blacks into the unions by giving them the necessary training. In some cases older students already had the skills but needed a piece of paper as proof. Byrd also encouraged more African Americans to become architects.

In addition to working at WCC, Byrd continued to practice architecture, starting with his own house on Brookside and one across the street for Letitia's grandmother. Many of his projects connected to his social activism, such as the Black Economic Development League building on Depot and a nursery school for Ypsilanti's Greater Shiloh Church of God in Christ. A lot of his projects were church related--converting the former Arnet's Monuments on Chapin into New Hope Baptist, designing and building New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church in Willow Run, and adding on to what is now Crossroads Community Baptist Church, next to Stone School. For his own church, Ann Arbor's First United Methodist, Byrd designed and built a chapel, a memorial garden, and a promenade that serves as a barrier-free entrance.

Whenever he could, Byrd used his commissions to create job opportunities for his students and for black contractors in the area. Victor Hamilton, a WCC student whom Byrd was mentoring, was one of those hired to work on the Greater Shiloh nursery school. Hamilton recalls that as part of the job, the union came out and signed people up. Carl Hearns, an African American concrete contractor, sponsored Hamilton, getting him into the trade he still practices. Hamilton says that if he hadn't met Byrd, it probably wouldn't have happened. "Growing up on the south side of Ypsilanti, I didn't know about unions," says Hamilton. "He put me in that direction."

Byrd also liked finding new uses for old buildings. He built his own office in a onetime garage on East Summit, and converted the old brewery at Summit and Fifth into apartments. In 1969, while serving as a Washtenaw County commissioner, Byrd convinced the county to purchase the old Holy Ghost Seminary at Washtenaw and Hogback; today, it's part of the County Service Center.

In 1975 Byrd bought an 1830s farmhouse and sixty acres of land on Lohr, then a dirt road. Although now across the street from Kohl's department store, the house then seemed way out in the country. Run down from years of rental use, it was a perfect teaching tool for restoration practices. Hamilton and others recall helping to raise the sagging floor, jacking up the roof, putting in new rafters, and replacing the gingerbread on the outside.

In another of Byrd's class projects--building a cupola--his students learned how to apply metal to wood. They constructed the wooden frame at WCC and added the metal in Byrd's basement. When it was done, Byrd thought it was so pretty that it should be used. He decided to build something on the land behind the farmhouse.

His original thought was that the building should be a community meeting space. "There were very few places blacks could meet," explains Letitia. But one day, "he felt a calling to build a church," she recalls. "He was very spiritual. If he had lived, he would probably have gone into the ministry. He spent so much of his time studying and researching church work and talking to ministers."

Victor Hamilton was involved in the project from the beginning, laying the concrete blocks on weekends. He worked mostly alone, although another WCC student, Terry Samuels, sometimes helped. Samuels also worked on the altar and other interior brickwork. Whenever he could, Byrd used donated material that contractors didn't need or had rejected--but Hamilton also remembers many trips to Fingerle Lumber.

For work outside his expertise, Byrd looked to the black contractors who had worked on his other projects, such as Flint electrician Tom Flowers. "He was a dear friend--more like a brother," recalls Flowers. At each stage Byrd invited his WCC students to come, watch, and learn.

Byrd's personal stantp was most noticeable inside the chapel. He designed the stained-glass windows, chose the verses to put on the railings and on the stonework, designed the interior cross, and did most of the inside carpentry, including the railings, pulpit, and chancel, where he inlaid a cross in the wooden floor.

The chapel was dedicated in January 1987. The service was beautiful, recalls J. Nathaniel Crout, the pastor at New Covenant. According to Crout, Byrd envisioned the church as "a place people could come to concentrate, meditate--a sanctuary."

Early that spring, Byrd had a heart attack. "He left home in pain one morning. At noon he drove to St. Joe's and was admitted. He never came home," recalls Letitia. He died on May 17, 1987, at age sixty-six, after seven weeks on a respirator. "On the day he died, students poured their eyes out," Crout remembers.

A year after Byrd's death, the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation started meeting in the chapel. The congregation was founded in 1984 by a group from St. Andrew's who wanted to put more emphasis on social justice issues. They had been meeting in various places--private homes, the Pittsfield Grange, the old Arborland--until Letitia heard about their need through her brother, a member of the congregation. She eventually sold them the land and gave them the building, with the provision that it remain in religious use for fifty years. She is now working on turning the restored farmhouse into a museum of African American history.

Since moving to the Byrd Chapel, the Church of the Incarnation has grown to 160 members. Needing more space and amenities, it undertook a major fund-raising effort to build an addition, designed and constructed by Attila Huth, that includes a large social hall, Sunday school space, and staff offices. To meet township standards, the church also replaced the narrow dirt entrance road with a paved two-lane driveway and large parking lot.

The new addition meets public meeting standards, so the building can now be rented out for lectures, concerts, or weddings. Already serving Byrd's vision of a place of worship, it will also fit his original idea of a community meeting place.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: A cupola created by his WCC class inspired architect David Byrd to build a chapel on his property in Pittsfield Township. "He was very spiritual," recalls his widow, Letitia. "If he had lived, he would probably have gone into the ministry."

An end to "dead man's alley"?

When the Ann Arbor Farmers' Market opened in 1919, the vendors brought in their produce by horse and wagon and displayed it around the old courthouse. Little could they have dreamed that someday their celebrations would be handled by an advertising agency, or that a national expert would be called in to advise on their market's future. But in the twenty-first century, that's exactly what's happening: the market's eighty-fifth birthday party this month is being planned by Steppe Solutions, and a master plan is being developed by Johnson Hill Land Ethics, (JHLE) with input from David O'Neil, a Philadelphia-based expert on farmers' markets.

In the late 1930s, WPA crews constructed steel sheds for the market in the old Luick Lumberyard between Fourth and Fifth avenues. The market has hardly changed physically since. With vendors' fees covering basic maintenance and the manager's salary, it has operated fairly independently under various city departments, more recently the city treasury, with some additional oversight by a market board.

That changed in 1999, when the city's parks and recreation department took over the market. Parks staff began looking for ways the space could be improved both as a farmers' market and as a community resource. For example, says planner Jeff Dehring, "we could utilize it the times when the farmers aren't here or rent it for other festivities such as Earth Day or music fests." (The market has hosted Earth Day for the past two years.) Besides making better use of the space, Dehring says, renting the market would bring in revenue that could lessen the economic burden on the vendors.

The one remaining house on the market property was razed after its last occupant, Mary Kokinakes, died in 2002. (Kokinakes and her husband had sold it to the city many years earlier, with the provision that they could live out their lives there.) The time seemed right for reassessing the market's situation.

For the last year and a half, JHLE principals Mark Johnson (son of a cofounder of JJR) and Chet Hill (formerly with the city parks department) have been working with project manager Jamie Brown to develop a plan to use the new space. David O'Neil, who is also working on plans for Detroit's Eastern Market and the Toledo Market, has visited twice. Several of his suggestions--based on his theories that customers like to shop in a circular pattern and that markets need a clearly defined entrance--have been incorporated into the phase 1 plan.

Vendors had assumed that the land where the Kokinakes house stood would be used to extend the market's middle "leg." Because that leg ends in the middle of the market unconnected to anything else, some shoppers avoid it--it's been nicknamed "dead man's alley." But instead, JHLE has suggested that part of the house site be turned into a "bioswale," a planted basin used to collect and filter storm-water runoff from the market. JHLE would solve the problem of "dead man's alley" by removing it, using the space for parking, and replacing the lost stalls with a partial row along Fourth Avenue.

The new layout is supposed to encourage customers to circle the entire market, as well as making the market more visible from Fourth. JHLE proposes equipping the new spaces with the latest market amenities--radiant heat, electricity, water, and phone lines for authorizing credit card payments, as well as deeper parking stalls and wider aisles--and says the changes would result in a net gain of six stalls and five parking spaces.

Other suggestions include adding a historic-style brick entry at both ends of the Detroit Street row, rain barrels at downspouts to collect water for farmers' plants, and customer pickup spaces on Fourth and Detroit. The cost for these improvements, estimated at $400,000 to $500,000, would be paid from un-earmarked park funds, with grant matches if possible. The parks staff also plans to organize a "Friends of Farmers' Market" group that would sell bricks to help raise money.

Later phases could include another twenty or thirty stalls along Fourth Avenue to complete the loop. Another improvement, at present still in the realm of dreams, would be to remove the central parking area and turn it into a parklike space--but only if alternative parking can be found. Asked whether the farmers don't need the parking space, Jamie Brown replies that many markets function fine with a drop-off system. He points out that the vendors on the Detroit Street side already drop off their produce--and that area is considered the best location at the market.

A more immediate change will be the arrival of a new market manager. Louise Wireman, who took over from longtime manager Maxine Rosasco, stepped down in July after two years on the job. A Toledo resident (she was formerly in charge of the Toledo Market), she says that at this point in her life she prefers to work where she lives. "I've attained my goals. I improved the operating systems, hammered out ground rules," she says.

Longtime vendors rent stalls by the year, but assigning coveted "daily" rentals can be tense. Wireman says that she reduced conflicts between farmers and artisans over the daily stalls by listing them strictly on the basis of seniority. At press time, the city parks staff was interviewing potential successors.

The next step is to get input from those directly affected--the annual vendors, the daily vendors, the artisans, the neighbors, Kerry town-area merchants, and the general public. The first group to see the phase 1 plan, the annual vendors, were not overjoyed with it. "I like the existing market as it is," says Alex Nemeth, who has been coming to the market for seventy years. He thinks the main objection was to moving the stalls from the middle aisle to Fourth Avenue.

The market's Eighty-fifth Birthday Bash on August 14 (see Events) will include displays explaining the phase 1 plan and asking for input, as well as a booth to "sell" fund-raising bricks. Live radio coverage is planned, and visitors will be able to view archival photos, listen to live music, and take part in old-fashioned activities, such as making Mr. Potato Heads with vegetables from the market. If all goes well, work on phase 1--or some modification of it suggested by the stakeholders--could begin as early as this winter.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Eighty-five years of the market (counterclockwise from lower right); vendors outside the old courthouse on Fourth Avenue; the current market sheds under construction in the 1930s; grower and customer in the 1950s; JHLE's phascil proposal, which includes a "bioswale" and a new, circular layout.

The Germans in Ann Arbor

A century ago, German immigrants and their descendants were Ann Arbor's biggest eth­nic group. Starting in 1829, and continuing for 100 years, Germans immigrated to the area in waves, fleeing political and eco­nomic troubles in their homeland.

Most came from small villages surrounding Stuttgart in the kingdom of Wurttemberg. They called themselves "Swabians" after the country that encompassed Wurttem­berg in the Middle Ages. "The name stuck although the country didn't," explains Art French, president of Ann Ar­bor's Schwaben Verein.

The Schwaben Verein (roughly, "Swabian Club") was one of dozens of institutions through which Ann Arbor's German-speaking community re-created their European culture. For generations, immigrants and their children could worship in German, attend parochial schools taught in German, and even get their local news from German-language newspapers.

Most lived in what is today the Old West Side Historic District. By 1880 "one-third of the population [of Ann Ar­bor] were Germans or of German extraction," Marie Rominger recalled in an unpublished history written in the 1930s. "These formed a closed community so that that part of the city to the west of Main and south of Huron was occupied almost exclusively by Germans, and on the streets there, one could deem oneself in Germany, for the German language was very gen­erally spoken by old and young."

German pioneers

Conrad Bissinger was probably the first German to set foot in Ann Arbor. A baker from Mannheim, Bissinger arrived in Ann Arbor in 1825, one year after the town was founded. He found a small settle­ment of log cabins, too small to support a baker, so he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he plied his trade while saving money to return to Washtenaw County. In 1830 Bissinger bought land in Scio Township, settling on it in 1831.

Daniel Allmendinger arrived in Ann Arbor after Bissinger in 1825; he also left but returned sooner--in 1829, accompanied by two other Germans, Jonathan Hen­ry Mann and Ernst Peter Schilling. All three were origi­nally from Wurttemberg but were living temporarily in German settlements in the eastern United States: Mann in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Schilling and Allmendinger in Dansville, New York.

According to the Mann family history, written in 1930, "They visited Ann Arbor and were much pleased with the village and while Mr. Schilling remained, the other two returned home for their families, having decided to make Washtenaw County their future home."

Schilling had brought his family with him and so was able to settle immediately on the eighty acres he bought in Scio Township near Park Road. Allmendinger bought land in Scio closer to town--part of the property today is occupied by the Westgate and Maple Village shopping centers--and started his farm before returning east. "The story is told that on this trip Daniel brought on his back all the way from Dansville, New York, four hundred small fruit trees," says the Allmendinger family history. "Daniel planted his fruit trees and a crop of corn on his new land and then again returned to New York. The following au­tumn he came back with his family."

Mann, trained as a tanner in Germany, was the only one of the three to settle in the village and ply his trade rather than farm. According to the family history, "he bought a lot on the corner of Washington and First for twelve dollars and the lot next door on Washington for a pair of shoes. His specialty was tanning deerskins, which must have been plentiful in what was then a frontier town. "He set up a workshop at the rear of his home," Marie Rominger writes. "Here he tanned the hides that were brought him, from all the surrounding country/He would accumulate the leather thus tanned, and when he had a sufficiently large pack, he would load it on his back and start afoot on the old Indian trail for Detroit, the nearest market."

A German magazine writer, Karl Neidhard, met Mann in Pennsylvania while writing about German settlers there. In 1834 another reporting trip brought Neidhard to Ann Arbor, where he was overjoyed to encounter Mann again. "The whole family [the Manns had seven living children] lived in a house with two main rooms, a kitchen, and attic rooms," Neidhard wrote. "A small barn gave shelter to a horse and a cow, while a tract of land sur­rounding the house and extending down the slope of a hill furnished feed for the animals and supplied the family with vegetables and, presently, with fruit. A wild plum tree had already been transplanted into the garden. In the lower part of the garden, a small creek [Alien's Creek] drove a mill wheel."

Peasants and political refugees

Mann wrote to his brother-in-law in Stuttgart, Emanuel Josenhans, "giving a very favorable account of what he saw of the new territory and the route by which it could be reached," his son Jonathan wrote in the 1881 History of Washtenaw County, Michigan. "Mr. Josenhans circulated the letter amongst the peas­antry in the neighborhood of Stuttgart. The consequence was that numerous immigra­tion was started for Michigan by a class of small farmers and mechanics who had very limited means."

Seven more German families came in 1830, and by 1832 there were over thirty. Most of the Germans immigrants who fol­lowed in the next 100 years came from the same villages, drawn by family ties and sponsorships. They came for better eco­nomic opportunities, for political freedom, and to avoid military service.

Disastrous harvests and political and economic dislocation after the Napoleonic Wars motivated the first wave of immi­grants. Jacob Stollsteimer came in 1830 because of crop failure caused by a drought. Frederick and Maria Staebler im­migrated to Scio Township from Wurttemberg in 1831 "to escape Metternich's con­straints and the looming threat of Prussia," according to a memoir by their great-grandson, Neil Staebler.

The abortive revolution of 1848, and the social unrest caused by subsequent efforts to reestablish monarchies in the German states, spurred the second wave of immigra­tion. This group was smaller than the first but often better educated--for instance, Marie Rominger's father, Dr. Karl Rominger, fled to avoid criminal prosecution for his involvement in the failed revolution. A medical doctor, trained at the University of Tubingen, he was also knowledgeable in geology, and in 1869 he was appointed the state geologist.

By 1855 there were estimated to be more than 5,000 Swabian Germans in and around Ann Arbor. Non-Swabians also were coming to the area by then, drawn by the large German-speaking population. According to Irving Katz's The Jews in Michigan before 1850, Jews immigrating from Germany and eastern Europe favored Washtenaw County because "many of the farmers in this county were recent German immigrants themselves, and the Jewish ar­rivals found here the language of their na­tive land and a place where they could earn a living, mostly as peddlers, until they could establish themselves as mer­chants, manufacturers, or craftsmen." The earliest arrivals, the five Weil brothers, came in the 1840s, followed by their par­ents in 1850. In 1845 the first Jewish wor­ship services ever held in Michigan were conducted in the Leopold Weil home on Washington.

In the 1870s and 1880s, more Germans fled the effects of the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War and German chancellor Otto von Bismarck's "iron fist." Christian Schlenker came in 1871 after his parents died in an epidemic that broke out during the war. He and his three siblings were sponsored by their uncle, jeweler Jacob Haller. Schlenker started a hardware store that lasted four generations.

German immigration slowed from 1893 to World War I, because the German econ­omy was doing fine while the United States went through several severe recessions. But one final wave of Germans came after World War I, es­pecially in the 1920s, as the United States prospered and Ger­many fought staggering inflation--baker William Metzger left when it took a bushel basket of money to buy a loaf of bread. Sponsored by Ann Arbor baker Sam Heusel, grandfather of radio personality Ted Heusel, Metzger took over the restaurant that be­came Metzger's, and his brother Fritz became owner of the Old German. A third brother, Gottfried, ran the Deluxe Bakery, sup­plying the black bread used by both restaurants.

A missionary from Basel

In 1832 Jonathan Mann wrote to the Basel Mission House asking that a pastor be sent so that Ann Arbor's Germans could hear preaching in their own tongue. (Al-though in Switzerland, the Basel mission was close to Wurttemberg and received much of its support from people in that region.) Basel sent a recent graduate, Friedrich Schmid, a twenty-five-year-old German from Waldorf.

Schmid arrived in Detroit on August 20, 1833, and from there walked to Ann Arbor, where he lived initially with the Mann fam­ily. "They received me with love and friendliness, and I at once found myself at home in their cabin," Schmid wrote in a letter to his superiors in Basel. He described Ann Arbor as "a little village, mainly of English people, only a few German families are in the city, the remaining families, perhaps forty to forty-six, live out in the woods and forest."

Since most of the local Germans were farmers, Schmid's con­gregation decided to build their church in the country. Daniel Allmendinger donated an acre on a corner of his farm (today part of Bethlehem Cemetery on Jackson Road). Work commenced in November and was finished by the end of December. "A little church in the forest has been erected upon a beautiful hilltop," Schmid reported. "It is thirty-two feet long and twenty-six feet wide, completely of wood, built at a spot which a few years ago was a wilderness where bears and wolves roamed." The first Ger­man church in Michigan, it was formally named the "First Ger­man Evangelical Society of Scio" but known commonly as Zion Church.

On his visit in 1834, journalist Karl Neidhard walked out from Ann Arbor to attend services with Mann. "Soon there were oth­ers, men with pointed hats and women wearing Swabian bonnets appeared from the bush and joined us. ... About a hundred peo­ple attended. I was told that no one was absent excepting those whose state of health or whose advanced age made the long walk inadvisable. Mr. Schmid . . . rose and delivered a very sound and moving sermon which was not only listened to in absolute silence but was also understood and appreciated I am sure. As far as pos­sible, he spoke in the Swabian dialect. The rituals were those of the homeland. The German hymns, the profound calm of the nearby forest, the simple log house and the good-natured faces of the country people, who, far from their fatherland, were thanking the Lord for leading them safely across ocean and land to the far­thermost frontier of Christianity--all of this was for me a most moving scene."

A year after his arrival, Schmid married Mann's oldest daugh­ter, Sophie Louise. "Our wedding took place on the fourth of Sep­tember in our little Zion Church," Schmid wrote. "My entire con­gregation came and received us with singing as we approached the House of God." As a wedding present, the bride's parents built them a house.

By 1836 the congregation had grown to more than eighty, and so a second church was built three miles away on Scio Church Road. Originally called the "German Salem Society," it is today Salem Evangeli­cal Lutheran Church. Schmid preached at Zion on Sunday morning and at Salem in the afternoon. His house was built on a six-acre site across from the Salem church, so he could grow food instead of buying all his groceries in Ann Arbor--a considerable savings, since he and Sophie Louise eventually had twelve children.

In his missionary capacity, Schmid also ministered to other German communities all over southern Michigan. He was directly responsible for starting twenty churches, but if one includes all the congregations where he was the first to give a sermon, the number is between forty and seventy.

Schmid's traveling ministry also led to his being an informal land agent: if new arrivals couldn't find what they wanted in Washtenaw County, he could guide them to other German commu­nities. The Schmids hosted many Germans when they first arrived. "At times the parsonage resembled a hotel, with this difference--that the guests were free to come and go without charge," recalled their son, Frederick Schmid Jr.

Almost all the earliest arrivals started out as farmers, even those who had practiced a trade in Germany. But as Ann Arbor grew bigger and farmland grew scarcer, more Germans settled in town. By 1839 the in-town German population, tired of the week­ly three-mile trek to church, asked for more convenient services. Schmid began alternating between country and village, initially preaching in the Presbyterian church and the County Courthouse. In 1845 the congregation bought a lot at First and Washington, di­agonally across from Mann's house, and started building. Bethle­hem Church was finished in 1849. The same year, Schmid moved to town. After that the original country church on Jackson was used only for weddings and funerals, until it was torn down in 1881.

Settling the Old West Side

In 1845 merchant and developer William Maynard bought a large parcel of the land just west of the village and began dividing it into house lots. Maynard's property extended west from First to Seventh, north to Huron, and south to Mosley. (Though Maynard prosaically used numbers for most of his streets, Mosley is named after his mother's family.)

Maynard's subdivision, conveniently located between Bethlehem Church and the German farming community to the west, was the natural destination for the town's rapidly growing German popula­tion. They built not only houses but also factories, businesses, and recreational fa­cilities in the area we now know as the Old West Side.

Alien's Creek, running north along the eastern edge of Maynard's subdivision (approximately where the Ann Arbor Rail­road tracks go today), attracted industries that needed water, such as breweries and tanneries. Other business people located downtown, including pharmacist Christian Eberbach and cabinetmaker Florian Mueh-lig. In 1852 Muehlig starting making cas­kets as an offshoot of his furniture busi­ness, which later segued into today's Muehlig Funeral Chapel. Jacob Haller, trained as a watchmaker in Germany, set up shop on Huron Street in 1858.

In the post-Civil War economic boom, factories owned and run by Germans flourished. In 1866 John Keck started a furniture company at 405 Fourth Street (now the Argus Building). In 1872 David Allmendinger (Daniel's nephew) started an organ factory in his home; by 1907 he employed 107 men and had built a large brick factory at the corner of Washington and First. The same year Christian Walker founded a successful carriage company; his Liberty Street factory is today the Ann Arbor Art Center.

Germans also dominated the Main Street shopping district. In 1860 Frederick Schmid Jr. joined with his brother-in-law, Christian Mack, to start what became Ann Arbor's leading department store, Mack & Co. In 1867 Philip Bach built a store for his dry goods business at the corner of Wash­ington and Main; the building continued in that use until 1980 (it's now the Hopper Hathway law office). Across the alley on Washington, William Herz opened a paint store (today Cafe Zola). Henry Schlanderer apprenticed to watchmaker George Haller (Jacob's son) and took over his business in 1911. Today two downtown jewelers, Seyfried's and Schlanderer's, can trace their lineage to Haller's.

The farmers were not forgotten. They could grind their wheat at the German-owned Central Mills at First and Liberty, have their horses reshod at many German-owned blacksmith shops, buy harnesses and work clothes at Ehnis Brothers on Liberty, and get agricultural supplies around the corner at Hertler's on Ashley. When they were done, they could stop at several nearby workingmen's bars to so­cialize before returning home.

The factory and business owners built large homes near their businesses. In 1870 Peter Brehm, owner of the Western Brew­ery on Fourth Street, built a Second Empire house at 326 West Liberty. (Brehm's brew­ery now houses the journal Mathematical Reviews, while his home is the Moveable Feast restaurant.) That same year, Christ­ian Walker, owner of the carriage factory, moved into an Italianate house on the cor­ner of Seventh and Liberty. Gottlieb Schneider lived at 402 West Liberty, just a few houses away from his mill. In 1890 David Allmendinger built a house for his large family at 719 West Washington and developed extensive grounds that includ­ed two ponds and a gazebo.

Their workers built more modest homes, often on lower ground near Allen's Creek or its tributaries. The earliest were simple buildings, such as the 1850s cabin house at 626 West Liberty that housed la­borer William Kuhn, his wife, Catherine, and their eight children. Later homes, built between 1870 and 1920, included exam­ples of all the major styles of the day, in­cluding Queen Anne and Colonial Re­vival. Most, however, were simple vernac­ular structures, usually wood with five or six rooms. Although not unusual architec­tural specimens, they did (and do) evoke a pleasant way of life, with front porches en­couraging neighborly visits along the tree-lined streets.

The new home owners developed their grounds as they would have in Germany, planting flowers and vegetables they were familiar with. Many residents had grape arbors and made wine from the grapes. Those with livestock, a horse or a cow, had barns. Today the Old West Side is dot­ted with such structures, now used for garages, but two doors, a small one for the horse and a larger one for the buggy, are often discernible, as well as hitching posts and carriage steps.

A German society

When Friedrich Schmid arrived in 1833, all the German Protestants in the area were delighted just to have services in their language. But as the population grew larger, different groups began breaking off. The congregation of First German Methodist Episcopal, forerunner of today's West Side Methodist, were the first to leave, in 1846. In 1896 they built a church in the heart of the Old West Side on the corner of Jefferson and Fourth (now home to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).

The biggest split took place in 1874 and is still talked about today. When Schmid retired from Bethlehem in 1871, the new pastor, Hermann Reuther, drew big crowds, and church leaders decided a new church building was needed. When about half the members refused to con­tribute to the cost, they were expelled and started a new church, which returned to the old name of "Zion."

Both congregations are still flourishing today, Zion as a Lutheran church, Bethle­hem as a United Church of Christ congregation. Bethlehem built the first phase of its beautiful fieldstone complex on South Fourth Avenue in 1895; Zion moved to its present home overlooking West Liberty in 1956.

Trinity, the city's first English-language Lutheran church, was organized in 1893 with support from Zion. The church served not only non-German Lutherans but also Germans who wished to become more assimilated into the mainstream cul­ture. Also in town were a handful of Ger­man Catholics, such as the stonecutter families of Baumgardner and Eisele, who joined the Irish and Italics at St. Thomas.

The last predominantly German church, St. Paul's Lutheran, was organized in 1908 after U-M students petitioned the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to send them a pastor. The congregation located in the Old West Side, first on Huron Street and then in their present place at 420 West Liberty. St. Paul's attracted many of the fi­nal wave of German immigrants in the 1920s, since it continued to offer German-language services as the older congrega­tions were switching to English.

Churches weren't the only custodians of German culture in Ann Arbor. In 1848 a German-language school was organized for grades 1 through 8. Classes were held in the basement of Bethlehem Church un­til 1860, when a school was built on First Street. By 1873 the school had 121 pupils. From 1875 to 1918, Zion also ran a parochial school for grades 7 and 8.

In 1861 a public school opened on the corner of Jefferson and Fourth streets; originally called the Second Ward School, it was renamed in 1898 in honor of Philip Bach, who had served on the school board for thirty-four years and as mayor in 1858-1859. Although the instruction was in English, most of the students and teach­ers were German.

Musical institutions were central to Ann Arbor's German society. Christian Gauss, whose son went on to become a dean at Princeton, was a member of the Mannerchor, a men's singing group that met once a week. One of the senior Gauss's prized possessions was a flute that he had brought from Germany; he regular­ly played duets with his neighbor, black­smith Henry Otto, an excellent violinist. Otto was also the leader of Otto's Band; under him and his son Louis, thd band played for most major town events.

Reuben Kempf was sent by his parents to Basel to study for the ministry, but when he started following bands around town, officials at the seminary suggested he switch to music. In 1890 Kempf and his wife, Pauline, opened a music studio in their home at 312 South Division (now the Kempf House for Local History). The Kempfs owned the first grand piano in town, a Steinway; the university borrowed it for concerts.

German clubs were everywhere on the west side. The Turnverein (Gymnastics Club) exercised on land they owned south of Madison between South Fourth and South Fifth streets (approximately where Turner Park Court is today). Just to the west, German volunteer firemen owned the Relief Fire Company Park. The Schutzenbund Park, which belonged to a shooting club, was nearby on Pauline, where Fritz Park is now. Other clubs met in Hangsterfer's Hall or Fred Rettich's Orchestrian Hall on Main, or at the Germania Club in the Staeblers' Germania Hotel (now the Earle Building).
The Schwaben Verein (officially Schwabischer Unterstiitzungs Verein) was founded in 1888. Originally a burial socie­ty, it was also a social club, mostly for Ger­mans who arrived during the 1880s wave of immigration. Originally members had to be from Swabia, but today it's open to any German or person of German ancestry. In 1908 it bought the Relief Fire Company Park (the Fire Department had by then be­come professional), where it built a club­house, beer garden, and small bowling al­ley. (The bowling alley still stands, much altered, at 731 South Fifth Street.)

The Schwaben Verein left the most durable mark on the city. In 1914 it built a four-story headquarters on its Ashley Street property, after reaching an agree­ment to rent most of the space to Mack's Department Store. Mack's, by then the city's premier store, was directly east of the new building, facing Main, and con­nected to it by an enclosed bridge. The Schwaben Verein used the second floor for meetings and social gatherings. After Prohibition was instituted in 1919, the group could no longer operate a beer garden, so it sold its park, using the money to pay off the Ashley Street building. Reenergized by the final wave of German immigration in the 1920s, the Schwaben Verein has lasted into the twenty-first cen­tury, although it recently sold its building.

Many other German institutions, how­ever, closed in the wake of of the anti-Ger­man hysteria during World War I. Although German Americans had been citizens for generations, had been prominent in civic af­fairs, and had fought in America's wars (during the Civil War, Ann Arbor's Steuben Guards fought side by side with the Yankees), they were still suspect. Elsa Ordway, who attended Bach School during World War I, recalled that her class was walked to Hill Auditorium to hear a talk on German atrocities, and that the children were required to write reports when they returned. T. H. Hildebrandt, a math professor who played the organ at the Congregational church, was fired. In later years, when elderly Germans were asked whether they spoke German, they would often answer, "I used to know it, but my family stopped speaking it during World War I."

According to a church history, the First German Methodist Episcopal Church changed its name in 1919, "when the Ger­man language fell into disrepute because of World War I." According to Louis Doll's History of the Newspapers of Ann Arbor: 1829-1920, Eugene Helber, editor of the German newspaper Die neue Post, "took a somewhat too outspoken pro-Ger­man stand during World War I, with the result that he was summoned before feder­al court to show cause why his paper should not be barred from the mails." Ac­cording to Doll, Helber changed not only his policy but also his language, publish­ing from then on in English.

The nationalist fervor hastened a process that had already begun. By then the Bethlehem school was already bilin­gual, and the church was alternating be­tween German and English for services. Zion's services had been exclusively in English since 1910.

Decline and rebirth

The Old West Side went into a decline during World War II and the years imme­diately following. The nineteenth-century houses were aging, and Germans with the means were moving to newer homes. At the same time, the economic boom that ac­companied the war had caused an acute housing shortage, and many of the once gracious family homes were cut up into duplexes or apartments. After the war, de­velopers started tearing down houses to build small apartment buildings, stark modernist cubes that clashed with the sur­rounding Victorian survivors.

The Old West Side Association was formed in 1967 to fight a proposed devel­opment that would have replaced all the houses on First between Jefferson and Madison with apartments and condos. The early activists were a mixture of longtime German American residents, such as Harry Koch and Florence Hiscock, and newer ar­rivals interested in preserving the area's vernacular urban environment, such as U-M art professor Chet LaMore and land­scape architect Clarence Roy.

In 1972 the Old West Side was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of the first neighborhoods of ordinary homes to receive this recognition. The next year the association started its popular homes tour to show how livable old homes could be. In 1978 the Ann Arbor City Council passed a historic-preservation or­dinance that protects the outside of homes from inappropriate remodeling.

Today, senior citizens living in the Old West Side are likely to be of German ori­gin, but the younger people represent an ar­ray of ethnic groups. Many descendants of the original Germans still live in the Ann Arbor area, although not necessarily in the Old West Side. Besides the Schwaben Verein, two other German groups still function: the Greater Beneficial Union (GBU), a fraternal organization that pro­motes German American culture, and the German Park Recreational Club, which during the summer months hosts picnics featuring German music, German dancing, German food, and German beer at its beer garden on Pontiac Trail (see Events, Au­gust 25).

New residents of the Old West Side of­ten make major changes to their houses, adding skylights, hot tubs, and backyard decks, and enlarging rooms by tearing out walls. But in one matter, they are true to the original spirit. Most have moved into the neighborhood seeking the old-fash­ioned sense of community that the original settlers established. People are choosing to raise their children on the Old West Side, adding on to their houses, rather than move.

"Everybody watches each other's chil­dren. They are in and out of each other's houses," says Christine Brummer, presi­dent of the Old West Side Association. "The parks are always in use. You always see people walking in the streets.

"It's another regeneration."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Missionary Friedrich Schmid led construction of the 1833 Zion Church —the first German church in Michigan. (Upper left) The first Bethlehem Church after the split of 1874. (Left) One of a hpst of civic groups, the Germania Club took its name from the Germania Hotel—todays Earle Building.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: German farmers scarcely needed English to navigate nineteenth-century Ann Arbor. They could buy supplies from German-owned stores and grind their grain at the German-owned Ann Arbor Central Mills on First (right, today the Millennium and Cavern clubs).

[Photo caption from original print edition]: German shopkeepers and industrialists built much of downtown Ann Arbor, including the Ann Arbor Carriage Works on Liberty (left)—today the Ann Arbor Art Center.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The David Allmendingers relax in their gar­den on the Old West Side. Workers and busi­ness owners lived side by side in the German neighbor­hood.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: In 1873, this German-language school on First Street enrolled 121 pupils. German institu­tions and language survived for generations in Ann Arbor—but were largely swept away during the anti-German hysteria of the First World War.

WCBN's Apostle of Country Music

"Country music is real stories, about real people, about real situations," says WCBN deejay Chad Williams. "It's a refined tradition with many branches and different in­fluences. [But] it's looked down on, especially in this town."

Williams, who calls himself "a farmer in a nonfarm town," is out to change that. As "the Funky Farmer," he co-hosts the free-form U-M station's Down Home Show, explaining and popularizing country music to his Ann Arbor listeners.

On a recent Saturday, Williams started his show with a new George Jones CD, which led to a set of hot-rod songs, which naturally segued into truck-driving songs, which then led to truck-stop songs. Williams is so familiar with country music that he can put sets like this together on the fly, rummaging through piles of his own recordings or jumping out of the broadcast chair to fetch a disc from WCBN's library. He fields phone requests with equal ease—his normally deadpan expression lighting up when someone re­quests a contemporary favorite like Lone­some Bob or Mike Ireland and Holler.

Williams, twenty-five, has come a long way from the uncomfort­able freshman who entered the U-M in 1991. He grew up on a farm in central Ohio but was studying actuarial math so that he could earn a better living than farming offered.

"I didn't fit in at all," recalls Williams. "When I said my dad was a farmer, some­one actually asked me, 'What are you, some kind of hick?' The U-M was full of rich kids. Everyone wanted to be in a fra­ternity and had parental support. I worked forty hours a week, mainly in dorm cafete­rias, while taking a full load. Instead of trying to fit in, I hung on to my roots. That's how I carved my niche."

Dan Moray, another Down Home Show deejay, remembers Williams's first tenta­tive calls to the station to request Johnny Cash tunes. "He was so shy he could bare­ly tell his requests," Moray recalls. But Williams accepted Moray's invitation to come down to the station and was soon behind the microphone himself. Since 1993, "the Funky Farmer" has hosted the show every third Saturday, taking turns with Dan "the Two O'Clock Cowboy" Moray and Jim "Tex" Manheim.

Compared to his cohosts, Williams says, he plays more contemporary country in addition to a wide variety of classics. (His all-time favorites are Emmylou Har­ris, Merle Haggard, Jimmie Rodgers, and Guy Clark.) Williams also hosts two other WCBN shows: Bill Monroe for Breakfast, a bluegrass show on Saturday mornings, and Free Roots, on Wednesdays, which features a wider selection of music known in the trade these days as "Americana."

Once eager to leave Ann Arbor, Williams now has mixed feelings. He will stay at least long enough to finish the twenty credit hours needed for his ac­tuarial degree (he had to drop out several times to earn money and currently works full-time as a computer consultant at the U-M School of Social Work). In odd mo­ments between work, school, and the radio station, he's written fifty country songs, performing them on Monday open-mike nights at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti.

As a teenager, Williams went through periods of liking other kinds of music but always came back to country. "I'm a sim­ple guy who's been through a lot like everyone else," he says, "and country mu­sic is what I fall back on.

"I came to college to be all successful, to be full of money, but I lost my desire for it," says Williams. "College was tough. I worked all the time and learned things the hard way.

"Now I don't want to be an actuary, but to do what makes me happy. I like com­puters a lot and music. Those two things are the way to go."

The Library Board, too, Attracts a Crowded Field
But good will, not con­flict, is the draw

I love the library. I want to give them something back because I use their services," says Ruth Winter, explaining why she's running for the Ann Arbor Dis­trict Library board. The other seven candi­dates, who are vying for three seats at the June 8 election, echo these sentiments.

This will be the second election in the district library's history. Two years ago eleven people ran for seven seats. Those with the most votes (Carol Hollenshead, Robert Potts, Ed Surovell, and Gene Wil­son) won four-year terms, while the next three (Don Axon, Richard Dougherty, and Sandra White) were given two-year terms, which are now expiring. In the future, all terms will be for four years, but staggered so that every two years either three or four seats will be up for election.

Dougherty and White are seeking re-election, but Axon has decided to step down. A week before the filing deadline, no one had filed to fill Axon's seat, but af­ter a notice appeared in the Ann Arbor News, six people stepped forward. The candidates seem motivated more by a de­sire to be of service to the library than to radically change it. None of them disagree with the library's strategic plan (which in­cludes new branches, increased technolo­gy, greater outreach), though some have suggestions for fine-tuning or adding to it.

Two years ago there was an undercur­rent of tension between computers and books, although all of the candidates came out saying that both had their place in a modern library. This year the exis­tence of technology is taken for granted; the concern, if there is any, is for more equal access.

Incumbent Richard Dougherty, the former head of the U-M libraries, is currently vice-president of the library board. "The first two years, so much positive has happened," he says, explaining why he's running for a second term. "It was a diffi­cult process separating from the schools, [but] the board came together." Dougherty particularly wants to stay to see the suc­cessful conclusion of union negotiations.

Henry Edward Hardy, computer con­sultant and former grad student in the U-M School of Information, says he's running because "I am active and concerned with issues of censorship." Although he hasn't seen any indication that the library is on what he considers the wrong side of this issue, he's worried about some of the signs he sees in the community, such as com­plaints about CTN coverage of Safety Girl and the U-M's naked mile. He'd like to expand Internet access and create patron E-mail "so we don't create an information underclass."

Warren J. Hecht, assistant director of U-M's Residential College, says he would bring perspectives as an administrator, writer, and editor to the board. He says, "The library of the future will be comput­er- and digital-oriented, [but that] will nev­er replace curling up with a good book."

Sigurd A. Nelson II, an engineering consultant, says he supports the library's goals but has specific suggestions on their implementation—in particular, he wants the replacement for the Loving Branch to serve as a pedestrian anchor for the neigh­borhood in the same way the branch does now. He's also interested in making sure that every user has equal access to the In­ternet: "I worried that those who need it most, won't get it."

Marlene Ross, recently retired after thirty-five years as a mental health profes­sional, would bring her administrative background to the board. She is particular­ly interested in augmenting the "Babies are Born to Read" program, which encour­ages new mothers to read to their children.

Incumbent Sandra White is secretary of the library board. An administrator in the state WIC program, White is running again because she's excited about what has already been accomplished. She notes, "I can look back and see what worked."

Charles Wilbur, state director for Sen­ator Carl Levin, earned a degree in library science and worked in a school media cen­ter before going into politics. A member of the Michigan Technology Commission, he says he's running because he's intrigued by the process the library is going through "to transform themselves with technology and [still] preserve their traditional func­tion." He, too, is concerned with providing "universal access to the information age."

Ruth R. Winter, an anesthesiologist who works two days a week at Jackson's Foote Hospital, says that as the only candi­date with elementary school-age children, she would bring that perspective to the board. Winter is impressed with the high regard people hold for the library. "When I circulated my petition in the neighbor­hood, people were skeptical," she says. "But when they heard it was for the li­brary, the doors were wide open."