Side by side, separate resorts catered to blacks and whites

People once came from all over southeastern Michigan to play golf, dance, swim, and fish at two resorts on neighboring lakes north of Chelsea. But the guests rarely mingled, because one group was white and the other was black.

Both resorts were established in the 1920s—Inverness, on North Lake, by a white former Detroit business owner, and Wild Goose Lake, a short hop away, by three black families from Ann Arbor. The latter was born in controversy. When word first got out that some farmers were considering selling their land to blacks, neighbors circulated a petition urging them not to do so. When grocer Perry Noah refused to sign—he reportedly told the petitioners, “My father died in the Civil War to free these people”—his store was briefly boycotted.

The sellers, descendants of the area’s original settlers, refused to be intimidated. And that is how dual resorts, each with its own country club and a beach, grew up almost side by side.

The land around the two small lakes, about five miles north of Chelsea, was first permanently settled in 1833. Charles and John Glenn and their sister Jane Burk¬hart came from upstate New York with their spouses and children. Charles Glenn reportedly had decided to move west after his first wife and two young children were killed when flax she was spinning caught fire.

The siblings bought adjoining tracts of government land and built houses. Charles Glenn’s original house at 13175 North Territorial Road still stands. John Glenn had a fancier Italianate house down the road. The Burkharts settled just south of Wild Goose Lake.

Other settlers quickly followed, enough to justify a post office at North Lake in 1836. That year the Glenn family organized a Methodist church. Nineteen people gathered at John Glenn’s house for the first service, with Charles Glenn presiding as lay preacher. Ten years later the two brothers built a small church that also served as a school. In 1866 John Glenn deeded land for what is now the North Lake United Methodist Church. He also gave land for a cemetery on Riker Road.

The land around the lakes, hilly and full of glacial gravel, was best suited to fruit farming. Charles’s son Benjamin Glenn went into the nursery business with his cousins William and Robert, starting apple trees from seeds they procured at a cider mill. (At Wild Goose Lake today, aged apple, pear, and cherry trees are the remnants of a much larger orchard.)

The local Grange built a hall that served as the community’s social center. The North Lake Band, which played in neighboring towns, was based at the Grange Hall from about 1897 to 1906. In 1925 the North Lake church bought the building for $1 and moved it to church property to use as a Sunday school, dining room, and kitchen.

In 1920, Doug Fraser, president of American Brass and Iron Company in Detroit, retired and moved to North Lake. Fraser had ulcers, and his daughter Lauretta had contracted whooping cough, tonsillitis, and diphtheria; he hoped farming would be a healthier way of life for them both.

Fraser and his wife, Laura, bought John Glenn’s seven-bedroom Italianate farmhouse from John’s grandson Fred Glenn. The dining room was so large, Lauretta Fraser Sockow remembers, that the family preferred to eat meals in the sunroom next to the kitchen.

Sockow, now in her nineties, remembers how she loved the rural area as a child. She attended the one-room North Lake School at 1300 Hankerd, now a private home. Her family joined the North Lake church and sometimes hosted barn dances, playing music on their Victrola. Fraser grew apples, strawberries, raspberries, and currants and also raised pigs, but his pride and joy, according to Sockow, was his registered cattle.

Unfortunately, her father eventually developed an allergy to them. “His arms swelled up to the size of a football,” Sockow recalls, and he had to sell his animals and machinery and find another way of making a living.
His property reached all the way to North Lake, so in 1927 Fraser decided to start a resort. Invoking his Scottish heritage, he called it Inverness and gave its streets such names as Glencoe, Aberdeen, and Bramble Brae. He divided the land between his house and the lake into lots for cottages and set up the deeds so that all owners would have lake privileges. He put in tennis courts behind his house, and he built a nine-hole golf course, expanding into additional land he’d bought along North Territorial Road. He moved his family to Ann Arbor and turned the former Glenn home into the golf course’s clubhouse.

Fraser’s gamble paid off. In the 1920s, greater prosperity and rising car ownership created a new demand for resort communities, even in once-remote areas like North Lake. Ads for Inverness noted it was “only sixty miles from Detroit,” and Fraser encouraged potential buyers to drive out for the day to sample activities, such as pony rides for children and dances for adults (the clubhouse living room was big enough to accommodate two sets of square dances simultaneously). Sockow remembers that one neighbor might play the piano and another the violin.
Sylvia Gilbert, who today lives in the house built for the farm’s hired man, says the original clubhouse “was gorgeous. There was a beautiful powder room upstairs, wicker furniture. You could eat in the dining room or the sun porch.” Gilbert recalls dances where people would dress in kilts, and Halloween parties with elaborate decorations. Her house has since been moved from its original spot to 7095 Glencoe, around the corner.

Inverness attracted people of means from Detroit and Ann Arbor. Doctors, dentists, and businessmen built large cottages. Laurence Noah, Perry Noah’s son, earned money by doing chores for the summer people, such as delivering wood and taking away garbage. In the winter, Laurence and his father cut ice from North Lake and stored it to sell in the summer.

A mile away, at Wild Goose Country Club, the members enjoyed the same amenities as at Inverness—swimming, dancing, fishing, and golf. But for the people who frequented it, Wild Goose represented a much rarer opportunity.

“Blacks had no place to go,” explains Mercedes Baker Snyder. Her father, Charles Baker, along with Donald Grayer and Iva Pope, bought the land and organized the resort. Baker, co-owner of the Ann Arbor Foundry, was interested in the venture because “he loved golf, and blacks couldn’t play at public courses,” explains Mercedes’s husband, Charles Snyder.
The partners developed the club on the 250-acre farm of Sam and Fred Schultz, who were descendants of the original settlers, the Glenns. The petition drive that residents of North Lake started to keep out the black resort community didn’t deter the Schultzes. After the sale was completed on June 1, 1927, the Wild Goose Country Club was formed, with ninety-three lots for cottages and a stretch of communal lakeshore with a fishing dock. As at Inverness, the original farmhouse eventually was converted to a clubhouse. A nine-hole golf course began behind the clubhouse and went across Wild Goose Lake Road toward the lake. A dance hall was built on a hill.

Pawley and Carrie Grayer Sherman, Charles Baker’s father- and mother-in-law, became the first residents when they moved from Ann Arbor to the farmhouse. Mercedes Snyder, who came out for weekends to visit her grandparents, remembers it had three bedrooms downstairs, two big living rooms, and a big kitchen, but no plumbing. Her dad would play golf while the children romped around, walked in the woods, or swam in the lake.
The first two cottages, one built by the Shermans, the other by Donald Grayer, were log cabins made from Sears Roebuck kits. A couple more cabins were built before the Depression. The rest of the eighteen or so members merely owned unbuilt lots, which sold for $100. “At that time most Ann Arbor blacks worked in fraternities or cafeterias,” explains Charles Snyder. “Fifty cents an hour was considered a good wage, so they couldn’t afford to build.”

Most of the members were relatives or friends of the organizers. A much larger group, consisting of other friends and extended family members, came to visit and swim, dance, or golf. Visitors often traveled for hours to get there; in those days there weren’t many recreational facilities open to blacks.

Coleman Castro used to come in the 1930s to fish with Don Grayer Jr., his future brother-in-law. Ann Arbor resident Donald Calvert recalls coming out in the late 1940s or early 1950s to swim with friends at Wild Goose Lake. Back then, he says, the resorts favored by his white classmates, such as Zukey Lake or Groomes Beach at Whitmore Lake, did not allow blacks.

In its heyday, Wild Goose hosted big dances organized by Jim and Harriet Moore (a Sherman daughter), who moved into the clubhouse after the senior Shermans moved out. The public dances attracted blacks from all over southeastern Michigan. U-M dentistry graduate D. J. Grimes, who was one of the first black dentists in Detroit and a cousin of Jim Moore, told his Detroit friends about the dances and also put Moore in touch with good bands. Ann Arbor residents would go home after the dances, but the Detroit visitors often stayed, sleeping in rooms the Moores rented to them, either in the clubhouse or in another house they built across the road.

The lakeside resorts’ golden age was brief. Once the Depression hit, “people didn’t need cottages. People didn’t need to play golf,” says Sockow. Sales at Inverness dropped so precipitously that her father had to incorporate and bring in other investors to keep going. Although he ceded control of the development to a board of directors, he kept managing the country club until his death in 1952.

Cottage building completely stopped at Wild Goose Lake during the Depression. The dance hall was knocked over during a big storm in the 1930s and was never rebuilt. Russell Calvert, Donald’s brother, remembers that the golf course was still there in the late 1940s and 1950s but had become less popular because by then blacks could play on municipal courses. It eventually fell into disuse and is now overgrown.

North Lake residents and Wild Goose Country Club members apparently reached a state of grudging coexistence after the failure of the initial petition drive. Wild Goose people patronized North Lake businesses and report they were treated well. But the two groups did not socialize much.
After World War II, building at both lakes resumed. The prewar cottages were winterized and often enlarged, and the old prejudices began to ease. In the 1960s a Wild Goose resident, Bessie Russell, joined the North Lake church. “They were glad to have her,” recalls Mercedes Snyder. “They needed someone to play the organ.”

Today, both former resorts have turned into bedroom communities where working people and retirees live year round. At North Lake, the Inverness Country Club is going strong, with a waiting list to join. Buying a house in the original subdivision bestows automatic membership. The clubhouse has been replaced with a more modern building that looks like a ranch house.

The Wild Goose clubhouse was sold and is again a home. Much of the communal land, including the golf course, has also been sold and is divided into residential lots awaiting development.

The biggest change at Wild Goose Lake is that the population is now about 50 percent white. “As older blacks die, young blacks don’t want to live in the country,” explains Charles Snyder. But residents still often have family connections—including some that cross the old color line. Members of one of the new white families are the in-laws of Coleman Castro’s son, Tommie.

7-5-1 Doug Fraser boating on North Lake with daughter Lauren “Courtesy Sylvia Gilbert

7-5-2 Glenn House, later the country club “Courtesy Sylvia Gilbert”

7-5-3 Inverness clubhouse today “Courtesy Adrian Wylie” 

7-5-4 Shirley, Sherman, Carl, and Mercedes Baker at Wild Goose Lake with their father, Charles, and grandfather Pawley Sherman. “Courtesy Mercedes Snyder”

7-5-5 Wild Goose sign “Courtesy Adrian Wylie”

7-5-6 Original plat for Inverness “Courtesy Sylvia Gilbert”

7-5-7 The first cottages at Wild Goose Country Club were log cabins built from Sears Roebuck kits “Courtesy Mercedes Synder”

7-5-8 Mercedes Baker Snyder and her husband, Charles, still enjoy the lake. “Courtesy Adrian Wylie”

The Germans in Ann Arbor

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

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

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

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

German pioneers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peasants and political refugees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A missionary from Basel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Settling the Old West Side

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A German society

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Decline and rebirth

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's another regeneration."

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

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

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

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

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

Its headquarters on Fifth Ave. attracted hoboes and passersby alike

Saturday night was once the busiest time of the week for Ann Arbor merchants, because that was when farmers would drive to town to do their weekly errands. As families milled about, shopping and catching up with the news, the Salvation Army brass band would march from the army's headquarters at Fifth and Washington up to Main Street, playing hymns and summoning the crowds to open-air services.

"It was part of Saturday in Ann Arbor," says John Hathaway, who grew up here in the 1930's. He remembers that when he attended Perry Elementary School as a child, Salvation Army kids were always eager to enroll in the music program so they could prepare for playing in the band.

Mary Culver recalls that when she was in college, the band would stop outside bars frequented by students. After a few hymns, a band member would come through the bar with an upside-down tambourine, collecting money as the students sang, "Put a nickel in the drum, save another drunken bum." Culver remembers it as a good-natured scene, but doubts that the Salvation Army got much money, since the students of that era had little to spare.

Virginia Trevithick, a retired Salvation Army employee and a former band member, recalls, "It was a nice little band, about fifteen members, all good musicians. On Saturday when the stores stayed open late we held street meetings in front of Kresge's at Main and Washington [now Mongolian Barbeque]. There would be a big crowd."

William and Catherine Booth held the first Salvation Army street meetings in England in 1865. Designed to attract people who would not attend more conventional churches, the Booths' services combined elements of the English music hall and religious evangelism. Finding that it was hard for people struggling to survive to even think about religion, the Booths also began the Salvation Army's social ministry, providing food and shelter for those in need. They organized along military lines to establish clear lines of command, and in an age characterized by a love of the military, the style appealed to many recruits.

The Salvation Army arrived in the United States in 1880, and the Ann Arbor branch was founded in 1896 by a Captain Gifford and a Lieutenant Handicott. An Ann Arbor News article forty years later reported that one of their original recruits, William Hatfield, was still active, especially at meetings held at the County Farm (the poorhouse). Services were also held at the county jail. It took a while, both nationally and locally, for the Salvation Army to be appreciated for the good work it did, and in the early days members were frequently abused. Ann Arbor lore includes stories of their being pelted with stones, rotten eggs, and tomatoes. According to one account, a businessman once drove his horse and buggy right through a band of Salvation Army soldiers.

In its first three decades, the army met in various rented quarters downtown. By 1926, after a fund drive, it was able to build a permanent headquarters downtown. A 1940 paper in the Bentley Library, written by one of Emil Lorch's architecture students, Beth O'Roke, attributes the design to a Chicago architect, A. C. Fehlow, who was a friend of the district commander. According to this paper, Fehlow went on to design many other army headquarters in the Midwest.

Fehlow put the main entrance right on the corner, accessible from either Washington or Fifth. The office was just inside and up a half-flight of stairs, easy for transients and people in need to find. Beyond that was the sanctuary, which held 150. The floor above was used for Sunday school, Bible classes, and youth activities; the lower level was a caretaker's apartment and a room for donated clothes and household goods.

Originally, the local Salvation Army took as its province family welfare. When the United Way was formed in 1921, the army, as a charter member, agreed to concentrate on offering emergency help. Local families hit with unexpected misfortune might be given food and clothing, furniture and dishes. The army also ministered to transients seeking help. Trevithick remembers that the "hoboes" who rode the rails during the Depression would get off at Ann Arbor and walk up to the Salvation Army, where she would give them vouchers good in certain restaurants. She sent those needing a bed for the night to a boardinghouse at 501 North Main. "They were never a bother, just once or twice," she says of the transients.

In addition to people in need, the central location drew passersby. For instance, Marion Lutz was walking by one day and, hearing the music, went in and was warmly welcomed. She eventually became very active. Later, her husband, William Lutz, a Methodist minister, became a counselor at Arbor Haven, the Salvation Army's shelter for homeless families.

After fifty years, the army outgrew the downtown space, and like many other churches, moved to where there was space to expand and to park. In 1978 they dedicated their new citadel on West Huron at Arbana. Paul Wilson, commander at the time, explains that the new facility was about double the size of the old one and handicapped-accessible, so they could offer a fuller senior program, serve meals rather than send people off with vouchers, provide office space for six social workers, and offer craft space and a gym.

The Salvation Army still has a band, but it no longer plays on street corners. That ended in the 1940's, Wilson says, the victim of increased traffic and the high cost of insurance.

The army's social service has become more sophisticated over the years. Says the current local co-commander, Gary Felton (who shares the office, literally and figuratively, with his wife, Karen Felton), "Where it used to be a bag of groceries and God bless you, now we try to figure out why they come in week after week." But in many ways the Salvation Army is the same as always. Members still visit hospitals and nursing homes. They still give toys to needy children at Christmas and clothes at Easter. And they still collect money in kettles at Christmas. The kettle drive, begun in 1892 in San Francisco, provides half of the local budget. The rest is supplied by United Way, contributions, and money from their congregation.

The army sold its downtown building to Dr. Michael Papo, who redid the inside and built an addition on what had been the parking lot on Fifth Avenue. The only reminders of the building's first use are the cornerstone, which states "Erected to the Glory of God in 1926," and the Salvation Army logo on the top of the center tower.

Four stained-glass windows that originally graced the tower were moved to the new sanctuary in 1979. Up where two of the windows once were, Jeffrey Michael Powers takes advantage of the natural light to use the space as a makeup area in his beauty spa. Although his use is entirely different, Powers says he appreciates the building's history: "A rental point was that the building was graced by the presence of God for a moment."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The only reminders of the building's first use are the cornerstone, which states "Erected to the Glory of God in 1926," and the Salvation Army logo on the top of the center tower.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: From 1926 to 1978, the Salvation Army worshiped God and ministered to the poor from the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Street.

When book groups click, participants gain deeper insights into literature and sometimes, into themselves.

Ann Arbor is a place where people like to read -- a town of "read-a-holics," in the words of Cindy Osborne of Little Professor. "A lot of our customers are big readers," agrees Dallas Moore of Borders. "Some we see in here almost every day."

Reading is, of course, a solitary activity. But more and more, the city's readers are getting together to talk about the books they've read, sharing both ideas and one another's company. In homes and bookstores, in churches, clubs, and restaurants, Ann Arborites are meeting to discuss everything from Hamlet to The Bridges of Madison County.

The Observer's unscientific poll identified at least sixty local book discussion groups, a third of which have sprung up in the last five years.

Local historic preservationist Louisa Pieper jokingly calls her book group "Gossip Incorporated." It started as a bridge group. "We got tired of bridge and ran out of gossip, so books were a good al≠ternative," says Pieper.

At First Unitarian Church, the women's reading group became so intrigued by Clarissa Pinkola Estes's Women Who Run with the Wolves, that they organized a workshop based on it. Expecting about fifteen, they were amazed when fifty-six women enrolled in "A Gathering of Wild and Wise Women."

"We read about the gay experiences of other people," says Joel, a member of a reading group that's an offshoot of Our Little Group, a gay men's social club. Members of a group focusing on works with lesbian authors and themes jokingly called themselves "Dykes Who Read." Joan Innes is a member of a group that specializes in nineteenth-century British literature. "I love that century!" Innes says. "So much happened. The world changed forever." A descendant of George Eliot's husband once came to a club's meeting to display one of Eliot's paintings and subsequently joined the group himself.

While dramatically different in membership and purpose, the book groups that work are satisfying for the same reasons. When they click, participants gain deeper insights into literature and, depending on the subject matter, into themselves.

Literature meets real life

At nine o'clock on a Friday night, four African-American women arrive at Sylvia Holman's Orchard Hills home. They exchange news and enjoy a generous snack of chicken, grapes, strawberries, and cheese before drifting into the cozy family room.

This month's book, Pushed Back to Strength, is a memoir by Gloria Wade-Gayles, a professor of English and women's studies at Spelman College. It's clear that Wade-Gayles has hit a nerve. Discussing the early parts about the author's childhood in segregated Memphis, Tennessee, the women praise her gutsiness. Made to sit in the upstairs "colored" section of a movie theater, she rebelled by throwing popcorn over the balcony rail onto the white people below.

At the same time, the women are interested in Wade-Gayles's discussion of the advantages of segregation, including the tightly knit, supportive all-black neighborhoods. "You were 'Amened' into high esteem," recalls Regina Mason, a Ph.D. candidate in educational administration. "We were told, 'You are part of this community--you won't go out and embarrass us!'"

This group has been meeting for a dozen years; most of the ten original members worked at Mack School. Although two members have left town, and everyone has moved on to other schools and jobs, the group has endured. It is a very tight unit that rarely allows visitors because members' reactions to the readings are intensely personal.

"We read anything that deals with black women," says Mason. Past selections have included books by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Terry McMillan, and Octavia Butler. They also read the first book known to be written by an American black, Clotel: or The President's Daughter, a narrative of slave life in the United States written in 1853 by William Wells Brown.

Hour after hour, the group analyzes Pushed Back to Strength. At 12:30 a.m., schools administrator Betty Schaffner decides to call it a night. The others stay to discuss the last few chapters. It's not unusually late for the group. When they discussed educator Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, they talked until four in the morning.

Bodice rippers and beyond

The mood is lighter one Sunday evening when four women, all white, meet at Little Professor Book Company. At the back of the store, where a couch and several leather chairs are grouped invitingly around a working fireplace, the romance book discussion group comes to order.

Tonight's book: Bewitching Minx, by Janis Laden. In contrast to the African-American women's group, none of these participants knew each other before joining the group, which was organized by the store. Anita Morgan, a history teacher at Huron High, leads the discussion.

"I liked the characters," says Wynn Hausrath. "The mother-in-law was great!"

"There was too much bickering," says another member, twenty-year-old Shira. "In lots of romances, they argue too much."

"I liked the way that the heroine was a real person with her own viewpoint," says Nancy, who like Shira asks to be identified only by her first name. Moran replies that it's a trend in recent romances for the heroines to be older and more independent.

The requests for anonymity are a reminder that some people sneer at romances and the people who read them. The members' comments show that they, too, are well aware of the limits of romance novels--the formulaic style, the familiar characters, the predictable conclusions. But they enjoy the books just the same. One member says she alternates between reading romances and mysteries, depending on whether she's in the mood for "relational stuff versus putting clues together." And Shira notes that she went out and bought a copy of Tom Jones, the 1749 novel by Henry Fielding, after reading about it in a romance.

After their discussion, the four women peruse the Little Professor's romance section, deciding what to read next. When they return with several possibilities, I'm surprised. Instead of the usual "bodice ripper" covers I expected, these have decorous, tasteful designs--a decanter and two roses on a blue background on one. Lifting that cover, which doesn't go quite to the edge of the book, I discover a second cover beneath it. This one is a photo of the male model Fabio, shirtless, embracing a woman who is falling out of her dress. The extra cover isn't exactly a plain brown wrapper, but it evidently makes the book less embarrassing to carry in public.

Besides the romance readers' group, Little Professor sponsors a black literature group, a mystery group, and a contemporary literature group. Other bookstores have gotten into the act. At the request of their customers, the owners of Aunt Agatha's mystery and crime bookstore lead a mystery discussion group that meets in the store.

Borders for years has been helping existing book groups select and order books, but until recently had resisted pleas to actually set them up. Last year it relented to the extent of helping groups get organized, but it still doesn't provide leaders. "We tell them they can do it on their own," Dallas Moore explains. "They don't need an authority to tell them the themes, the hidden meanings." Currently, Borders sponsors an international fiction group, a Victorian literature group, and a vampire fiction group. After an organizational meeting at Borders, the groups are meeting outside of the store, at the public library or at coffeehouses around town.

Through the public schools' Rec and Ed department, the city itself sponsors classic and contemporary book discussion groups. And organizations like the U-M Faculty Women's Club, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and the Women's City Club have been sponsoring groups for decades.

Book groups often start at local churches and religious organizations. Every Thursday at the local Jewish Community Center, senior citizens tear into such heavy-duty classics as The Scarlet Letter, Gulliver's Travels, and Pere Goriot, under the tutelage of retired English professor Sidney Warschausky. Members take the group seriously. JCC senior coordinator Yehudit Newman says it's not uncommon for members to skip the center's lunchtime speaker on Thursdays to hole up in her office and finish their assigned reading. The group once started to read the Bible as literature but got into so many arguments that they gave it up.

Last year Borders relented to the extent of helping groups get organized, but it still doesn't provide leaders. "We tell them they can do it on their own," Dallas Moore explains. "They don't need an authority to tell them the themes, the hidden meanings."

Booked for fun

Not every group is so intense. By far the most common book groups in Ann Arbor are loosely organized collections of friends. They read a wide variety of books, usually contemporary fiction, and generally meet in one another's homes about once a month.

Reading lists vary widely, but a few titles are mentioned again and again: Like Water for Chocolate, the works of Barbara Kingsolver, and Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. Popular nonfiction titles include Jill Ker Conway's The Road from Coorain and Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem. Books made into movies are also popular, such as Orlando, Howards End, The Remains of the Day, and The Age of Innocence.

At many meetings, though, discussing the month's book is second to the socializing. "We spend ten minutes talking about the book--fifteen if everyone's read it--and three hours talking about everything else," jokes Betty Kirksey, who is in a group with five other women. While friendship leads some groups into personal topics, it also makes for richer literary discussions, because friends are more comfortable sharing personal experiences and insights related to the reading. After a women's group read Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger, in which the main character's wartime romance influences the rest of her life, each recalled a man in her own past who had dramatically affected her life.

"We know each other's stories," says Margaret Dawson, part of a group whose founding members were all nurses. Members of one group of women that has been meeting for thirteen years have helped one another survive two divorces, three pregnancies, five house purchases (a big step because the buyers were single women), and one diagnosis of breast cancer. The night before that woman's surgery, the group met in her hospital room.

No wonder many longtime members find their groups essential to their lives. Says Janet Chown, "After I read the book, I can hardly wait to get to the meeting and talk about it. I tell my husband we can never move away from Ann Arbor because I can't leave the book club."

The male minority
Most local book groups are exclusively female. Sometimes, that status reflects a conscious decision. "We're mean about [excluding men]," says Joan Weisman, whose group meets on Sunday mornings. "We all have nice husbands who are not macho, but they don't read what we do."

More often, though, women predominate in book groups because men just haven't been as interested. At an organizational meeting for Borders' international fiction discussion group, 90 percent of the attendees were female.

But lately, some Ann Arbor men, seeing how much pleasure their wives and women friends derive from their groups, are starting to form their own. Investment analyst Doug Gross modeled his book discussion group after his wife's group. He found three like-minded men, two of whom he had met while working on his M.B.A. at the U-M: Tony Glinke, owner of Ann Arbor Plastics, and Todd Doenitz, a structural engineer. Mike Mayotti, a civil engineer, learned of the group through his wife, who works with Gross.

"We're not a bunch of sensitive, caring guys," Glinke insists. "But when we get to know each other, we talk freely."

One rainy evening, the group meets at Palio on Main Street. After ordering desserts (cannoli, gelato, sherbet) and coffee or beer, they settle down to a serious discussion of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome.

As with the women's groups, the discussion at first sounds as if it could be taking place in an English class. But then the men begin to get more personal, relating the book's themes to their own lives.

The social pressures that forced Ethan Frome to stay with his wife, Zenobia, despite the fact that he loved another woman, remind several members of their own small-town childhoods. "The social constraints in a community like that are stronger," comments Gross, who grew up in Adrian. Todd Doenitz, who grew up in an even smaller town--Wayela, Illinois, population 550--explains that in a small town no one is sheltered from gossip. But they agree that Ethan's tormented choice is still topical. They discuss a contemporary example of such a situation, involving an au pair girl's effect on a marriage. Gross sums it up: "There but for the grace of God go I. What do you do if you have to work harder to have a relationship than you want?"

Food for thought

Even during the most serious discussions, food is seldom far away. The men meet at restaurants. For women's groups that meet in members' homes, the hostess usually serves refreshments. The AAUW afternoon group and the Women's City Club book group both have lunch in the City Club dining room. While many of the groups end the year with a potluck, Margaret Dawson's group has one at every meeting. "Nurses are food-oriented," she explains. "It's part of the nurturing complex."

But these being reading groups, even the food is likely to have a literary flair. Participants in the brown bag reading group at Washtenaw Intermediate School District bring their own lunches to eat while they talk, but someone always brings a dessert based on the month's book--Middle Eastern confections when they read Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk and sweet potato pie when they read Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First Hundred Years. For another group that meets in the evening, the hostess served food mentioned in Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence: goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil. In a classics reading group, a participant of Irish descent brought Irish soda bread when they discussed Yeats's poetry.

It's literally food for thought. "The book club provides an opportunity to explore ourselves and each other," sums up book club member Jane Peterson. "And to eat wonderful desserts."

[Photo caption from original print edition: After members of this African-American women's book group read Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, the discussion was so intense that the meeting lasted until 4 a.m.]

[Photo caption from original print edition: Men are scarce in most book discussion groups. Doug Gross (far right) was inspired to start this group when he saw how much his wife enjoyed hers.]

A living monument to feminism’s first wave

“It is estimated that over 5,000 men pass through the doors of the Union every day. They meet around the cafeteria tables, they read together in the lounging rooms, the Pendleton Library, and swim together in the swimming pool.” In striking contrast, “the girls have a little corner of the upper hall of Barbour Gymnasium partitioned off for the League offices where only a small committee may gather at a time.”

The year was 1926, and the speaker, Mary Henderson, was advocating construction of a building for the Women’s League, the female counterpart to the all-male Michigan Union. The alumnae she was addressing scarcely needed to be reminded of the unequal status of women at the university. In 1870, U-M placed itself in the forefront of American colleges by admitting women. Since then, however, it had fallen behind the rapid gains women were making in society at large.

In 1919, after a fifty-year battle by America’s first generation of feminists, Congress approved a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote and sent it to the states for ratification. Yet even as they took a giant step toward equality on the national scene, women remained second-class citizens at the U-M. The only facilities for female students were two dorms (Martha Cook and Helen Newberry) and a few sororities. Most women lived scattered around town with families or in rooming houses, “where they have no opportunity to come into contact with the more refining and more highly cultural influences,” in the words of another League proponent.

So in 1919, the Women’s League started seriously discussing building a place of their own. In 1921 they asked the Alumnae Council (of which Mary Henderson was secretary) to support the effort. The council, in turn, petitioned the regents.

The regents approved the concept and offered to provide the land, but required that all other costs be covered by donations. The goal was $1 million—$600,000 for construction, $150,000 for furnishings, and $250,000 for an endowment to support the building’s operation.

The women raised money in many small ways. Students made flapper beads out of lamp pulls, hemmed handkerchiefs, and even shined shoes (a fund-raiser christened “She Stoops to Conquer”). Some double-bunked so that they could rent their rooms out on football weekends. Students and alumnae alike sold all sorts of small items, including “freshies” (thin leaves of paper in booklet form with films of face powder between the pages), pineapple-cloth linens from Hawaii, and League playing cards. Paul Robeson gave a benefit performance of Porgy (the play that Gershwin’s opera was based on) in Detroit, and Clara Clemens, daughter of Mark Twain, toured major Michigan cities performing Joan of Arc.

But the big money was raised by Mary Henderson, a U-M grad and the wife of the director of university extension. In a reminiscence for the League’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Mary Frances Gross characterized Henderson as “determined and ruthless in getting what she wanted.” Henderson traveled all over to talk to alumnae groups and potential donors, somehow convincing the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce to underwrite expenses. “Whenever she heard of a possible donor, or one who could afford to give, she always had a contact, and off she would go. And she always came back with a contribution,” recalled Gross.

“Toward the end of the campaign, after consulting with the architects, she [Henderson] was in her office and still trying to think of someone to contact for a large donation so that a theater could be included in the plans and building,” Gross recounted. “All of a sudden she thought of Gordon Mendelssohn of Detroit. He was wealthy and had a real interest in the theater. She immediately phoned Detroit but learned that he was in Europe. Securing his address there, she composed an obviously successful cablegram and sent it to him. In a few days she had her answer by cable. He would give $50,000 if the theater would always bear his mother’s name.” And so the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater was born.

By 1927 the women had gathered $1 million in gifts and pledges. Eliza Mosher, first dean of women, turned the first shovelful of dirt at the ground-breaking on June 18, 1927. The cornerstone, filled with items the women had sold as fund-raisers, was laid on March 29, 1928.

The League was designed by Allen and Irving Pond, the same Ann Arbor–born architects who had designed the Michigan Union. Compared with the Union, “the woman’s building will be more gracious and more feminine in its atmosphere, but the underlying strength will be there,” Allen Pond wrote. “The day of the purely charming young lady is past.” The Ponds also designed many of the building’s decorative touches, including the statues above the front entrance (female figures identified as Character and Friendship), the stained glass windows, and the murals. Allen Pond, sadly, never lived to see his creation completed. The building was dedicated on June 14, 1929, two months after his death.

Henderson ran the League for its first year on behalf of the Alumnae Council. But with the arrival of the Great Depression, even she had trouble getting pledges redeemed. Though the cost of the building and furnishings was in hand, the promised endowment was never collected. Left without operating funds, the alumnae had no choice but to give the building to the university in 1930.

Under Dr. Ethel McCormick, the U-M’s social director of women, the League nonetheless became exactly what its founders had wanted: the center of women’s activities on campus. Mary Marsh Matthews, who attended the university in the 1950s, remembers McCormick as “a small person, energetic, funny, fierce, but lovable. She made the League part of our lives.” The building hosted orientations, teas, dances, meetings, and recreational classes (such as bridge and ballroom dancing), but the real bonding activity was the annual play put on by each class: Frosh Weekend, Soph Cab (for cabaret), the Junior Girls’ Play, and Senior Night.

The school year ended with the Drama Season, which always followed the musical May Festival and attracted the same caliber of discerning audience from far beyond Ann Arbor. The Drama Season ran from 1929 to the late 1950s; Ted Heusel, who directed the series in its later years, recalls Grace Kelly appearing in Ring around the Moon, Charlton Heston in Macbeth, and E.G. Marshall in The Crucible.
Drama Season actors stayed at the League’s third-floor hotel, as did many musical performers appearing at nearby Hill Auditorium. Aileen Mengel-Schulze, who worked in the League while a student in the late 1940s, recalls seeing Danny Kaye, Skitch Henderson, and Eugene Ormandy. Another alumna remembers sitting in the lounge and hearing some wonderful piano music in an adjoining room. The pianist turned out to be Van Cliburn.

In 1954 the Union signaled a new age by letting women enter the building--though at first only through a side door. By 1965 both buildings were fully integrated. To eliminate needless duplication, the governing bodies of the Union and the League were merged to create the University Activities Center, today part of the Office of Student Affairs under vice-president Maureen Hartford.

In 1997, the Friends of the League was organized to increase student and community appreciation and use of the historic building. They’re researching the League’s history, restoring the enclosed garden on the building’s east side, and offering monthly docent-led tours of the building. Call 647–7463 for more information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was it a case of religious one-upmanship?

Newberry Hall, the miniature stone castle at 434 South State, is a fitting home for the U-M's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. But the sumptuous structure wasn't built as a museum, or even by the university. It was completed in 1891 as the headquarters of the U-M Student Christian Association.

Most early American universities were founded by churches. Even at the state-financed U-M, organized religion was a powerful force during the nineteenth century. The board of regents' insistence that religious indoctrination was essential to higher education was partly responsible for their dismissal of Henry Tappan, the university's visionary first president. And the Student Christian Association's palatial headquarters very likely also reflected a lively case of sectarian one-upmanship.

When the SCA was organized in 1858, "there was no Union, no League, no deans of men or women, no counselors in religion or workers with foreign students," notes C. Grey Austin in his 1957 booklet, A Century of Religion at the University of Michigan. The group became a social as well as religious center of campus. It sponsored lectures, published a student handbook, ran its own employment and room-listing service, and established a library open to members and guests.

By its twenty-fifth anniversary, the interdenominational SCA had over 300 members--more than 20 percent of the student body at the time and twice the number that could fit into its meeting place in South College. As an anniversary project, members decided to raise money to build a permanent home. They purchased a lot on State Street across from University Hall, predecessor of Angell Hall, and in 1887 began construction.

The SCA's first plans called for a simple, one-story structure. But at some point the group's ambitions expanded drastically. Austin's book doesn't say why, but SCA leaders could hardly have missed the sight of a rival student religious center rising just three blocks to the north, at the corner of State and Huron. Completed in 1887, it was renamed Harris Hall in 1888 in honor of its sponsor, the Right Reverend Samuel Smith Harris, Episcopal Bishop of Michigan.

The evidence of a rivalry between Newberry and Harris halls is all circumstantial. But the resemblances between the two are too numerous to be entirely coincidental. The SCA first discussed building a headquarters in September 1883. The first mention of building an Episcopal student center appears in the minutes of St. Andrew's Church one month later. Harris Hall was built of brick in the then-fashionable Richardson Romanesque style. Newberry Hall was built in the same style, but with stone. Both centers had parlors and libraries on the first floor and auditoriums upstairs. Harris Hall's seated 500; Newberry Hall's seated 550.

The expanded Newberry Hall was finished as impressively inside as out, with inlaid wood floors and tile fireplaces. For the head of the imposing central staircase, the SCA commissioned a Tiffany window in an abstract, Art Nouveau style--one of only two Tiffany windows in Ann Arbor.

In all, the SCA raised $40,000 to build Newberry Hall. That's exactly the amount that Bishop Harris raised for Harris Hall. The Episcopalians' list of donors included fur baron John Jacob Astor. The SCA's largest gift came from Detroiter Helen Newberry in honor of her late husband, Judge John Newberry, U-M class of 1849. Newberry Hall is named for him. (After Helen Newberry's death, their children donated the money to build the U-M's Helen Newberry Residence, next door to Newberry Hall.)

The SCA flourished in its stone castle. In 1917, it built and moved into an even bigger headquarters, Lane Hall, at the corner of State and Washington, and made Newberry Hall available to the U-M. During the terrible flu epidemic of 1918, Newberry was used as an infirmary. In the 1920's the U-M used it for classroom space before turning it into an archaeological museum in 1928. Francis Kelsey, the museum's eventual namesake, was a Latin professor at the U-M from 1889 until his death in 1927. He was both a distinguished scholar (his edition of Caesar's Gallic Wars was a standard text for many years) and an inspired fund-raiser who single-handedly launched and built the U-M's Near East collection. His greatest coup was persuading Detroit attorney Horace Rackham, one of the founding investors in Ford Motor Company, to finance a U-M excavation at Karanis, Egypt, a farming community about fifty miles southwest of Cairo that for several centuries was part of the Roman Empire. Findings from the eleven-year dig--textiles, coins, glass, papyri, wood, dolls, pottery, and terra-cotta lamps--account for almost half of the Kelsey's holdings.

The SCA fell on hard times in the irreligious 1930's. In 1937 it deeded Lane Hall and Newberry Hall to the U-M, and its services were taken over by a new U-M Student Religious Association. The association was later absorbed into what is now the Office of Ethics and Religion. (A similar fate befell Harris Hall: it was leased rent-free to the USO during World War II, then rented to the U-M for decades before St. Andrew's finally sold it in 1974. Beautifully renovated in the late 1970's, it's now home to Harris Advertising.)

The first floor of the Kelsey Museum still looks much as it did in the SCA days. The upstairs has been divided into offices and storage areas. However, the stage is still discernible, and the floor, which slopes slightly, is full of drill marks where the auditorium's 550 seats once were bolted down. The Tiffany window, unfortunately, is no longer publicly accessible, but it still graces the north side of the stairwell, now protected from weather and vandals by Plexiglas.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Newberry Hall today (top) and under construction in about 1890 (left). Completion of the ecumenical Christian center was delayed four years to allow fund-raising for a much more lavish building than originally planned. The upgrade may have been spurred by rivalry with the Episcopalians' new student center, Harris Hall (above).