Next time you are taking a stroll downtown, look up at the top of the West Side Book Shop on Liberty, about half a block west of Main. At the pinnacle of the 1888 building is an ornate weather vane that features an elaborate “H.” According to Jay Platt, the owner of the shop, it was created for the Harrar family, the building’s original owners. Platt explains that the current weather vane is an exact replica created and installed in the mid-1970s: when the Harrars sold the building, they took the original with them.
You’ll find another weather vane atop the building housing the Arbor Brewing Co. at 114 E. Washington. This one integrates the date “1876” into its design. However, it actually came into being in 1983, when architect Don Van Curler engaged Ann Arborite Bil Mundus to create it. Mundus made weather vanes as a hobby.
Across the street at the Arena sports bar is another great weather vane: a magnificent cow etched in bas-relief. According to Grace Shackman’s 1993 “Then & Now” article on the building, it sported a cow weather vane when Fred Hoelzle ran a butcher shop there from 1893 until 1926. The current one is a tribute to the original, placed there when Metzger’s German restaurant expanded into the space in 1991 (it’s now on Zeeb Rd. in Scio Township).
On top of the Hands-On Museum, a galloping team of horses pulls a fire engine. Once again, we see the work of Bil Mundus. Mundus volunteered at the museum for a decade and told us he created this weather vane for it in the 1980s. The original museum building was originally the Ann Arbor fire station, and Mundus’s grandfather was fire chief from 1909 to 1939.
Downtown is certainly not the only place you can find weather vanes. Just around the corner from where we live west of town, a silhouetted sailboat, launched on high from the cupola of a neighbor’s house, sails the skies through fair weather and foul.
