Panel Information: Commerce on the "Ann Street Block"

Behind you, just to your left, the "Ann Street Block" still houses storefronts, offices, and residences. It was built in 1871 as the Hoban Block after fire destroyed earlier buildings. Customers came to butchers, grocery stores, saloons, restaurants, billiard halls, a laundry, hotel, and adjoining monument and harness shops.

By 1920, the growing Greek immigrant presence in the neighborhood added the social life of all-male coffee houses. After African American workers migrated to Ann Arbor and doubled the black population in the 1920s, the businesses in the Ann Street Block primarily served the black community. The block was restored in the 1980s.