Sponsored by the Moore/Howley Family

Photos Courtesy of the Moore family and the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by Hazel and Edmund Koli

Photos Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by Carol and Robert Mull

Photos Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library

The depot shown in the 1886 view above was built in 1845. The arrival of the first train from Detroit on October 17, 1839, assured Ann Arbor's future as a center for commerce and education. A grand celebration began at the original depot and ended at the county courthouse. By 1841 the first students at the University of Michigan could arrive by train from Detroit or Jackson. The Michigan Central Railroad reached Chicago in 1852.

This 1886 depot, built for the Michigan Central Railroad in grand Richardsonian Romanesque style, was the gateway to Ann Arbor at a time when trains were the major means of intercity travel. The central building had ornate waiting rooms, an elaborate ticket booth, coffered wood ceilings, stained glass windows, and a large terra-cotta fireplace. Packages were shipped from the express office on the west. Trunks and other luggagewere checked and retrieved at a baggage building on the east. A long track side roof sheltered passengers and connected the three buildings. East of the station, a garden with a fountain greeted visitors.

Enthusiastic crowds came to see presidents, prominent politicians, and visiting dignitaries, some of whom spoke from the rear platform of the train. A few, such as pianist Ignace Paderewski, arrived with private railway cars. Patriotic fanfare and emotional farewells sent troops off to war. UM football teams departed and returned to mobs of cheering fans.

From the hill above Plank Road in the 1870s (North Main Street today), you could look back toward where you are now standing and view sources of Ann Arbor's early power and transportation. In the panorama, find your location, along with the dam, the millpond, and the millrace. Beginning in 1830, they supplied power for Lower Town’s mills. Sinclair’s Mill stood to your right.

After 1839, when the railroad reached Ann Arbor from Detroit, paper, wool, flour, and feed from the mills, as well as livestock held in pens in the foreground,could be shipped to eastern markets. Coal arrived by rail for the Ann Arbor Gas Company, which built its first works in 1858 across from the old depot. Lumber arrived for Selleck Wood’s and other lumberyards and planing mills nearby.

On the site in front of you in 1860, William Sinclair built the flour mill shown above in the birdseye on right. Lower Town founder Anson Brown had erected the first mill here in 1833. Brown dammed the Huron River up-stream to create a millpond and raise the level of the water, which flowed down a millrace high above the river's north bank. This provided power for the flour mill, a woolen mill, a paper mill, and other Lower Town industries.

Hydro power uses the energy of flowing water to do work. Water falling from a headrace creates enough force to turn the blades of the water wheels in the mill, before flowing out a tailrace to the river below. Main drive shafts transfer power from water wheels to a series of gears, shafts, pulleys, and belts that operate millstones, sifters, grist elevators,grain cleaners, and other equipment.

Sinclair’s earlier mill on this site was reported to have ground 800 barrels of flour weekly. Following the 1841 harvest, it shipped a record 8,112 barrels to New York via the Erie Canal. Under subsequent owners, the mill retained Sinclair’s name. In 1894 the Ann Arbor Milling Company renamed it Argo Mills.

Alber & Co., one of the city’s earliest blacksmith and wagon shops, once stood in front of you where State Street ended at Broadway after crossing the railroad. Factories, mills, slaughterhouses, and tanneries operated nearby as well as three spring-fed breweries. The Northern Brewery on Jones Street advertised “bottled beer in cases of 2 dozen or 1 dozen bottles, quart or pint, delivered to any part of the city.” The spring was later tapped by the Arbor Springs Water Company. After the brewery closed in 1908, the building was used as a foundry for fifty years. It was renovated for offices in 1976.

In 1866 Lewis Moore and his son Eli began building an agricultural implement factory on the north bank of the river on the site of an old paper mill. By 1896 the Ann Arbor Agricultural Works, seen above in a fanciful drawing, covered three acres. It was one of the largest employers in town with a machine shop, warehouse, lumber yard, and its own railroad spur. The machinery was powered by water from the millrace, later supplemented by steam. The headrace ran under Broadway and the tailrace flowed out next to the foundry.

Sixty-five men manufactured a line of horse-drawn agricultural implements including "the Advance Hay Tedder, Advance Iron Mower, the Advance Sulky Rake, the Columbia Hay Press, the Advance Chilled Plow, and the Improved Cummings and Clipper Feed Cutter.” The company claimed a reputation for “first class goods in this line.” Eli Moore was the plant’s supervisor until 1903, when the business became the Ann Arbor Machine Company, manufacturing many of the same products. Edison acquired the property and built a warehouse on the site in 1928.

In 1865 Lower Town's most unusual citizen, Dr. Daniel B. Kellogg, a "clairvoyant physician," purchased the building to your right which then had four stories. Kellogg was a medium who performed his medical wizardry by "communicating" through the disembodied spirits of two Native American medicine men, Walapaca and Owosso. During trances, Kellogg claimed to see patients’ internal organs in glowing electric tints. Letters arrived from all over the country seeking his aid. All that was needed for a mail order diagnosis was the patient's name, age, address—and the usual fee. To answer the demand for Daniel’s cures, he and his brother Leverett marketed a line of family medicines, which included Kellogg's Liver Invigorator and Kellogg’s Magic Red Drops. After Daniel died in 1876, Leverett continued the patent medicine business. Daniel’s son Albert served as the new medium.