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.

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.

"Not too many in Ann Arbor lived such a life," says Molly Hunter Dobson of her great-aunt and great-uncle, Carrie and Harry Boyd Earhart. The Earharts' 400-acre estate along the Huron River included a small golf course for "H. B." to practice his swing, forty acres of woods where he went horse­back riding, and formal gardens and a greenhouse where Carrie indulged her love of flowers. Today, most of the estate has disappeared, swallowed up by Concordia College and the Waldenwood subdivision. But the stone-walled mansion the Earharts built in 1936 still stands on Geddes Road near US-23. Newly renovated to serve as Concordia's administrative center, the man­sion and adjoining gardens will reopen with public dedications on June 16 and 22.

Born in 1870, H. B. Earhart made his fortune in the gasoline business. He was the Detroit agent for the White Star Refin­ing Company, a faltering oil company based in Buffalo, New York. Earhart bought the company in 1911 and moved its headquarters to Michigan--just as the automobile industry was taking off. Under his direction, White Star grew into a major enterprise, with a chain of gas stations and its own refinery in Oklahoma. Earhart eventually sold out to Socony Vacuum, later Mobil.

Four years into his retirement, at age sixty-six, Earhart decided to replace the farmhouse where his family had lived since 1920. Earhart's correspondence with his landscape consultants, the famous Olmsted firm of New York, reveals that Carrie Earhart had doubts about the proj­ect. Though she eventually went along with her husband's desire for a big house, she insisted that it be functional rather than gaudy or ostentatious. Their extended fam­ily would use every inch of it, from the basement pool room to the attic theater.

The mansion was designed by Detroit architects Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls, with input from the Olmsted firm. Its clas­sic, simple proportions were enhanced with elegant details that included a slate roof, copper eaves and detailing, and a Pewabic ceramic fountain. Outwardly traditional, the house incorporated the latest in modern technology. Beneath the limestone exterior (hand-chiseled to simulate age), its struc­ture was steel and concrete. It boasted what is believed to be the first residential air-conditioning unit outside of New York City, showers with ten heads, and vented closets with lights that went on when the door opened. There were bells every­where--Carrie Earhart never had to go more than ten feet to summon a servant.

The Earharts and their four children moved to Ann Ar­bor in 1916. "I always un­derstood that we did so be­cause Mother liked small town living, and Ann Arbor at that time had a population of only about 28,000, not counting the university," daughter Eliza­beth Earhart Kennedy explained in her 1990 memoir, Once Upon a Family.

The Earharts initially rented a house on Washtenaw Avenue. But within a year, they bought a historic dairy farm on Ged­des Road known as "the Meadows." Be­fore they could move in, World War I in­tervened. Feeling he should be closer to his business, H. B. moved his family back to Detroit for the duration. They used the farmhouse for vacations and getaway weekends until 1920, when they moved to Ann Arbor permanently.

By then, the three older children, Mar­garet, Louise, and Richard, had left for college. Elizabeth attended Ann Arbor High, but because the family lived so far in the country, she had to be driven each day by her mother's chauffeur. Embar­rassed, she had him drop her off two blocks from school so she could arrive on foot like everyone else.

H. B. Earhart kept the farm active, but he did promptly tear down the old barns, which according to Kennedy's memoir, "were too near for mother's fastidious nose." He had them rebuilt on the other side of Geddes at the corner of what would soon be renamed Earhart Road.

While vacationing in North Carolina the first year they lived at the Meadows, Elizabeth fell in love with horseback rid­ing. When they returned home, her father bought a pair of horses. Like his daughter, H. B. Earhart enjoyed riding, and although Carrie Earhart did not share their enthusi­asm, she contributed to their pleasure by having daffodils planted in the woods, which spread and naturalized. "She was to daffodils as Johnny Appleseed was to ap­ples," says her grandson, David Kennedy. Even today, residents of the Earhart subdi­vision tell of buying a house in the winter and being pleasantly surprised when the daffodils bloom in the spring.

H. B. and Carrie Earhart were both inter­ested in gardening. They established a for­mal garden behind the house and built a greenhouse behind the garage. To superin­tend it all, they lured to Ann Arbor a prizewinning horticulturist, James Reach. Born in Scotland, Reach was working on an estate near Philadelphia when the Earharts met him at a flower show in New York.

The late Alexander Grant began work­ing as a gardener for the Earharts in 1929. In an interview before his death in Janu­ary, Grant admitted that when he first came looking for work, he didn't know "a daffodil from an ice cream cone." But when Reach discovered that Grant had grown up near Edinburgh, his own birth­place, he hired him anyway.

Carrie Earhart was herself a serious gardener. She won prizes at national gar­den shows, served as president of the Michigan Federated Garden Club, and was cofounder of the Ann Arbor Garden Club. For two years in a row, she and Reach re­created part of the Meadows' garden on the stage of the Masonic Temple for the Ann Arbor Flower Show.

While the new house was being built, near the site of the old farmhouse, H. B. and Carrie went on a round-the-world cruise. Returning, they settled into their new home. H. B. filled the library with history books. On the walls of the library the Earharts displayed their art collection, which included origi­nals by Velazquez, Picasso, Millet, and Goya. Carrie enjoyed music, so the living room was dominated by a grand piano. She often hired members of the Detroit Symphony to perform for guests.

The house was decorated with treasures the Earharts had picked up on their travels. "They traveled more, and to more exotic places, than was then common," remem­bers great-niece Molly Dobson. Two huge oil portraits of the Earharts were displayed on the stairwell leading to the second floor. (The portraits hung in Ann Arbor's YMCA for many years, commemorating the Earharts' funding of the Y's residential wing, and are now in the conference room of the Earhart Foundation.) Upstairs, H. B. and Carrie each had a bedroom complete with dressing room and bathroom.

Two of the Earhart children, Richard and Elizabeth, lived on property adjoining their parents' estate. Richard farmed a piece of land just to the north known as "Greenhills." (The school of that name is now on part of his property, as well as Earhart Village Condominiums.) Eliza­beth, married to lawyer James Kennedy, lived west of her parents in part of an or­chard originally owned by Detroit Edison. The southern part of the orchard, running down to the river, was owned by H. B. Earhart's nephew, Laurin Hunter.

Hunter, who worked for Earhart, had originally planned to build a house on his property and had even hired an architect. But one day in 1935, Earhart rode up on his horse while Hunter was working and offered to give him the old farmhouse if he would move it. Although Hunter's property was close enough to be seen from the Earharts', it took three months to move the house--the hard­est parts were turning it at a ninety-degree angle and get­ting it over a ravine.

The Earharts enjoyed having family around and encouraged the younger generation to visit. A room in the basement was fixed up as a playroom, and the pool room--reached by a secret door in the library that looked like part of the bookcase--was a big draw. Grandson David Kennedy re­members having a lot of fun upstairs, too, in the attic theater, which included a stage at one end and a movie projection booth at the other. "We would play in the theater, just goof around," he recalls, "or watch family movies of kids hamming it--not Hollywood movies because there was no sound system."

Outdoors, they could swim, play tennis, or even golf. The area around the house was carefully landscaped. Grant recalled that the gardens included a peony-lined walk, a rose garden, a grape arbor, a gaze­bo, and a lily pond. Grape ivy grew along the back porch and espaliered apple trees were cultivated along the wall to the east of the porch.

Carrie Earhart died in 1940 at age sixty-eight after a short illness. A private fu­neral  was held in the home. Dobson remembers that the living room was filled with a great profusion of Easter lilies from her greenhouse and that Burnette Staebler, soloist at the First Presbyterian Church and a friend of the younger generation of Earharts, sang "I Know That My Re­deemer Liveth." A front-page obituary talked of Carrie Earhart's many contribu­tions to the community.

H. B. Earhart stayed on in the house af­ter his wife died, keeping busy with his many interests and charities. With more time on his hands, he would frequent the greenhouse lounge, reading or talking to Grant, who had become the greenhouse manager after Carrie Earhart's death. Grant described Earhart at this time as a "tall, stately man, very upright, very delib­erate in what he said, and what he said he meant. He wasn't a man who spent time gossiping, he was very serious."

When Earhart had visitors, he often brought them to the greenhouse. Over the years Grant recalled being introduced to many prominent citizens, including Henry Ford, society people, and a physicist from Stanford who was working on the atomic bomb. One day when Grant was edging the driveway, he heard sirens approaching. He looked up to see a police motorcade escorting then Michigan governor Kim Sigler, who was coming to visit Earhart. 

Earhart was involved in many charity works as well. Although he was a member of the First Methodist Church, he took an interest in the nearby Dixboro Methodist Church, where he was friends with the minister, Loren Campbell. Campbell re­membered that when the church needed an addition, Earhart offered to match the con­tributions made by the congregation.

Although much of his charity was not publicly known, Earhart was very re­spected in the community. Campbell re­called in an interview before he died that when Earhart and his sister (Josephine Hunter, who lived with her son Laurin) came to church in Dixboro, there would be a buzz in the community as if a celebrity were visiting.

H. B. Earhart died in 1954 at age eighty-three after suffering a heart attack. He was buried beside his wife in Botsford Cemetery on Earhart Road. His obituary, like hers, was front-page news. Among other accomplishments, the obituary mentioned his support for industrial education and his role as a prime mover in the cre­ation of the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority, which is responsible for the string of parks still enjoyed today. The Earhart Foundation, which he started in 1929, is still in existence, mainly funding educational projects. After Earhart's death, his son Richard ran the foundation; it is now headed by David Kennedy.

In the early 1960s, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod bought the land for Concordia College from Richard Earhart and the house from the Earhart Founda­tion. The campus, designed by architect Vincent Kling in a 1960s modern style, was dedicated in 1963.

Over the decades, Concordia has grown from a two-year college to a four-year col­lege with an enrollment of 600 students. Now, thanks to a gift from Fred Schmid of Jackson, who donated the money as a memorial to his father, the college has the resources to restore the Manor, the name it uses for the Earharts' house. "We don't have to tear down a lot to bring it back to its former glory," says Chris Purdy of Archi­tects Four. Most of the design features, such as the Pewabic tiles in the bathrooms and the carved wood in the dining room, are still there. The room lay­out will remain the same except for the addition of an eleva­tor, necessary to make the house handi­capped accessible.

The downstairs rooms--the living room, dining room, and library--are be­ing adapted for public uses such as meetings, receptions, or wait­ing rooms. H. B. Earhart's bedroom will be the office of Concordia president James Koerschen, while Carrie Earhart's will be a conference room. The basement pool room will serve as another conference room. The third floor, left pretty much as it was as a theater, provides a perfect meeting place for the Concordia Board of Regents.

Restoration of the gardens is being planned by HKP Landscape Architects. At first it looked like a simple project of putting in plants that would have been used in the 1930s, but as more information surfaces from the Olmsted archive and from those who remember the gardens, a more authentic restoration is now possible.
 
Concordia plans to make the renovated Earhart Manor available to the community for events such as conferences, meetings, or weddings. "We're looking forward to giv­ing it back to the community in Ann Arbor to use and enjoy," says Brian Heinemann, Concordia's vice-president for finance and operations, who is in charge of the project. "It'll be the front door to the college as it was the front door for the Meadows." The work on the house is scheduled to be com­pleted in June. Public dedications are planned for the evenings of June 16 and 22, following church services.

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[Photo caption from original print edition]: H. B. Earhart with grandson James Kennedy Jr. He was sixty-six and already retired from the gasoline busi­ness when he built his dream house. He looked up to see a police motorcade escorting then Michigan governor Kim Sigler, who was coming to visit Earhart.

A family of butchers left a monument on Main Street Nineteenth-century immigrant fami­lies were generally very close-knit, with relatives living near one another and working in similar professions. Con­sider Ann Arbor's Pardon family, builders of the Pardon Block on the southwest cor­ner of Main and Miller. Seven of the eight children of Edward C. and Wilhelmina Pardon, who immigrated to Ann Arbor from Germany in 1857, were connected to the meat business: three of their four sons became butchers, and all four of their daughters' husbands were butchers or worked in meat markets. The fourth son was a baker--but his bakery was also in the Pardon Block. Ironically, Edward C. Pardon himself was a tailor. He worked for Wagner and Co. on Main Street before going into busi­ness for himself. The family lived on the southeast corner of Fountain and Summit (then called High Street), until moving to Pittsfield Township in 1875. The family's switch to the meat busi­ness appears to be an accident of marriage. In 1883, the oldest Pardon daughter, Hulda, married John Schneider, a butcher with a shop at 213 North Main. According to Samuel Beakes's 1906 Past and Present of Washtenaw County Michigan, Schneider trained Hulda's younger brother Charles as a butcher. Very likely, he also trained an­other of Hulda's brothers, William, who fell between Hulda and Charles in age. The butchers in Ann Arbor must have all known each other and probably social­ized together. At any rate, two of Hulda's sisters, Wilhelmina and Emma, followed her example and married butchers: Wil­helmina, called Minnie, married Charles Lutz in 1885, while Emma married Jack Eschelbach in 1891. Lutz eventually took over Schneider's store on Main Street; Es­chelbach had his own shop at 202 East Huron. The youngest sister, Clora, married Lyman Hebbard, who worked at a number of area grocery stores. Hebbard, too, even­tually wound up in the meat business, working for Charles Pardon. William was the first Pardon to have his own store, opening a grocery and meat market at 123 East Liber­ty in 1892. Two years later, Charles re­turned to Ann Arbor after six years in South Lyon to build his own meat market at 223 North Main, at the corner of Miller. He is described in Beakes's book as having "an extensive business, drawing his patrons from among the best class of citizens." Beakes adds that Charles's "well direct­ed activity and unremitting energy have made him a prosperous merchant." In 1899, Charles added two more buildings to the west to create the present Pardon Block: 219, 221, and 223 North Main. Preservation architect Dave Evans, whose offices are in the Pardon Block, believes it's possible Charles bought existing build­ings and then altered them to match his original storefront: he notes that although the detailing on all three storefronts is the same, they have different widths. According to the 1900 Ann Arbor In­dustrial Edition, Charles bought up the stock of J. H. Miller, a grocer at 221 North Main, and created a combined grocery and meat market in the two storefronts. He also bought the stock of Eberhart bakery and sold it to his youngest brother, Frank, who moved that business into the block's southernmost storefront. Like his two brothers, Frank lived above his store with his family. In 1893, the oldest son in the Pardon family, Edward J., bought about six acres of land fronting Summit between Miner and Fountain, close to where he'd grown up. Although his holdings were not really big enough to be called a farm, for a while he was able to piece together a living from his land: he had a garden, a large flock of chickens, a team of horses, and a milking cow. Taking advantage of a large hill of sand on the property, on Summit near Min­er, he also sold and delivered sand to area masons. But eventually the sand hill was gone, and Edward Pardon hired on with his brother Charles to be a sausage maker in his meat market. Thus, by the turn of the century, the four Pardon brothers and their four broth­ers-in-law all worked in the food business in downtown Ann Arbor. But this situation did not last long. First William and then Charles left their businesses to work in packinghouses. Charles got a job at a Flint packinghouse, then returned to Ann Arbor as the manager of the Hammond Beef Company at 233 Depot. William temporarily retired to Whitmore Lake to farm but returned in about 1912 to start his own business, the Ann Arbor Packing Company, at 221-229 East Summit. Frank also left his bakery busi­ness, the family story being that he was al­lergic to flour. He joined the Ann Arbor Police force, rising to become chief, but died in 1916 of injuries sustained in a stu­dent riot. Even after their stores closed, Pardon family members kept working for one another. Edward followed Charles to Hammond, again working as a sausage maker. (He later told his grandson, Richard Pardon, that the only way he could tell whether the sausage was seasoned right was to taste it, which meant he had to eat raw meat.) After William started his pack­ing company, Charles left Hammond and came to work for him, serving as treasurer and manager. William stayed in the busi­ness for twenty-five years, and many of the next generation of Pardons worked there filling jobs such as bookkeeper, dri­ver, secretary/treasurer, and vice-president. William eventually sold his business to Pe­ter's Sausage Company, and today the land is part of Wheeler Park. At age sixty-two, Edward J. Pardon went into home building, developing five houses on his property--three on Summit and two on Miner--which he rented out. He built the last one, on the corner of Fountain and Summit, when he was seven­ty-two. Charles and William, no longer having stores to live above, also moved back to the old neighborhood, into houses on Spring Street. Richard Pardon remem­bers, "There was a path all worn down connecting the family houses. They went through fields rather than on the street to get to each other." The Pardon Block kept its original uses under different owners through World War II; in the 1930's, the middle store was an A & P grocery. Later tenants included a photographer, a gun­smith, and an upholstery shop. By 1950 the corner building was converted to a restaurant, a use it has maintained ever since under many owners, most recently as the Broken Egg. In 1986 Dave Evans moved into 219 South Main, the former location of Frank Pardon's bakery. He stripped off the paint, making the brick and limestone details jump out, and restored the first-story store­front to its original look. The next year, Duane Renken did the same with the northern two sections, which are today owned by Arthur Nusbaum of Stepping Stone Properties. In 1989 the Ann Arbor Historic Preservation Commission chose the Pardon Block to receive a rehabilita­tion award. The late Frank Pardon, then eighty-six, visited the building that had held his father's bakery and his uncle's grocery and meat market. Evans recalls, "He was very emotional, all choked up. He was so glad the building was fixed up."

Ann Arbor's 19th-century showpiece recalls the time when fire was an ever-present peril

When Ann Arbor's 1882 firehouse opened, it was the most elegant and expensive building the city owned. That was fitting, because the greatest danger facing Ann Arbor in the nineteenth century was fire.

As late as the Civil War, Ann Arbor was still built almost entirely of wood--even the storefronts and sidewalks downtown. A spark was never far away because the city was lit by candles and oil lamps and heated by fireplaces and parlor stoves. Homes and businesses went up in flames so often that in 1865, a U-M student matter-of-factly referred to helping volunteers fight "the first fire of the winter."

Fires were also much more devastating then. In the early 1840's alone, fire destroyed Klinelob's distillery, S. Denton's ashery and soap factory, and the Michigan Central Railroad depot. The Michigan Central fire took out three neighboring properties as well, one of them a mill warehouse containing nearly 20,000 barrels of flour. Firemen couldn't even save their own buildings. In 1875, fire completely destroyed the Lower Town engine house, which had been erected just two years previously.

In Ann Arbor's first decade, the village's main fire-fighting strategy was simply to keep the town pump in good repair. That was vital because citizens responding to the call of "Fire!" needed plenty of water for bucket brigades. In 1836, responding to public pressure, the village council appointed fire wardens and other officers in each of the town's two wards, and men in both wards soon organized themselves into volunteer fire-fighting companies. The following year, the village bought its first fire engine, a hand pump on wheels that the firefighters dragged to the scene of a fire and filled by bucket brigades from the Huron River or nearby wells.

After the big fire at the Michigan Central station in 1845, the village bought its first hook and ladder wagon. It also started building cisterns at strategic locations around town to store rainwater for fire-fighters' pumps. In 1849, two new volunteer companies were organized: Eagle Fire Company No. One was a hose company with a hand-operated pump engine; Eagle Fire Company No. Two was composed of hook and ladder men. A year later, Ann Arbor levied a special tax to purchase ladders and new equipment for three more new companies: Deluge, Relief, and Huron.

Another new company was organized and named after their new pump engine, the Mayflower, just in time to fight a disastrous fire at the Clark School on Division Street in 1865. This fire led to a second cistern-building spree (a shortage of water was blamed for the severity of the damage to the school). Eventually there were cisterns at most major intersections, each about ten feet wide and fifteen to eighteen feet deep, protected with a manhole cover.

The volunteer companies were reorganized and renamed over the years, but there were usually four active at any one time, most divided internally into hose crews and hook and ladder teams. The different companies took turns being on call; for a big fire every firefighter in the city would respond.

After 1868 the firefighters were paid $5 a year (a ballot initiative to pay them $10 a year was defeated), but their real pay was the camaraderie they shared. Families felt connected to certain companies, and their sons would join when they came of age. (The tradition of fire-fighting families continues today: the son and grandson of Ben Zahn, fire chief from 1939 to 1955, joined the department, as did the son of Fred Schmid, fire chief from 1974 to 1985.) The companies met regularly for training and practice and to clean and repair their equipment. They sponsored balls and picnics, marched in parades, and toured fire departments in other cities to check out their methods--a practice so widespread that to this day, professionals on junkets are still sometimes referred to as "visiting firemen."

Having the proper fire-fighting equipment was a matter of civic pride. In 1870, when the city acquired a new hose, the whole town assembled to see which company could throw a stream of water the farthest. Using the cistern at the intersection of Main and Washington, the Protection company was able to shoot water 165 feet and 4 inches, beating the Relief company, who managed only 161 feet and 7 inches. In 1883, when the Vigilant hose boys got a new hose cart from Chicago, they showed it off by parading through town accompanied by a brass band.

Ann Arbor's volunteer firemen formed an enthusiastic lobbying group, most often convincing city council to make desired expenditures after major fires. The construction of the 1882 firehouse was their greatest success--and, it turned out, their last hurrah.

The new firehouse replaced an old one on the same site, a wooden structure not much bigger than a two-car garage, with a tower behind it to dry hoses. City council asked voters to approve an expenditure of $10,000 to build the new structure. It was an extraordinary amount at the time, and twice what was needed, according to an editorial in the Ann Arbor Courier. Nevertheless, voters approved it on the first ballot attempt. Choosing among four architects' submissions, council accepted a plan by William Scott of Detroit and hired local contractors Tessmer and Ross to build it.

The first floor of the new building was designed to store the hook and ladder and pumper wagons, while the second floor had a sizable hall for meetings and social events. The building was capped off with the bell tower, used to summon the volunteers (the number of rings indicated the ward the fire was in). Outside, a big cistern collected up to 300 barrels of rainwater. Architectural historian Kingsley Marzoff, in a 1970's article, described the building as a "modified Italian villa" and called it "a rare example ... of the nondo-mestic use of this type of design." He also compared the bell tower to those in Siena and Florence.

At the time the firehouse was built, there were 105 volunteer firemen (women wouldn't become firefighters until 1980) in four companies, which the 1881 county history lists as Vigilant, Protection, Defiance, and Huron. Each group had its own room in the firehouse, which it fitted up at its own expense. However, only Protection and Vigilant (which operated the town's only steam-powered pumper) kept their equipment there. Huron, which protected Lower Town (the part of Ann Arbor north of the Huron River), had a small station house north of the railroad tracks just off Broadway. Defiance's station was on East University, where the U-M's East Engineering building stands today.

The main fire hall's big upstairs room often served as a meeting place for other town functions. For instance, the Washtenaw Historical Society held their meetings there, and a very successful set of temperance meetings was held the year it was completed. The firemen celebrated the completion of the new hall with two major dances: a Thanksgiving dance, sponsored by the Vigilant Engine and Hose Company, and another on December 21--billed as "the dance of the season"--with the Chequamagon Orchestra, sponsored by Protection's hose company.

The volunteers didn't enjoy the use of the hall for long, however. The 1880's proved to be a pivotal decade for the city's fire-fighting efforts, and by its end, the citizen volunteers had been replaced by professional firefighters.

In 1885, the city's first piped water system was installed. It included 100 fire hydrants and largely solved the water shortage that had hindered fire-fighting efforts since the city's founding. Just three years later, Ann Arbor hired its first full-time firefighters. Responding to lobbying by volunteer fire chief Albert Sorg, city council hired Chris Matthews to live in the fire-house and William Carroll to be on duty nights. A year later, city council authorized a sixty-day trial period for a completely professional department, and Fred Sipley was hired as the first paid fire chief. The big upstairs room in the firehouse was divided into two dormitories and a recreation area. By 1893 the city had eight full-time firemen and five more on call.

Horses probably moved into the fire-house shortly after the firemen. Originally, the volunteers had pulled the equipment themselves, but as distances grew longer and the equipment heavier, horses became more desirable. They became an absolute necessity after the purchase in 1879 of the steam-powered pumper, which weighed so much it took more than a dozen men to pull it.

At first, horses were furnished by draymen, who would rush over when they heard the fire bell (the first to arrive got the job). For a short time the fire department paid the firehouse janitor, Jake Hauser, a biannual sum of $90 to use his horses whenever there was a fire. But when firemen threatened to quit if they didn't get their own horses, city council relented and purchased two in 1882, the same year work commenced on the new hall.

By 1888 the department owned five horses: three to pull the steam engine and two to pull the hook and ladder wagon. When the fire alarm rang, the horses knew exactly what to do. Released from their stable on the north side of the firehouse, they would stand in front of the wagon they were to pull and wait until their harnesses, which were held up by a system of pulleys and ropes, were lowered. On days when there were no fires, the horses had to be exercised, and there was a special cart for this, which was also used in parades.

The need to motorize the department was discussed in the early years of the twentieth century, especially after the devastating fires at the Argo Mill in 1903 and the high school in 1904. But the citizens were fond of the horses and resisted: as late as 1914, they voted against ballot issues to buy self-propelled fire engines. The voters finally relented in 1915, after a big fire at the Koch and Henne furniture store, but even then, the horses weren't replaced immediately. For a while the department used a combination of motorized and horse-drawn engines.

Barney, Duke, and Jim were the last three fire horses. Luckily for them, the chief at the time, Charlie Andrews, was an animal lover. According to his grandson, Bill Mundus, when the horses were no longer needed, Andrews sent them to the Heinzman farm west of town where they could enjoy their retirement years.

The stable behind the firehouse was converted to a workshop where firemen painted signs for the city between fires. Later it was converted to a garage, first used by the public works department to store their grader and dump truck and later by the fire department for the chief's car. Fred Schmid remembers moving the chief's car out onto the street so the firemen could play badminton there. The space is now part of the present fire station.

The fire department stayed in the 1882 building for ninety-six years. In 1978 they moved into the present main fire station, which had been built just north of the old building on Fifth Avenue.

"I didn't like the [old] building until I left," admits Schmid, the fire chief at the time of the move. "It was not easy to keep clean; there was a stoker boiler in the basement, high ceilings, the windows were rattlely, and the stairs were worn down." The old firehouse was also too small for modern equipment--one of the department's trucks didn't even fit and had to be housed at the substation at Stadium and Packard.

"Today, serious fires are few and far between," says fire battalion chief John Schnur. "We usually get them when they're small." In the past thirty years only a few fires have totally destroyed a building--Gallup Silkworth (a heating oil company) and the Old German restaurant in the 1970's, and the U-M economics building and the Whiffletree restaurant in the 1980's. So far in the 1990's, the most serious fires have been two abandoned fraternity houses.

"Houses just don't burn down anymore," says Schmid. He and Schnur list a number of reasons: earlier detection by smoke detectors and automatic alarms, faster response due to telephones and motorized vehicles (the average response time is now four minutes--less time than it previously took volunteers to reach the firehouse itself), sprinkler systems and unlimited water supply, and more fire-retardant building materials and techniques.

But with all these improvements, there are trade-offs. For instance, firefighters now wear more fireproof uniforms and use air tanks, but this means they can go deeper into a burning building and are closer to possible explosions. Also, according to Schnur, "Fires are smaller but more deadly." While in the nineteenth century most home furnishings were made of natural materials like wood or cotton, today there is a preponderance of synthetic materials, such as polyester and polyurethane, which give off gases when they melt. While the natural materials filled the firefighters' lungs with smoke, Schnur is worried that the chemicals they now breathe may be even more harmful to their future health.

With fires no longer the daily worry they were in the nineteenth century, fire marshall Scott Rayburn is concerned that the public has become too complacent. "It's a full-time job to keep the message out," he says. Today, with fewer fires to rush to, the 121-member fire department keeps busy being proactive: educating the public, performing fire inspections, and engaging in a constant schedule of training.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Nineteenth century fires were frequent and devastating. This 1899 blaze on Main St. destroyed a branch of the Mack & Co. department store.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: A horse-drawn hook and ladder rig. The city bought its first horses around the time the 1882 firehouse was built.

Once a beloved summer camp for Detroit Edison women, it's about to be replaced by a nursing home

"Like a summer camp, but with grown-up women," is how Mary Kay Bean, public relations officer for Detroit Edison, describes the original use of Vivienne Farm, which from 1911 to 1954 served as a rest and recreation spot for Edison's female employees. Located on East Huron River Drive just west of St. Joe's hospital, it was in more recent times Edison's Management Development Center. The property has been sold, and the building will soon be torn down to make way for a nursing home.

Detroit Edison obtained the land for Vivienne Farm in 1911, as part of their efforts to develop hydroelectric power along the Huron River. In assembling the land and the river rights needed for the Geddes Dam, the company bought the entire Barnes farm at Geddes and Dixboro, including the farmhouse. Because the farm was such a lovely place, Edison employees began to use the property for recreation.

Edison consolidated all its riverside land holdings into one company named Huron Farms and hired William Underdown, then of Cornell University, to manage and develop it. They kept some of the land as working farms in order to demonstrate the uses of electricity in agriculture.

There was an apple and cherry farm across Huron River Drive, where Washtenaw Community College is now, a peach farm near Delhi, and a model dairy farm on Whitmore Lake Road. On hilly land east of the Barton Dam, the company developed the Barton Hills subdivision. The first house built there was for Edison president Alex Dow and his wife, Vivienne.

According to the official history of Detroit Edison, Kilowatts at Work, by Raymond Miller, "Dow 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." U-M architecture dean Emil Lorch designed most of the local Edison buildings, including the Barton power station, downtown office buildings in both Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and the Dows' Barton Hills home. Frederick Law Olmsted, best known for designing Central Park in New York, was hired to advise on landscaping for the properties.

It was Vivienne Dow who suggested that the Barnes farmhouse be made into a recreation spot for female employees. At that time, paternalistic employers like Edison sponsored recreational clubs for almost every interest: stamps, photography, bridge, athletics, music, drama. The company built a boat club, a tennis club, and a rifle range for their employees' use. Although some of these clubs were co-ed, most of their members were men. Vivienne Farm was established to give the women something of their own.

Soon women from the whole Edison service area, from Bad Axe to Jackson, were coming to Vivienne Farm for, as Miller put it, "an excursion into rural America at a completely nominal cost."

U-M architecture dean Emil Lorch designed "the lodge" for Detroit Edison after the original farmhouse burned down in 1912. It will soon be demolished to build a nursing home (below).

Longtime Edison employee Oneta King explains that "Vivienne Farm was needed, because they didn't let married women work at Edison until the Fifties." Some of the single women who worked for the company lived in boardinghouses, but the younger ones lived at home with their parents. They could go to Vivienne Farm for a weekend or a week without worrying their parents, who knew they were well cared for and well chaperoned by the resident housemother.

Mary Schlecht, whose mother worked at Edison, remembers hearing that Vivienne Farm was a delightful place and that women had wonderful times there. In a 1974 Sesquicentennial Journal article, Vema Parker, wife of Edison's then-president, James Parker, wrote, "The prospect of taking a train to Ypsilanti, being met by Miss Jenney McCarthy, who with her beautiful white hair and dotted Swiss dress, met them in a Model A Ford, became a highlight in the lives of many young girls." According to Bean's research, camp activities included boating, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, croquet, and day trips into Ann Arbor.

Shortly after Vivienne Farm opened, a fire destroyed the farmhouse and a nearby pavilion. None of the sixteen young women staying there was hurt, but their wardrobes were destroyed--and later replaced at company expense. Lorch was then hired to design the building that is there now.

The new building, sometimes called "the lodge," was completed in 1914. Barbara Wolfgang, whose grandmother and mother both worked there, describes it as an "awesome house." As a child, Wolfgang used to slide down the polished wooden banister of its large open stairway. Downstairs was a dining room that seated about twenty, the living room, or parlor (later used as the conference room), a library-den off the main foyer, and a screened back porch that looked out onto a natural area running down to the Huron River. Upstairs there were seven bedrooms, one a triple, the rest mostly doubles.

On the grounds were a tennis court, swimming pool, and putting green, as well as a greenhouse, all now removed or abandoned. There was room to play croquet or just walk around. Earlier pictures also show extensive gardens. It is very likely that Olmsted at least advised on the grounds, since he was then at work on other Edison properties in the area.

By the 1950's, chaperoned farm vacations had lost much of their appeal. At that point, Edison remodeled the lodge into a conference center for employee training. Retired Edison employee Gage Cooper remembers, "It was isolated from business operations, so you could concentrate on what you were doing." At the elegant conference center, attendees slept in the upstairs bedrooms, ate three good meals in the dining room, and in their free time walked on the well-kept grounds or played cards or pool in the basement.

But as car travel became more common, people began to commute to training sessions. In 1978 the housekeeper position at Vivienne Farm was abolished, and meals were catered from then on. Use continued to decline, and in the last six or seven years it has hardly been used at all. Explains Bean, "It's not large enough for what we do today. Most [people] today are learning technology, and there is not that ability there."

Edison considered expanding the house but in the end decided to sell the property. The buyer is the Health Care and Retirement Corporation, headquartered in Toledo, which plans to demolish the existing buildings to construct a single-story, 180-bed nursing and rehabilitation center. Although it's a sad loss of a historic building and landscape, the new use is certainly a natural complement to nearby hospitals. It is scheduled to be completed by the spring of 1997.

What do you do with a 104-foot antique?

The Bell Road bridge, which spans the Huron River a mile north of Hudson Mills Metropark, still has its original sign, "Wrought Iron Bridge Company, Canton, Ohio, 1891," clearly legible on the top bar of its Erector Set-like frame. One lane wide and 104 feet long, resting on a fieldstone foundation on an unpaved road, the bridge looks much as it did 100 years ago, when it carried loaded hay wagons from the nearby Bell family farm.

But a century of use has taken its toll, and the bridge is currently closed. Bob Polens, director of the Washtenaw Road Commission, explains, "It is in a deteriorating condition. The truss is deteriorated because of rust, one or more of the wing walls have capsized, and the fieldstone abutments also have cracks." A car crashed into an end post in late 1992, closing the bridge for part of 1993, and nearby residents complained about having to go miles out of their way for necessities such as groceries. The road commission then reopened the bridge, limiting traffic to vehicles under four tons, but when more stones from the abutment began falling into the river, they closed it again while they try to decide what to do.

Of the several options possible, the least likely one is to tear the bridge down. It is an official antique, designated as "historic" in a study jointly funded by the state highway department and the state bureau of history.

The chief consultant on the project, Charles Hyde, is a professor of history at Wayne State University and the author of Historic Highway Bridges of Michigan. According to Hyde, the Bell Road bridge is the state's third-oldest extant metal-truss bridge made by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company. One of the two older ones is also in Washtenaw County: the Maple Road bridge over the Huron, sometimes called the Foster bridge because it is closer to Foster Road on the south, dates back to 1876.

Washtenaw County has two other metal-truss bridges not mentioned by Hyde, both built in 1900: the Delhi bridge at Delhi Metropark (see the August Observer) and the Furnace Street bridge in Manchester. While these historic bridges add to the beauty of our landscape and to our understanding of the past, it's quite a challenge for the road commission to figure out how to make them meet modern load-bearing and safety requirements. The Furnace Street bridge is badly rusted and open only to foot traffic. The Delhi bridge collapsed in the 1917 tornado but was rebuilt using many of the original parts. Repaired many times, the Maple Road bridge is still in use, but only one lane at a time. Because it is limited to twelve tons, it is not safe for many vehicles, including school buses and fire trucks.

The commission has received dedicated funds to work on the Bell Road bridge, but because it is historic and federal funds are involved, it must go through an analysis by the state bureau of history before a final plan is accepted. As Kristine Wilson of the bureau of history explains, "They have to demonstrate they have looked at all the prudent and feasible alternatives. Could it be rehabilitated? Could it be moved? Could it be left and another bridge built beside it while it is used as a pedestrian bridge, or could it be used for one lane of traffic?"

At first the county road commission doubted that the Bell Road bridge could be rehabilitated with any amount of historic integrity, but Polens now thinks it is possible. He says, "While the bridge could never be brought up to today's [structural] standards, it could be renovated and used with weight restrictions, [because] traffic in the area is not expected to increase, since the Stinchfield Woods [owned by U-M] and the Huron Mills Metropark limit future growth." The counter argument to this solution is that the amount of traffic might not justify the cost of the renovations.

Another possible solution is to use the old bridge as a foot or bike path and build a parallel bridge or a new one upstream, maybe connecting Strawberry Lake Road with Stinchfield Woods Road. A third option is to do nothing, leaving the bridge closed and continuing to detour traffic via the North Territorial Road bridge to the south (heavier vehicles must use North Territorial even when the Bell Road bridge is open).

If the road commission decides on this option, they could give the bridge away. Under the terms of critical bridge funding, the money budgeted for demolition of an old bridge can be used to move and repair it. Historic bridges have successfully been moved in other communities. Just recently a Belleville bridge was moved to Kent County to replace a bridge the county had given to the village of Portland. The Bell Road bridge would not be suitable for a highway bridge but could be a beautiful and unique footbridge or bicycle path in any number of river parks in our area.

This fall, after the summer construction season is over, the road commission will turn its attention to the future of the Bell Road bridge, using input from nearby residents and the affected township governments in an attempt to find a solution that works for everyone affected--a process they figure will probably take several years.

[Photo caption from original print edition: Scenic and historic--but no longer safe for traffic--the Bell Road bridge is protected from demolition by state law. It may take several years to decide whether and how to repair it; if repair isn't feasible, it could be given away.]

Between them, Philip Bach and Bertha Muehlig furnished the community with dry goods and notions for 115 years

Today's Main Street is dominated by destination restaurants and specialty shops. But for most of the city's life, Main Street was a regional shopping center catering to the county's everyday needs: hardware, clothing, food, farm supplies. No store served this market longer than the dry goods store at South Main and Washington. It opened in 1865 as Bach and Abel and closed in 1980 as Muehlig's. Dry goods--a term no longer used in the Yellow Pages--denoted a business that sold both fabric for home sewing and items manufactured of cloth.

Philip Bach built the store in 1865, part of the post-Civil War building boom. He replaced a much lower wooden storefront that looked like a set for a western. Bach came to the United States from the Duchy of Baden (now part of Germany) at the age of nine and began working in the dry goods business when he was fifteen. When Bach's first partner, Peter Abel, died he was replaced first by his brother, Eugene Abel, and later by Zachary Roath.

At that time, before mass production, Ann Arbor supported as many as fifteen dry goods stores at a time. Housewives sewed nearly all of their families' clothing and even household items like sheets. In the early days, the only ready-made item in Bach's store was cloaks.

Downtown's retail market was volatile in the nineteenth century. As early as 1881, Bach had been in the same business longer than anyone else in town. He worked for fourteen more years, selling his store only months before his death in 1895 to Bruno St. James, co-owner of Goodyear and St. James, the competing store next door. Along with the business, St. James acquired the services of Bach and Roath's young bookkeeper, Bertha Muehlig, who had joined the staff in 1891 at the age of seventeen.

St. James altered the street-level windows and installed an innovative spring-operated cash carrier to send money and sales slips to a cashier on the mezzanine at the back of the store. After St. James died in 1911, Bertha Muehlig bought the business.

"There wasn't an article that was usable that she didn't sell," remembers Hazel Olsen, a former Muehlig's saleslady. Muehlig supplied the everyday things homemakers needed--mattress pads, linens, blankets, drapes, towels, aprons, tablecloths--in addition to everything needed for home sewing. She also sold clothes and accessories, primarily for her women customers--house dresses, underwear, purses, baby supplies, and children's clothing. The three floors were filled to the brim, with products hanging from the walls. Fay Muehlig, Muehlig's niece by marriage and herself an employee, remembers that people would say, "If you can't find something, go to Muehlig's; they'll have it."

Muehlig's combination of high quality and reasonable prices brought a loyal clientele. The stock remained the same year after year, regardless of fashion. Even after paper tissues were widely used, she continued to sell handkerchiefs, as one former employee remembers, "by the bushel full." She carried women's long underwear (called Tillie Open Bottoms) long after central heating made houses more comfortable in the winter.

Personal service was a hallmark of the store. Stools in front of the long counters allowed customers to sit while they were being helped. Frieda Heusel Saxon, who just celebrated her hundredth birthday, remembers twirling around on a stool as a little girl while her mother, Mary Heusel, shopped. When she was busy, Heusel would telephone her orders. Despite her sometimes vague requests--"enough blue material to make an apron," for instance--the store managed to fill them satisfactorily, according to Elsa Goetz Ordway, the neighbor girl who was sent to pick up Heusel's orders.

As Bertha Muehlig aged, her stock appealed more to mature women. "Owners buy what they need themselves," explains former employee Chuck Jacobus. Her store was the best place to get service-weight stockings, support hose, and step-in dresses without buttons or zippers. Corsets and girdles were fitted by a specially trained woman. The sales staff mirrored the customers: many worked there for years and simply cut back their hours when they reached retirement age. Muehlig herself worked even after she needed a wheelchair: she came in every day and was carried up to her mezzanine office, where she sat, wearing a visor, going over the books.

Muehlig, who never married, lived out her life in the home where she was reared, at 315 S. Main, a block and a half from her store. With no children to leave her money to, she gave lavishly to local churches, scout troops, and hospitals, earning the nickname "the Santa Claus of Ann Arbor." Her pet charities were the Donovan School, later Northside, and the Anna Botsford Bach home. In her store, Muehlig gave discounts to anyone with a hard luck story or a worthy cause. She was also good to her regular customers, giving them presents at Christmas.

When Muehlig died in 1955 at eighty-one, she left the store to two longtime employees, Alfred Diez, a German immigrant whom she had hired in 1926, and Margaret Jones, her bookkeeper since 1937. A third share was left to her nephew, who sold it to Raymond Hutzel. Muehlig's home, the last house on the block, was torn down in 1962 and replaced by a modern storefront building (now Stein and Goetz). Many mourned the loss of this landmark house.

The store continued largely unchanged after Muehlig's death. Jacobus, who was Diez's assistant, remembers that people from out of town were "flabbergasted" at the old-time feel of the store and that chil≠dren were fascinated watching the spring-loaded cash carrier whiz to the mezzanine and back. While Diez worked to broaden the stock to bring in younger customers, he never would go so far as to sell jeans. Jacobus remembers Diez's wife, Dorothy, saying, "I don't like them, I won't wear them, I won't sell them."

Diez died in 1976, and Muehlig's was sold to Tom and Nelson DeFord, who ran it until 1980, when they moved down the street and renamed their store DeFord's. The building lay empty for a year until Hooper, Hathaway, Price, Beuche & Wallace, one of Ann Arbor's oldest law firms, bought and renovated it. Using an 1867 picture, they restored the facade to its original appearance. They kept as many of the store's internal features as possible, including the pressed-metal ceiling, the mezzanine, the elevator, and the oak staircase.

[Photo caption from original print edition: Muehlig at age eighty, accepting a candy replica of her Main Street home made by grateful students at Northside School.]

[Photo caption from original print edition: Celebrating Muehlig's 60th anniversary in 1971: l. to r.) Alfred Diez, Dorothy Diez, Cora Schmid, Irene Howell, Gladys Lambarth, Fay Muehlig, Frieda Volz, Emma Schairer, Helen Coon, Elsa McGee, Lillian Hewitt, and Chuck Jacobus.]

It was a favorite of townsfolk for 67 years

"I feel real bad that I've celebrated my last birthday there," says Gottlob Schumacher, a former owner of the Old German, who turned ninety-one on January 29. After almost fifty years of working seven-day weeks, the restaurant's current owner, Bud (Robert) Metzger, is closing the business and retiring.

Although Metzger's rest is well deserved, his customers are in mourning, many of them coming in for a last chance to savor a menu that embodies the cuisine of Ann Arbor's Swabian population: southern German specialties such as spatzen, warm potato salad, stuffed noodles, Koenigsberger klops (veal meatballs in a caper sauce), and liver dumplings. One item, "German meat patties," is an Old German original. In the 1940's, the restaurant was fined for selling "adulterated" hamburgers because they added breading and seasoning. But the item was so popular, explains Metzger, they resumed selling it--"We just hung on a new label."

The Old German started in 1928 as a small eatery on Ashley with a horseshoe counter and a few tables. Original owner William Schwarz was a German-trained butcher who specialized in sausage making. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Schwarz couldn't get a liquor license because he was still a German citizen. He sold the restaurant to the Haab brothers, Oscar and Otto, but they found it too hard to run restaurants in both Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, so after a few years they offered to sell it back. Still not a citizen, Schwarz asked Gottlob Schumacher, a tailor at Wild's Men's Clothing, to become his partner and apply for the liquor license. By the time Schumacher joined the restaurant in 1936, it had expanded into its current L-shaped layout by taking over a grocery store facing Washington Street.

Carolina Schumacher and Anny Schwarz cooked traditional German fare, with daily specials such as spareribs, sauerkraut, and pig hocks, and chicken dinners on Sunday. At lunchtime they served workers from the three factories in the area--King Seeley, American Broach, and the International Radio factory (later Argus).

Bud Metzger's father, Fritz, bought the restaurant from Schumacher in 1946. Trained as a baker in Germany, he left in 1926 to escape the rampant inflation, only to run into the Depression here. He first ran a restaurant in Ypsilanti, then moved to Ann Arbor and ran the German Inn at what had been a Coney Island on Huron Street across from the bus station. Metzger had two brothers in Ann Arbor, William and Gottfried, who were also trained as bakers. (Their father owned a bakery in their hometown of Wilhelmsdorf.) Just a few months after the Old German opened, William started a similar German restaurant, Metzger's, right next door (where the Del Rio is now). Gottfried ran the DeLuxe Bakery on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Washington, and for many years furnished the black bread for his brothers' restaurants.

Bud returned from the navy in 1946 and immediately went to work for his father. "We never talked about it," he recalls. "It was just understood that I would work there." In 1952, when Fritz became too ill to work, Bud took over. While keeping the original customer base of factory workers and people of German descent, the Old German began attracting a much wider clientele, becoming the special-occasion restaurant for many townspeople and university students. During the 1960's and 1970's, the lines of people waiting to be served often extended outside and down the block.

A fire on April 1, 1975, destroyed the Old German. It was out of business for two years, but customers flocked back after it was remodeled and expanded. Competition from scores of newer restaurants has put an end to the long waiting lines, but the Old German is still very busy at mealtimes. Some regulars come every day, including a group, mainly lawyers, who gather at the traditional round table for lunch. Many university alumni feel that a visit to the Old German is a must when they return to Ann Arbor to relive their first dates or their first beers at age twenty-one. What was missing at a lunch visit in early February was the under-forty crowd.

The Old German will close the first or second week in March. They have to be out for the new owners, the Grizzly Peak Brew Pub, by the first of April, but Bud doesn't want a big deal made out of the actual final day. "I couldn't handle it," he says. He thinks his twenty-four employees, many of them long-term (cook Bill Dettling has been there since Schumacher's day), will have no trouble finding other employment. Some already have plans. He isn't sure what he'll do in retirement, but he won't be leaving town. "Ann Arbor has so much to offer," he says.

Bud Metzger's beer stein collection, which is almost as famous as the food, will be auctioned off in May.