Over the summer, a neighborhood vanished. In the hilly rectangle bounded by S. Division, Hill, Fifth Ave., and E. Madison, backhoes methodically crushed scores of wood-frame houses, a handful of small apartment buildings, and the old Fingerle Lumber sales room.
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The September ceremony featured speeches both lofty and bitterly political; a serenade from a transgender singer; the dramatic lifting of a white sheet from the marker; and a steady parade of attendees snapping selfies with DeGrieck and Kozachenko. (Wechsler, who lives in Boston, could not attend.)
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My first Ann Arbor Observer article appeared in the October 1980 issue. This October will be my last as editor. Our deputy editor, Brooke Black, is already planning her first issue as editor-in-chief in November. Publisher Patricia Garcia is also retiring and will be succeeded by our media director, Danielle Jones.
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The “Mighty Fitz,” the biggest ship on the Great Lakes when it was launched in 1958, went down with all hands in a storm on Lake Superior in November 1975. Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot immortalized it in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and now it’s the subject of Bacon’s latest book: The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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Twenty-two years ago, Bob Materka stood on the balcony of the three-story bed and breakfast he and his wife, Pat, had recently bought, facing the lawn by the Rackham Building. It was Christmastime, and he found his yard lacking. “Gee whiz,” he thought, “we should decorate this in some way.”
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Hats. Hats. And more hats!
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Church members, neighbors, and passersby all enjoy seeing the tower, but they will have to live with a shorter one for several months. At almost seventy years old, its spire—the metal section on top—is about to be removed for repair.
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At the height of El Movimiento—the Chicano/Latino labor and civil rights movement led by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez—a group of mostly Mexican American U-M social work students founded Trabajadores de la Raza, intended to support underrepresented students and promote justice at the university. This group would evolve into the La Raza Arts and Media Collective, part of a vast network of grassroots organizations throughout the country. In UMMA’s glass-walled Stenn gallery, La Raza: Arts and Media Collective, 1975–Today celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.
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“This month’s I Spy is an imposing building on N. Fourth Ave. that was called the ‘City Building,’” writes Ken Koral. Built in 1893, it “housed city offices until city hall opened,” in 1907, shares Dyke McEwen.
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On one autumn afternoon in 1925, two U-M students stopped for lunch at a restaurant in Nickels Arcade, but no one came to take their order. After a long wait, a busboy approached them with a stack of dirty dishes and placed them on the table.
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The sign for Bell’s Diner on W. Stadium is mounted on a chimney. Old-fashioned lettering can be seen behind the sign. Only the first two (of the five) letters can be read: “Wo.” What is written there?
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The Observer’s call for historical artifacts earlier this year yielded an interesting range of items. Many will be documented by the Ann Arbor District Library as part of its digital archive of the city’s history.
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Cinema Guild cosponsored the Ann Arbor Film Festival from its start in 1963 and hosted guests like Frank Capra, Harold Lloyd, Andy Warhol, and the Velvet Underground. And it sometimes courted controversy with screenings of banned films like Flaming Creatures, which in 1967 led to the arrests of four Cinema Guild board members.
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The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on the federal Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Three days later, University of Michigan president Henry Tappan and other dignitaries in Ann Arbor addressed a public meeting at on the courthouse square at Main and Huron. “The meeting overflowed across the square into the street,” reports a city historic marker on the courthouse wall.
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Antracoli works nearby in a neat and spacious office. Friendly, direct, and even-toned, the director, forty-eight, does not wear her ambitions on her sleeve, but she’s focused and passionate about her goals. The most important, she says, is “to create a more inclusive collection.”
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Many Washtenaw County towns were founded during a land rush following the defeat of the Midwest’s Indigenous inhabitants and construction of the Erie Canal.
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The James L. Crawford Elks Lodge has a commanding presence at the northeast end of Sunset Rd., high on a hill overlooking the Huron River. The substantial brick-and-stone building has been a pillar of Ann Arbor’s Black community for eight decades.
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The Ann Arbor area is blessed with great, public collections of local historical artifacts, such...
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