Downtown Ann Arbor (Images of America)
Category: Books,History,Americas
Downtown Ann Arbor (Images of America) Details
About the Author Author Patti Smith has selected images that show a town with mud streets, wooden sidewalks, liveries, tanneries, electric lights, and telegraph offices. Included are stories about the first car dealership, various merchants, and early immigrants. Ultimately a love letter to a beloved city, Images of America: Downtown Ann Arbor offers a glimpse into a not-so-distant past full of the people who built one of the most thriving downtowns in the state of Michigan. Read more
Reviews
This book came to my attention when I was listening to the Lucy Ann Lance Radio Show on 1290 AM WLBY here in Ann Arbor. I heard Lucy interviewing the author of this book about her journey in writing it. I immediately wanted to add this book to my small collection of books about the history of Ann Arbor.I am one of those folks that Mayor Hieftje talks about in his brief foreword. My wife and I came to Ann Arbor so I could study music at the U of M music school and we have lived here since 1978. We raised our six kids here and they have all stayed in the area, as well. Ann Arbor is indeed a beautiful town with a great deal to offer. As you walk around town you see all the buildings and wonder how they came to be and what they were before what they are being used for today. Whenever I enter any town or city, I have the same curiosity about how it came to be.Since the age of photography, people have been capturing aspects of their lives to tell the story of themselves, where they live, and what was important to them. However, these photos are full of interesting unintended information as well. Things the people of that day took for granted, were obvious to all of them, but are wonderfully foreign to us. When we view these treasures removed by time they tell us a new story that none of the folks involved ever intended to tell, and may not have realized themselves.Unfortunately, too many photographs are lost to accidents like flood, fire, and natural decay. Worse, people of a later time who do not realize the value of these photographs simply discard them. Patti Smith is a local teacher and runs her own blog. She has done us all a wonderful service by gathering up these wonderful photographs and publishing them as part of Arcadia Publishing’s terrific “Images of America” series.Ann Arbor is not a city that was created in the mists of ancient history. The area obviously had native Americans living here long before any of the Europeans showed up, but the present town is rooted in the expansion of America. John Allen and Elisha Rumsey are credited with being the original settlers of the town who created it in 1824. Each of them had a wife named Ann and so they named the town after them and all the beautiful old trees in the area. The town’s future and character was forever defined by the move of the University of Michigan from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837.This book is about the city itself and not the University. Because the town was created and laid out in historical time, the streets are largely, but not universally, rectilinear. That is, downtown is laid out with streets that run North and South and East and West that intersect at, mostly, right angles.The earliest photograph in the book is on page 40 and apparently dates before 1860. The photos range, for the most part, from just after the Civil War through the 1960s with most being late 19th and early 20th Century photographs.Unfortunately, the book does not have a map of Ann Arbor, but you can easily find them on the web or the map software on your phone. The author lays out the photos by street. First, we are shown how the city appeared over time by looking along the streets that run North and South and then the Streets that run East and West. The third section takes us through principle “suburbs” of Ann Arbor such as Kerrytown, Lower Town, and other areas of Ann Arbor other than what is known as “downtown”.Other than some basic prefatory material, the only text in the book is the very helpful captions for the photographs. I think one of the wonderful uses of the book is to have in hand as you take a walking tour of the City. You can see what remains, what has been preserved, how what has survived has been altered, and what has vanished into the flux of time.Enjoy!Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI
