Community

A decade ago, at the height of the county’s housing frenzy, Bloomfield Hills-based Colt Farms applied to rezone 286 acres in Ann Arbor Township from agricultural use to a mobile home park. The panoramic vistas of the Braun...

In 1978, David E. Davis Jr. single-handedly made Ann Arbor a center of automotive publishing when he moved Car and Driver from Manhattan to an office in Pittsfield Township. By the time he quit eight years later, he’d...

In a “Big Year,” a birder chooses a geographical location, then tries to see as many species as possible during a calendar year. A variation on the concept is a Big Green Big Year, or BIGBY–seeing as many...

University of Michigan students Natalie Eliot (left), Evan Keimer, Jackie Brand, and Caitlin Kozak splashed barefoot in the flash flood pond that formed outside their house on South Fourth Avenue. Later they helped push...

The Elsifor family has been a part of Ann Arbor for more than one hundred years. My mother died five years ago in February; this June, she would have been seventy-four years old. She died suddenly, but we knew she wanted to be...

A book titled 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Ann Arbor, Michigan (But Are About to Find Out) arrived in town so casually it was almost as if author Horace Martin Woodhouse didn’t care whether anyone read it or not....

The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority has a vision for the future–but the present already looks pretty good compared to most places.After a yearlong process that included hiring a national consulting firm, conducting an...

On a recent Saturday morning at the Drop-Off Station on Ellsworth, a dozen people doing court-ordered community service milled around a car delivering two old computers for recycling. Business is down at the station–so...

The bell atop the Stone School Cooperative Nursery, 2600 Packard, still rings as it did when it was a one-room school. The heavy bell is rung by the nursery school students, with the aid of a teacher, to mark the end of the...

Q. Are any Civil War Medal of Honor recipients buried in Ann Arbor?A. Two are buried at Forest Hill Cemetery: Joseph B. Kemp was honored for capturing a Confederate flag in the Battle of the Wilderness, while Conrad Noll rescued...

A year after the Native American dioramas were removed from the U-M Museum of Natural History, it looks like homo sapiens won’t be back. Though children were fascinated by the miniature scenes of Indian life, “We...

When the South University Area Association approached city council to request the rezoning of its district six years ago, its argument was simple: existing demand for development was being stunted by restrictive...

We received 137 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for Castle’s Steak House on p. 42 of the April issue. The ad, which referred to the hanger steak the Fake Ad Czar recently discovered on a menu, was a (very) thinly...

“Quasimodo. He definitely looks like Quasimodo,” says U-M freshman Courtney Beleck. Craning her neck while gazing up at Burton Memorial Tower, she’s speculating about who the tower’s bell ringer might...

April’s I Spy “is a mural of Ann Arbor Veterans,” writes Melodie Marske. It’s “‘Peaceworks Through Art’ by Mary Thiefels,” writes Connie Kerr, “at 112 W. Liberty.” Our...