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Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

When A.V. Robison & Son’s Livery and Hack Stable advertised "Best Carriages in the City for Funerals" in 1872, the building that had housed the Goodrich House Hotel still stood just down the street. The YMCA was built on the hotel site in 1904. The hack stable --by then operating as an auto garage-- is visible behind Van’s Marine Band and the Boy Scouts parade banner in the 1916 photograph above.

Women workers watched through windows from the Washtenaw Abstract office on the right -- a building that still stands today with the addition of a 1927 Art Deco façade. Ann Arbor’s Farmers' Market had its origin in 1919 when ten farmers began selling produce directly from wagons and trucks on the Main St. side of the Courthouse. As the number of farmers increased, this "curb market" was moved to North Fourth Ave.

Sponsored by Lawyers Title Insurance Corporation

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library and Ruth Green Spann

In 1921 the Colored Welfare League bought the Kayser Block on North Fourth Ave. (above right) and used it as a center to help settle black workers who migrated to Ann Arbor in the 1920s. It gradually became an African American community center and a gathering place for social and fraternal groups. It was also used for commercial undertakings and as a residence.

The Greek Revival building on the northwest corner of Ann St. and Fourth Ave. (above center) was Ann Arbor's fourth post office from 1841 to 1853. Early abolitionist meetings were held on the second floor.It later served as a flour and seed store, a bakery, and a confectionery before being demolished in 1930 to make way for a gas station.

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Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library and the Ann Arbor Community Center

In the northeast corner of Ann St. and Fourth Ave. is the structure built in 1836 to house the short-lived Bank of Washtenaw . A stuccoed Greek Revival building, it was remodeled as a residence in 1847 for local businessman Volney Chapin, whose family lived there for almost thirty years.

It continued to play a role in the life of Courthouse Square as it was adapted for a sequence of businesses, including the Catalpa Hotel, Joe Parker's Saloon, the Chamber of Commerce, many service and welfare organizations, the local bus station, and the Peters Hotel.

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Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

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.

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Photos Courtesy of Frederick Arnet, The Bentley Historical Library, Theopolis "Stomp" Bostic, Lucille Porter, & David Tinder

For over one hundred years the streets surrounding Courthouse Square were a focus for busy Ann Arbor life. Most structures that housed the many businesses and activities around the square are gone. No photo exists of Miss Monroe's primary schoolhouse, a crude log building with small glass windows and split log benches. It stood behind you on the northwest corner of Main and Ann Streets from 1825 to 1829, at a time when the square served as town founder John Allen's vegetable patch and members of the Potawatomi tribe traded berries in town.