North Fourth Avenue building was the meeting ground of Ann Arbor's Black community The building at 209-211 North Fourth Avenue has played a unique role in the history of Ann Arbor's black community. Now J. D. Hall's barbershop and Birkenstock Shoes, the brick building with the sunburst-topped windows has been a hotel, provided commercial space for black businesses and meeting rooms for black groups, and served as low-income housing. Many of its uses testify to the black community's longtime commitment to helping each other and to having a good time, despite the low wages and de facto segregation that prevailed during its heyday in the 1930's and 1940's. The three-story structure was built in 1899 by Charles Kayser. It was used as a hotel through World War I, run by a long series of managers. At least eight are named in the city directory, most of them listed as "colored"--a designation the publisher seemed to feel necessary at the time. The frequent changes in management imply that no one was making a go of the business. In 1921, the Colored Welfare League bought the building. In a 1978 interview, John Ragland (1905-1981), lawyer for the CWL and sometime tenant of the building, recalled how the purchase came about. "In World War I, black men called into the army felt they were not getting the same recognition accorded to white recruits," recalled Ragland, a 1938 U-M law grad who was for a time the only black lawyer in town. "A group of local black leaders therefore raised money for send-off parties. When the war ended, the money left was used to purchase 209-211 North Fourth." The CWL hoped to pay for the building by renting out rooms. Many black workers were coming to town to work on U-M buildings and on roads and were having trouble finding places to stay. Since the building was in bad shape and needed more extensive repairs than the CWL could afford, the Reverend Ralph M. Gilbert, then pastor of the Second Baptist Church, persuaded the Community Fund (forerunner of United Way) to help pay for rejuvenating the dilapidated building. The CWL raised additional operating money by renting their street-level space to commercial businesses. By 1930 two long-term businesses were in place on the north side of the building--a beauty shop and a barbershop, both run by blacks and catering to black customers. The barbershop, which continues to this day, was originally in the back of the building; it was run by Samuel Elliott, also a member of the CWL. The beauty shop, "Ever-ready," was run by Olive Lowery in the 1930's and by Sadie Harmon, now Sadie Fondren, in the 1940's. The storefront on the south side (209) was used as a restaurant. Room on the second floor was saved for club meetings and social events for the black community. One of the first groups to take advantage of the meeting space was the newly formed Dunbar Center, later to evolve into the Ann Arbor Community Center, now on Main Street. The Black Elks and their women's auxiliary, Daisy Chain Temple No. 212, met there until they bought their own building on Sunset. Other black fraternal groups that met there included the Masons, St. Mary's Lodge No. 4, the Odd Fellows, the Household of Ruth Lodge, Eastern Star, and Isis. The Wild Goose Country Club met there, too. It was made up of black families who owned land on Wild Goose Lake in Lyndon Township. Maids' Night Out, which met every Thursday evening, was open to women employed as servants. Member Edna Williams remembers that they played cards and enjoyed refreshments while exchanging information and lining up rides, especially to Ypsilanti, where they liked to go square dancing. Another group that reflected the limited job options open to blacks was Alpha Sigma Omega, whose name is made up of a letter from each of the three national black fraternities. It was made up of men who worked for white fraternities on the U-M campus. They did charity work for children and the elderly, and they hosted a big party every year--"always at a different lake," Edna Williams recalls, "with a banquet, good music and dancing, and of course, drinking. You'd go prepared to stay all night." In 1937, after many groups moved on to places of their own, part of the upstairs was converted into Josephine's Tea Room, run by a widow named Josephine Williams. She was assisted by another widow, Julia Smith, who took over the business from 1939 to 1943, renaming it Julia's Tea Room. Nellie Monamus, a longtime Ann Arbor resident, remembers the tearoom as "very nice," with good Southern-style food and simple breakfasts. Edna Williams remembers it sponsoring seances as fund-raisers. She says no one took them seriously, but they were a lot of fun. After the tearoom closed, the second floor was made into additional apartments, one the home of Jim Crawford, now the head of the Black Elks. The Colored Welfare League became less of a force in the community as the original members aged or died. By 1966 the Fourth Avenue building was in disrepair and losing money, and J. D. Hall, a young barber in town, offered to buy it. When he discovered that the CWL owed back taxes, and that lots of repairs were needed to bring the building back to code before he could start renting rooms again, Hall remembers, he almost got cold feet--especially since he and his wife were expecting a child. But Hall went ahead, and today he is glad he stayed with it. He has continued to run the building a lot like it was in CWL days. The third floor has six reasonably priced rooms for rent, while the second floor is still used by community groups. (The Platt Road Baptist Church began there.) Recent occupants include Model Cities and the Women's Crisis Center. Currently, it houses the offices of the Community Leaning Post, run by Hall's sister, Lucille Porter. A nonprofit organization, the Leaning Post is best known as a tutoring service for youth with academic problems. It also helps hard-to-place adults find homes and jobs. Hall himself is still chief barber in his shop on the first floor.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: According to the late John Ragland, the Colored Welfare League was formed to give black soldiers a proper send-off in World War I; after the war, the CWL purchased 209-211 North Fourth for housing and meeting space. (In the 1940's photo at upper left, you can just make out the sign for Ragland's own law office upstairs). Barber J. D. Hall owns the building today (above).

When gardening was a civic cause

When the Matthaei Botanical Gardens organized the 1990 Ann Arbor Flower and Garden Show, they revived a local tradition that had lain dormant for forty-nine years. From 1926 to 1941 Ann Arbor was the site of twelve garden shows, beginning with a members' competition organized by the garden section of the U-M Faculty Women's Club and growing to a sophisticated community-wide effort.

When the original shows were held, a number of leading citizens were dedicated gardeners. In what was then a smaller, more close-knit town, the serious gardeners were all known to each other, and they saw gardening not only as a hobby but as a cause. In 1937, a front page article in the Ann Arbor News called on "every man, woman and child" to join the gardening movement so "the entire community will gain in beauty, will become a more delightful place in which to live and work."

The first flower shows were internal club events for members to compare their garden output, and only a few hundred people came. The change to a community event began in 1931 when the Faculty Women's garden club invited the Ann Arbor Garden Club and the garden section of the Ann Arbor Women's Club to host a joint show that would be open to everyone. They recruited a token male, Dr. Louis Hall, a prominent dentist, to be chairman. (He had an old-fashioned English garden, complete with hollyhocks by the side door, at his house at 1530 Hill.)

The new format encouraged serious male hobbyists to become involved, including contractor Carl Weinburg, whose peony gardens off Lutz were a showplace of the city; hardware merchant Andrew Muehlig, who had a beautiful garden at his old red brick house at 609 North Fifth Avenue; tailor Samuel Burchfield, known for his glorious irises; Dr. A. S. Warthin, whose garden was well set off by the stone wall he built along Ferdon; and Charles Harris, proprietor of the Harris Seed Company at 303 South Main.

During the 1930's, shows were held in Harris Hall, in the Masonic Temple on Fourth Avenue (since torn down to make room for the Federal Building), and finally in the U-M's Yost Field House.

Though the core group was made up mainly of wealthy citizens who employed professional gardeners, the organizers encouraged as many people as possible to become involved. The shows were always held in June and so featured the flowers then in bloom--roses, peonies, irises, and delphiniums. Along with species flower judging, other competitions that anyone could try their hand at were tea table arranging, shadow boxes, miniature gardens, flower arranging, landscaping, and photography.

Special exhibits varied from year to year. The 1934 show featured a "Wayside Garden," similar to one planned by Mrs. Henry Ford for the North American Flower Show in Detroit, which showed the best way for farmers to arrange their goods for sale. The next year a "French Market" of potted plants, cut flowers, nosegays, and window boxes was designed and equipped by Mrs. Rollin Drake (women were always called by their husbands' names), reproducing as far as possible the flower and vegetable markets she visited on her trips abroad. In both 1935 and 1936, Mrs. Harry Boyd Earhart, with the assistance of her gardener, James Reach, re-created her June garden on the Masonic Temple stage.

For the 1939 and 1940 shows, held in Yost Field House, Dr. George Ross, assistant professor of landscape design, transformed the gym area into a scene of outdoor beauty, with paths, trees, and even a fountain and reflecting pool. Many individuals and groups set up imaginative displays--an all-white garden by Mrs. and Mr. James Inglis, a trout stream complete with fish by Dr. and Mrs. Harry Towsley, and a re-creation of Ann's Arbour (the apocryphal scene of the city's naming) by the Northwest Civic Association.

The event was a lot of work, but it was obviously also a lot of fun, both before and during. Large numbers of volunteers, divided into committees to plan each part of the show, worked almost all year. They met at each other's houses, often staying for tea or a light lunch. Some took field trips to other garden shows, particularly to Chicago.

The show was an excuse for a lot of out-of-town visitors--each of them, in true small-town fashion, listed in the Ann Arbor News. Many were relatives of the show's organizers or representatives from other cities' garden clubs. In 1940, Mrs. Henry Ford attended, and a lunch was given in her honor, hosted by that year's chair, Mrs. Frederick Coller of Wallingford Road. Another distinguished visitor was author Carl VanDoren, who while visiting the university was persuaded to open the show. Attendance totaled an impressive 14,500.

The last show was held in 1941 at the cloisters of the university law school. Because of the impending war, it was a much scaled-down version of earlier shows and lasted only one day. The News, which always gave the garden show excellent coverage, was loyal to the end, reporting that it was "beautifully done and unique but on a smaller scale that proved as satisfying and attractive."

The flower show was revived as a fund-raiser for the U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens last year. Both it and the upcoming 1991 show, to be held April 11-14 at Yost Field House, while modeled on past shows, also show changes in gardening. Besides the wider variety of plant materials available, the biggest change is probably that people have less free time for gardening or for volunteering, so the show is now organized by a professional staff, and more of the exhibits are from commercial firms. Nevertheless, volunteers still play an important part, especially at the time of the show, and local clubs and individuals still enjoy participating.

Despite the nearly fifty-year lapse, interest in gardening is clearly still high: 23,000 people attended last year's show. Organizers of this year's show expect that attendance will reach 35,000.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Yost Field House was transformed for the 1940 show with plantings, a fountain, and a reflecting pool. The shows started out as a showcase for wealthy garden buffs (Mrs. Henry Ford was a guest in 1940), but organizers also sought to involve the whole community; an Ann Arbor News article urged "every man, woman and child" to join the gardening movement to help make Ann Arbor "a more delightful place in which to live and work."

From simple farmhouse to elegant urban hair salon

For more than a century, 512 South Main has mirrored downtown's changes. Originally a small brick house in a residential neighborhood, it was absorbed into the growing Main Street business district as Claude Brown's secondhand store and pawn shop in the 1930's. It's since grown and evolved - under a succession of owners - into a printing firm in the 1950's, an antiques shop in the 1970's, and an elegant hair salon today.

Gottlob Schumacher roomed in a house on the same block of Main in the 1920's. He remembers that at that time the area "was strictly residential, all the way up to William." Even the block north of William was sprinkled with houses, including Bertha Muehlig's home at 315, the Marchese house at 321, and Dr. Conrad Georg's home where the Quality Bar is now.

When Schumacher lived on Main Street, 512 was still owned by Conrad and Katrina Schneider, who had moved into it in about 1886. (The house was probably built in the 1860's.) Like so many Ann Arborites, Conrad Schneider was a German immigrant from the Stuttgart area. He earned his living as a painter, working out of his home. In an interview in the mid-1980's, his grandson, the late William Shadford, remembered him as "capable and industrious."

The Schneiders had five children, most of whom continued to live nearby after they grew up. Daughter Augusta married William Major Shadford and moved to 535 South Ashley, to a house almost directly behind her parents. Daughter Pauline lived just down the street in a house next to what is today Great Lakes Fitness & Cycling. Her son, Ed Ryan, is shown on his tricycle in the picture.

The building changed to a place of business in 1931, when Claude Brown moved his store there from Ann Street. Brown used the two main floors for his business, living in the walk-out basement with his wife, Leah, a cook at Delta Sigma Delta. Originally from Canada, Brown was a heavyset man, weighing about 250 pounds, who had lost an arm in a railway accident. At his store, Jim Fondren remembers, "you could get anything you wanted." Brown sold mostly used clothing, but also had furniture, household goods, jewelry, and even antiques.

Jim Crawford, who knew Brown as a fellow member of the black Elks, remembers the store as "jammed all up," with both floors filled and some of the merchandise, such as old washing machines, spilling outside. According to Crawford, "Brown knew what people wanted. He was always willing to sell, trade, or deal in some kind of way. He also operated sort of a pawn shop. He would give someone, say, ten dollars for something, and if they didn't later come back with twelve or fifteen dollars, he would sell it." During World War II Brown became adept at locating used appliances, like toasters, which were scarce because new ones weren't being made: their factories had been turned over to war production.

When the Elks Pratt Lodge was going through lean years and could not afford a permanent meeting place, Brown let them use his store on Sundays. Crawford remembers that they would "just move the junk back and find chairs to sit on." Although a shrewd businessman, Brown was generous to his fellow Elks, giving clothes and other items to families in need.

After Brown, 512 South Main was owned by Bernadine and Frank Sprague, who also lived on the premises. The Spragues made two additions to the building: they doubled the size of the original narrow house and added onto the basement, which is above ground in the back. Bernadine Sprague ran a printing business called "Letterart" in the building. It advertised services ranging from "expert mimeography" to special mailings. For a while a wig shop rented some of the premises, as did various offices.

In 1967, Richard and Sandra Russell opened an antiques business at 512. They named their store the Old Brick after the building, but later changed it to the Yankee Trader. The Russells made one more change, adding a second story atop the outside portion of the basement.

In 1983 Russell left the antiques business to concentrate on his career as a general contractor. Since then, Laky and Kim Michaelides have used the building for their hair salon.

Laky, who was raised in Israel by Greek parents, speaks Greek, Hebrew, French, and Arabic as well as English. In 1988, the Michaelideses remodeled the outside of the building, restoring a first-floor window that had been replaced by a door, painting the building gray, adding an awning, and landscaping both front and back. They received a Pride of Ownership award from the Board of Realtors for their efforts. Now they are remodeling the inside, in Laky's words, "to keep abreast with styles of the time, to give what clients expect from a classic place."

The biggest recent change in the building was beyond the Michaelideses' control. A couple of years ago, Ideal Auto Body turned a parking lot next to Laky's into a new office--and chose a startling post-modern style to do it in. The result is one of the most jarring architectural juxtapositions in town: a series of shiny metallic steps that appear to march up the sober brick building's north wall.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Downtown stopped at William Street when Ed Ryan (top left) posed in front of his grandparents Conrad and Katrina Schneider's house soon after the turn of the century. Even after the building was converted to business use during the Depression, several successive owners lived upstairs--including Bernadine and Frank Sprague, who more than doubled its size (top right) by the 1950's. The building is now Laky and Kim Michaelides's hair salon.

The stately and prestigious Women's City Club started as a simple farmhouse.

In its 100-plus years, 1830 Washtenaw has changed in harmony with the street it faces. Built when Washtenaw was a dirt country road, it was first a simple, boxy farmhouse. When Washtenaw became a fashionable address, the house was ingeniously transformed into an imposing home for a wealthy physician. As the Women's City Club since 1951, it has continued to evolve, expanding physically and adapting socially as it moves to encompass the needs of career women as well as club women. It provides meeting space for seventeen member clubs and 900 individual members, to whom its dining room, lounges, and library are an ideal place to hang out, entertain guests, or, in the case of the increasing number of professional women members, meet with clients.

The house was built by Evart Scott, who moved to Ann Arbor from Ohio in 1868 to attend the U-M. Scott completed only two years of college, but stayed in town to become a successful businessman, civic activist, and farmer. He was president of the Ann Arbor Agricultural Co., which ran a mill at Argo dam, and a member of the school board, the public works board, and the board of Forest Hills Cemetery.

Scott moved into the house on Washtenaw in 1886, a few years after starting an orchard and nursery on what was then a thirty-acre plot just outside the city limits. He planted elm trees along his 1,000-foot Washtenaw frontage (from present-day Ferdon all the way to Austin) and named it "Elm Fruit Farm."

In 1915, after the city had annexed the area, Scott sold the bulk of his farmland to Charles Spooner. Spooner subdivided it into building lots and, in collaboration with architect Fiske Kimball, built the elegant homes that still grace the neighborhood. Reminders of the land's earlier owner can be found in the street names Scottwood and Austin (the name of Scott's father, brother, and son) and in a few ancient fruit trees, most of them pear, found in the neighborhood.

Two years after selling the land, Scott moved to a smaller house at 1930 Washtenaw, on the eastern edge of his property. He sold the big house and three acres of land to Dr. R. Bishop Canfield, a professor in the medical school who was returning to town after wartime duty in the U.S. Medical Corps.

Canfield hired architect Lewis J. Boynton to turn the forty-year-old farmhouse into something more suitable for its increasingly prestigious address. Boynton succeeded in transforming the simple box into an impressive house in the then fashionable Dutch colonial revival style. He replaced the old-fashioned wraparound porch with small extensions on each end of the house. Then he added a massive sloping roof that came down over the porches and allowed the attic windows to peek through as dormers. The finishing touch was a delicate front entrance porch with slender Ionic columns.

Canfield was one of the nation's leading specialists in ear, nose, and throat problems. He and his wife, Leila, a nurse from Colorado, had one child, a redheaded adopted daughter, Barbara. Alva Sink, a longtime member of the Women's City Club, knew the Canfield family well. For three of the years that she was a student at the U-M in the early 1920's, she ran a private school on their third floor, teaching Barbara and five other children of prominent families, including Jane Burton, daughter of the U-M president. Mrs. Sink remembers the Canfield house as "beautiful," and says that the interior "looked much as it does today." She recalls that Mrs. Canfield's help included a cook, maid, and yardman.

Canfield died in 1932, at age fifty-eight, when his car ran into a tree near the present site of Arborland. He was returning home after driving his wife and daughter and Dr. and Mrs. A. C. Furstenberg (he would later become dean of the medical school) to Detroit to catch a train to New York, where all but Mrs. Canfield were to sail for Europe. Mrs. Canfield hurried home as soon as she received news of her husband's death. Unfortunately, the Furstenbergs and Barbara had already sailed. Informed by ship's radio, they could do nothing but sail on to Gilbraltar, where they boarded a ship returning to the U.S.

Mrs. Canfield continued to live in the house until her death almost twenty years later. When the house went on the market in 1950, a group of local women were looking for a location for a women's club. Up to then, many groups had met on campus, especially in the Women's League, but increased enrollment at the U-M after World War II made university space harder to obtain.

By then, too, Washtenaw's big houses weren't quite so desirable as they'd been: few postwar families could afford servants to care for rambling buildings and grounds, and the street's increasingly heavy traffic was a worry for children. (Washtenaw at that time was part of Route 23, which went through town.) To the chagrin of residents, some houses were being taken over by fraternities, sororities, and other institutional users like the First Unitarian Church, which had recently bought and remodeled a former home down the block.

There was opposition to the conversion of the Canfield home, but the proponents were capable, well-connected, and hardworking women. When critics said the house was not strong enough to hold the weight of large gatherings, member Elsie White had her husband, Dr. Albert White, head of engineering research at the U-M, arranged to have the house checked. Free financial advice was given by Earl Cress of Ann Arbor Trust, while the Roscoe Bonisteels, Sr. and Jr., donated legal advice.

The key hurdle of changing the residential zoning was solved after the group negotiated an agreement with the six nearest neighbors that they would tell the city council they had no objections to the club as long as there were no exits from the rear onto Norway.

After Barbara Canfield, by then married and living in Chicago, accepted the City Club's offer of $45,000 in January of 1951, the group went to work raising money. Margaret Towsley, secretary of the founding group, sent letters to all the women's clubs in town asking them to join and also to encourage at least a quarter of their group to enroll as individual members. Twenty-one clubs and 600 individual members responded, and by June 20, 1951, the final papers were signed. Supplementing membership fees with fund-raising activities, the group managed to pay the entire mortgage within five years. Just six years later, architect Ralph Hammett was hired to design a modern addition to house a large dining room, auditorium, office, main lobby, and lounge.

Today, women's clubs in many cities have lost members or completely ceased to exist due to the large number of women working outside the home. So far, the Ann Arbor club has maintained itself well. Though membership has fallen by about 200 women from its peak in 1970, the club is actively recruiting younger members with more evening programs, more events open to men, and a deferred membership payment plan for daughters of members. (The membership initiation fee is $200 and annual dues are $175.) Some of the younger members are housewives deferring careers to raise children, but many are career women - real estate agents, lawyers, and accountants. Says club archivist Ruth Whitaker, "It provides a forum for women doing volunteer work to touch base with people in the work world." Club president Greta Smith adds, "It's a good way to meet people if you're new in the area."

Most importantly, enthusiasm is still high. Elsie White describes the club as "a great blessing to the community," while Sink says, "It's the best thing Ann Arbor ever did for women - or rather, that they did for themselves."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Built 103 years ago as a plain farmhouse, 1830 Washtenaw was gentrified in 1917 with a total revamping in the Dutch colonial revival style (left). As homes on the street began giving way to institutions, the Women's City Club bought the house in 1951 and added a big modern wing eleven years later.

On the eve of World War I, German Americans Built a virtual Palace of ethnic solidarity

The Schwaben Halle at 215 South Ashley was sold several years ago, but the Schwaebischer Unterstuetzungs Verein (“Swabian Support Association”), the group that built it, is still alive and kicking. Better known simply as the “Schwaben Verein,” the club was founded in 1888 by recent German immigrants. Although the local German community is by now pretty well assimilated, the Verein survives, in large part because of the fun the members and their families have sharing their common ancestry. “Eat, drink, and dance. What else do Germans do?” laughs member Walter Metzger. At the spring Bockbierfest, says president Art French, “the food is different, but we still eat and drink and dance. Any excuse for a party.”

Swabians, who take their name from a medieval kingdom in southern Germany, began immigrating to Ann Arbor as early as 1825, usually when there were economic or political problems in Germany. The 1880 immigrants were escaping the effects of Bismarck’s rule, as well as an economic depression, choosing Ann Arbor because Germans from earlier migrations were already here. But although other Germans in town helped them get established, the new arrivals felt a need for mutual support in the new country.

Tailor Gottlieb Wild, who was born near Stuttgart and served a four-year apprenticeship before coming to America, brought the idea of a Swabian club to Ann Arbor. His story, as related in Samuel Beakes’s 1906 Past and Present of Washtenaw County, is like that of many other Ann Arbor German immigrants: “He came to America when but seventeen years of age, and made his way to Ann Arbor, having relatives in this city, who had come to the New World in 1835.”

In 1887 Wild moved to Toledo to work as a journeyman tailor. He became involved with a Swabian social group there, and when he returned to Ann Arbor the following year to open his own shop, he encouraged his fellow Swabians to form their own association. (Wild’s tailor shop, like the Schwaben Verein, proved impressively durable--it evolved into a popular campus-area men’s store that survived until 1988.)

The Schwaben Verein’s official purpose was to provide a primitive kind of mutual health and life insurance: members paid a $1 initiation fee and 30¢ a month in dues, and in times of need the group would help out with hospital or burial expenses. But from the beginning, the real attraction was the camaraderie. “It was a way to be with people who spoke their language, followed their customs, who had the same outlook on life,” explains president French.

The group’s first meeting was held June 22, 1888, on the second floor of Wild’s tailor shop. Business was conducted entirely in German, a tradition that would continue for nearly a century. Many of Ann Arbor’s retail establishments were owned and run by Germans, so as the group grew they easily found other places to meet. They moved from Wild’s shop to rooms in Michael Staebler’s hotel, the American House (now the Earle, at Washington and Ashley), and when that in turn proved inadequate, to rented rooms above Arnold’s Jewelry Store on Main Street.

In 1894, just six years after its founding, the group was financially secure enough to purchase a building, the former Wagner’s blacksmith shop on Ashley between Washington and Liberty. All seven members of the executive committee signed the mortgage. They reserved the second floor for their meetings and rented the downstairs to blacksmith Henry Otto (who was better known locally as the leader of Otto’s Band).

In 1908 the Schwaben Verein bought a second property: the Relief Fire Company Park, south of Madison and west of what is now Fifth Street, then on the outskirts of the city. (Since 1888 the fire department had been changing over to professional firefighters, and volunteer companies were phased out.) The park was used for open-air events. “Parades and picnics were memorable occasions,” the Ann Arbor News reported. “Entire families turned out, the children to enjoy games and sports while their elders talked on and on about the ‘old country’ and the occurrences in their lives in their adopted land.”

Hardware store owner Christian Schlenker, who was president of the Verein at the time, is credited with spearheading the construction of a permanent headquarters. “Entirely due to his persistence and influence, they decided to build the new Swabian Hall,” W. W. Florer states in volume 1 of Early Michigan Settlements (1941).

The key was a deal between the group and Mack & Co., then Ann Arbor’s largest department store, at 220–224 South Main. Walter Mack agreed to rent most of the planned structure, including the two upper floors and part of the basement. Mack, though the son of a German immigrant, was not a member of the Verein (“Mr. Mack was never affiliated with any fraternal organizations but has concentrated his energies and attention upon his business interests and family life,” writes Beakes), and he did not help with construction costs. However, he agreed to build a steam heating plant, pay fire insurance for the whole building, and provide water for the sprinkler system.

Construction of the Schwaben Verein, 1914.

In May 1914 the blacksmith shop was torn down, and construction began on the new building. Local historian Carol Mull, who has done extensive research on the building, finds it probable that some of the brick from the blacksmith shop was reused in the new building. Architect George Scott designed the Schwaben Halle, and Julius Koernke, a German immigrant who had settled in Ann Arbor in 1890, served as contractor.

Enclosed walkways connected the third and fourth floors with Mack’s Main Street store, and the buildings’ basements were joined by a tunnel. Mack used the basement for storage and the upstairs for a dining room, a beauty shop (the holes from the plumbing were still there when the Verein sold the building), and a big toy display at Christmas. The Ashley Street storefront was rented to Hagen and Jedel Men’s Clothing.

The Verein reserved the second floor for its own activities. A large front room was used for dancing and banquets; it had a stage at one end for plays and performances. There was a dressing room behind the stage and beyond that the bar and kitchen. Beautiful woodwork, tin ceilings, a fireplace, and a stained-glass front window with the Schwaben name on it all added to the hall’s beauty. In 1988, to celebrate the Verein’s hundredth anniversary, some of the members donated stained glass for the side windows and transoms.

During World War I, when other German groups were fading out or switching to English, the Schwaben Verein kept meeting and didn’t experience any overt harassment. “The society subscribed to war loans throughout the war and helped in every deserving war charity brought to its notice,” wrote the Ann Arbor News in 1922. While admitting a little defensively that the group was “still carrying its German name,” the paper insisted that “the organization is essentially American and stands for everything which is American.”

The war and subsequent anti-immigrant fervor, as well as Prohibition, cut into the activities of many German groups, but the Schwaben Verein emerged stronger than ever. Helping German war victims from the Württemberg area gave it an additional reason for existing. And although Prohibition lowered attendance at the park, the club met the challenge by selling the land and using the proceeds to help pay off its Ashley Street building.

Member John Hanselmann bought the park and divided it into house lots. The club continued having picnics at Hanselmann’s Grove on Waters Road off Ann Arbor–Saline Road or at members’ farms, such as Walter Aupperle’s property on Frains Lake Road. (The German Park organization on Pontiac Trail is a different group, although there is some overlap in membership.)

In 1922, just eight years after finishing the Halle, the group was able to celebrate paying off the mortgage. “On the eve of Thanksgiving day a gathering of 100 men stood in a darkened room of the Schwaben hall and in hushed stillness watched the mortgage on the building disappear in flames,” reported the Ann Arbor News. “The flickering light of the flames showed up solemn faces and glimpses of the Star Spangled banner which decorate the room. As the last shred of paper fell and the flame died out lights flooded the room and 100 voices rose in acclamation.”

The Verein paid off its mortgage just in time to be ready for the next wave of immigrants. “They came from the very same villages as the men of the eighties and of former decades,” writes Florer. “A revival of interest in plays, concerts, and other social activities began and has continued ever since.”

One of the 1920s immigrants was Gottlob Schumacher, who until his death in 2001 was the group’s oldest living member. Schumacher first visited the Schwaben Halle three days after his arrival in Ann Arbor in October 1923. Staying at the American House, Schumacher was introduced to a fellow Swabian named Gottlob Gross, who brought him over to the club. In a 1988 interview Schumacher recalled that since it was Sunday the hall was supposed to be closed, so the men went up the back stairs from the alley. They rang a bell, and the barman looked through a sliding window before letting them in. Although it sounds like a scene from a Prohibition-era movie, Schumacher insisted that the bar offered nothing stronger than hard cider--although even that was illegal during Prohibition.

Schumacher officially joined the Schwaben Verein three months later. One of his favorite activities was acting in plays the group wrote and performed in Swabian dialect. Walter Metzger, whose parents emigrated from Swabia, recalls that a huge crowd always attended these plays, put on near Christmas. “They filled up the Schwaben Halle, sitting in folding chairs and the benches around the side,” he says. The programs would consist of two or three short, sitcom-like sketches: “There would be a married couple. They would bicker and make fun of each other,” Metzger explains. “Then others would come in--neighbors, relatives. They were humorous. You had to laugh the entire time.” In between the plays, the audience could buy sandwiches and beer at the bar.

The cast were all amateurs, just members who enjoyed that sort of thing—Schumacher, Anton Vetter, Hans Meier, Martin Rempp. Bill and Fred Wente, who worked at Herz Paint Store, did the sets. Bill Staebler, who owned a beauty shop, did the makeup, and members’ wives sewed the costumes. Metzger was just a boy then, but he was put to work with his older brother Hans, who could drive, delivering advertising placards to outlying towns such as Manchester and Bridgewater that had large German populations. Metzger also served as a curtain puller and once even had a nonspeaking role.

In 1938 the Schwaben Verein had been in existence for fifty years. One hundred and fifty members and guests celebrated the anniversary at a banquet at the city’s biggest hotel, the Allenel (where the Courthouse Square apartments are now). After dinner they reconvened at the hall for a program that included music by the Lyra Männerchor (men’s chorus), followed by dancing and a radio program of Swabian folk tunes and songs--broadcast live via shortwave from Stuttgart especially for the occasion.

The plays stopped during World War II, but the group weathered the war, just as it had survived World War I. It no doubt helped that many of the young men leaving to fight the war were themselves of German ancestry. Although local German Americans were firmly on the Allied side, they didn’t forget their relatives in Germany. “We had our own CARE program, helping individually in areas we knew about,” explains French.

The war triggered one last influx of German immigrants. The Schwaben Verein continued a full schedule of activities, including Kirchweihe (literally a church dedication festival, observed as a harvest festival, with strings of radishes, beets, turnips, and cabbage serving as decorations), a children’s Christmas party, an anniversary dinner, and the Bockbierfest, featuring a special beer traditionally made for Lent. For years a group of women, headed by Karoline Schumacher, who was chef at the Old German when she and her husband owned the restaurant from 1936 to 1946, would make and serve such German specialties as liver sausage, roulades, goulash, spaetzle, sauerkraut, and German potato salad. And of course beer was the drink of choice for most events.

German bands from Toledo or Detroit with names like Langecker’s Wanderers, Tyrolers, Dorimusikanten, or Eric Nybower provided the music for dancing. Sometimes the Schuhplattler, a group affiliated with German Park, would perform traditional German dances. For its centennial in 1988, the Verein imported a band from Germany named Contrast.

People who regularly attended these functions became very close. Art French met his wife, then Kathy Rempp, at a Schwaben event. And Kathy’s parents, Mina and Martin Rempp (who, like his son-in-law, was a long-term president), met at a Schwaben event in Toledo.

“We still call each other our extended family,” says Marianne Rauer. “We are our own psychiatrists.” Fritz Kienzle, the group’s flag bearer, once dropped out for three and a half years but missed it so much he went back. “You’ve got to have that gravy on your potatoes,” he explains.

The Schwaben Verein has changed as the local German community has become more assimilated. Originally members had to be from Swabia, but later the group accepted anyone who spoke German. Today, members just have to have some German connection.

Most in the group now are American born, although there are still fourteen German-born members. “The meetings were mostly in German until about twenty years ago,” says French. “There are less and less who can converse in German, so we have to keep translating in order not to keep them out. But we still open and close the meetings in German.”

Though the Verein is still officially an all-male group, in the 1970s, with no change in the rules, women started coming to the hall during meetings. Wives of members who drove their husbands to the meetings, or who just didn’t want to be left alone at home, came up and waited in the bar area, visiting and playing cards until their husbands finished the meeting and joined them.

After Mack & Co. closed during the Great Depression, the first floor was rented to other tenants, including a bar called Mackinaw Jack’s, which left the facade covered with fake logs. Most recently, Hi-Fi Studio, an electronics repair business, packed the space with old TVs and stereos. Even the second-floor meeting room was rented out when the Verein wasn’t using it. Over the years it’s hosted everything from the local Jewish congregation (in the early 1920s) to sports clubs, sister city events, and weddings and other private parties.

French says the group currently has seventy members, of whom twenty or twenty-five regularly attend bimonthly meetings. The average age is about fifty. “Lots join with their dads,” explains Harriet Holzapfel, whose husband, son, and father-in-law were all members. “There’s an age gap,” says Rauer, “but once they are married and have kids they come back. They want their kids to have the Christmas party and family events.”

But the group’s desire to keep the large hall waned, especially since the rest of the building wasn’t producing the rental income it once had. Art French says he’d been looking for a long time, but “I couldn’t get tenants. Everyone wanted to buy—no one wanted to rent.” So in March 2001 the Schwaben Halle was sold to Bill Kinley of Phoenix Contractors and Ann Arbor architects Dick Mitchell and John Mouat.

The new owners removed the fake log-cabin siding from the front of the building and restored the facade as closely as possible to its original look. Inside they made changes to meet current standards, such as wider, fire-code-compliant stairs and an elevator for handicap access.

Meanwhile, the Schwaben Verein members meet just down the street at Hathaway’s Hideaway. “We’re still active, still accepting new members, we still have the activities. We just don’t have a building,” says French. For big events they rent space at either Links at Whitmore Lake or Fox Hills golf course on North Territorial.

Many in Ann Arbor’s German community were sad to see a building that encompassed so much of their past sold. “It was like the soul of the German community, such a beautiful place,” says Marianne Rauer. But Fritz Kienzle points out that the Schwaben Verein was always more that just a building. “People said when you sell you lose all your heritage,” he says. “But the heritage is in you, in your memories.”

A taste of Broadway in Ann Arbor

Performers tap dancing on drums or flying out over the audience on swings, women in fancy gowns and plumes floating onto the stage to the strains of "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody." A Busby Berkeley musical on Broadway? No, it was right here in Ann Arbor at the Lydia Mendelssohn theater: "Juniors on Parade," a Ziegfeld-style production created by Broadway veteran Roy Hoyer to showcase the talents of his dance students and to raise money for worthy causes.

Hoyer came to Ann Arbor in 1930, at age forty-one. With his wrap-around camel hair coat, starched and pleated white duck trousers, open-necked shirts, and even a light touch of makeup, he cut a cosmopolitan figure in the Depression-era town. For almost twenty years, his Hoyer Studio initiated Ann Arbor students into the thrills of performance dancing as well as the more sedate steps and social graces of ballroom dancing.

Born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Hoyer appeared in many hometown productions before a role as Aladdin in a musical called "Chin Chin" led him to a contract with New York's Ziegfeld organization. His fifteen-year Broadway career included leading roles in "Tip-Top," "Stepping Stones," "Criss Cross," "The Royal Family," and "Pleasure Bound." Movie musical star Jeanette MacDonald was discovered while playing opposite Hoyer in "Angela." But Hoyer himself by the end of the 1920's was getting too old to play juvenile leads. When the Depression devastated Broadway--in 1930, fifty fewer plays were produced than in 1929--Hoyer, like many other actor-dancers, was forced to seek his fortune elsewhere.

Hoyer came to Ann Arbor because he already had contacts here. In the 1920s he had choreographed the Michigan Union Opera, a very popular annual all-male show with script and score by students. His Roy Hoyer Studio taught every kind of dancing, even ballet (although the more advanced toe dancers usually transferred to Sylvia Hamer). On the strength of his stage career, he also taught acrobatics, body building, weight reducing classes, musical comedy, and acting.

His sales pitch played up his Broadway background: “There are many so-called dance instructors, but only a few who have even distinguished themselves in the art they profess to teach," he wrote in his program notes for "Juniors on Parade." "Mr. Hoyer's stage work and association with some of the most famous and highest paid artists in America reflects the type of training given in the Roy Hoyer School."

Pictures of Hoyer on the Broadway stage lined his waiting room, and former students remember that he casually dropped names like Fred and Adele, referring to the Astaire siblings. (Fred Astaire did know Hoyer, but evidently not well. When Hoyer dressed up his 1938 "Juniors on Parade" program with quotes from letters he'd received from friends and former students, the best he could come up with from Astaire was, "Nice to have heard from you.")

Hoyer's first Ann Arbor studio was in an abandoned fraternity house at 919 Oakland. He lived upstairs. Pat Bird Allen remembers taking lessons in the sparsely furnished first-floor living room. In 1933 the Hoyer Studio moved to 3 Nickels Arcade, above the then post office. Students would climb the stairs, turn right, and pass through a small reception area into a studio that ran all the way to Maynard. Joan Reilly Burke remembers that there were no chairs in the studio, making it hard for people taking social dancing not to participate. Across the hall was a practice room used for private lessons and smaller classes.

Back then, young people needed to know at least basic ballroom steps if they wanted to have any kind of social life. John McHale, who took lessons from Hoyer as a student at University High, says that for years afterward he could execute a fox trot or a waltz when the occasion demanded. Dick DeLong remembers that Hoyer kept up with the latest dances, for instance teaching the Lambeth Walk, an English import popular in the early years of World War II. (DeLong recalls Hoyer taking the boys aside and suggesting that they keep their left-hand thumbs against their palms when dancing so as not to leave sweaty hand prints on their partners' backs.)

Hoyer's assistants were Bill Collins and Betty Hewett, both excellent dancers. Burke remembers that when the two demonstrated social dancing, their students were "just enchanted." Several ballroom students remember the thrill of dancing with football star Tom Harmon. As a performer in the Union Opera, Harmon came up to the studio for help in learning his dance steps and while there obliged a few of the female ballroom students. "I'll never forget it," says Janet Schoendube.

While ballroom dancing was mostly for teens or preteens, tap and ballet students ranged from children who could barely walk to young adults in their twenties. (Helen Curtis Wolf remembers taking her younger brother Lauren to lessons when he was three or four.) Classes met all year round, but the high point of the year was the annual spring production, "Juniors on Parade."

The show was sponsored by the King's Daughters, a service group that paid the up-front costs and then used the profits for charity—medical causes in the early years and British war relief later. The three evening performances and one matinee were packed, and not just with the parents of the performers. During the drab Depression, people looked forward to Hoyer's extravaganzas all year long. Hoyer "jazzed us up when we needed it," recalls Angela Dobson Welch.

"Juniors on Parade" was a place to see and be seen. In 1933 the Ann Arbor News called it a "social event judging by the list of patrons and patronesses and the list of young actors and actresses whose parents are socially prominent." But the show's appeal wasn't limited to high society. Even in the midst of the Depression many less well-to-do families managed to save the money for lessons or worked out other arrangements in lieu of payment. Allen's mother helped make costumes; senior dance student Mary Meyers Schlecht helped teach ballroom dancing; Rosemary Malejan Pane, the acrobat who soloed in numbers that included cartwheels and splits, was recruited by Hoyer, who offered her free lessons when he learned she couldn't afford to pay.

The first act of the show featured younger children, wearing locally made costumes, while the second act showcased the more advanced students, who wore professional costumes. Every year Hoyer and Collins traveled to Chicago to select the dancers' outfits. For one 1935 number, the girls wore gowns that duplicated those worn by such famous stars as Ruby Keeler, Dolores Del Rio, and Carole Lombard. Live piano music was provided either by Georgia Bliss (on loan from Sylvia Hamer) or Paul Tompkins.

Sixty-some years later, students still remember such Hoyer-created numbers as "Winter Wonderland," a ballet featuring Hoyer and Betty Seitner, who stepped out of a snowball; "Floradora," six guys pushing baby buggies; "Sweethearts of Nations," eight girls in costumes from different countries, including red-haired Doris Schumacher Dixon as an Irish lass and Angela Dobson Welch as a Dutch girl. In "Toy Shop," dancers dressed like dolls; in another number, five girls, including Judy Gushing Newton and Nancy Hannah Cunningham, were done up in matching outfits and hairdos as the Dionne quintuplets.

"Juniors on Parade" ended with a high-kicking Rockettes-style chorus line of senior students. Then the stars returned home to their normal lives. Although some of them became very good dancers, none went on to careers in dance. (Doris Dixon later worked at Radio City Music Hall and was offered a job as a Rockette, but turned it down when she saw how hard it was.)

The last big show was in 1941. When the war started, Hoyer cut back on his studio schedule and went to work at Argus Camera, where they were running two shifts building military equipment. He worked in the lens centering area and is remembered by former Argus employee Jan Gala as "a lot of fun, full of jokes." Another employee, Catherine Starts, remembers that "he was so graceful. He took rags and danced around with them."

After the war Hoyer kept his studio open, but people who knew him remember he did very little teaching in those years. His health was failing, and his former cadre of students and stars had moved on to college and careers.

In 1949 ill health led him to move back to Altoona. He worked as assistant manager at a hotel there, then as a floor manager and cashier at a department store. He was still alive in 1965, when an Altoona newspaper reported that he was back home after a nine-month hospital stay.

Although it has been forty-five years since Hoyer left Ann Arbor, he is not forgotten. Hoyer Studio alumni say they still use their ballroom dancing on occasion, and even the tappers sometimes perform. Angela Welch remembers a party about ten years ago at which the Heath sisters, Harriet and Barbara, back in town for a visit, reprised their Hoyer tap dance number. And years after the studio closed, accompanist Paul Tompkins worked as a pianist at Weber's. Whenever he recognized a Hoyer alumna coming in, he started playing "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody."

Bach School's new playground was once a West Side bar

Children playing on the Bach School playground probably have no idea that it was once the location of adult recreation. From 1901 to 1919, a beer distributorship and popular West Side drinking spot was located behind Jacob Dupper's home at what was then 439 Fifth Street, now the north end of the playground. In those pre-zoning days, he ran several businesses from out-buildings on the property. His barn was the Ann Arbor distributorship for Buckeye and Green Seal beers, both made by a Toledo brewery. And a small structure usually called "the shop" was the neighborhood bar.

The Dupper family lived at 439 Fifth Street, now the north end of the Bach School playground, and ran a beer distributorship from their barn.

The shop stood across the driveway from Dupper's house and farther back from the street. Neighborhood men came in the evening to share a companionable drink, to chat, and to play cards. Dupper's grandson, Henry Velker, from whom most of this information was obtained, remembers that the clientele came from all over the Old West Side, then still known as the city's Second Ward.

The building (also sometimes called "the caboose") was furnished with tables and a short bar. It had room for about thirty or forty people, who could buy beer, wine, or whiskey. Velker remembers that customers came in all seasons, although in the summer they usually came later in the evening after their chores were finished. In the winter, when darkness descended sooner, they came earlier and stayed longer.

The customers were all men. Erna Steinke Jahnke, who grew up on nearby Jefferson Street in the years that Dupper's business was in operation, says that she never heard of any women going there. Parents also discouraged their children from hanging around the neighborhood bar.

George Voelker delivered beer with the aid of a horse named Sam.

Jacob Dupper was born in 1860 in Bondorf, a small town thirty miles south of Stuttgart. According to Velker, Dupper learned the brewery and distributing business while still in Germany. When he moved to Ann Arbor in his twenties, his first job was working for the Northern Brewery on the north side of town.

In 1901, Dupper obtained the Ann Arbor franchise for Buckeye and Green Seal beers. Although there were two local breweries, many local residents disloyally claimed that the Toledo brands tasted better. Dupper kept them supplied, delivering the beer to stores, restaurants, fraternities, and private parties.

As a sideline, he also delivered ice. He had his own icehouse on the property, stocked with ice cut and shipped in from Whitmore Lake. The barn served as his beer warehouse and also housed the horses and wagons he used for deliveries.

The beer was shipped from Toledo, in both bottles and kegs, via the Ann Arbor Railroad and was unloaded at the Ashley Street station on a First Street spur of the tracks. From there it was taken by horse and wagon the five blocks to the Dupper house.

Fred Dupper behind the counter of his shop.

When Dupper died in 1907, his son, Fred Dupper, took over the business with his wife, Minnie. Fred Dupper's brother-in-law, George Voelker, who lived across the street, worked as a driver for the company. (George Voelker was Henry Velker's father. Velker changed the spelling of the name to more closely match the pronunciation.)

Though the shop and the distributorship closed with the beginning of Prohibition in 1919, the Duppers continued to live in the house for many years. Sam Schlecht, who lived on Fifth Street in the 1920's, remembers the painted ads for Buckeye Beer on the sides of Dupper's barn long after the beer itself had disappeared.

Fred Dupper died in the early 1940s. The house was used as a residence for about twenty more years, until it was torn down to make room for an expansion of the Bach School playground.