Rev. Guy Beckley was a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, even though it was a federal crime to help escaping slaves. His house nearby on Pontiac Trail was one of several secret "stations" in the area. Caroline Quarlls, who escaped from slavery, stayed with Beckley on her journey to freedom in Canada. Michigan’s Anti-Slavery Society was established in Ann Arbor in 1836. Starting in 1841, its newspaper, The Signal of Liberty, which called for the abolition of slavery in the United States, was published in the Huron Block, directly across Broadway from here, by Beckley and his co-editor Theodore Foster. Beckley died in 1847.

**

PORCELAIN EXHIBIT PANELS:

• The Underground Railroad
• The Clairvoyant Physician
• The Agricultural Works and Lower Town
• From Industry to Parks
• Lower Town's Flour Mills
• Early Power and Transportation
• The Finest on the Line
• Along the Michigan Central Railroad Tracks

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

**

Photos Courtesy of Wystan Stevens and the Bentley Historical Library

In 1832, New York native Anson Brown erected the Exchange Block in which was called Lower Town. He was determined to make this side of the river Ann Arbor's center. Where the Potawatomi Trail crossed the Huron River, a wooden bridge had been built in 1828 to carry traffic from Detroit and Pontiac to the village of Ann Arbor. Brown and his partners dammed the river upstream and built a flour mill next to the bridge, where Edison later built the substation to your left.

The partners laid out streets with New York City names: Broadway, Maiden Lane, Canal, and Wall. Brown succeeded in capturing the appointment of postmaster, forcing upper-village "Hill-Toppers" to come to Lower Town for their mail. His ambitious dreams died with him in the cholera epidemic of 1834, but Lower Town survived as a distinct neighborhood with its own school, industry, and commercial center. It was incorporated into the city as the fifth ward in 1861. Workers as well as business owners lived in homes that still remain on Broadway, Pontiac, and Traver.

Standing here in the 1930s, you would have seen the gas works in front of you with its large storage tanks, as well as Edison's power station at the end of the bridge. The railroad station was behind you.

Early settlers and travelers arrived on foot, on horseback, or by stagecoach, following Indian trails that crossed the river where the bridge is today. Wagons carried supplies until the railroad reached Ann Arbor from Detroit in 1839.

Water was Ann Arbor's earliest source of power. By 1830 a dam upriver diverted water into the millrace, parallel to the river, to provide power for Lower Town's mills and later the Agricultural Works. In 1858, at a site south of the railroad tracks, the Ann Arbor Gas Light Company began using coal to make artificial gas for street lamps, home heating, lighting, and cooking. Gas stored in large tanks was distributed through five miles of pipe. The gas works moved to this larger site north of the tracks in 1900, a few years after an explosion damaged the old works.

Sponsored by The Treasure Mart

Photos courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by Zingerman's Community of Businesses

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by the Ann Arbor branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Photos Courtesy of the Ann Arbor Observer and Bentley Historical Library

In 1869 John G. Miller built this large steam powered planing mill, which specialized in windows, doors, shutters, and gingerbread trim for the growing city. Detroit Street hummed with industrial activity that took advantage of the nearby railroad and lumberyards. Herman Krapf bought the mill in 1878 and ran it until 1905. Like Miller before him, he lived in the house on the left. E. J. Knowlton briefly rented space from Krapf to manufacture his nationally advertised collapsible “Universal Bath.”

The automobile changed the neighborhood. A gas station replaced Schmidt’s carriage factory at Detroit and Kingsley streets. At the Division Street end of the block, an auto dealership opened next to what had been the Ferguson Cart Company. In 1960 the Treasure Mart opened a consignment shop in the old mill. It was the first of many businesses that would become the Kerrytown shopping district.

Hurd-Holmes's farm implement business was one of many industries between downtown and the railroad. David Henning erected the brick building to your right in 1864 to expand his barrel factory and apple-packing business. It was later Moses Rogers’s farm implement shop, then a creamery, a lumber warehouse, a machine shop,and, as the neighborhood changed, an art gallery,and the first home of the Ecology Center.

On this block in 1835, Ann Arbor’s first Catholic mass was said by Father Patrick O'Kelly in James Horrigan's home. Irish and German Catholics settled nearby and in 1845 built the first St.Thomas church. On the corner to your right in 1899, church member Francis Stofflet built row houses for his married children. On the opposite corner in 1902, Italian immigrant Rocco Disderide moved his house to make way for his new grocery store.

By the 1980s the neighborhood had changed.The row houses became condominiums and the grocery the popular Zingerman’s Delicatessen.