Site 13a. STATE and NORTH UNIVERSITY

More than any other location, this corner reflects the relationship between the town and gown themes in Ann Arbor's history. The glass frame shows the impact of the University on growth of commercial and residential properties and the transformation of the campus site and the State Street area over time.

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Panel Information: Town and Gown

The 1954 Michigras parade, with elaborate student floats, passed the Michigan Theater on its way up Liberty Street. The parade and the theater were partof an entertainment tradition of "gown" and "town" coming together to shape Ann Arbor's cultural identity.

In the nineteenth century local acts and touring companies played in downtown ballrooms, churches, the courthouse, and Hangsterfer’s Hall. Students, faculty, and townspeople contributed talent and enthusiastic audiences. In 1871 Ann Arbor’s first real theater,

Hill’s Opera House with 2,000 seats, opened on Main Street. Local actors in "The Spy of Shiloh" packed the house. On campus that same year the cornerstone was laid for University Hall, with a 3,000-seat auditorium for concerts, graduations, and the town’s largest events. Many celebrated guests appeared, including lecturers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Susan B. Anthony, and Mark Twain, actress Sarah Bernhardt, and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. After 1913 audiences attended the new and larger Hill Auditorium.

Site 12. STATE and LIBERTY

The interests of town and gown have always been uniquely joined in Ann Arbor through their shared involvement in entertainment and cultural activities.

WALL DISPLAY 1: The James Foster House of Art
WALL DISPLAY 2: From Liveries to Taxis
WALL DISPLAY 3: Uptown Theaters
WALL DISPLAY 4: A Book Lover’s Town
WALL DISPLAY 5: Remembering Drake’s
WALL DISPLAY 6: Music! Music! Music!
WALL DISPLAY 7: The University Musical Society and the May Festival

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Panel Information: Schools and Churches

Ann Arbor public schools, begun in the 1830s, were inadequately funded and poorly organized. This changed in 1856 when the Union School opened (building on right); it was the grandest building in Ann Arbor. Its assembly room, seating 700, was often used for public events. Classes prepared students to enter the nearby university. Nonresidents, who paid tuition, made up more than half the enrollment.

Site 11. STATE and HURON

Ann Arbor is famous as a city of schools, but its church life is hardly less vigorous and influential. The two institutions have been as closely linked in their purposes as they have in location, notably on this corner. The connection is nicely symbolized by Harris Hall, built by St. Andrews Church for the activities of the Hobart Guild of Episcopal students, across the street from the former Unitarian Church. The exhibit documents the development of the corner as it relates to the nearby neighborhood.

WALL DISPLAY 1: Ann Arbor High School
WALL DISPLAY 2: Carnegie Library
WALL DISPLAY 3: Harris Hall

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Panel Information: Lumber and Agriculture

From 1873 to 1930 Luick Brothers lumberyard and planing factory supplied lumber, sash, doors, blinds, moldings, scrolls, and "fancy sawing" for the growing town. Nearby carriage, furniture, and farm implement factories, along with new construction, used Luick products.

Gottlob and Emmanuel Luick were two of twelve children born into a farm family of early Washtenaw County German immigrants. Gottlob twice served as Democratic alderman and was mayor of Ann Arbor from 1899 to 1901. Upon retiring in 1931, he gave the lumberyard land to the city to be used as a farmers' market. During the economic depression of the 1930s, farmers used the old lumber sheds for stalls and shelter during cold weather. From 1938 to 1940 a permanent market was built by the Works Progress Administration, a federal jobs program.

Site 9b. FIFTH AVENUE at DETROIT

This is the area where suppliers and manufacturers established themselves between the town center and the railroad line. They provided the lumber, coal, flour, oil, ice and supplies needed to develop and maintain a prosperous community. Nearby were the names of workers, and the adjacent area became a neighborhood of evolving ethnic diversity.

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library and the Ann Arbor News

WALL DISPLAY 1: Ann Arbor’s African American Community
WALL DISPLAY 2: A Changing Neighborhood
WALL DISPLAY 3: Between Downtown and the Railroad
WALL DISPLAY 4: Industry on Detroit Street

Panel Information: A Supply Side of Town

By the 1880s the area between downtown and the railroad along the Huron River supplied lumber, carts and carriages, stone work, coal, oil, and gas. Business owners and workers lived nearby amid a changing ethnic and racial mix. Agricultural Hall (above center with awning), built in 1856 at the intersection of Catherine, Fourth, and Detroit, is the second-oldest surviving commercial building in Ann Arbor. During the Civil War the building housed the agricultural implement store and factory of Moses Rogers. The Soldiers' Aid Society for Civil War Relief and other local groups met in the large third-floor hall.

When the photo above was taken in 1879, John Finnegan lived upstairs in Agricultural Hall and sold mowers and reapers there, many of which were made at the Ann Arbor Agricultural Works' large factory just across the river east of Broadway. After 1892 the internationally famous Ypsilanti Jersey Fitting Underwear was made here when the building was one of Hay and Todd Manufacturing Company's factories. In 1908 the building became the White Swan Laundry, a name that stuck long after the use had changed.

Site 9a. CATHERINE and NORTH FOURTH AVENUE

This is the area where suppliers and manufacturers established themselves between the town center and the railroad line. They provided the lumber, coal, flour, oil, ice and supplies needed to develop and maintain a prosperous community. Nearby were the homes of workers, and the adjacent area became a neighborhood of evolving ethnic diversity.

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Panel Information: The Growth of City Services

Completed in 1907, Ann Arbor's first City Hall provided first-floor office space for expanding publicservices and a council chamber above. The eight-man Police Department had a separate entranceon Fifth Avenue. The Fire Department was already located across Huron Street in the landmark 1882 Firemen's Hall.

After incorporation in 1833, the village council met sporadically in the Courthouse office of Ann Arbor's founder, John Allen, the first village president.

Ordinances adopted at the first meeting dealt with matters of public safety, such as the discharge of firearms, and hogs and dogs running wild. In 1836 the village established a volunteer fire department. Putting out fires and providing cistern water to fight them cost over a third of the village's total 1848 income of $2,152. The village hired workers to ring the Presbyterian church bell to mark the hours, erect and light street lamps around the Courthouse, and repair the dirt streets.