A former factory in floodway limbo

The fate of the former furniture factory at 109 East Madison, a key building in the debate over the use of local floodways, has been delayed. The present owner, the University of Michigan, tried to sell it but took it off the market after failing to receive any offers that were close to its appraised value.

Built in 1883, it is a classic three-story brick building, with subtle detailing and large windows. But visions of turning it into condos for downtown’s hot housing market ran into a seemingly insurmountable problem: the building is in the Allen’s Creek floodway. Although normally hidden in an underground pipe, the creek reappears during a “hundred-year flood” (the kind of flood that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year; see “Storm Warning” in the November Observer). In such a flood, 109 East Madison not only would get wet, but would receive the full force of the flowing water.

There was no regulation of floodway construction in the late nineteenth century, when cabinetmakers George Gruner and George Kuebler decided to go into business for themselves. Gruner and Kuebler built their factory on the corner of South Fourth Avenue and East Madison, nestled into a bend of Allen’s Creek--the creek passed along the building’s Fourth Avenue side and then curled around the back. Gruner and Kuebler’s equipment was steam driven, so they didn’t need the creek’s waterpower; more likely, they chose the site to be near their labor market, the skilled craftsmen who lived on what is now known as the Old West Side.

In 1899, after Kuebler died and Gruner moved to Cincinnati, Charles Sauer bought the property. Sauer was born in Canada to German parents and learned carpentry from his father before moving to Ann Arbor at age twenty. He worked as a draftsman and as a contractor before forming Sauer Lumber with his two brothers, Adam and John.

The new business offered architectural services and contracting, as well as lumber for all kinds of building. In the early years, the Sauers also still sold furniture, possibly using the same tools and craftsmen who worked for Gruner and Kuebler. They extended the business west, building a small mill in the yard for custom work, and an office at 543 South Main. “They have a well equipped planing mill in connection with the lumber plant and are doing an extensive business,” Samuel Beakes wrote in the 1906 edition of Past and Present of Washtenaw Country, Michigan, “their patronage having continually grown in a gratifying manner since the organization of the firm in 1899.”

The Sauer brothers built Ann Arbor’s 1906–1907 city hall, kitty-corner from the present one, on the corner now occupied by the Dahlmann City Center Building. Eight years later, Charles Sauer himself moved into the mayor’s office. Sadly, he died just six months into his term, at age forty-nine. On the day of his burial, all business and governmental offices closed from 2 to 3:30 p.m. during the funeral.

Although it passed out of family hands, the Sauer Lumber business kept going until the mid-1940s. Colin Fingerle, whose family owned a competing lumberyard nearby, recalls that Sauer’s specialized in doors and windows, making them from scratch.

Bob Beuhler, whose dad owned a coal company across the street, remembers the Sauer employees as skilled craftsmen. When he was a boy, he was in the middle of building something--a model boat, he thinks--but couldn’t finish the project with the tools he had, so at his dad’s suggestion he went across the street to Sauer’s to ask for help. “They ran it through their machine. They obviously knew what they were doing. They were old guys, very kind, and did it for nothing,” says Beuhler.

Nelson Plumbing, a company that sold plumbing supplies to builders and contractors, was the next occupant of the building. Fingerle remembers going to the third floor, then unused, and seeing the shaft, belts, and pulleys that had distributed power from the steam engine throughout the building. After Sauer went out of business, the Fingerles bought the property west of the building. They are still using the old custom mill and occupied the Main Street office for a while, but have since torn it down for a lumber shed.

The university bought the former factory building in 1970. It has housed various offices, including the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, Alumni Records, and Marketing Communications. Workers there enjoy the charm of the exposed brick walls and large windows, although they say that the building shakes when trains go by. They also report that in a big storm the first-floor carpeting gets wet and gives off a musty odor. While the building was on the market, all the occupants made plans to move, which the last of them are now carrying out.

People were interested in buying the building, but none at the price the university wanted. “We were frankly disappointed with the offers we received,” says Norm Herbert, U-M associate vice-president and treasurer. “From a use standpoint, keeping the building is of more value to us.”

One of those who expressed interest was local developer Peter Allen, who would have liked to convert it to living units. “It’s a magnificent building inside,” says Allen. “It would be good for young faculty.”

But “state law prohibits residential use on the floodway,” says Jerry Hancock of the city’s Building Department. “Peter Allen would have to change state law.” Office use is all right, according to Hancock, because “typically people are awake and alert and can get out of harm’s way.” But people sleep in residential property and might not be able to get out in time if surging water damaged basement utilities or if the building weakened enough to collapse. People also could be trapped on an upper floor during a flood, Hancock adds, unable to get out for a medical emergency.

Asked about the floodway problem, Allen answers, “That’s patently foolish. It’s up out of the ground. It would be great in-fill [housing]. It fits with all public policy. The idea that it’s dangerous doesn’t hold up. It’s been there for a hundred years.” Allen sees this building as a “kingpin--if you could do residential, it would give the lever to do some more, to open a bigger loophole.”

But that showdown will be delayed for at least three or four years. After rethinking the matter, the university has decided to use the building for “surge space.” It will provide temporary quarters for offices displaced by planned renovation work on several Central Campus buildings, including LS&A, Mason and Haven halls, the old Perry School, West Hall, and the Dana Building.

One thing is almost certain: the building will not be demolished. Since under current rules no one could get permission to build a new structure on the site, it would not be in anyone’s interest to tear it down. Just what it can be used for, though, is still to be determined.

What went on at the fairgrounds the other fifty-one weeks of the year

For four days each fall from 1922 to 1942, Veterans Park was the site of the Washtenaw County Fair. The forty acres bounded by Jackson, Maple, and Dexter roads were filled with exhibits and events, including music, fireworks, and horse racing. The race horses were stabled near the track on the corner of Dexter and Maple, while show horses were on display in an exhibit barn near Jackson and Longman Lane.

The other fifty-one weeks of the year, the show barns turned back into Guy Mullison's riding stable. "Shorty" Mullison was only about 5 feet tall--so small, recalls retired U-M phys ed prof Marie Hartwig, that he looked incapable of governing a horse. "But the horse would do whatever he asked. You felt if he asked it to sit down and cross its legs, it would."

Born in 1876 in New York State, Mullison moved to Michigan with his family when he was five. As a young man, he ran the City Ice Company out of the barn behind his house at 326 East Ann (now part of the City Hall parking lot), using horse-drawn delivery wagons. He also had a part-time job taking care of the fire department horses, which were housed around the corner in the old fire station at Fifth Avenue and Huron.

Mullison started his stable in 1914 out of his home and for a while ran the ice company concurrently; he probably used some of the same horses. "It was popular," Hartwig recalls. "The horses were always out. I would get on a horse and go clopping through town until I came to the country. If a car came behind, I would get on the side. I remember being in some precarious positions until the car got by."

After the County Fair moved from what is now Burns Park to what is now Vets Park in 1922, Mullison moved the main part of his stable operation from his home out to the new fairgrounds. With the move, his customers no longer had to ride out to the country--they were already there. The Maple Village and Westgate shopping center sites were still farms, and even to the east there were open fields all the way down to the Eberwhite Woods.

When he moved, Mullison increased his stable from six horses to thirty. People who rode them still remember many of them by name: tall, plodding Ted, calm Barney, lively Jimmy McCracken, the beautiful Anne's Navy Girl, and the terrible Dickey Boy, who tried to knock his riders from the saddle.

Mullison also boarded a number of horses, including one belonging to the daughter of his vet, Dr. Lane, and Topper, which belonged to riding instructor Bertha Lyon. The boarders had their own box stalls, while most of Mullison's own horses were in standing stalls.

Mullison converted the box stall closest to the door into an office. A second fairgrounds barn served as an indoor riding area. Although respected as a good businessman (he counted Henry Ford and U-M president Alexander Ruthven among his friends), Mullison could not read or write--his wife, Gladys, did all the accounts.

Marty Ball, who as a teenager worked at the stable in exchange for a chance to ride the horses, remembers that people came every day, even in winter, to ride. If they rented the horse for an hour, they would usually ride in the area where Abbot School is now. If they had more time, they would go down to the Huron River, either straight north on Maple or out Miller to East Delhi--both Miller and Maple were still dirt roads with very little traffic.

Mullison also supplied horses for special events, including the National Guard's summer maneuvers in Grayling. Betty Smith remembers him painting one of his white horses red, white, and blue for a Fourth of July parade.

During the Depression, Mullison joined forces with horsewoman Bertha Lyon. Like Mullison, she had grown up on a farm and had always loved horses. (She told her daughter, Roberta Barstow, that as a child she used to tie horseshoes to her feet and pretend to be a horse.) Lyon arranged with the University of Michigan to offer riding in their physical education program. Hartwig remembers that the classes were very popular.

On Saturdays Lyon offered an all-day program for young people--mostly pre-teen girls at the horse-crazy stage, but some as young as five--whom she would pick up at their homes. Each would bring a bag lunch and dress appropriately in jodhpurs and boots. Dorothy Coffey still remembers Lyon's drill: "Knees in, heels down, back straight, hands up." In the summer, Lyon ran an informal riding camp at the DeForest farm, near Dixboro and Geddes roads (now Village Green apartments); she used six or eight of Mullison's horses, which she kept in a corral made of saplings. Students would ford Fleming Creek, ride through the woods and up a hill, and then canter across a field.

Lyon's alumnae rave about the experience even today. Coffey remembers how she waited all week for Saturday to come and how she would return home exhausted but happy. She says that Lyon "gave us a love of horses and fair play."

With the move, Mullison's customers no longer had to ride out to the country--they were already there. The Maple Village and Westgate shopping center sites were still farms, and even to the east there were open fields all the way down to the Eberwhite Woods.

Also fondly remembered are the excursions organized out of the stable: breakfast rides ending with coffee and doughnuts at the Mullison house on East Ann, supper rides ending at what is now Delhi Park to roast hot dogs, and moonlight rides--a favorite with the college kids. Lyon or an≠other stable employee would lead the expeditions, and Shorty and Gladys Mullison would meet them at the destination with food and supplies. Isabelle Reade, who began riding at age eight to strengthen her legs after recovering from polio, remembers a ride that ended up at a one-room school, where they played on the teeter-totter.

When it came time for the County Fair, Mullison moved his horses out of the barns, except for a few that might be needed by people entering riding competitions. Some would already be at Lyon's summer camp. Others were taken to a pasture on the Huron River near North Main Street.

Mullison died of a heart attack in 1941 at age sixty-four. The Jackson Road County Fairs lasted only a year longer. After the war the property was sold to the city for a park, and in 1955 the exhibit barns--by then considered a fire and health hazard--were torn down.

Bertha Lyon died in 1960. After she left Mullison's she set up her own stable on Joy Road, where she broke and trained many horses. She had a high reputation in the field, and her trainees won awards in shows all over the country, including Madison Square Garden. A horse named Cherokee Chieftain, who started out in Mullison's stable and was broken and trained by Lyon, went on to become famous as the Lone Ranger's horse, "Silver."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Left) "Shorty" Mullison on horseback at his Ann Street home. The riding stable grew out of an ice delivery business based in a barn behind the house. (Right) Mullison joined forces with riding instructor Bertha Lyon during the Depression. Lyon (top, far left) and students posed at Mullison's Stables at the county fairgrounds.

Dobson-McOmber returns to the Steam Printing House

By Christmas the Dobson-McOmber Insurance Company plans to move into new offices in the former Dr. Chase's Steam Printing House at the corner of Miller and Main. One of Ann Arbor's landmark buildings, it was immodestly described by its original owner, Alvin Wood Chase, as "without question the finest printing office in the West."

Chase had little reason for modesty. He started the building in 1864, putting up the corner section as a place to print his book, Dr. Chase's Recipes; or Information for Everybody. A collection of folk remedies and practical suggestions about almost every aspect of everyday life and work, it was a best-seller--at one time, his boosters claimed, second only to the Bible in sales. As sales rose and Chase began also publishing a newspaper--the Peninsular Courier and Family Visitant--which he bought primarily to tout his book--he found he needed more room. Within four years, he tripled the size of the building.

Chase opened the completed printing plant with a great flourish on December 29, 1868. Ann Arbor mayor Christian Eberbach served as master of ceremonies at a banquet for 400 people, introducing a lineup of speakers that included U-M president Erastus Haven and the Albion College president. The ceremony celebrated not only the completion of a building but also the rise of a man from humble origins to a place of prominence. In the nineteenth-century manner, Chase earned his fame and fortune with equal parts of hard work and self-promotion.

Born in New York State in 1817, Alvin Chase came to Ann Arbor in 1856 to pursue a medical degree after a career as a traveling peddler of groceries and household drugs. While taking classes at the U-M, he supported his family by selling home medical remedies and household recipes that he had picked up in his travels, starting with a single page of hints and cures.

Chase only audited classes at the U-M, since Latin was required to complete the program and had not been taught at the "log school" he'd attended in New York. He earned the title "doctor" in 1857 after spending sixteen weeks in Cincinnati at the Eclectic Medical Institute.

After returning to Ann Arbor, Chase practiced medicine and continued to expand his book of recipes. To the modern reader, many of his remedies seem very quaint. Besides cures for five kinds of "apparent death," they included tinctures, teas, and ointments made from plants, tree bark, and--in one case--cooked toads. But at a time when doctors were still bleeding patients or poisoning them with mercury, his cures may have been as much help as anything the local doctor prescribed.

Chase himself admitted to no doubts about the efficacy of his remedies. His entertaining, first-person style is full of anecdotes about where and when he got the recipes and the wonderful luck people had using them.

Chase was fifty-one when he celebrated the grand opening of his building. The next year, afraid that sales of his book would soon decline, and also sure that he would die young, he sold the building and the businesses to Rice Beal. Sales did not decline. After Chase tried unsuccessfully to get back his book rights, he began an all-new recipe book. He died in 1885 (at age sixty-eight), just before completing the book, which was published posthumously as the "memorial edition."

Rice Beal eventually passed his interests to his son, Junius, who continued to publish a newspaper from the building. In 1910 Russell Dobson Sr. bought what was by then called the Ann Arbor Daily Times-News. His specialty, according to his grandson Jack Dobson, was buying failing newspapers and bringing them back to economic health. He had just finished reviving and then selling the Akron Beacon Journal. His decision to come to Ann Arbor was influenced by fact that his son, Russell Jr., was entering the U-M law school.

Dobson's doctoring of the newspaper worked. He moved it from the Chase building to a new building on Ann Street in 1916. Three years later he sold it to the Booth chain, which still owns and publishes it--as the Ann Arbor News.

In 1924, Kyer, Whitker, and Dobson, a wholesale grocer, moved into the building at Miller and Main. The Dobson was Russell Jr. He was also practicing law and soon left the business altogether to work full-time in insurance. His partners remained in business there until Charlie Kyer's death in 1938. Henry Whitker then sold the business to Symons, a big distribution company, who used the building until they moved out to State Street in 1946.

After Symons vacated it, the building was used as a warehouse for various companies--Argus, Montgomery Ward, Smith Floor Covering--becoming increasingly dilapidated through neglect. The cornice and brackets were removed during the Symons occupancy, and during the warehouse years the windows were boarded up, probably to decrease theft.

In 1968 Johnson, Johnson, and Roy, a landscape architecture firm that was a pioneer in historic restoration, bought the building from the Whitker family and began fixing it up--demonstrating that they could do for themselves what they advocated for others. They used the top floors for their offices and rented out the street level to various businesses. Last year they moved into a new building they built on Miller right behind their old one, then sold the corner building to Dobson-McOmber Insurance.

For Dobson-McOmber, the move will be a homecoming of sorts, since both the Dobson and McOmber strands of the company have their roots in downtown Ann Arbor. The company traces its beginnings to 1893, when Fred T. McOmber left his job at the post office to start an insurance business.

The Dobson family became involved in insurance in 1924, when Russell Sr. started the Ann Arbor Trust Company. Russell Jr., who had worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney and then in a private law firm, joined the trust company in the title insurance division. When Dobson Sr. sold the trust company, Dobson Jr. retained the insurance division, starting his own company.

The two insurance companies, Dobson and McOmber, ran parallel paths, both operating in various downtown offices. Both men had sons who fought in World War II and then came back to join their father's businesses. Fred T. McOmber, although well past retirement age, held on "with grim determination" through the war in order to keep the business for his son, Ted. Ted McOmber, who returned in 1945, when his dad was seventy-seven, says, "I felt I owed it to him to try. It was the least I could do." Ted found he enjoyed working with people and stayed with the insurance business until his own recent retirement.

Bill Dobson finished his MBA right after the war and then joined his father's agency in 1948, eventually becoming the owner. Ted McOmber and Bill Dobson, who had known each other all their lives, merged their companies in 1957. Dobson-McOmber Insurance moved out to East Stadium and later Manchester Road as business grew. The tradition of passing the business on to a son is continuing: Steve Dobson, Bill's son, has been Dobson-McOmber president since 1987.

Fred T. McOmber's firm started out with one employee, a secretary. Today Dobson-McOmber employs forty-five people--enough to use all of Dr. Chase's old building. Continuing the historic renovation begun by Johnson, Johnson and Roy, they're painting it in shades of green to bring out the ornate brick detailing. Back windows that were covered over will be opened up and all the windows replaced with four-over-four glass similar to what was there originally. The garage on the back is being torn down and replaced with an entrance and an elevator shaft, making the building handicapped-accessible and providing space for customer parking.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Chase's recipes included cures for five kinds of "apparent death" and an ointment made from cooked toads.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Above) Dr. Alvin Wood Chase began his printing house in 1864; his self-help medical book sold so well that he was able to triple the plant's size by 1868. (Left) Bill and Steve Dobson and Ted McOmber of Dobson-McOmber Insurance. The century-old firm is restoring Chase's showplace as its new headquarters.

Four generations of selling watches and jewelry

In four generations of selling watches, jewelry, and silver, the Schlanderer family has seen jewelry sales go up, silver sales go down, and watch sales remain steady. The need to know the time evidently remains a constant in most people's lives, regardless of economics or fashion.

Schlanderer and Sons, 208 South Main, was founded in 1933 by C. Henry Schlanderer and his two sons, Paul and Arthur. But the family story really starts much earlier. By the time he opened that store, Hank Schlanderer had already been in the watch and jewelry business for forty-seven years.

Schlanderer was born in 1870, the son of German parents. His father, also C. Henry, was born in a small town near Tuebingen and immigrated to Ann Arbor with his family in the 1850's. He found work as a baker, a trade he had learned in Germany, married Fredericka Rauscher, and bought a house at 504 South Main. A volunteer firefighter, he was mortally injured on his way to a fire in 1871. Fredericka was left with four young children and another on the way. To make ends meet, she moved the young family to the basement of their house and rented out the upstairs.

As soon as he finished sixth grade, Hank Schlanderer went to work; collectively the children managed to earn enough to allow the family to reclaim the upstairs of the house. When he was fourteen, Hank joined his brother working at the Keck furniture factory on Fourth Street. Two years later, he left to apprentice as a watchmaker with George Haller.

Schlanderer could not have chosen a better teacher. George Haller, trained in Germany, came from a long line of skilled clock and watchmakers. His father, Jacob Haller, even had several horological inventions to his name. Schlanderer was paid a dollar a week as an apprentice, and he graduated when he could make a watch from scratch. He stayed on with Haller for twenty-five years, rising to manage Haller's store at 216 South Main.

When Haller died in 1911, Schlanderer formed a partnership with another watchmaker and jeweler, Fred Seyfried. They called their store Schlanderer and Seyfried, or sometimes S & S. They bought the Henne jewelry store at 113 E. Liberty, then moved in 1922 to 304 South Main. In 1933, when both men wanted to bring their sons into the business, they dissolved the partnership. Fred Seyfried stayed at 304, while Hank moved a block north to 208. Both stores have been there ever since. (Seyfried's today is owned by brothers Bill and Jim Hart.)

Schlanderer's two sons, who joined him at the new location, brought their own skills to the business. Paul had been working as a silverware buyer for J.L. Hudson, while Arthur had a master's in business and could take over the accounting. Both were graduates of the U-M, where Arthur was captain of the hockey team.

The building that Schlanderer and his two sons moved into was almost eighty years old. Paul Christman built it in 1854 for his tin and stove shop, which remained there until his death in 1913. After Christman's death, the building became a confectionery, then a drugstore. For a time, the Staffan Funeral Home occupied the former Christman family apartment upstairs.

Schlanderer and Sons opened in the middle of the Depression. Arthur Schlanderer remembers that during their first year they didn't earn even $25 a week. Things turned around during World War II. In the 1930's they had stock to sell but not enough customers. In the 1940's they had customers but not enough stock, since many factories had switched to war production. Most of their watches came from Switzerland, which was neutral during the war, but shipments took so long that the watches were often sold before they even arrived. Some of the store's best customers were workers at the Willow Run bomber plant, who had extra money for the first time in their lives and came in to buy fancy items like diamond-encrusted wristwatches.

Hank Schlanderer died in 1941 at the age of seventy. His son Paul died in 1949, leaving Art the sole owner until 1957, when his nephew Chuck joined him after graduating from Hillsdale College with a business degree and spending two years in the service. Chuck's son, Chuck Jr., joined the business in 1989, after finishing at his dad's alma mater, Hillsdale. In addition to his regular liberal arts studies, Chuck Jr. studied jewelry making, both in high school (Huron has an excellent program) and in college. Arthur retired two years ago at age eighty-two.

The store's inventory continues to evolve as demand changes. It started as primarily a watch store with jewelry as a sideline, but sales of both are now about the same. Chuck Schlanderer says people used to have just a few good pieces but now like to have jewelry for every occasion. Because customers also prefer better quality pieces these days, Schlanderer's no longer carries costume jewelry. Another item that has disappeared is the compact, a small mirrored case for loose face powder. Back when most women had at least two, one for special occasions and one for every day, it was not unusual for Schlanderer's to sell twenty a day.

Sales of silver hollowware and flatware, once a major part of the business, have also declined, partly because per ounce silver prices have gone way up, but mainly because of changed lifestyles. People used to feel they needed silver serving pieces for entertaining, and they were common wedding gifts. Young women began collecting silver in their "hope chests" long before they ever met their future husbands. Now few women have time even to polish silver.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Hank Schlanderer stands next to his boss George Haller (far right) in this 1891 photo. Schlanderer opened his own store after Haller's death in 1911. Three subsequent generations of Schlanderers have sold jewelry downtown: (from right) Art Schlanderer, Chuck Schlanderer, and Chuck Jr.

From El Salvador to Ann Arbor with hope and good cooking

For immigrants, it's a bittersweet experience seeing their children embrace a new culture. Pilar Celaya says this first hit her when she was at the Pioneer High graduation of her two oldest kids. "When they started playing the national anthem, [the American] not the El Salvadoran one, I started crying--thinking I was only supposed to stay here one year and now my children are graduating in another country."

An Ann Arbor resident for eight years, Celaya, fifty, has a story as dramatic as that of any refugee from Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia. Forced to flee El Salvador because their lives were in danger, she and her family came by chance to Ann Arbor because the Society of Friends (Quakers) offered them sanctuary. A short (four feet nine) woman with slightly graying shoulder-length brown hair and sparkling eyes, Celaya arrived penniless and without knowing English. Today, she has her own catering business, her husband, Aurelio, has a permanent job, and all five of her children have earned high school diplomas. Two have gone on to college, and one has graduated.

In the early 1980's, the Celaya family (the name is an alias they chose to safeguard their identity when they arrived in the United States) was living in El Salvador's capital city, San Salvador; Pilar worked in a textile factory and Aurelio in a food processing plant. They lived just outside of town in a small farmhouse with a dirt floor, unpainted walls, and an outdoor toilet, but lots of room outside. They grew squash, bananas, and avocados, and raised chickens, ducks, and pigs--all of which they sold. They enjoyed their pets: numerous birds that flew around freely, and five dogs, one for each child. Leaders in their unions at work, they were also active members of the Emanuel Baptist Church, inspired by its social activism.

The terrible series of events that forever altered the lives of the Celaya family began on the night of February 17, 1980, when three men pulled up in a jeep and burst into their house. The men were part of El Salvador's notorious "death squads," who didn't like the family's union activism. They killed Celaya's two brothers-in-law, wounded two of her nieces, and destroyed the house. Afraid the death squads would return--all in all, death squads killed more than 70,000 people over a ten-year span--the Celaya family went into hiding.

After Pilar's brother was arrested, Aurelio escaped to Mexico. At risk to herself, Celaya waited until her brother was released from jail before she and the children joined Aurelio in Mexico in 1982. There, she found work managing a laundry, while Aurelio worked as a chauffeur. She says of their stay in Mexico, "Even though we could speak the language, we were not so lucky in Mexico. The country is poor. There are not many opportunities."

In 1985, they accepted an offer of sanctuary made by the Friends congregation in Ann Arbor. Though half a million people had fled the fighting in El Salvador, the U.S. government did not recognize the conflict as a civil war, and so denied them political asylum. In defiance of that policy, the Friends offered to help the family enter the U.S. illegally and to harbor them in the large house they own on Hill Street.

The Celayas crossed the border in Arizona, after a four-and-a-half-hour walk that included fording a river. The trip from Arizona to Ann Arbor took a month, with the Friends transporting them in a twentieth-century Underground Railroad, exchanging drivers and putting the family up at different homes.

Finally arriving, tired and dispirited, at their new home at 1416 Hill, the Celayas were cheered when Barry Lyons, one of their hosts, welcomed them in Spanish. For a week, Lyons slept on the couch to be on hand in case of an encounter with the police or immigration officials. Luckily, the authorities didn't bother them, then or later.

A month after her arrival, Pilar Celaya began speaking in public about her experiences in El Salvador, taking a translator with her, eventually traveling around the country to sanctuary conferences. Reliving the terrible events caused her to suffer nightmares after each engagement. "It wasn't easy," she says, "but I wanted to make a real effect and do something concrete."

Celaya and her family had to adjust to everything in Ann Arbor, from the weather (they had never seen snow) to the abundance of specialized stores to Americans' fondness for gadgets. Although delighted to find such previously unknown luxuries as a blender and a mixer in the Quaker House kitchen, Celaya once exclaimed to a friend in Ann Arbor, "I think North Americans don't sleep! They have to be awake to think what they can invent to make money."

When the family first came to Ann Arbor, Pilar and Aurelio could not work because, as illegal aliens, they could not get Social Security numbers. The Friends and others took care of their day-to-day expenses and their medical and dental bills. The couple took care of the house, did odd jobs to earn spending money, and took English classes. Learning English was more of a struggle for them, because of their ages and their relative isolation, than for their children.

While learning to cope with her new life, Celaya kept Salvadoran ways alive. Although her children picked up English quickly, she insisted that they speak Spanish at home. She continued to cook Salvadoran-style food. When the younger boys wanted to go on overnights, she refused to allow them, because that is not the custom in El Salvador. She also held to a strict nighttime curfew.

At first, the Celayas assumed that they would soon be returning to El Salvador. After two years had passed and conditions back home remained unstable, they applied for political asylum. With the help of U-M law professor Alex Aleinikoff and his students, they gained TPS--Temporary Protective Status. Although technically they could still be deported, the Celayas feel safe today, after eight years.

Once she knew she could be legally employed, Pilar Celaya started thinking of a way to earn a living. As a teenager and young wife, she had earned money cooking and selling tamales and soup on the street on weekends. Early in her residency at Quaker House, she and Aurelio found that they could repay people's kindness by cooking--giving tamales as gifts, inviting new friends for meals, and cooking for Quaker functions.

Celaya began her professional cooking career in 1988 by selling tamales. A year later, she moved into full-scale catering, using either the kitchen where she lived or the one at First Baptist, their Ann Arbor church. In 1990, she took a Community Development course on how to run a small business. She now does her catering out of a kitchen she rented on North Fourth Avenue next to New Grace Apostolic Church. Relatives on the West Coast help by sending authentic ingredients like plantain leaves for the tamales and spices such as azafran, borraja, and biente de leon

Two years ago, the Celayas made the big leap from the Friends house to living on their own at Arrowwood Hills Co-op. They live in a four-bedroom townhouse, with a bedroom for each of the three boys still at home.

Celaya has filled the place with tropical plants, Latin American art, including a Diego Rivera print and a Peruvian wall hanging, pots and knickknacks from around the world, and many books, in both Spanish and English.

Eleven years after their flight to Mexico, Celaya says she still misses "everything--my people, my culture, my church, my home." A recurring dream suggests her nostalgia: "I see myself in my house in El Salvador with my kids, but always they are little. I go shopping, and on the way back I remember I have to take an airplane or a bus to Ann Arbor. Then I wake up and realize I am in Michigan."

Officially El Salvador is at peace now. But Celaya knows from contacts back home that there are still killings by people who oppose the peace agreement between the government and the rebels. And there is the Americanization of her children. "After eight years of their lives here, I can't ask them to go back," she says. Her daughter, Carla, who graduated from Nazareth College two years ago, married an American in a large and festive ceremony at Cobblestone Farm. A son, Alezandro, attends Eastern Michigan. The three other sons, all high school graduates, are working and saving money for college.

Celaya herself wishes she could afford to attend college. That and opening her own restaurant are her dreams. And while she doesn't want to give up her Salvadoran citizenship, the family is applying for a different immigration status that would allow them to leave the country and return.

Celaya's friends are amazed that after all she's been through, she's still such a warm, caring person. She says, "I thank God I'm still alive, I still have my health, and my kids are good people. We're lucky people as a family. I know bad things have happened, but I'm happy with my life."

Its founding signaled Ann Arbor's growing diversity

When Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church was built in 1893, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and William, its mission was to give Ann Arbor's Lutheran population the choice of English-language church services. Ann Arbor's original Lutheran church, Zion Lutheran, held its services in German. That left the city's growing number of Lutherans of other nationalities unserved. And by then, even some German Lutheran families were more comfortable speaking English. Longtime Trinity member Gladys Brown remembers that her parents joined the new church because "they wanted their children brought up in an English-speaking church."

The impulse that led to Trinity's founding came from Carl W. Belser, a Lutheran minister who taught Semitic languages at the U-M. Concerned that Lutheran college students did not have a church home in Ann Arbor, he began in 1892 to hold informal Sunday afternoon sessions. As the group grew and townsfolk also began coming, he appealed to the Home Mission Board of the General Synod for help in starting a permanent congregation.

The first minister of Trinity was William. L. Tedrow, who came from Indiana to preach one Sunday and was so well liked that the congregation asked the board to let him stay. He took over in February 1893. The congregation was formally organized on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1893, with forty charter members, and by June they had found a building site on the corner of William and Fifth. They moved the wooden Italianate house standing there to the back of the lot on the William Street side, where it became the parsonage. The congregation met at the U-M's ecumenical student center, Newberry Hall (now the Kelsey Museum), while the 400-seat church was under construction. The completed church was dedicated April 5,1896.

The Ann Arbor Register for April 9, 1896, described the new church as "a neat and cozy structure and a great credit both to the pastor and people." Entering from either William or Fifth, people would go down an aisle to the sanctuary, its two identical wings decorated with arch-shaped stained-glass windows. The basement, divided into two rooms and a small kitchen, was used for Sunday school classes and group functions.

Music was supplied by a hand-powered pump organ. Old-timers remember the Christmas when the man who pumped the bellows for the organ agreed to play Santa. In the middle of the service the organ suddenly stopped. It turned out that the glue holding Santa's beard contained chloroform, which had put him to sleep.

The ambitious building plan left the young congregation financially strapped: though the church was designed with a tall central bell tower, it stood empty until 1919, when Saranda Miller, an employee at Muehlig's, gave money for a bell in memory of her husband, Joseph. From then on, the bell rang before each service. At midnight on Christmas Eve, member Gertrude Wagner remembers, the choir would climb a ladder to the top of the tower and sing Christmas carols, the music wafting out over the surrounding homes.

From the beginning, Trinity had a close relationship to the university. Lutheran college students were encour≠aged to sing in the choir or teach Sunday School, and women from Zion and Trinity took turns serving them Sunday dinners. With the increase in university enrollment after World War I, Trinity pastors took on the additional job of student ministry. Af≠ter World War II, with another enrollment jump, the United Lutheran Church bought property at Forest and Hill to build the Lord of Light campus ministry, and hired the Reverend Henry Yoder (pastor from 1932 to 1945) away from Trinity to lead it.

Yoder's successor at Trinity, Walter Brandt, was the last pastor to live in the William Street parsonage. Already an old house when the church was built, it was very run-down by the late 1940's. The congregation renovated the parsonage to make it the parish hall, housing the office, five much-needed Sunday school classrooms, and a caretaker's apartment. They bought a house on Granger for Brandt and his wife, Mary.

At the same time, the congregation decided also to attack the backlog of church repairs that had piled up during the Depression, when there was no money, and World War II, when there were no supplies. Some suggested it would make more sense just to move, but the love of the original building and the importance of the downtown location--especially since Zion Lutheran had just moved out to West Liberty--made them hesitate.

In the end, the decision was made for them. Brandt's successor, Richard Pries, had been on the job only two days in 1956 when he was visited by representatives of the YM-YWCA. The YWCA had for years been based in the former Christian Mack house at the corner of William and Fourth Avenue, and the YMCA had its own building on North Fourth. But the organizations had merged in 1953 and wanted to build a joint facility on the whole block of William between Fourth and Fifth. They needed the church and parish hall to complete the parcel.

Parishioners were shocked. In her history of the church, 100 Years in God's Grace, Mary Sedlander writes, "They were a congregation of 335 people, few of whom were well-to-do. They had only, within the last few years, managed to get their budget balanced and their property in good repair. They had just welcomed a young, inexperienced pastor after having had none at all for six months. Now they were being asked, within a period of two years, to locate suitable property and erect a new church building."

But rather than face being enclosed on two sides by the "Y," they agreed. They bought a piece of land on Stadium from Gottlob Schumacher. U-M architecture professor Ralph Hammett, a Trinity member, designed a modern church very different from the original. He did keep one feature: a central tower, from which Saranda Miller's bell still rings.

Both the "Y" and the church thrived in their new locations. Since the move, Trinity's membership has grown to 1,250, making it one of the city's largest churches. Unlike many Lutheran congregations, Trinity's is ethnically diverse. Current pastor Walter Arnold says that about half the members are not even from Lutheran backgrounds.

Trinity is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year with a series of events structured to look ahead as well as back. In January they celebrated the past by inviting former pastors and interns and conducting a service with an old liturgy. A March service was devoted to the present, and in April they used a new liturgy and music by contemporary composers. For his sermon, Arnold used Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

[Photo caption from the original print edition]: Trinity Lutheran in the 1930's (left) and the church parsonage next door. The entire block is now occupied by the Ann Arbor "Y."

When studio photography was king Today, when the slightest family occasion is recorded with simple pocket-size cameras, and major events bring out the camcorder, it's easy to forget that just yesterday major life events were commemorated in the photographer's studio. Births, confirmations, graduations, team membership, army enlistments, marriages--all, if the family could afford it, were recorded for posterity at the local studio. Studio photographers, masters of the bulky, tripod-mounted cameras and fragile glass negatives of the day, were the unoffiocial portraitists of the city. From 1890 to 1971, Fred Rentschler and his son and successor, Edwin Rentschler, took pictures of mayors, businessmen, service organization officers, and ministers. Their Rentschler Photographers, primarily at 319 East Huron, had almost a monopoly on U-M subjects: they memorialized every U-M president from James Angell on, photographed the leading professors, and took all the major team pictures. Fred Rentschler was born in Ann Arbor on June 3, 1868, a few years after his parents immigrated from Wurttemberg, Germany. The 1906 Past and Present of Washtenaw County described the family as "prominent in social circles of the city"--connections that no doubt helped Fred get customers. After a two-year apprenticeship in photography with the firm of Lewis and Gibson, Rentschler established his own studio in 1890 at the corner of Main and Huron, on the second floor of Brown's Drugstore. His darkroom was across the alley, reached through a covered catwalk. He would take a picture in his studio, run across the alley to develop the glass negative before it faded, then return to take the next shot. In 1904, when the drugstore was about to be demolished to make way for the Glazier Building, Rentschler bought an old house at 319 East Huron, on land now part of City Hall, to use as his studio. To capture as much natural light for sittings as possible, he built a room on the back of the house with a two-story glass wall. Next door Rentschler built a house for his family. He had married Jessie Doane, a schoolteacher from Dexter, in 1898, and the couple had three children. Fred Rentschler's grandson, Jeff Rentschler, a recent retiree from the Ann Arbor Fire Department, was a small boy when his grandfather died. He heard from those who knew Fred that he was friendly and outgoing, but also that he ran the studio with an iron hand. At his death the Ann Arbor News wrote, "He had a great deal of patience . . . and thus was able to wait for that fleeting twist of the mouth, or that expression of eyes that delighted his heart when he squeezed the bulb to flash the human countenance onto a film." Edwin Rentschler, born in 1900, was trained from an early age to be his dad's successor. He officially entered the photography business in 1926, after graduating from the U-M with a business degree. (Jeff wonders if his dad resented going right into the business and if that is why he, in turn, wasn't encouraged to take it over.) The same year Edwin Rentschler joined the business, he married Lois Gates, the daughter of Dr. Neil Gates. As his father's health declined, Edwin handled more and more of the business, taking over completely a few years before Fred died in 1940. Edwin retained the customers and used the same technology as his fa≠ther had. Jeff Rentschler remembers him standing behind the big camera or hurrying to bring out props--chairs, stools of various sizes, tables. Like his father, he was a perfectionist and a careful craftsman, good with details and very patient. Jeff remembers him as a sterner man than his grandfather; but he could also be very charming. Even with children, who can be a real challenge for a photographer, he would talk and wisecrack until they relaxed and he could get good pictures. Jeff describes his father as a workaholic who perfected the system of photography he had been taught and changed nothing unless absolutely necessary. Long after good-quality 35-mm film cameras appeared--including the Ann Arbor-made Argus--Edwin Rentschler stayed with glass negatives and a large view camera so heavy it could be moved around the room only on casters. Because the equipment was so heavy, all work was done in the studio, never on-site. Weeks before their weddings, brides would come to the studio to pose in their gowns. Whole crowds would arrive for group pictures. Even the athletic teams came. Jeff remembers it was a tradition for the U-M football team to come at the end of each season and pose for a group picture. Then they would elect the next year's captain and his picture would be taken, too. (Rentschler didn't charge teams for the pictures, but made money selling them to others.) Edwin Rentschler's studio was a one-man operation; he even made frames himself. The only help he had was a receptionist and a college student who got a room in exchange for chores such as light cleaning and snow shoveling. During World War II, though, he had to hire extra help to take care of all the servicemen who wanted their pictures taken before they left, possibly forever. As the studio era waned, Rentschler could have stayed busy by moving about, doing weddings or photographing industrial sites. But he preferred the studio. For the last ten years of his career, he shared space in the Talbot Studio on Main Street and continued taking formal portraits. The only time he ventured from the studio was for the football team pictures. He was willing to take those on-site because, when he moved out of his Huron Street studio, the athletic department had taken all his staging to Yost and would set it up for him every year. Rentschler retired in 1969 and died two years later. Rentschler took home movies of his own family, but never casual photographs. Asked when he retired if he would take pictures of his family, he replied, "My wife takes candids. I'm strictly a studio man."

[Photo caption from the original print edition]: For decades, mayors, U-M presidents, ministers, and even the entire U-M football team made pilgrimages to Rentschler Photographers (above left) to have their pictures taken for posterity. It was undoubtedly founder Fred Rentschler who photographed his son Edwin and bride Lois Gates in 1926. The Rentschler studio and home on Huron were demolished in the 1960's to make room for City Hall. [Photo caption from the original print edition]: Long after good-quality 35-mm film cameras appeared--including the Ann Arbor-made Argus--Edwin Rentschler stayed with glass negatives and a large view camera so heavy it could be moved around the room only on casters.

Guy Bissell and the early years of Ann Arbor's restaurant trade

Between 1905 and 1909, the number of restaurants in Ann Arbor doubled--all the way from eight to seventeen. One of the newcomers was the Royal Cafe, opened in 1909 by Guy Bissell at 316 South Main.

Restaurants weren't a big deal early in the century. "People didn't go to restaurants like they do now," recalls Elsa Goetz Ordway, whose family owned the Goetz Meat Market on Liberty. "As a child I can't remember ever going to a restaurant." Bertha Welker, who was a teenager growing up on Sixth Street when the Royal Cafe opened, never went to a restaurant as a young woman, either. Frieda Heusel Saxon, whose family owned the City Bakery on Huron, remembers that they might run out for a quick bite at lunch, but they didn't eat in restaurants for enjoyment.

In 1909, saloons still far outnumbered restaurants in the city. (There were thirty-seven in 1909.) But they were mainly men's hangouts. Families who wanted to socialize around eating entertained at home or, as a special treat, went out to an ice cream parlor. Ordway remembers that the favorite spots for Sunday afternoon ice cream treats were Trubey's and Preketes's, both on South Main.

The Royal Cafe wasn't intended for the sweet tooth or the drinking crowds. Despite its fancy name, it was what Guy Bissell's daughter, Eleanor Gardner, describes as a "casual restaurant," with a quick-service counter, a few wooden tables, and a simple menu. The bill of fare offered nothing stronger than coffee (five cents), and the only sweet item was griddle cakes (ten cents).

Bissell ran the restaurant himself, doing the cooking with the help of his father, Ira, whenever he was in town. (He divided his time among his three children.) Bissell's wife, Marie, stayed at home with their small children, Eleanor and Clarence, and also cared for her mother, Frederica Bernhardt.

Bissell was just twenty-six when he opened the Royal Cafe. He was born in Ludington, Michigan, the son of an English father and a German mother, and raised in Ypsilanti. He left school after the eighth grade and moved to Ann Arbor when he was eighteen. He worked as a bellboy at the American Hotel (now the Earle Building) where he also slept, and held short-term jobs, including positions as a laboratory technician and a clerk at Overbeck's Book Store. He and Marie Bernhardt were married in 1904.

Bissell's only professional cooking experience before opening his own restaurant was a short stint as a baker for Bigalke and Reule, grocers and bakers, at 215 E. Washington. Gardner says her father learned cooking from his mother, who taught him German specialties.

When the Royal Cafe opened, most of the city's restaurants were on campus or clustered around the courthouse. For a time, it was the only eating place on Main Street other than the tearoom at Mack and Company, Ann Arbor's big department store, at the corner of Main and Liberty. Workers at nearby businesses were probably the nucleus of its customers. The biggest business in the vicinity was the Crescent Works Corset Manufacturers (where Kline's department store is now); others on the block included meat and grocery stores, dry goods and millinery shops, a plumber, a hardware store, an ice company, and an undertaker.

One year after the Royal Cafe opened, five more restaurants were listed in the city directory. The cycle of growth continued, and by 1911 there were twenty-five. That year, the Royal Cafe moved across the street to 331. A year later, Bissell moved it across town to 609 Church Street to serve the college crowd.

The frequent moves were typical of the period. Restaurants had a fast turnover rate and rarely lasted long enough to pass down to the next generation. (The longest-lasting of the 1909 restaurants was Preketes's, later named the Sugar Bowl.) After two years on Church Street, Bissell was bought out by the university. He never again ran a restaurant.

By then the city had twenty-seven restaurants. Eleanor Gardner says her father quit because "the restaurant business got too big for him." It's hard to imagine what he would think of the city today, when the Observer City Guide lists more than 200 restaurants, half a dozen of them in the 300 block of South Main. The original Royal Cafe is not one of them; it's now part of Fiegel's Men's and Boys' Wear.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Gardner was born the year the Royal Cafe opened, and has no firsthand memory of it. But this old interior photo reveals that the menu was heavy on protein: steak, bacon, pork chops, salmon, and sardines. It offered no fruit and only one vegetable: baked beans. Prices ranged from five cents for drinks, to five and ten cents for sandwiches, to fifteen to forty cents for dinners, which included coffee, potatoes, and bread and butter.

Varsity Laundry and the Federal Building block

The first washing machine was reputedly built in 1851 in an Oakland, California, gold-mining camp. A Mr. Davis used barrels with a plunger affair to keep the clothes stirred up, and an old donkey engine to furnish the power. He used his machines to set up a business washing miners' clothes commercially. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, similar "power laundries" sprang up all over the country.

The Ann Arbor Steam Laundry, Ann Arbor's first power laundry, was started in 1888 by Edward Servis and Milton Steffey. It didn't last long: by 1898 Steffey had moved to St. Paul and Servis was working as a tinner. But in 1905 Herbert Tenny opened the Varsity Laundry at the same address, 215-217 South Fourth Avenue.

Tenny chose the name because he was an avid U-M football fan. The name was always painted in blue and gold. His sixteen-person staff included several partners (originally Bert Cook, later Clarence Snyder and Fred Lantz), drivers for the horse-drawn delivery wagons, a coal man to feed the steam boiler, a maintenance man to keep the machinery going, a bookkeeper (for many years Elsa Hochrien of First Street), men to run the washing machines, and a crew of women to do the pressing, sewing, and hand touch-ups.

In about 1913, Tenny replaced the horses and wagons with Dodge trucks. Two years later, he moved the laundry to the corner of Liberty and Fifth Avenue. Though for many years it had been the site of Christian Schmid's lumberyard, the block was known as Jail House Square, because it had originally been set out by the town's founders for that purpose. George Scott, a local architect who designed the Schwaben Hall as well as many houses in town, drew the plans for the new laundry, which took three years to build.

Brothers Nate and Barney Dalitz bought Tenny out in 1924. Nate's son Morrie first saw it that fall, when his parents picked him up from summer camp and told him that they had bought the laundry and moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor. Compared to the rough Detroit neighborhood where the family had lived, Ann Arbor struck the thirteen-year-old as a sissy town: he went two whole weeks without getting into a fight. But he learned to love Ann Arbor.

Herbert Tenny was often around even after the Dalitzes took over. "Like all ex-owners, he couldn't stay away," says Morrie Dalitz. He'd even written into the sales agreement that he retained parking privileges--handy when he played pool at the Masonic Temple around the corner on Fourth Avenue.

The Dalitzes repaired and modernized the business as they had the time and money. The laundry's old wooden washing machines were replaced with larger ones that held 400 pounds of dry laundry at a time. Each load weighed 1,200 pounds when wet; they had to use a crane to lift the laundry into a big centrifugal extractor. From there it went to a flatwork ironer, called a mangle. Dalitz remembers how two women would feed laundry into the ironer, while two at the other end would remove and fold it, moving so fast they looked as if they were dancing.

The 1920's were a good time to be in the laundry business. People were enjoying the respite after World War I and wanted to dress well and have a good time. In 1927, Varsity diversified by adding rental linens for restaurants, barber shops, doctors and dentists, drugstores, fraternities, and professional offices.

As a teenager, Morrie Dalitz worked summers as a "jumper" on a delivery truck that covered cottages on the many lakes northwest of Ann Arbor. There was enough business to justify the run, he recalls, since "no one wants to spend their summer washing clothes." For those who couldn't afford Varsity's full washing and pressing service, there was unpressed "fluff dry" service (the clothes could be dampened and ironed later) or "wet wash," delivered damp and ready to iron.

As a young man, Daiitz began work≠ing full-time at the laundry, starting with two years as a jumper on the linen supply trucks. Often there would be five or six stops on a block. While the driver sat in the truck, Dalitz would run in with the delivery. To speed things up, he took the door off the old Dodge truck, leaping out at each stop, without touching the running board. (He shakes his head, remembering that after a day of jumping in and out, he still had the energy to play softball.) Later, his father put him in the plant, where he learned all aspects of the laundry business; he could repair any machine, figure out the chemistry, or work as a salesman.

In the 1930's, the Dalitzes replaced Tenny's 1913 vehicles with a fleet of Chevrolet trucks, for which they paid $3,000. They also expanded the plant, tearing down two houses to the south to add a receiving and marking room, garage, and drive-in area. They put up a neon sign, the second in town. (Mack's department store had the first.)

But by then the development of better home washers and dryers began to cut into the power laundry business. After Morrie Dalitz returned from World War II (he enlisted in the field artillery, but was transferred to the quartermaster corps because he knew laundry), he took a more active role in management and began buying out his uncle's share. Varsity diversified into supplying industrial linens, such as uniforms for garages and gas stations, and in the late 1950's it began to distribute paper products as well.

In 1964, after his father and uncle died, Dalitz sold the laundry to Bill Schumer, who moved it to Ypsilanti. Dalitz himself started a second career in real estate, where he is still active, using the knowledge of the town he gained during all his years with the laundry.

The entire block of Liberty Street where the laundry was located was torn down in 1973 to make way for the present Federal Building. The casualties included several rooming houses, the laundry, the Eberbach Building, and the Masonic Temple. The wreckers had a tough time with the Eberbach Building and the Masonic Temple (which was demolished merely to make room for a parking lot). But though the former laundry was still a good looking building, Dalitz recalls, it didn't put up much of a fight. Weakened by years of moisture and temperature extremes, it came down at almost the first tap.

[Photo caption from the original print edition]: (Above) Varsity Laundry from the Liberty Street side in the 1930's, showing the new delivery trucks and neon sign. Morrie Dalitz is the young man standing in the middle. (Right) The entire block was demolished in the 1970V to make way for the Federal Building, and Tower Plaza has transformed the skyline. Only the houses on the other side of Fifth Avenue confirm that it's the same scene.

When trains hauled everything from freight to football fans

"I just thought you'd like to know about a fun place to go," John William Scott-Railton, age nine, wrote the Observer. "It's a train's round table." Using John's directions, we walked south from Hoover Street along the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks until we came to a metal shed, welded shut, with a faded "Ferry" sign on the side facing the tracks, and eight tracks fanning out from the main track. Following the outside track into an overgrown area, we came to a crumbling poured concrete circle crossed by a section of track mounted on a rusting steel frame.

Later, talking to train buffs and retired railroad personnel, we learned that John William had stumbled across Ferry Yard. It was once the center of the Ann Arbor Railroad's local freight operation, and on home football days it was a crowded passenger terminus, too. The shed was the yard agent's office, the sidings were to store freight cars and special football passenger trains, and the turntable allowed crews to reverse the direction of engines and freight cars.

The turntable used what trainmen jokingly called the "armstrong method": it was turned by the power of their strong arms. None of the train buffs we talked to knew how old the turntable was (their guesses for date of construction ran from 1878 to the 1920's). Finally, attorney Dan McClary, whose job on the railroad in the summer of 1969 turned him into a lifelong student of trains, found the date by looking at Ann Arbor Railroad annual reports. The original turntable was installed in 1911, the same year the railroad introduced McKeen motor cars to compete with the interurban trolleys. In 1939, the annual report says, "a second hand turntable was purchased and installed at Ferry Field," probably because heavier engines were being used.

Started in 1878, the Ann Arbor Rail≠road originally ran from Toledo to Frankfort, where it crossed Lake Michigan by ferry. Ann Arbor passengers ordinarily used the depot on Ashley--now the Law Montessori School--for trains bound south (the Toledo Torpedo) or north (the Frankfort Fireball). But Ferry Yard was the arrival and departure point of all the freight trains coming through town. All Ann Arbor-bound freight cars were dropped off at Ferry Yard, where the yard conductor would take over, directing crews to deliver the cars to their final destinations: the mills, lumberyards, coal yards, furniture factories, ice companies, and warehouses that lined the railroad's route along Allen's Creek through the Old West Side. In the 1930's and 1940's, according to retired yard conductor Ford Ferguson, a crew of three using a switch engine would move from twenty to fifty cars a day. The switch engine was also used as a pusher to help the bigger trains get over the Plymouth Road hill north of town.

In the 1950's, the Ann Arbor Railroad replaced its steam engines with diesels designed to run in either direction. After that, the turntable was used mainly to turn freight cars around so they could be unloaded from the same side they had been loaded from. McClary says that by 1969 they were moving only six or eight cars a day, the biggest customers being Fingerle Lumber and the Rhode brick yard. On slow days the crew would retire to the caboose to play cards until the shift was over at 7:00 p.m.

The 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's, the heyday of freight service to Ferry Yard, were also the heyday of football trains, specially scheduled runs bringing fans to games. They would come, not only from the away team's hometown, but from anywhere around the Midwest where U-M alumni were numerous enough to organize excursions. The biggest gathering was always for the Ohio State game, where trains would originate in Columbus and go north through Ohio picking up passengers all along the way. With no worry about driving, fans could sing the fight song at the top of their lungs and generally concentrate on having a good time, probably making present-day tailgaters look tame. And of course the winners would celebrate extra hard on the way home.

Ferry Yard, located between Ferry Field, where the football games were played from 1906 to 1927, and the present stadium, was the logical place to drop off passengers. According to Ferguson, the more popular games, such as Ohio State, might bring in as many as fifteen trains. Some of them were so long that they required more powerful freight engines instead of passenger engines; to add capacity, companies even borrowed passenger cars from other lines.

While the football fans were enjoying the game, the railroad employees would work frantically, cleaning up the debris left by the arriving parties, watering and refueling, and turning the engines around on the turntable for the trip home.

Football trains stopped running in the late 1960's, and the turntable stopped being used in the 1970's. Today the Ann Arbor Railroad is divided in two; the section from Ann Arbor to Toledo retains the name and is still privately owned, while what is left of the northern part is operated for the state by the Tuscola and Saginaw Bay Railroad., Although eight to ten freight trains a day still use the southern portion, Ferry Yard is no longer used at all.

[Photo caption from the original print edition]: (Left) Steam engine on the Ferry Yard turntable, November 24, 1951--the last time a steam engine pulled a football train. While the passengers watched the game, yard crews turned the engines around for the trip home. (Below) John William Scott-Railton and Robby Young (in white sweatshirt) investigate their discovery: the Ann Arbor Railroad freight office and turntable.