“The photo is a close-up of the Washtenaw County Administration Building at 220 N. Main Street,” writes Dave Bicknell. “The building was originally square when it was completed in 1909,” adds Barb Tester, referencing our clue, and it was “Ann Arbor’s main post office.”
The plans were “drawn by the staff of the U.S. Treasury Department,” writes David Karl, and construction was overseen by architect Fremont Ward. In Historic Ann Arbor: An Architectural Guide, Susan Wineberg calls it “the first architecturally significant federal building in Ann Arbor.”
“By 1933, a substantial addition was added, making the building rectangular,” continues Karl. It “was meant to match the original [Neoclassical] style of the building,” writes Tester.
“In 1959, the West Stadium Blvd. location became the main post office,” adds Tester, but 220 N. Main was still a “post office back when I first moved to Ann Arbor in 1970,” shares Ken Koral, and remained in use until the Liberty St. branch opened in 1977. “Within a few years,” Wineberg writes in Historic Ann Arbor, it “was sold to Washtenaw County which restored the building.”
We received five correct entries in April. Tester won our random drawing and will enjoy her $25 gift certificate at Zingerman’s.
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