How a Lower Town family's modest home solved the century-old search for a county historical museum

On Sunday, June 10, an early-morning jogger along the Huron River looked up in astonishment as he ran along the boardwalk beneath the Broadway bridge. There on the bridge, blotting out Detroit Edison's Argo substation beyond, loomed a white frame house. It was mounted on wheels and being pulled along by a snorting dump truck. More than 150 years after it was built, 1015 Wall Street was on the move.

Escorted fore and aft by police cars to handle traffic, and half a dozen utility trucks to remove overhead wires, the house was soon across the river. Progress slowed on Beakes Street: tree branches that couldn't be dodged or shouldered aside by a worker riding the house's roof had to be trimmed away by workers in bucket trucks wielding buzzing chain saws. Still, by late afternoon, the building had traveled nearly a mile from its starting point and was ready to take its new spot at the corner of Main and Beakes.

Named the Kellogg-Warden house after the families that built it in about 1837, the house passed its century and a half on Wall Street as an unassuming residence in a backwater neighborhood. In its new spot, now officially designated as 500 North Main Street, it is scheduled to be rehabilitated, landscaped, and opened to the public as a museum of the Washtenaw County Historical Society.

A long process of fund-raising and construction lies ahead before the tentatively titled "Museum on Main Street" (MOMS) is ready. But the completion of the move itself brought a sigh of relief to society members. For over a year beforehand, the project was hanging by a thread.

The U-M, which owned the house, was eager to turn the site into badly needed parking for its Turner Clinic. The university was willing to donate the house to the city, but the city had neither a use for it, nor the money to finance a move. And even after the historical society stepped forward and won the U-M's agreement to donate the house and the city's agreement to lease the new site, problems kept cropping up.

First, the long-abandoned gas station at Main and Beakes had to be demolished and its underground fuel tanks removed.Then came further delays: to remove soil contaminated by the leaking tanks, to scramble for more funds for cleanup, and finally to negotiate with the state Department of Natural Resources for a clean bill of health for the site.

While the university patiently delayed demolition, state Senator Lana Pollack and Representative Perry Bullard helped the society work out an agreement with the DNR that allowed the move to proceed. Even after it was scheduled for the first Sunday in June, there was one more delay: a windstorm on June 2 knocked down power lines across southeast Michigan, tying up Detroit Edison crews needed for the move. Fortunately, the weather the weekend of June 10 was fine.

The goal of all these efforts is to properly showcase a collection of documents and artifacts dating back to the society's founding in 1857. Despite the fact that the Washtenaw County Historical Society is the oldest local group of its kind in the state, the acquisition of the house marks the first time in its history that the society has owned property.

As a result, the society's collections have led a gypsy existence. They have been moved in and out of the county courthouse three times over sixty-one years, were kept in various U-M quarters for thirty-three years, were stored in the old city Water Department twice, and reposed in the Cole-Pool barn for sixteen years. They are currently scattered among the Kempf House, Cobblestone Farm, |Clements Library, Bentley Library, and Dexter Historical Museum. Now, thanks to the generosity and patience of the U-M and the city, the society can begin to create a museum in which its collection will be reunited, coaxed at last into telling the coherent history of Washtenaw County.

Boom and Bust in Lower Town
The area just north of the Huron on Broadway was platted in 1832 as part of Brown and Fuller's Addition to the village of Ann Arbor. Although Anson Brown and Edmund L. Fuller called it "Ann Arbour on the Huron," it is better known in local histories as Lower Town.

The lot where 1015 Wall Street stood was one of a group sold in 1835 by Desire Brown, Anson's widow, to Thomas Peatt. The price—$124.27—sounds suspiciously like an auction for back taxes. The lots were resold repeatedly over the next four years at swiftly rising prices. The prices probably reflect the construction of the 1015 Wall Street house and several neighboring houses, as well as the wild land speculation in Ann Arbor at the time.

In 1837, 1015 Wall was one of five lots Peatt sold to Dan W. Kellogg. Kellogg, in turn, resold them the following year to Ethan A. Warden (who I believe was his business partner and brother-in-law). By 1839 Warden sold two of the lots, including 1015, to Charles Kellogg (his father-in-law, I suspect) for $1,800. But that was the end of easy, profitable sales in Lower Town. Although Charles died in 1842, it was not until 1853 that the executors of his estate were able to sell this property. In that year, Samuel Ruthruff purchased 1015 and a neighboring lot for only $600. The Land Panic of 1837 and the general depression of the 1840's had taken their toll: land values were substantially reduced and did not begin to recover until after the Civil War.

Based on sales prices and details of the house itself, I believe the house at 1015 Wall was built sometime in the period 1835-1837. It still isn't clear whether Peatt, Kellogg, or Warden was responsible. Since Peatt doesn't appear in any city records or newspapers, though, I'm betting on Dan Kellogg as the builder.

The Kellogg and Warden families were actively involved in the development of Lower Town. They were millers, and ads for their products appeared in local newspapers until the 1840's. The Kellogg brothers, Dwight, Dan W., and Dorr (sometimes spelled Dor), are mentioned in passing in several histories of Lower Town, but most of the family except Dorr had died or returned to New York by the time Washtenaw County's first history was written in 1881.

Fortunately, in the Bentley Library I uncovered a cache of over 100 letters sent between family members in Ann Arbor and their loved ones back east in Auburn, Moravia, and Kelloggsville, New York, between 1835 and 1842, along with large folders stuffed with invoices, deeds, and other paper ephemera from the same period. They provide details about one family's move into the Michigan Territory and of their motivations, successes, and failures. They give us a new perspective on the history of Ann Arbor, too.

For example, we know from local histories that Anson Brown's sudden death in 1834 proved traumatic to the development of Lower Town. But here is Dwight Kellogg writing to Ethan Warder in Auburn, New York, in September of 1835, still fairly bursting with a boomer's optimism:

Well! On the first day of this month Mrs. Brown and E. L. Fuller made me a written offer that if I would pay them $32,500 by or before the 1st of November next they would convey to me by a good warranty deed all their interest in the property of Brown and Fuller and Brown and Co. The time is nearly half out now and I don't know as I shall raise it or as any other will for me—Dan took the statement of the affair and of the property to the east with him. I however have not yet heard from him. I have no hesitationin saying the property is at this moment worth not less than $12,000 more than they ask for it. ...

Kellogg goes on to offer Warden a piece of the action if he's interested, noting that their goods were selling well and they'd sold $30,000 worth since last October and could have sold $70,000 worth.

It appears that Dwight Kellogg was successful in luring family members to Ann Arbor to take advantage of this opportunity, for we find Ethan Warden in Ann Arbor by 1836. Dan W. Kellogg appears to have arrived earlier, in 1835. Dorr Kellogg, according to the 1881 History of Washtenaw County, spent several weeks in Ann Arbor in 1825 and bought land, then returned in 1836 and built a mill on the Huron River with Dwight. Two years later, they were joined by their father, the Hon. Charles Kellogg.

Already in his sixties, Charles Kellogg had served as a judge of the county court of Cayuga, as a member of the New York legislature, and as a member of the U.S. Congress, in addition to being the proprietor of a mill in Kelloggsville, New York. It is astonishing to think that a man his age would willingly pioneer in the Michigan wilderness, but that's precisely what he did. The former congressman set up a meager little hardware store in the Huron Block at the comer of Wall Street and Broadway (demolished about 1961), selling nails, sperm candles, files, shirting, and window glass.

Ethan Warden set up a grocery and dry goods store in the Huron Block, in partnership with Dan W. Kellogg. The Warden and Kellogg partnership did not last long, but Ethan maintained the business by himself until 1839.

In the 1840's it appears that things were starting to unravel. Dorr dissolved his partnership in the mill with Dwight in 1841. Dan's wife Esther Almira died in 1842. Charles died that same year, and his widow Mary Ann died in 1844. Dan returned to New York, where he beam a successful businessman. The fate of Ethan Warden and Dwight Kellogg remains unknown.

Dorr Kellogg maintained a residence at 510 Lawrence from about 1866 to 1884, where he lived with Ethan Warden's widow and his sister. The letters now at the Bentley were found in the 1960's in the attic of this house by student tenants, who brought them to Russell Bidlack, dean of the School of Library Science. It was Bidlack who donated them to the Bentley
Library. All Kellogg family members who died in Ann Arbor are buried together in a single plot at Fairview Cemetery.

A Quiet Century
The house at 1015 Wall took its present form during the ownership of Samuel Ruthruff, the man who bought it from Charles Kellogg's estate in 1853. The 1860 city directory lists the tenant as Ruthrop, res Lower Town, with no profession given. In the 1868 Directory he is listed as Saml Ruthrauf, res 29 Wall; in 1872 lie's Ruthruff, and in 1874 he's Ruthrauff!

Maps of Ann Arbor from 1853 and 1854 show only the front portion of the house. By 1869, however, a surveyor's map indicates the presence of both rear additions, one of them 1 and 1/1 stories and the other a single story. The latter of the two additions has a roof that slopes below the roof of the primary addition, forming part of what is commonly referred to as a "hens and chicks" arrangement.

The fact that this house is in such good condition and has had so few alterations reveals the conservative stewardship that followed Ruthruff s tenancy. The exterior, with the beautiful door frames and lines of the Classic Revival period, remains almost unchanged. Inside, a federal-style staircase with curved newel post and spindles and a bone "amity button" in the center remains intact. So do the interior wood trim, the double fluted pilasters surrounding the fireplaces, the paneled aprons below the windows, and several original doors. Several doors upstairs that were painted to look like expensive hardwood are also in remarkably good condition.

The house's excellent preservation reflects both the long tenure of subsequent owners and their limited means. By the 1890's, Charles G. Greiner, a gardener, was living in the house with members of his family. The inside of the door leading to the attic has penciled on it: "Louise Greiner, Lillie, Mabel, Laura, Frieda, Ella, Pa G., Ma G., wrote this June 7, 1901." It appears that the house remained in the care of the Greiner children for most of the next century. Laura Marz, who I believe was this family's last surviving member, died in 1988 at the age of ninety-two.

For nearly forty years, from about 1915 to 1955, Laura and her husband, John Marz, shared the house shared the house with Ann and Fred Bauer. Laura worked as a bookkeeper at various companies around Ann Arbor and as a saleswoman at a local clothing shop. John was a bus driver, Anna a laundress, and Fred a machinist. The Bauers disappear from city directory listings after 1955, but the Marzes remained for several more decades; John Marz died between 1970 and 1975.

Laura and the Bauer family, too, were also musicians, and they were recorded on tape by longtime neighbor Thelma Graves. This family, or families, were typical of people living in the Lower Town area in the twentieth century. Struggling to make ends meet with fairly low-paying jobs, they managed to survive and even have time for musical pursuits.

The Society's Frustrating Search
Though the Bauers and Marzes preserved their modest home well, they would probably be startled to learn of its new life as a museum. So would many of the early members of the Washtenaw County Historical Society. For most of this century, they held out for something considerably grander.

Delays and disappointments have plagued the society's search for a home. Founded in 1857, the society was reorganized in 1873 as the Pioneer Society of Washtenaw County and began in earnest to accept donations and to search for a suitable home. From 1879 to 1929 a room was provided in the county courthouse. Some materials were also kept in a log cabin at Burns Park (which eventually dissolved into rot due to termite and water damage). Membership in the society initially was restricted to twenty-year residents of the county; later, the rules required that a member must also be at least forty years old.

The first president of the society was Alpheus Felch, former governor of Michigan and justice of the state supreme court. Other officers were a veritable Who's Who of Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and surrounding townships. Their aims, according to a society document, were "to cultivate social relations, collect and preserve biographic sketches and historical facts and reminiscences, and transmit the same to future generations." Their first venture along these lines was to commission and help produce the voluminous (almost 1,500 pages) 1881 History of Washtenaw County.

Thanks to the ill-advised ban on younger members, the Pioneer Society gradually dwindled away, and no meetings were held after 1925. In 1929, stimulated by U-M president Alexander G. Ruthven, the group was rejuvenated, renamed the Washtenaw Historical Society (it became the Washtenaw County Historical Society in the early 1970's), and opened to anyone who wished to join. New goals were incorporated into a new constitution, which stated the group's aim to "foster interest in the history of Washtenaw County and to assemble and preserve in permanent collections all materials relating to that history." The renewed society resumed the search for a permanent home for its collections.

Hopes were high in 1942 when the Douglas home at 502 East Huron (now offices for the First Baptist Church) was willed to the university for use by the society as a home. Though promoted by Emil Lorch, dean of the School of Architecture, the plan was rejected by the regents because the society had no endowment with which to restore and maintain the property. In 1955, a fund drive for $40,000 to acquire what is now Cobblestone Farm fell short of success. The next year, when a small space being used by the society at the Fritz School was no longer available, President Katherine Groomes wrote that the society was "hunting for sorely needed space." In 1967, Ann Arbor News editor and society president Arthur Gallagher stated that "time is running out" and "action is urged to create a historical museum." A year later, custodian of possessions Harry M. Cole cited the "desperate need" for a permanent home.

The society attempted unsuccessfully to convince the city to buy the historic Danforth house at 303 East Ann Street (sincedemolished). Efforts to obtain the Tuomy house, now the Home of the Historical Society of Michigan, were equally unsuccessful. The old fire station, now the Hands-On Museum, was considered in the early 1970's but thought unsuitable due to lack of parking! The Parker Mill was also considered, but thought too expensive!

Things seemed to take a more positive turn in the later 1970's with the renewed interest in local history generated by the city's sesquicentennial in 1974 and the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. A major grant of $20,000 in the late 1960's by Katherine Dexter McCormick, a descendant of Judge Samuel Dexter (after whom the city of Dexter is named), was the beginning of a building fund.

In 1977, the society acquired lease rights for the Barton Dam and powerhouse with the intention of creating an historical museum and garden. Elaborate plans were drawn up, but only$60,000 was collected toward the project, far short of the goal of $750,000. Problems of access, water, and money grew, and eventually the city decided to reclaim the powerhouse to generate electricity. Past president Patricia A. Austin laments that "it was the wrong time at the wrong place."

In 1986, then-president Galen Wilson, a curator at the Clements Library, declared the "biggest push ever" to find a permanent home and showcase for the collections. He cited documents from the 1820's, a torch from Abraham Lincoln's Washtenaw County campaign, early American paintings of the Dexter family and by local artist Katie Rogers, an 1860's watch worth $10,000, and an eighteenth-century chair worth $5,200. A committee was established to study space needs, but again, nothing suitable was found.

1015 Wall Fills the Vacuum
The house at 1015 Wall fell into this vacuum in 1988 largely by chance. I was the one who learned of its historic importance and its threatened demolition, but it was Karen O'Neal who did more than anyone to save it.

In 1987, 1 was trying to find houses that were standing in Ann Arbor when Michigan became a state 150 years earlier. I was struck by 1015 Wall Street's unusual formal simplicity and odd positioning on the street, and after further research I discovered that, indeed, it had probably been constructed between 1835 and 1837.1 also soon learned that not only was it one of a mere fifteen or so houses surviving from the time Michigan became a state, but it was in danger of being demolished to create a parking lot.

I immediately wrote to the university's head planner, Fred Mayer, telling him of the antiquity of the house and asking if the university would consider moving it to preserve it. Remarkably, within a few weeks I received a reply that the university was very concerned about preserving the house and was offering it to the city of Ann Arbor. I was ecstatic.

But then enthusiasm waned when six months after accepting the house the city decided they had no use for it. At that point, Thelma Graves, a WCHS member who grew up on Wall Street across the street from this house, approached the society's president, Karen O'Neal, about attempting to acquire the house. Through O'Neal's determined leadership, the society managed within weeks to receive the house from the university as a gift (along with $5,000 they were going to use for demolition) and to gain a promise of the site at Main and Beakes from the city of Ann Arbor. The house fit perfectly on the site, the neighbors were enthusiastic about the possibility of a museum nearby, and the society would have a Main Street address. "Things seem to be falling right into place," O'Neal noted in September1989.

But it would not be so easy. Month after month went by with little activity on the part of the various actors in this drama. Eventually a large hole did appear at Beakes and Main where the gas station and tanks had been. Things seemed to be progressing when the bad news arrived: the DNR said the dirt was still contaminated. But eventually, with the help of Lana Pollack and Perry Bullard, an agreement was worked out. The university got its parking lot, and the society got its new home.

Why did this attempt to create a museum succeed where so many previous attempts had failed? Board members, including Elizabeth Dusseau, Alice Zeigler, Dave Pollock, Esther Warzynski, Louisa Pieper, and Rosemarion Blake, agree that it was a fortunate combination of circumstances—particularly the willingness of both the university and the city to help. There also was our realization that we were never going to be given a beautiful mansion needing no repairs and sitting on a large beautifully landscaped lot in central Ann Arbor. There just aren't enough of them, and the cost of real estate in Ann Arbor is just too high.

Board members also cited the energy, efficiency, and determination of Karen O'Neal. By training a civil engineer, O'Neal was able to understand the complicated aspects of preparing a site for such a project, saving money that would otherwise go to a consulting engineer. Once she was assured of the enthusiastic support by the board and the membership at large, O'Neal worked with officials from the U-M's Planning Department; the city Parks and Planning departments, and members of city council; and members of the state legislature and the Department of Natural Resources. When things got tight in the schedule, O'Neal's husband, Joe, and O'Neal Construction often rescued us, providing expertise and help in compacting the soil at the site and storing the original foundation bricks. "We could not have swung this without Karen and O'Neal Construction," says Elizabeth Dusseau.' They were indispensable.'',

Making a Museum
Now that the house has been moved, the serious work of its restoration and adaptation will begin. A fund-raising committee, chaired by Dave Pollock and Cliff Sheldon, has set a goal of $400,000 and will begin its work in September and October.

A second committee, the museum planning committee, is working on how best to use a small structure to display and interpret the history of Washtenaw County. Members have already established a collections policy, visited other area museums, and salvaged vintage plants from the site on Wall Street. The house needs a climate-controlled basement where materials can be stored and processed. The interior must be altered to provide handicapped access and restrooms and to comply with the Fire Code. New security measures, new electrical wiring, and a new furnace are also "musts." A new roof may be necessary.

Once these basics have been accomplished, the next major task will be the enormous job of sorting and cataloging the thousands of artifacts now in storage and developing a computerized accessions system. Once we have a handle on the number and types of artifacts in the collection, we will be able to develop distinctive exhibits dealing with various aspects of life in Washtenaw County over the years, beginning with the Indian occupation.

The first exhibit may, however, be the letters written by the Kellogg family between Ann Arbor and upstate New York that are now housed at the Bentley. While their letters deal in detail with the hopes of these immigrants and of life on the frontier, their house is the physical expression of their aspirations. Display of the Kellogg letters would fittingly mark the end of the house's life on Wall Street and the beginning of its new one on Main Street as a center of county history.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The Kellogg-Warden House at 1015 Wall Street (above) and at 500 North Main Street. One of Ann Arbor's oldest houses, it was in danger of being demolished until the historical society, helped by the U-M and the city, moved it across the river to a new life as a county historical museum.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: By the 1890's gardener Charles Greiner's family lived in the house. Penciled inside the door leading to the attic are the words: "Louise Greiner, Lillie, Mabel, Laura, Frieda, Ella, Pa G., Ma G., wrote this June 7. 1901."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Thelma Graves (left), who grew up across the street from 1015 Wall, had the inspiration that the house could be moved to become the museum the society had always wanted. Society president Karen O'Neal was vital in making it happen.

Once a Street of Grand Houses, it's Slowly Reclaiming its Former Respect

Twenty years before the Civil War, wealthy citizens built their houses near the center of town, often at street intersections. From the County Courthouse east along Ann Street, elegant Greek Revival structures stood at successive corners: a bank president lived at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Ann; an attorney at Fifth Avenue and Ann; a judge at Division and Ann; and a founder of the U-M medical school at State and Ann.

After the Civil War, during the building boom that occurred all over the U.S., the blocks between the corner buildings on Ann Street were filled in. In 1866 James F. and Rhoda Royce paid $900 to the heirs of George Danforth for "a strip of land off the east side of Lot 2" and built the house tthat still stands at 311 East Ann Street.

The house is a perfectly preserved example of what is known as an Italianate cube. The cube part comes from the fact hat the roof is not a pointed gable but a four-sided hip roof, which sits atop a square structure. (Houses in previous periods had been more rectangular.) Italianate refers primarily to decorative details:pairs of carved ornamental brackets under the roof eaves; long, narrow windows, often with rounded tops (here only the door is rounded); and the exuberant scroll-sawn decoration on the porch.

James Royce was an old pioneer, having arrived in Washtenaw County in 1830 from New York. He was a skilled cabinet- and chair-maker who later owned a carriage manufactory. Those endeavors evidently did not leave him wealthy: in later years, he worked as a clerk in the Bach and Abel dry goods store at the comer of Main and Washington (later B. E. Muehlig's and today the law offices of Hooper Hathaway Price Beuche & Wallace).

Bach had been Royce's son-in-law (his first wife was Royce's daughter), so it seems appropriate that he provided work for Royce in his old age. Bach later became mayor (Bach School is named after him). In 1878, when Royce was seventy-two, Bach purchased the house at 311 East Ann and allowed the Royces to stay there for as long as they lived. This may have been a form of pension for a good employee, a dodge to avoid creditors left over from Royce's business ventures, or even a gift for a former father-in-law.Whatever the reason, the Royces were able to live in the style to which they were accustomed until their deaths. James died in 1883 and Rhoda died in 1889.

In 1892 the house came into the possession of two unmarried half-sisters, Harriet and Electa Knight, daughters of early Washtenaw County pioneer Rufus Knight,whose cobblestone house still stands at 4944 Scio Church Road. Harriet was sixty-three years old when she moved from the cobblestone house to 311 East Ann. She remained there until her death in 1910 at eighty-one. Electa was kicked by a horse in 1901 and was thereafter confined to a wheelchair and forced to rely on her sister, who was nearly twenty years older. Despite their afflictions, they "bore their suffering with fortitude," according to Electa's obituary in 1919.

By 1907, the sisters began taking in boarders. The first were children of relatives who took advantage of the sisters' Ann Arbor residence to send their children to the esteemed Ann Arbor High School, which at the time functioned as almost a prep school for the U-M.

In the early 1970's, when I lived at 311, a managed to find and interview one of these boarders, Edith Knight Behringer. Mrs. Behringer lived at 311 from 1907 to 1915. She was the great-niece of Harriet and Electa Knight, and the house passed to her mother, Clara Knight, when Electa died in 1919. Mrs. Behringer remembered seeing her first car when a suitor came to call on Miss Gertrude Breed, who lived next door. Her aunts preferred to take the air with their Shetland pony and pony cart.

Later on, her aunts' lodgers tended to be doctors and nurses working at University Hospital, then located on Catherine near Glen. Three bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs were rented out. Despite depending on roomers to make ends meet, the Knight sisters never lost their pride in their fine home. While Mrs. Behringer lived at 311, a U-M professor built a house next door at 305. Her aunts dismissed it as a "little snot of a house" because it seemed so small compared to theirs.

By the 1920's, the automobile had taken hold in America, and many in the middle and upper classes moved to the suburbs, away from the decay that they saw throughout the central city (by then over fifty years old). The Ann Street neighborhood was no longer fashionable, and the area went into a decline. Both the bank president's house at Fourth and Ann and the attorney's house at Fifth and Ann became hotels. The former building survives (its biggest tenant is now Wooden Spoon books), but the latter—in its last years the Town House Hotel, catering to immigrants arriving from the South—was demolished in 1971 after part of the rear end collapsed on a neighboring house.

The doctor's house at Ann and State was moved across the street to 712 East Ann in the 1920's to make way for the Wil-Dean apartments. The judge's house at Division, now known as the Wilson-Wahr house, survived to become one of Ann Arbor's favorite historic buildings. Though less lovingly cared for, the Royce house at 311 also endured almost intact. It became a rooming house for U-M students in the 1960's: a rent roster from that era shows tenants from Thailand, Egypt, and Pakistan, as well as from all over the U.S.

Ann Street has begun to win back some of the respect its name once commanded. Beginning in 1977, a group of residents of the area began studying ways to protect the historic houses in the area. Eventually, two city ordinances were passed, establishing the Ann Street Historic Block (between Division and State) and the Old Fourth Ward Historic District, an association of owners of historic houses in the area east of Fifth Avenue to Glen and north from Huron Street to the river. Today, renovation is occurring all along Ann Street, from Main to Glen, and both owners and renters take pride in the rebirth of their historic neighborhood.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Above) In 1866, the neighborhood around tourney George Danforth's Greek Revival Mansion at Ann And Fifth began to fill in, starting with a fine "Italianate cube" at 311 E. Ann St.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Below) In this century, a much plainer house (at left) was shoehorned in at 305. The Danforth house was demolished in 1971, but the newer buildings both survive.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Harriet (left) and Electa Knight shared 31 with student roomers to make ends meet.

Out of 1,000 or so Dwellings in Ann Arbor in 1837, Less than 20 Survived the City's Subsequent Growth. Far from Being Gentrified Treasures, Most of Them Sit Unnoticed in Neglected Backwaters. 

Ann Arbor was an exciting place in 1837. Barely thirteen years old, it was party that year to two milestones in Michigan history. First, it was home to the "Frostbitten Convention'" in January 1837. Held at the County Courthouse at Main and Huron, the convention set the terms by which Michigan would enter the Union later that year. Second, it was announced in March that the University of Michigan would be located in Ann Arbor.

The coming of the railroad—an economic shot in the arm to nineteenth-century cities hoping to grow—was also being eagerly anticipated (it arrived the next year). The development-minded Ann Arbor Land Company even hoped that Ann Arbor's role in Michigan's entry into the Union would make it a logical place for the new state capital. The company commissioned J. F. Stratton to produce a map to stimulate land sales, optimistically showing a "'State House Square'' on State Street.

The true economic picture, however, was just the opposite of those promising portents. Ann Arbor didn't get the state capital. (Neither did any of the other cities clamoring for the honor: it remained in Detroit until 1847, when it was moved to the obscure town of Lansing.) In a stroke of genius, the company offered the land set aside for the state house as part of the forty-acre grant that attracted the U-M. But even that coup appeared to be a disappointment. While the coming of the U-M was indeed the long-term making of the city, it would be twenty-five years before it had a substantial impact on property values.

Meanwhile, the real estate speculation that had energized towns like Ann Arbor in southeastern Michigan began coming apart in the Depression of 1837. The founder of Ann Arbor, John Alien, was financially ruined. He returned to Ann Arbor from Wall Street in 1837 without a  penny to his name. Simultaneously, many of the wildcat banks that had been fueling the land speculation folded, which created a land panic. By 1838, the country was in a Depression, and land values dropped sharply.

The Lost Village of 1837
When the Depression struck, Ann Arbor was barely beyond being a wilderness. It had been incorporated as a village in 1833 (it officially became a town in 1851), and according to an 1840's newspaper account, had a population of 2,000. In addition to a courthouse, it contained a jail, four churches—Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Universalist (Methodist)—two printing presses for weekly newspapers, a bookstore, flour mill, saw mill, wool factory, iron foundry, two tanneries, seventeen dry goods stores, eleven lawyers, nine doctors, and an academy with seventy students. This civic infrastructure probably supported about 1,000 dwelling units. Today, fewer than twenty of those buildings remain—including that first Presbyterian Church, long ago moved and converted into a commercial structure.

The fact that even a few buildings remain from 1837 and earlier comes as a surprise. With all the demolition that has occurred with the expansion of both the university and the central business district in all directions, is miraculous that any survive. Some were located in quiet backwaters away from the main paths of development; most of the others had parsimonious owners who decided to move them out of the way rather than see them demolished.

Not unexpectedly, a large cluster are on the north side of the Huron River. Lower Town, as it was called, was not even officially part of Ann Arbor until 1851. Centered along Broadway, Wall Street, Maiden Lane, Pontiac Trail, Traver,Wright, and Kellogg, it began as a rival to John Alien's original settlement at Main and Huron. (Lower Town residents called inhabitants of the main part of town Hilltoppers.) Lower Town started strongly, but slowly faded into a backwater after the death of its most ardent promoter, Anson Brown, in 1834 at the age of thirty-two. That is why many buildings from the 1830's and 1840's have survived, primarily along Broadway and Pontiac Trail.

Most of these structures were built by the original developers of Lower Town—Anson Brown, his wife, Desire, her brother Edward Fuller, and her second husband Caleb Ormsby. South of the river, many of the houses still standing were built by the other group of developers operating in 1837: the Ann Arbor Land Company. Many of its members' names—Thayer, Ingalls, Maynard, Thompson—are familiar to us as the names of streets around the campus.

My search for buildings that remain from Michigan's statehood year began with a few local histories. One of the most valuable is a manuscript by Miss Cornelia Corselius, written in 1909 and illustrated with photographs by Miss Lucy Chapin. Both women were the granddaughters of pioneer settlers.

Another is the 1881 History of Washtenaw County, which has a section of reminiscences by the old pioneers. Some are quite specific as to dates and locations of buildings. But since their memories were no doubt clouded by age, I needed a way to verify the information. The Lawyer's Title Company generously allowed me free access to all their materials for research on deeds to all the properties the histories mention.

Deeds are not a perfect source, however. They can suggest when a building was constructed, but it is not conclusive, since a deed refers only to land. (Once in a while there is reference to a property known as such-and-such an address.) Sometimes deeds can be problematic, especially those from the halcyon days of 1836-1837, when speculators were driving prices through the roof. Supplementing the deed research is of course the building itself, if it isn't too terribly altered.

In all, I found eighteen buildings that were standing in 1837. Only two, both on Broadway, are strictly commercial, while one (201 East Ann) was built to be a house and a bank. One was built as a church but has been so altered by conversion into commercial space that nothing remains on the exterior of its original form. The rest are all houses that continue to be used as houses today.

The I-houses of Lower Town
In the 1930's, Louisiana geographer Henry Kniffen was struck by strong resemblances among houses he saw as he drove through the Midwest. Many of the oldest homes shared a common configuration: they had two full stories, their roof gables paralleled the street instead of facing it, and they were just one room deep, with mirror-image rooms on opposite sides of a central hall and stairway.

Since Kniffen first noticed them in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, he called them "I-houses." Unlike the various home designs that passed in and out of fashion later in the nineteenth century, he realized, they represented a folk form transmitted by builders, not a consciously chosen style. Kniffen later traced his I-houses back to the East Coast, and even to England.

Virtually all of the surviving 1837 houses in Lower Town are I-houses or some variation on the form. They include two houses on Wall Street (947 and 1015), two on Broadway (1300 and 1324), and three on Pontiac Trail (1317, 1416, and 1709). So it appears that one distinguishing element of an 1830's house is the parallel orientation and the I configuration: two stories high, two rooms wide, and one room deep.

All these houses were built by settlers from upstate New York (we don't always know precisely what part). Absalom Traver, whose name is perpetuated in Traver Creek and Traver Road, but about whom very little is known, built 1300 Broadway. He bought a large acreage in this part of town in 1830 and in 1837 platted Traver's First Addition to the city of Ann Arbor. It consisted of sixty-seven lots along both sides of Broadway beginning just north of Traver Creek. Just north of this juncture Traver had his grist mill, which is clearly identified on the 1874 Washtenaw County Map. In 1856 he added Traver's Second Addition to the city, which consisted of much of the land north of Maiden Lane that is now Neilsen's Greenhouse. Not much more is known about Traver. He died about 1870.

1300 Broadway is a typical New England I-house. It was two rooms wide and probably one room deep, and it probably had a central hall. The end chimney is from the twentieth century. The entrance and sidelights were noted by Emit Lorch in the research he did for the Historic American Buildings Survey in the 1940's, and the house was photographed by Lucy. Chapin in 1909.

More is known about the builders of the other houses. The builder of 1324 Broadway, Zerah Pulcipher, arrived in Ann Arbor in 1833 from Jefferson County, New York. He apparently helped Samuel Doty, later his father-in-law, build the house in 1834. Doty, an immigrant from Connecticut via New York, had also arrived in 1833. Zerah married Samuel's daughter Caroline, purchased the house from him, and lived there almost fifty-five years. This house is almost identical to 1300 Broadway.

The builder of 1709 Pontiac Trail, Josiah Beckley, came to Ann Arbor from New England by 1827, when he purchased seventy-three acres in Lower Town. Its floor plan matches 1300 and 1324 Broadway, but the house is made of brick rather than wood. According to deeds and family histories, Josiah Beckley's house was built in either 1834 or 1836.

Yet another similar structure was built in 1842 by Beckley's brother, the Reverend Guy Beckley, at what is now 1425 Pontiac Trail. Just across the street stands 1416 Pontiac Trail, recently shorn of its asbestos siding to reveal the old I-house hidden underneath. Housenoving was once much more common than it is today, and many of the 1837 survivors have been relocated. But this home's wanderings are impressive even among this well-traveled group: it was built at 217 South First Street, and was moved over a mile to its present site in 1947.

1317 Pontiac Trail was built in 1836 by William R. Perry. Perry operated a bookstore in Lower Town and was an avid Abolitionist, often taking out ads in his friend Josiah Beckley's Abolitionist newspaper. The Signal of Liberty. Nothing is known about Perry's background, but it's probably safe to guess that he, too, was a Yankee from upstate New York.

Two houses on Wall Street illustrate the variety to be found among these New England I-houses. The house at 947 Wall, built of brick, with a twentieth-century porch addition and second-story window alteration, has quite a history—most of which appears to be wrong. Many histories say the house was built by one Charles Kellogg, but his name never appears in any deeds connected with this property. Lawyers Title's records show that this property sold to a Nathan Burnham by Fuller and Ormsby (who platted the area in 1834) in June 1837 for $600, a price which suggests the house. already built. Charles Kellogg's name does appear in the records of a nearby house of similar vintage, 1015 Wall. The two-story frame house, built high on a brick foundation, has a very ornate doorway. (A similar doorway may have been obscured at 947 by later porticos and additions; 1015's seems more in keeping with doorways of the period than the Colonial Revival additions at 947.)

1015 Wall's future is uncertain. The U-M has purchased the building and will eventually need the land for expansion of the medical campus. Efforts to give the house to the city have been unsuccessful.

Sources differ on whether the last building in this group was built in 1837 or 1838. This is the asphalt-shingled but once elegant home on the hill at 723 Moore Street (originally Brown Street). It also has been associated with the name of Kellogg, but it appears to be a different family. A beautiful drawing of the house in 1874 is in the County Atlas of that year. It is completely different from the other houses of the 1830's: it is a hip-roofed, almost square building, verging on the Italianate with its brackets. This was originally an I-house, expanded in the 1860's when Dr. Kellogg operated his very successful practice from here.

Research indicates the house may have been built by pioneer Caleb Ormsby, since he sold the house and five lots to Joseph Waite in 1838 for $1,500. Shortly thereafter, it was sold to one of the owners of the paper mill for $3,000 and a year later it was sold again for an amazing $5,000. But speculative bubbles like the one in the 1830's seldom last. They endure only as long as new buyers with ready funds can be persuaded that prices are inevitably going up. The bank failures triggered by the 1837 Depression, coupled with Ann Arbor's failure to attract the state capital, depleted investors' confidence as well as their funds.

By the next time it was sold in 1842,723 Moore's price fell back to $3,000.

The Mobile Survivors of the Upper Village

Lower Town's slow growth after the death of Anson Brown helped spare at least a few of its original buildings from redevelopment. The Upper Village, which won the U-M and the growth that eventually followed it, had no such protection. As the commercial district grew outward from its nucleus at Main and Huron, and as prosperous residents built successively newer and grander homes on its borders, many of the original home sites occupied in 1837 were built over later in the nineteenth century. Of the few buildings that do survive, most had to be moved out of the way of developments.

Several of the houses that did endure resemble those in Lower Town. The one at 317 East Ann, which may be the oldest house still standing in Ann Arbor (it appears to have been built in 1832). It is a typical wood frame I-house with central door and hallway and end chimneys.

In the 1984 Field Guide to American Houses, Virginia and Lee McAlester comment that I-houses did not become popular in the Midwest until the arrival of the railroads. Cornelia Corselius writes, however, that this house was lived in by men helping to build the railroad in Michigan, suggesting an earlier arrival. The builder of 317 East Ann is unknown, though a deed refers to it as being occupied by a Doctor Randall in 1834. A Sylvester Mills and a Willard Mills were owners from 1829 to 1831, and it was perhaps this family that actually built the house.                             
 
U-M architecture professor Emil Lorch studied and drew this house for the Historic American Buildings Survey in the 1940's. Its past tenants and owners include a congregational minister, the Reverand Breed and his two daughters, one of whom was a well-known Latin teacher at the Ann Arbor High School.Before that. Henry Bower, newspaper editor, publisher, and real estate developer, lived there from 1846 to about 1860. It has unfortunately had aluminum siding and shutters added, but still manages today to retain the quality of its previous form.

One block to the east stands the white frame I-house at 511 East Ann. The date of this house is unknown, since it was moved to this site sometime in the early 1860's after the area was platted and the street extended from Division to State. The doorway is more elaborate than that of 317, consisting of sidelights and a glass transom (etched in the 1970's). It has a central hallway with a large staircase ascending to the second floor and curving around to a landing on the street side. A previous owner told the present owner that the house was moved from Packard Street, but early maps show similar houses at Ann and Division that also could be this one (for example, a house at 208 North Division, where the Wells-Babcock House is today).

In the vicinity of these houses are two connected with the family of James Kingsley, an early Washtenaw County pioneer. Both of the houses, one at 412 North Division and the other at 335 East Kingsley, have been moved a short distance from their original locations. The house at 335 East Kingsley, if it is the Kingsley house referred to in Corselius's paper, was built in 1829 at the northeast corner of Detroit and Kingsley (then called North). Kingsley was an ambitious attorney and developer who over the years served as mavor. state representative and senator, probate judge, and U-M regent. He married Lucy Clark in 1830 and took her to this home, but by 1835 they had decided to move to the more fashionable address on Division Street at Lawrence, two blocks away. The Kingsley Street house was split up, with the rear "moved up front on Kingsley Street and made into a square house that is still standing," according to Corselius. She may be referring to 335 East Kingsley, which in plan looks like a small I-house with central doorway. Unfortunately, the house is so altered by twentieth-century additions and siding that the original details are obscured.

The other Kingsley house, at 412 North Division, is the first house in this group to break from the I-house form. It appears to be a variant on what architectural historians call a "gable-fronter," with a side hallway. It is the only house I've found from this period still standing in Ann Arbor with such a floor plan. This house, too, was moved. It originally stood at the northeast corner of Lawrence and
Division and was moved to the back of the lot (now 412 North Division) in 1890 when the new owner constructed the Queen Anne house that now stands on that corner. The only clue to the antiquity of this house is the doorway, which has sidelights, and the steep staircase immediately behind it.

The only brick structure in this part of town known to be this old is 201 East Ann Street. It was built in 1835-1836 as both the First Bank of Washtenaw and the home of its first president. The building was probably constructed for William S.Maynard or William R. Thompson, whoever was the bank's first president (sources disagree). According to Corselius, the banking rooms were on the west and consisted of two large rooms and a vault. This was one of many banks that unfortunately failed during the Panic of 1837. However, until 1847, when it was purchased by the Chapin family (they lived here from 1847 to 1876, and it is often referred to as the Chapin House), it was always called "the Bank Building."

The original house, now obscured by later additions, was built of brick and then stuccoed to resemble large blocks of stone (and hence a Greek temple). The use of stucco at this date is unexpected, since it has long been held that the U-M buildings, built around 1840, started this trend in Ann Arbor. Alterations for commercial uses have completely obliterated its original Georgian floor plan, two rooms wide and two rooms deep.

Two other houses on the fringes of the Upper Village complete the survey of 1830's houses. The first, at 724 West Washington, is yet another I-house. It too was moved from its original location, one block to the north on West Huron Street. The 1854 map of Ann Arbor calls it the home of J. T. Allen, who may be James T.Allen, the brother of John Allen, Ann Arbor's founder. If that James Allen built the house, it may date back as far as the 1820's. James arrived from Virginia in the fall of 1824, bringing the rest of John Allen's family with him—their parents, John's wife, and his children. Unfortunately, the house was totally gutted recently and remodeled into a two-unit
condominium, but care was taken to keep as many of the original details as possible.

Finally, there's the small gable-front house at 450 South Fifth Avenue. Like the Allen house, it appears to have been constructed just outside the city limits in this early period. (John Allen and Elisha Rumsey's original 1824 plat of the city stopped at Jefferson.) Deed records show an increase in value from $25 in 1835 to $100 in 1836. This may or may not mean that the house was constructed during this period. But it is very similar to a house that once stood on Ashley at Liberty and was believed to have been built in 1826.

It is a tiny house, 1 and 1/2 stories, now covered by aluminum siding but known to be walnut. It has a central doorway (unlike the house on Ashley, which had a side doorway) and probably was a simple one- or two-room floor plan. (The side addition was probably added in the 1860's.) Although long associated with the Dietz family (who were German), the original house was probably built by Paul Minnis, most likely one more Yankee from upstate New York.          
  
Public/Commercial Buildings
By far the best known of Ann Arbor's earliest buildings is not a house but a commercial structure. Shortly after platting the area where two Indian trails met at the Huron River (now Pontiac and Broadwvay), Anson Brown constructed what is generally accepted as Ann Arbor's oldest surviving building, 1001-1007 Broadway. Originally known as the Exchange Block, the brick structure is believed to have been built in 1832. It housed many businesses, including the Post Office, until Brown's untimely death in 1834. When the U-M located in the Upper Village in 1837, the fate of this part of town was sealed: no expansion of any importance took place for almost fifty years, and then it focused on manufacturing rather than retail development.

Next door and across the street were other buildings constructed in the 1830's. Still standing, but reduced to two stories, is the Chester Ingalls block at 1009-1111 Broadway, built in 1834 or 1836. Across the street until I960 was another brick block, known as the Ludholtz estate but probably built for Brown or Fuller. The builder was Asa Smith, one of the first pioneers to arrive in Ann Arbor in the early 1820's.

Smith was an itinerant carpenter who made his living building houses during the day and making bedsteads at night. He constructed thirteen houses between 1825 and 1831. He is referred to as a "mechanic" who made a good living building houses, frequently selling the one he was living in and building another for himself. Smith was a native of Boston, but was married in Gates, New York, and his first child was born in Rochester, New York.

The upstate New York building tradition Smith represents influenced most of the earliest buildings constructed in Ann Arbor. All three of these buildings on Broadway were built in a style with stepped gables at the parapets. This was a common style in upstate New York, where the Dutch influence was quite prevalent. The Exchange Block, or Anson Brown Building was financed by Brown and perhaps built by Smith. The Chester Ingalls Block, built in 1834, was also perhaps constructed by Smith.

Old photographs indicate the buildings looked very similar when constructed and were remarkably intact even until the twentieth century. In her 1962 book, Ann Arbor Yesterdays, Leia Duff recalls that the group of buildings "always used to give me a feeling of having been dropped down suddenly in a village of the Old World. On the left, ... the stately white [no doubt painted white in the twentieth century] brick building remains. . . . Just beyond it, the less pretentious little red brick storebuilding seems to have been transplanted from some old street in Baltimore or Philadelphia or Greenwich Village."

The last building on the list, 213 East Washington, was built in either 1829 or 1837 to house the First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor. Unfortunately, we have no photographs of this church before it was moved and altered for commercial use in the 1860's. However, an old photograph from the 1930's shows a two-story building that resembles a typical I-house, with central entry and side gables. The Presbyterian Church, which has occupied four buildings in its long tenure in Ann Arbor, believes this is the church built in 1837, but it may possibly be the one constructed in 1829. Duff writes that the first church was built at Huron and Division in 1829 and was a one-room frame building only 25 by 35 feet, later extended 20 feet forward and crowned with an uncovered belfry.

This meeting house soon became inadequate with the rapid settlement of Ann Arbor, so the second church was built halfway between Fourth and Fifth avenues, facing Huron but far back from the street. With its ample gallery, it was for years the largest gathering place in town and was the scene of the first U-M commencement in 1844. By 1849, however, it was already being used as a commercial building. A February newspaper of that year contains an advertisement by Andrew DeForest that inadvertently captured the speed with which the village of 1837 was being transformed and reused by the growing town. DeForest gave his address as "The Old Church, just east of Cook's Hotel."   

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[Photo caption from original print edition]: 511 East Ann Street

[Photo caption from original print edition]: 1324 Broadway Street

[Photo caption from original print edition]: 723 Moore Street

[Photo caption from original print edition]: 947 Wall Street

[Photo caption from original print edition]: 201 East Ann Street

[Photo caption from original print edition]: 450 South Fifth Avenue

[Photo caption from original print edition]: 1001 -1007 Broadway Street

[Photo caption from original print edition]: 511 East Ann Street [Photo caption from original print edition]: 1324 Broadway Street [Photo caption from original print edition]: 723 Moore Street [Photo caption from original print edition]: 947 Wall Street [Photo caption from original print edition]: 201 East Ann Street [Photo caption from original print edition]: 450 South Fifth Avenue [Photo caption from original print edition]: 1001 -1007 Broadway Street

June is the time when catalpa trees, with their distinctive, heart-shaped leaves, bear their big white flower clusters, to be followed by seed pods that look like long, brown string beans. But Ann Arbor’s most famous catalpas—indeed, the trees from which many of the central-area catalpas are said to have been propagated—are only a memory. They stood in front of the old Chapin house, a once-handsome Greek Revival building on Ann at Fourth Avenue. The building now houses the Yoga Center, the De la Ferriere book store, and, on the Fourth Avenue side, the People’s Produce Co-op and the Wooden Spoon book store.  For three decades, from 1890 to 1920, the place was known as the Catalpa Hotel.

Today it takes a practiced eye to see beyond the cracked stucco and plastic entryway and recognize the dilapidated building as a once-imposing structure dating from before 1850. The house was built some time around 1840 to house the Washtenaw Bank and provide a home for its president and his family. Its solid brick walls were covered with stucco, which was then scored to resemble the stone masonry the Greek temples which inspired the Greek Revival style so popular in early nineteenth-century American architecture. Ann Arbor had so many such imitation-stone houses that it was sometimes called a “little stucco village.”

In 1847, Volney Chapin, the prosperous owner of an agricultural implement foundry on West Huron, purchased the house and converted it to a private residence. For thirty years it was a local showplace, renowned for its large catalpa trees and rose-bordered paths winding through the extensive grounds extending all the way back to Catherine and up to Fifth Avenue. After Mrs. Chapin’s death in 1876, the house was sold. The gardens gave way to commercial development, while the house served as a hotel with a succession of different names. The side along Fourth Avenue was remodeled into several storefronts with plate glass windows. They housed a variety of shops, including a saloon, a billiard hall, and a barbershop. In 1913, Joe Parker, proprietor of Joe Parker’s College Saloon (the famous “Joe’s” that figures so prominently in that favorite college song, “I Want to Go Back to Michigan”), moved his establishment into the Catalpa Hotel, where it thrived until Prohibition. Joe’s went out of business in 1920, and the next year the Catalpa Hotel was sold to the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce. The famous college hangout is still remembered with a small tile mosiac “Joe” in the corner of the Wooden Spoon book shop.

The Chamber drew up plans for remodeling the building in the then-popular colonial mode, taking advantage of its classical lines and details. Published drawings provided for an outdoor tea garden, an auditorium, and a banquet hall.  But these changes never materialized. By 1925 the Chamber had more ambitious and metropolitan plans for its property, as it began a long campaign to construct a modern, fireproof hotel, on the site. These plans, too, never came to pass. Throughout the Depression and early war years the building housed the offices of many service and welfare organizations, as well as the local bus station.

In 1942, citing its inability to meet operating expenses, the Chamber sold the building for $11,000 to Christ Bilakos. He renamed it Peters Hotel for his son, Peter Bilakos, who now has his law practice down the street in the recently-restored building at 109 East Ann. That building housed his father’s restaurant. The Bilakos family still owns the Chapin building.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The Chapin house in Judge Chapin’s day, circa 1870. The catalpas are the three large-trunked trees in front of the house. MICHIGAN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The Chapin house today: a rare downtown survivor from a more gracious era.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: An artist’s conception of the bar at Joe’s when that famous college saloon was in the Calalpa Hotel. The bald bartender is Joe Parker himself.

The first time I heard the term "politically correct," I was sitting on John Sinclair's bed. It was mid December 1972, and the week before, the Light Opera had put on a light show at the People's Ballroom.

I was seriously into doing lightshows at the time. Gather up some used slide and overhead projectors, mix well with colored oils and a variety of home-made psychedelic apparatus, and voila: a swirling visual treat just right to shine above a stage filled with sweaty rock and rollers. The Light Opera consisted at the time of myself, aided and abetted by Mike Lutz (not the rocker, the lab tech) and photographer Henry Seggarman.

Before the show I had borrowed my mom's camera and shot a bunch of logos of the Tribal Council, the umbrella organization through which Sinclair's Rainbow People's Party (RPP) supervised a host of countercultural activities-the Ballroom, the Tribal Network (the loose collective of the Ann Arbor Sun newspaper, and other media entities), the People's Defense Committee (which provided legal aid), and various other groups. Along with the logos, slides from the 1972 Blues and Jazz Festival, and the usual assortment of psychedelia, our show had featured my collection of tasteful classical nudes, garnered from my travels through the art museums of Europe.

That was what got us in trouble. I was being called to account before the Tribal Council's Music & Ballroom Committee, which met in the big house that the Rainbow People lived in on Hill Street. Sinclair's bedroom was the only meeting space available that day. Sinclair had come to town in the 1968 and formed the White Panther Party. By 1971, the year I graduated from Kalamazoo College and returned to Ann Arbor, the White Panthers had evolved into the Rainbow People's Party.
The on-line introduction to the John and Leni Sinclair Papers collection, now housed at the Bentley Historical Library, describes the party thusly:

"Rainbow People's Party embraced Marxism-Leninism as its guide to action and concentrated on building a strong local political organization to promote the revolutionary struggle for a "communal, classless, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist...culture of liberation..."

The "strong local political organization" was the above-mentioned Tribal Council, and the Light Opera was up on charges of sexism.

The People's Ballroom wasn't owned by the Rainbow People. It shared a former Cadillac dealership with the Community Center Project, a federally-funded group of agencies consisting of Drug Help, Ozone House, and the Free People's Clinic. While the actual political ins and outs are too complicated to go into here (that would take a book, perhaps two), suffice it to say that the Ann Arbor Tribal Council Music & Ballroom Committee was a committee of dedicated lefties, and politics were never far from the matter at hand.

My own involvement was as non-political as I could make it. I saw myself as a simple artiste bent on photons and merriment. I was a child of the upper middle class (I grew up on the other side of Washtenaw from the Rainbow house, three blocks up Hill St.) and while of libertarian inclinations, I was in no way a radical.

Given John Sinclair's own legendary love of marijuana, his description of the Ballroom in a letter to the Musician's Union may seem surprising:

"Ann Arbor People's Ballroom is a non-profit, community-operated rock and roll dance center ... It has been funded under a federal grant designed to help combat the hard drug problem in Ann Arbor's rainbow community by providing activities and programs which give young sisters and brothers a constructive, positive context for their energy."

Note that Sinclair and the Rainbow folks (and almost everyone else in Ann Arbor) made a clear distinction between hard drugs (heroin, speed, etc.) and the non-menace of reefer. The Ballroom was at 502 E. Washington Street, where the Tally Hall parking structure is now. It was the result of years of planning, politicking, and involvement from the local hip community. Members of several local bands assisted in the construction, including the Wild Boys. I was in a band at the time, and remember making it to at least one of the pounding parties, after which we all went skinny dipping in Dolph Park.

The ballroom opened September 1st, 1972. The front offices held the various community center organizations and an open meeting room, and the ballroom was in the back, where the former Cadillac garages were. There was a continuing problem with street people hanging out in the meeting room, and a lot of discussion among the agencies as to how to deal with the issue. This would have serious repercussions, as we shall see.

The ballroom was around 100' wide by 40' deep, with a raised stage area at the east end and food and drink at the west end. A team of local volunteers had built an incredibly beautiful suspended dance floor for the Ballroom, and all were delighted with its dance-worthiness. The grand opening "tribal stomps" featured the Wild Boys, the
Mojo Boogie Band and Guardian Angel on Friday and Petunia (a jazz ensemble), Stone School Road, and the Rainbow People's house band, the Mighty UP, on Saturday. The total take was $928.50 and the place was packed, with lines out into the street.

The Ballroom had a total capacity of 540, was open Fridays and Saturdays, and was filled most of those nights. During the week there were art shows and other activities. I remember being at the Saturday opening show, and being blown away by how freakin' cool the whole thing was. Fillmore Ann Arbor! Just down the street from my church! (That would be the First Methodist Church, where I did time as Boy Scout, acolyte, and junior choir member).

Food was provided by the People's Food Committee, the RPP's Psychedelic Rangers provided security, and the Friday show was broadcast on WNRZ, the hip radio station of the time. In between bands, the Tribal Council Communications Committee interviewed musicians and community workers, and presented the whole ballroom story live on the radio.

The Ballroom became a must-play venue for bands across the state. At the Bentley Historical Library there are 76 boxes of cultural artifacts donated by John and Leni Sinclair from this era. In a folder called "Peoples Ballroom" are long lists of bands clamoring for dates, as well as the contracts for those bands that appeared. Also found are notes from Ballroom committee meetings, on which some of this story is based.

The Ballroom was custom-made for light shows, so naturally we wanted to do a show there. My connection in was a high school student named Hugh Hitchcock, who was a phenomenal Moog synthesizer player. He had a band called Pyramus and I got them a gig at the Ballroom on 12-8-72 with the proviso that the Light Opera would accompany them.

To reach the Ballroom, you walked down the alley between the wings of the main building and entered through a small ticket-taking enclosure. Atop the enclosure was the area for the lightshow crew, accessible via a ladder. Which meant we had to pass up all our heavy projectors, slides, and other equipment before the show, hauling it all down thereafter. We had a wheel with holes in it spinning in front of the slide projectors, so we could flash the slides through colored filters, and the slides would flicker back and forth from one projector's output to the other. That way we could juxtapose nude females with nude males in a (to me, at least) humorous suitably-psychedelic fashion. And so, on the night Pyramus played, the first thing that greeted concert-goers was a big slide of the Tribal Council graphic, backed by naked people flickering in and out.

This, I thought, was pretty hilarious. But alas, I was politically incorrect. It seemed there was also a People's Lightshow Committee that I was unaware of, made up of a cadre of women who used to do lightshows at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit. Hard-core politicos, they didn't find our show funny at all.

They called us on it at the meeting on John Sinclair's bed. We (myself and Henry Seggarman) took a lot of flack from the cadre sisters (all the Rainbow people were brothers and sisters), who were incensed that we had the unmitigated audacity to feature naked women in our little presentation. The nude women in question were Aphrodite, the three Graces, and other alabaster figures familiar to anyone who has taken Western Art 101. The point was raised that nude men (Apollo, David, the Laocoön Group, etc.) were also involved, but somehow the cadre sisters missed seeing those.

There was much discussion of what was politically correct here, my first exposure to the term. There was much made of the idea that the show should reflect the community as a whole (as defined by the RPP cadre), not just be one group's (admittedly cockamamie) take on art and society.

At one point in the meeting, John's 5-year old daughter Sunny, wandered in looking for scissors. John asked her where they were the last time she saw them, and she said that John had them the last time, using them to cut up the peyote buttons. The upshot was that we got kicked out of the Ballroom. Which was a good thing, because the next week it burned down.

The Knock-Down Party Band and Merlin were on the bill for December 15, 1972, and a fire started in the basement. Everyone evacuated safely, and the bands even managed to get their equipment out. But the Ballroom and Community Center were toast.

According to the Ann Arbor Sun, the firemen pretty much stood by and let it burn. While it was certainly true that the whole operation, being of non-traditional brown rice longhair tie-dyed hippy origin, was not beloved by the local power structure, Joe Tiboni remembers the story a bit differently. He says the fire began in the basement of the front part of the building where the offices were (the Ballroom in the back was on a cement slab). When the firemen arrived, the fire, accelerated by silk screen solvent ("rocket reducer") used in the production of posters, had engulfed the entire ceiling and there wasn't anything anyone could have done.

I heard about the disaster the next morning when I went to pick up my week's food from the People's Food Coop. I was majorly bummed, as was the entire community. As I recall, the cause of the blaze was a very disturbed street person who hung around the Community Center. The story I heard was that he started the fire so he could report it and become a hero. He came running out of the basement yelling "Fire!" and grabbed the only fire extinguisher in the building. But the fire was already out of control and that was it for the Ballroom and Community Center.

Efforts were made to resurrect it, with concerts under the Ballroom name held in East Quad. The four main agencies at the Community Center, Ozone House, Drug Help, Free People's Clinic and the Community Center Project were housed temporarily at the former Canterbury House location on E. William St. Eventually all moved to more permanent quarters and all but Ozone House have long since been absorbed into other agencies or disbanded.

Disbanded as well was the People's Ballroom. It had a brief life; three and a half months of rock and roll, peace, love, and (mostly) understanding.

I took away from the experience a determination to continue my artistic tendencies, while avoiding contact with politicos as much as possible. I went on to play bass and guitar in a bunch of fun yet unsuccessful bands, doing lightshows until changing times made that impossible, and finally evolving to doing Mac computer support, web work, writing, and photography. And sometimes, when I take a digital picture, I think about how it would look flashing in colors above a band somewhere, with some nudes tossed in, just for grins.

Thanks Joe Tiboni for his insights and memories, and to Arwulf for taking the time to write down his recollections. And a big "Righteous, dude!" to John Sinclair for making the early 70's an interesting time in Ann Arbor, and for the foresight of donating his archives to the Bentley before his house in New Orleans burned down.

Below are photograph captions from the original print edition, also available from the author's website at: Mondodyne.

Caption 1: The picture above shows various Community Center members posed in front of the building before the renovation. This is from the Ann Arbor Sun newspaper, 7-27-71. According to Joe Tiboni, those pictured are: (On the left of the door) Laura [last name unknown], Matt Lampe, Joe Tiboni. (Right of the Door): Nancy Lessin (front row) Tanner, Michael Pollack, Robin Giber and Blue. Between Tanner and Pollack, Gayle Johnson. Others unknown. Photo by David Fenton. Photo courtesy of the John and Leni Sinclair papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Caption 2: The photo above, taken during an art show at the Ballroom, shows John Sinclair on the left and Walden Simper in the foreground, flanked by Bob Sheffield (standing), others unknown. Photographer unknown, but probably David Fenton. Photo courtesy of the John and Leni Sinclair papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.