Nellie Smith* heard someone coming up the stairs and sat up in bed. She could see her breath in the late-winter afternoon light. Perhaps he had left something behind. She glanced around the room. There was nothing on the table, the chair, or the stove with the broken leg propped on a brick.

Knocks sounded. Nellie stood, shook out her ragged nightgown, and opened the door an inch. The friendly gaze of a middle-aged woman in a trim winter coat and long dark skirts met Nellie’s cautious look.

Harriet Gilbert as she looked around the time she was first elected Ypsilanti Home Association president in 1875, an office she held for over 30 years.

Lizzie Swaine introduced herself, apologized for the intrusion, and said there’d been word of a little difficulty at this Washington Street address. It felt cold here, she said – did Nellie have any fuel in the house? No, said Nellie, nor food either. Lizzie asked a few more questions, reassured her that help was coming, thanked her for her time, and left. Likely the women’s interaction was similar to this imagined scene.

What is a matter of record is that some days later Lizzie joined twelve other women for the May 1896 Ypsilanti Home Association meeting at Lovina Briggs’ Huron Street home. As Lizzie described Nellie’s plight, she may have noticed some raised eyebrows. The ladies discussed the case. Later, Association secretary Cleantha Dickinson paraphrased the talk in the 1896 meeting minutes logbook.

“Mrs. Swaine came to present the case of Mrs. Smith,” she wrote, “whom she found without a fire and about to be turned out of her rooms because she could not pay her rent.”

She continued, “Investigation among the ladies proved that the woman had a father and brother in comfortable circumstances who would not help the woman unless she behaved herself … it was found that she had been under arrest for keeping a disorderly house,” a euphemism referring at that time to prostitution.

She concluded, “The ladies decided they could not help her while she persisted in wrong doing.” Luckily, Nellie was an exception – the group helped most of those cases that came before it. 

Long before federal or state social welfare agencies, the Ypsilanti Home Association was a homegrown ladies’ charity group founded in 1857 as an auxiliary of New York’s American Female Guardian Society, which operated a “Home for the Friendless.” Any woman could join the YHA for five cents [a little over a dollar in today’s money]. Schoolgirls could also join, and were exempted from the fee if they sewed one garment to give to the “Home.” The first donation box mailed to New York contained a variety of handmade clothing and bedding, and some beans.

Initially held in members’ homes and later in various Ypsi churches, the afternoon meetings began with a Bible reading and prayer, followed by roll call and member reports of needy cases. Two women from each of Ypsilanti’s then-five wards composed the executive committee, which undertook home visits and had the authority to distribute donations.

In addition to donations sent to New York, the ladies also assisted the poor in Ypsilanti. In 1863 the group chose a closer-to-home beneficiary, the “Detroit Home of the Friendless.” Seventeen years later, the YHA decided that the Detroit group was self-sufficient. Thereafter the Association’s energies turned exclusively to the Ypsi poor.

Over the decades, the YHA’s help took many forms. Shoes were purchased for a child who could not attend school barefoot in the winter. The ladies made numerous bedsheets and comforters. The group took charge of distributing Thanksgiving food donated to Ypsi churches. One meeting was held with the ladies sitting around a rectangular quilt frame, sewing as they listened.

The YHA distributed firewood, winter coats, furniture, and jars of homemade jam. They graciously thanked area farmers for donations of vegetables. They accepted 126 loaves of bread from a city-wide baking contest. During the Civil War, the YHA sent items to the Soldier’s Aid Society. They even paid for a length of sidewalk in front of the home of a man who couldn’t afford the city-assessed cost.

They asked the city council to supply a better grade of coal for the municipal free allotment to the poor, unsuccessfully. On another occasion, they approached the council again, this time with a formal petition requesting that the city’s scrap wood, offered to the poor as fuel, be sawed into stove lengths instead of four foot long chunks, to save the recipients the cost of taking it to a sawmill. They succeeded.

It seems a small victory, but the ladies of the YHA were exercising their collective social power in one of the few ways then viewed as appropriate for women. They had no vote, limited rights, and access to only a very few types of female employment regarded as acceptable. Given these societal constraints, the YHA offered Ypsi women a means of effecting change in their community and gaining authority and influence within the vehicle of Christian charity.

In an era that drew a sharp distinction between privation caused by misfortune versus questionable morals, the ladies of the Association withheld their charity on occasion, as in Nellie’s case. In the fall and winter of 1888-89, they refused help to the Moffett family, Jane Wesson, and a Mrs. Gordon, for unrecorded reasons. At the February 1892 meeting “the ladies made a vigorous protest against assisting a family where the father of the family was able to work.” The member who had given aid was Lura Parsons, who again met with disapproval at the March 1894 meeting. Lura reported that she had given money to a recent arrival from northern Michigan. The other ladies declared “the man was wholly unreliable and unworthy of assistance. Mrs. Parsons was [demoted] to only assist in case of hunger or sickness.”

This friction was rare in the group’s decades of good works, at least judging by the surviving minutes. The majority of meetings were productive and upbeat. One acclaimed president elected in 1875, Harriet Gilbert, retained the office for over three decades.

Harriet Gilbert as she appeared in 1910 at age 80, a few weeks before her death.

The YHA won community respect early in its long tenure. Within a year of its founding, schoolchildren, Normal (Eastern Michigan University) students, merchants, farmers, and residents began to channel donations of goods and money to the YHA.

Recognition also came through visits by such distinguished guest speakers as local and Detroit ministers. In July of 1864, even Sojourner Truth gave a talk to the group. The visit was a stop on her train trip from her Grand Rapids home to the White House, where the former slave met Abraham Lincoln. Her direct, impassioned manner of speaking may have been a bit overpowering to the YHA ladies. “Judging from observation,” noted the meeting minutes, “some present thought ‘distance’ would have lent ‘enchantment to the view.’”

Later, after years of experience, the group seemed to regard the local poor with a proprietary attitude. When one family’s home burned down in the fall of 1907, neighbors showered the family with money, furniture, and clothes. This irked the YHA. In the October 9, 1907 Ypsilanti Daily Press, an open letter from the association urged the community to “end the indiscriminate giving, especially of money … [instead, to the YHA’s executive committee] may be sent either a notice of contributions … or the things themselves.” It didn’t help that the family’s father had a vague but troubling connection to a recent Huron River drowning.

Active during the Depression, the YHA played a major role all over town in helping with or coordinating such projects as preserving food or making clothes. The group was shocked when in 1935 President Roosevelt introduced new legislation, including the Social Security program, that would federalize social welfare programs, to be administered top-down by the states.

The State of Michigan demanded that the YHA submit papers to Lansing proving that the group had been disbanded. The YHA debated what to do, and a read between the lines suggests that their initial response seems to have been polite yet strategic stalling.

By the April 1935 meeting the group could stall no longer. “In regard to our dissolution papers,” reads the title to one section of the 1935 logbook, “A motion was made by Mrs. Weber and seconded by Miss Minor that a personal talk with the Secretary of State might be more effective than correspondence. She moved that we drive over to Lansing and settle matters.”

And they did. Like many other local charities, the YHA worked out an agreement whereby they could continue their charity work, even as federal funds flowed in. The group lasted until just after World War II, when the YHA reduced its meetings to only two a year. It apparently disbanded in 1946.

For nearly a century the YHA had spearheaded charity work in Ypsilanti. The thousands they helped had good meals, warm clothes, and a bit of relief and hope thanks to the association’s enduring efforts.

*Surnames of charity recipients have been changed.

Mystery Artifact

In the previous column, cmadler correctly guessed that the object in question was a nutcracker.

Mystery artifact.

It really doesn’t work very well, though, which may be why only one person recognized its purported function.

Those little plier-like crackers are far better.

At any rate.

This column’s mystery artifact is a recent acquisition by the Ypsilanti Historical Museum. I stumbled upon it while nosing through the back storage area in the Archives where I volunteer.

It’s a gorgeous old machine … and yet such an enigmatic one! What was it and what was it used for? Take your best guess!

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives” and “Hidden History of Ypsilanti.” Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

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When represented as a pie chart, it's not as clear whether 1% is the top or the bottom. (Chart by The Chronicle)

Also addressing the audience was Ward 1 city councilmember Sabra Briere. Though The Chronicle did not attend the event, with Briere’s permission, we’re publishing the draft of her speech. We think it deserves a wider reading – as the calendar turns to the traditional season of giving, and as police in more than one city appear to be in a mood to move against Occupy demonstrators.

The official motto of the dinner was: “Building the Future on the Foundations of the Past” 

Tonight I’m filling in for the mayor of Ann Arbor, John Hieftje, and for the mayor pro tem, Marcia Higgins. It’s an honor to play your mayor this evening.

I’d like first to remind everyone that tonight we’re not just breaking bread together. We’re celebrating Ann Arbor’s NAACP day, the first Saturday in November. Each year we hold the dinner on this night to remind us of our need to work together.

There are several people in the audience tonight who currently hold office, who have held office in the past, or who would like to hold office in the near future.

If you are a current elected official, please stand. Those who’ve been elected in the past, please join them. And those who are running for office, could you stand too? Let’s applaud their willingness to serve.

I prepared a few remarks, and promise not to speak at length. Tonight’s topic indicates that we are building our future on the foundations of the past.

I take my texts from the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The function of education … is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. … Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. [MLK "The Purpose of Education," 1948]

I think I’ve learned the value of an education, especially as the world continues to change. It’s one thing to learn how to use a computer; it’s a completely different thing to learn how to think, to ask questions, and to constantly learn. During my brief life I’ve found the computer a constant challenge, but one I was able to tackle. But learning how to evaluate the information I receive, how to question authority – even in myself – and how to be ethically honest has been more demanding.

Sometimes we forget what the purpose of an education really is. It isn’t to get a job. Few of us will work for only one employer in our lifetimes. It isn’t to be employable, either. Many of the skills needed on the job aren’t the ones the educational system taught us. Those skills – being prompt, being responsible, being reliable, taking pride in what we are doing – those skills we learn in life.

But a good education teaches us those things – in the classroom or out of it – that allow us to think intensively and critically. We learn that we are always ignorant, and always striving to know more and be more.

Rarely do we find people who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. [MLK "Strength to Love," 1963]

Education – the kind that leads to hard, solid thinking – isn’t something we are handed. We need to work at it, acquire it from our teachers, and recognize that “teacher” includes parent, pastor, neighbor and friend. If we get our vision of the world handed to us, if we never learn to question the quality of information we receive, then others control our thoughts and actions.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. [MLK "Strength to Love," 1963]

It’s that willingness to be sincere in our ignorance and intentional in our stupidity – and we are all stupid from time to time – that allows others to control our thoughts and our actions. Each piece of wisdom we are given must be questioned, tested, and folded into our own world view. That’s because wisdom cannot be given – it must be earned. And our failure to become wise encourages us all to make decisions based on our ignorance and our biases.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. [MLK "Strength to Love," 1963]

We each face a lot of pressure to conform. Our keynote speaker tonight demonstrated in his youth the value of resisting conformity. That value – that nothing would change unless our world vision was challenged – often goes unconsidered or underappreciated.

Tonight there are folks all across our nation, sleeping out in parks and public spaces because they are protesting. They are protesting an economic system that is failing them – and us. The Occupy movement should make us all rethink our vision of America – our vision that hard work is rewarded, that each generation will be better off than the one before, that progress is defined as better technology.

I suspect that everyone in this room is part of the 99%.

According to The Economist, the data showing the difference between the top 1% and the rest of us is dramatic and feeds into two existing prejudices:

First, that a system that works well for the very richest has delivered returns on labor that are disappointing for everyone else. Second, that the people at the top have made out like bandits over the past few decades, and that now everyone else must pick up the bill. Of course it is a little more complicated than that. But this downturn ought to test the normally warm feelings in America of the 99% towards the 1%. [The Economist, Oct. 26, 2011 "The 99 Percent"]

Is it testing your warm feelings?

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” [MLK "Conquering Self-Centeredness," 1957]

Finally, I need to remind us all that, if we are the 99%, there are still others who are the bottom 1%.

While the top 1% has seen its income grow significantly in the last 20 years, and the rest of us have seen our incomes stagnate year over year, the bottom 1% has seen an actual decrease.

As we approach the traditional giving season, please think of those who are forced to live without – and of those on the streets, reminding us of our duty to each other.

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That part of town is perhaps best known for the local landmark Washtenaw Dairy, located less than a block away from the proposed development. At Friday’s meeting, donuts from the shop were offered as refreshment, next to a wall of drawings and maps of the project. Washtenaw Dairy owner Doug Raab was among the 50 or so residents who attended.

This architectural rendering of the 618 S. Main project was posted on a wall at the Nov. 11 neighborhood meeting about the project. This view is from the perspective facing northeast, from the intersection of Ashley and Mosley streets. (Photos by the writer.)

The building – a six-story structure, with additional apartments on a penthouse level – will consist of about 180 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, with rents likely in the $950 to $1,400 range. Two levels of underground parking are planned, with about 140 spaces. The project targets young professionals in their mid-20s to mid-30s, developer Dan Ketelaar told the group on Friday – people who are interested in an urban lifestyle, within walking distance of the downtown and University of Michigan campus.

Ketelaar hopes the project will transform that section of Main Street and perhaps encourage the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority to make improvements in that area, as it’s doing now along Fifth and Division.

Because the project as designed is about 80 feet at its highest point – 20 feet taller than what zoning would allow – it will be submitted to the city as a “planned project.” Planned projects allow for some flexibility in height or setbacks, in exchange for public benefits. They don’t allow as much flexibility, however, as a planned unit development (PUD). Ketelaar cited a large courtyard along Ashley as a benefit to the neighborhood. Another benefit he cited was the provision on site of double the amount of required parking.

Parking was among several concerns mentioned by residents during a Q&A on Friday with Ketelaar and his project team, which includes a landscape architect who also helped design the new plaza and rain garden in front of city hall. Several residents said parking and traffic are already an issue in that neighborhood.

City councilmember Mike Anglin – who represents Ward 5, where the project is located – urged Ketelaar to work toward narrowing Main Street south of Packard from four to two lanes, to slow speeds along that stretch. Ketelaar had mentioned the idea of improving that part of Main Street earlier in the meeting. He said he could suggest narrowing the road, but noted that it’s up to the city to make that decision.

Other issues discussed at the meeting include the need to integrate the development with the neighborhood, the project’s financing, and details of the building’s design. Environmental issues covered at the meeting included: the site’s brownfield status; stormwater management; and relation to the floodplain.

This is the second project to go through the city’s new design review process. The first project to be reviewed in this way – The Varsity Ann Arbor – had been approved by city council the previous night. The design review board will meet at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at the former Fox Tent & Awning building at 618 S. Main. That meeting, which is open to the public, will be followed by another community forum on Tuesday, Nov. 22 from 5-7 p.m. at the same location. Ketelaar has previously met with local business owners and members of the Old West Side Association board to discuss the project.

The project is expected to be formally submitted to the city later this month. After review by the city planning staff, it will be considered by the planning commission, which will make a recommendation to the city council. Construction could begin in the fall of 2012.

618 S. Main: Background & Presentation

Dan Ketelaar began by noting that the site sits on about an acre of land – roughly 44,000 square feet – bounded by Main Street and Ashley to the east and west, respectively, and by Mosley to the south. The property’s northern edge falls midblock, south of the Happy’s Pizza lot on Main and Affordable Vet Services on Ashley. Single-family houses line Ashley Street across from the site; all other sides face commercial property – South Main Market is across the street on Main.

The neighborhood meeting was held in the building of the former Fox Tent & Awning, which closed in late 2010. Other buildings on the site house Ivory Photo, Deluxe Drapery and Overture Audio. These commercial buildings – which were constructed in the 1930s – would be demolished to make way for the project.

Dan Ketelaar, president of Urban Group Development Co., the developer of the 618 S. Main project.

Ketelaar said his team began working on the project in March, looking for examples of the style they wanted to reflect. He pointed to photos posted on the wall of the room – images of Bach Elementary School, the old Argus building, Liberty Lofts – that evoke the character he says he wants to bring to this project. The buildings he cited are older, with brick facades. Liberty Lofts, at First and Liberty, is a former manufacturing plant that was converted to condos a few years ago.

The site is zoned D2, a designation for areas that transition between the densest zoning allowed (D1) and residential areas. For this site, D2 zoning allows for a maximum 400% FAR (floor-area ratio). FAR, a measure of density, is the ratio of the square footage of a building divided by the size of the lot. A one-story structure built lot-line-to-lot-line with no setbacks corresponds to an FAR of 100%. A similar structure built two-stories tall would result in an FAR of 200%.

With a 400% FAR, a building could be constructed up to 60 feet tall with 170,000 square feet of floor space, and still meet the zoning requirements.

Ketelaar noted that the site is in the southern part of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority district, and he hoped his development would encourage the DDA to improve the Main Street section south of Packard – perhaps in a similar way to the DDA’s current Fifth and Division streetscape project.

He also contrasted his vision with that of Ashley Mews, a condo development up the street at Main and Packard. Ketelaar described that building as a “hardscape,” saying he’d like his project to have a “soft streetscape” by comparison. He pointed to photos of a residential urban development in Portland, Oregon, which converted old railroad cars into housing, with a stepped-back front entry of greenery. Ketelaar also hopes to evoke the ambiance of Portland’s Hotel Modera, which features outdoor gathering spaces with fire pits and other amenities. [Ketelaar's daughter lives in Portland.]

Mike Siegel of VOA Associates – the Chicago-based architecture firm that’s working on this project – reviewed previous designs that had been considered by Ketelaar for the site. The team had begun by conceptually envisioning what a building would look like as permitted by zoning. When he described it as a glass block that’s 60 stories tall, he was quickly corrected to 60 feet. “It’s been a long week,” he quipped.

The team initially considered putting in two buildings, with a narrow courtyard in the center. The structure facing Main Street would have been apartments, while the building on Ashley would have included townhouses and duplexes. Both would have been six stories tall. However, “we didn’t feel it was very sensitive to the neighborhood,” Siegel said.

A second version was designed, with a smaller building on Ashley. But that version didn’t create enough density to cover the cost of construction, Ketelaar said. He noted that it’s true with any business – if you’re making donuts, but you sell the donuts for less than it costs you to make them, you won’t stay in business very long. “It’s a reality of business,” he said, “and that’s what we all need to deal with.”

Residents and representatives of the developer look at drawings for a proposed six-story apartment building on 618 S. Main during a Nov. 11 neighborhood meeting, held in the sewing room of the former Fox Tent & Awning building.

Siegel said the development team worked with Ann Arbor’s planning staff and came up with the design they’re proposing. The intent is to soften the edge facing the neighborhood on Ashley, which is lined with single-family homes. The main massing of the structure faces Main and Mosley, with a large courtyard area off of Ashley.

The development team also knew that the project needed more than the minimum amount of required parking, Siegel said, “or the neighbors are going to scream.”

Ketelaar noted that the site requires only about 70 parking spaces. They could have designed a surface parking lot, like Liberty Lofts, but “that didn’t seem right,” he said. Their current proposal calls for building two parking levels underground, with between 130-140 parking spaces.

One issue is that the water table in this area is high, he said. They hit saturated soil about 10-12 feet below ground. So while one level of parking will be completely underground, the second level will be about halfway above ground – and that drives up the height of the building, he said.

At the tallest point – the top of the elevator shaft – the building is about 80 feet high, as currently designed. That’s about 20 feet taller than the D2 zoning would allow. So the development will be submitted as a “planned project,” a designation that allows for flexibility in height and setback requirements, in exchange for public benefits.

A “planned project” allows modifications of the area, height, and placement requirements related to permanent open space preservation, if the project would result in “the preservation of natural features, additional open space, greater building or parking setback, energy conserving design, preservation of historic or architectural features, expansion of the supply of affordable housing for lower income households or a beneficial arrangement of buildings.” However, all other zoning code requirements must still be met – including the permitted uses, maximum density, and maximum floor area.

Ketelaar pointed to the additional parking and greenspace in the courtyard as among the public benefits of the project.

Shannan Gibb-Randall – a landscape architect with Insite Design Studio, the Ann Arbor firm that also built the new rain garden in front of city hall – described the landscaping and other exterior features of the project. On the Main Street side, the 9-foot width between the street and the property line seemed too narrow, so the building will be set back an additional 5 feet from the property line, she said. Gibb-Randall also cited the Portland railroad car project as a model, with the intent to create layers of greenscape and richness to soften the front of the building. Balconies will also create a recess on the side facing Main Street, she said.

Ideally, the city and DDA would eventually allow parking along that stretch of Main Street, she said, which would help to calm the traffic. Vehicles tend to pick up speed along that part of Main Street, she noted, as the road widens to four lanes south of Packard.

For stormwater management, the project will use surface infiltration rather than underground detention, Gibb-Randall said. Large planters and porous pavement are among the strategies they’ll use – much like the design of the plaza and rain garden in front of city hall, she said.

Siegel concluded the presentation by noting that the project will use sustainable building techniques and aim for LEED Silver certification.

618 S. Main: Questions from Residents

The meeting was attended by about 50 people, including nearby neighbors as well as people who are active in development issues citywide. Among others, they included Ray Detter of the Downtown Citizens Advisory Council; former planning commissioner Eppie Potts; Christine Crockett, president of the Old Fourth Ward Association; Alan Haber, who’s spearheading an effort to create a community commons on top of the South Fifth Avenue underground parking structure; Ann Arbor Ward 5 councilmember Mike Anglin; and Barbara Murphy, vice president of the Old West Side Association.

For this report, questions and responses are summarized and organized thematically.

618 S. Main: Questions from Residents – Traffic, Parking

A woman identified herself as the owner of a house on Ashley, between Madison and Jefferson, that was built in the 1800s. Often, there’s no parking along Ashley now, she said, and traffic is heavy. She said she can’t imagine what it will be like with this new development. It will likely be worse, she noted, “and I don’t want that.”

Ketelaar said he didn’t think they could solve that problem – any development would have the same issues. Siegel noted the project will have about 140 parking spaces, double the number of required parking spaces. The development team also plans to have some vehicles on site from the Zipcar car-sharing service, as well as bike storage areas to encourage the use of alternative transportation.

Mike Siegel of VOA Associates, a Chicago architecture firm, points to a detail in the courtyard of the proposed 618 S. Main apartment complex.

In response to another concern raised about parking, Ketelaar said that the site is part of downtown, and the project is intended to attract young professionals in their mid-20s to mid-30s. About three-quarters of the apartments will be studios or one-bedroom units, he said. The apartments will be attractive to people who work in the growing high-tech sector, he said, like Barracuda Networks, which earlier this year announced plans to add several hundred employees here. These young professionals are active, he said, and the reason they live downtown is so that they can walk.

One resident said the 25-35 age range might be low – the apartments would also appeal to people in their 40s or older, she said. Ketelaar agreed, observing that people his age often had the same kind of desires, in terms of urban living, that young professionals had.

Another resident pointed out that the area is in a transition. The reality is that there’s no grocery within walking distance, for example, so most tenants would use their cars for that kind of trip. Someone asked whether the Ashley Mews condo development was fully occupied – that complex didn’t seem to have much impact on parking. It is full, Ketelaar said, and each unit has its own parking space within the structure.

Siegel noted that if a “by-right” project were built on the 618 S. Main site, it could have about 200 units and 70 parking spaces, which would be allowed based on the D2 zoning. The project that they’re proposing would have fewer units – about 180 – but double the parking (about 140 spaces).

Another resident noted that he lived on South Main and walked in that area frequently. From Jefferson to Hoover, parking in the neighborhood is already full, he said, adding that he didn’t there would be much difference in parking caused by the new development.

Siegel asked whether neighborhood parking permits might be a solution. A resident noted that in some areas of the neighborhood, residential parking permits are already required.

One resident asked whether the DDA is helping finance parking for the project. No, Ketelaar said, but he hoped the DDA would consider making improvements along Main Street south of Packard, including possibly adding onstreet parking to that stretch.

In response to a concern about the visibility of the first-level parking, Ketelaar said it will be enclosed so that passers-by wouldn’t be able to see it. There might be some kind of greenery screen used as well. The two parking levels won’t be connected – one will have an entrance off of Ashley, with the other accessed from Main Street. There will be some guest parking available, possibly as surface spots in the courtyard area.

618 S. Main: Questions from Residents – Building Structure

A resident asked how tall the building would be, and why it would be allowed to go higher than 60 feet. The proposal calls for six stories plus a penthouse level: The first three stories would form a “street wall,” with three additional stories above that set back a few feet. A penthouse level on the roof would be set back even further, allowing the units there to have verandas.

Ketelaar explained that a “planned project” designation allows for variances in height or setback. This project will ask for a height variance, he said. The public benefits that the project offers in exchange for that variance include a 17,000-square-foot courtyard and additional parking. He allowed that not everyone might agree that these are public benefits, but he thinks they are.

He also noted plans to install solar panels on the roof, to reduce the building’s energy costs. When asked whether the use of large windows throughout the building will contribute to energy loss, Siegel said the building will use insulated, high-performance windows, possibly tinted. Residents will be able to open the windows, he said.

One resident asked whether the mechanicals on the roof would be enclosed – does LEED certification address sound requirements? No, but the city’s building and zoning codes do, Ketelaar said. Siegel added that the mechanical systems will be surrounded by walls, but open on top.

In response to a query about more details regarding the units, Siegel said there will be three sizes for two of the apartment types – studio and one-bedroom units – and five different sizes for the two-bedroom units. Rents will likely range from $950 to $1,400 per month.

Another resident asked where the garbage and recycling would be located. There will be an area for trash and recycling on each floor, Siegel explained. Building staff will then empty the trash and recycling into a dumpster and containers on the north side of the building. The developer is negotiating an easement with the property owner on that north side to allow for trash and recycling trucks to make pickups from Ashley.

In response to another question, Siegel said the public entrance to the building will be off of Ashley Street. Residents will have another entrance off of Main.

How committed are the designers to the use of brick masonry? a resident asked. A decision on materials hasn’t been made yet, Ketelaar said. Siegel added that they’re very committed to using brick with steel detailing on the first three stories. He indicated a range of other architectural detailing that he hopes to include, including cornices at the street level and other ornamental touches.

618 S. Main: Questions from Residents – Neighborhood

One resident said he’d like to see the first floor be retail, adding that it would be “great for the neighborhood.” Ketelaar said he’d thought about it, but couldn’t figure out what might work.

Ketelaar said that when he first came to town in the late 1960s, there were a lot of businesses to serve downtown residents, such as drug stores and groceries. Though there aren’t that many now, he acknowledged, the idea is that with growth of developments to bring more residents, the services will follow.

Doug Raab, owner of Washtenaw Dairy, talks with Ann Arbor city councilmember Mike Anglin at the neighborhood meeting for the 618 S. Main apartment project. Washtenaw Dairy is located a block away from the proposed development.

A resident asked whether Ketelaar had considered putting his building on the empty lot where the Glen Ann project had been proposed. Glen Ann was a 9-story residential project that another developer had proposed and that the city approved, but it was never built. The vacant parcel is at the corner of Glen and Catherine streets, across town near the University of Michigan medical center.

Ketelaar said he hadn’t considered that. The 618 S. Main property is in a unique location, he added, close to downtown and the UM campus.

The same resident noted that neighbors are concerned about the impact of the development on the neighborhood, in part because apartment dwellers aren’t as invested in the neighborhood as condo owners, who would be less inclined to trash the neighborhood.

Ketelaar noted that condos aren’t selling now, and that apartments appeal both to young professionals as well as to older people like him, who have the same interests in finding places to live where you can walk downtown, and that require far less maintenance than a house. One of his goals is to create a community, he said – that’s why they’re designing the courtyard space with seating, a small pool (though not one for swimming), and an indoor common living room on the first level, where people can hang out.

When asked about public access, Gibb-Randall clarified that the courtyard isn’t a public park. It’s intended for use by residents. Ketelaar described it as the equivalent of someone’s back yard.

A resident noted that the neighborhood already is a community. How will residents of the development interact with the existing neighborhood? They’ll become part of it, Ketelaar replied. Just because people are new to the area doesn’t mean they’ll be bad, he said.

When asked about putting in a coffee shop as a way to help integrate the neighborhood, Ketelaar said he was concerned about competing with the existing coffee shop – presumably referencing Washtenaw Dairy, located less than a block away at Madison and Ashley. Doug Raab, an owner of Washtenaw Dairy, was sitting across from Ketelaar at Friday’s meeting. One of the residents responded by saying that with 200 more people in the neighborhood, they could use more than one coffee shop.

Ketelaar was asked about other projects he’s been involved with, and what the impact was like on the neighborhoods for those. He said he hasn’t done a lot of development in Ann Arbor recently. He had been a principal in the 601 S. Forest project, but was bought out. That residential development is being constructed now and was controversial when it went through the city’s approval process – Ketelaar noted that some people who had been vocal about that project were also at the current meeting. He also cited Ridgewood condos, on West Liberty east of Stadium, as another project he’d developed.

618 S. Main: Questions from Residents – Environmental Issues

In response to a question about the floodplain, Ketelaar said the site isn’t located in the floodplain – it’s a few hundred feet from the edge of the floodplain, which is to the south, he said. One resident commented that in the flood of 1968, waters covered that area, and that while new federal floodplain maps will be released in April 2012, he wasn’t convinced they’ll be accurate. Bob Wanty of Washtenaw Engineering, who is also working on this project, said they have to use the maps that are available.

Alan Haber, top center, asks a question while Julie Weatherbee raises her hand with another query. Dan Ketelaar, developer of the 618 S. Main project, is seated at the far left. Behind him is Shannan Gibb-Randall, a landscape architect for the project.

A resident asked how the stormwater system will work, given the building’s large footprint on the site, and the fact that there will be two levels of underground parking. Gibb-Randall said they plan to “max out” the courtyard in terms of greenspace to absorb the water. When asked if this approach will work in the winter, Gibb-Randall said yes. Her firm has done over 70 rain gardens in Ann Arbor, she said, and while there is a limited palette of plants that can handle the seasonal changes, it’s possible to do. She described how when plants put down roots, about a third of those roots eventually die – creating channels underground that allow water to flow through. She plans to use as many native plants as possible.

Mike Anglin – one of two Ann Arbor city councilmembers representing Ward 5, where this project is located – asked Ketelaar about the project’s brownfield status. The site is considered a brownfield because it includes an underground fuel tank. The site across the street – Armen Cleaners, at the northwest corner of Mosley and Ashley – is also a brownfield, and there are monitoring wells in the area because of contamination there.

The 618 S. Main project is developing a brownfield plan, which will be submitted to the city along with the site plan. Ketelaar said they’ll apply for tax increment financing (TIF) to help remediate the site, but he wasn’t sure what amount they’d seek at this point. Anglin said it would be useful for the community to have results from any environmental testing that’s done on the site. Ketelaar noted that those tests would be submitted as part of the brownfield plan.

The city had approved brownfield credits for 601 S. Forest in 2008, when Ketelaar was still involved in that project.

618 S. Main: Questions from Residents – Financing

In response to a query about taxes, Ketelaar said that the owners of Fox Tent & Awning were paying about $18,000 in taxes each year, because they had owned the property since the 1930s. After the new development is built, he said the taxes will increase to over $500,000 annually.

Ketelaar was asked if he is confident he can build the development, from a financial perspective. He explained that typically, a project like this is 65% debt financed, with 35% equity. In this case, he said, the project is eligible for financing from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), through a 40-year loan – that will be part of the financing package. He noted that even now, many banks aren’t lending.

Next Steps

When asked what would happen if the city didn’t approve a planned project for the site, Siegel replied that they would still want to develop a site that will improve the community. If all goes according to plan and the planned project is approved, construction could begin in the fall of 2012. However, Siegel added, sometimes it’s hard to predict what Ann Arbor’s city council will do or how long the process will take. It was a line that drew laughs from many of the residents, but Ketelaar called out to councilmember Mike Anglin, “Mike, you weren’t laughing!”

[Anglin perhaps found no humor in the situation because of recent developments in the saga of a project on South Fifth Avenue. Demolition of seven homes occurred earlier in the week as the start of City Place, a by-right residential project that many people see as inferior to another project – Heritage Row – previously proposed as a planned unit development on that same site. Anglin was one of four councilmembers who voted against Heritage Row. Most recently, he attempted to forestall City Place from moving ahead by proposing a second time to form a historic district study committee for that area, but did not get enough support from other councilmembers. For additional background, see Chronicle coverage: "Chapter Added to Fifth Ave. Historic Saga"]

Following Ketelaar’s quip, Anglin said he wanted to encourage Ketelaar to think about working to make Main Street a two-lane road along the section south of Packard. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be just one lane in each direction, Anglin said, and it would help the community for Ketelaar to make that happen.

Ketelaar responded by noting that “all we can do is suggest it.” [Changes to city roads would involve the city government and, for trunk lines, the Michigan Dept. of Transportation.] He said he’d had a brief conversation about it with Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, but that the DDA and city council would make any decision regarding Main Street traffic lanes.

Anglin asked whether at least the group could leave the meeting that night with the idea that a traffic study will be done. Ketelaar replied that a traffic study will be done as part of the required site plan submission. He also said he’d be happy to talk with Anglin about making a presentation on this issue to the DDA.

Describing the meeting as wonderful, Ray Detter noted that this is the second project that will go through the city’s new design review process. The first project to be reviewed in this way – The Varsity Ann Arbor – had just been approved by city council the previous night, he observed.

The city of Ann Arbor adopted design guidelines in February 2011. New developments must be evaluated by the design review board, but compliance with the board’s feedback is voluntary.

Detter urged people to attend the design review board meeting at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16 in the same location, at 618 S. Main. That meeting will be followed by another community forum on Tuesday, Nov. 22 from 5-7 p.m. Ketelaar has previously met with some local business owners and members of the Old West Side Association board to discuss the project.

The project is expected to be formally submitted to the city later this month. After review by the city planning staff, it will be considered by the planning commission, which will make a recommendation to city council.

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of local government and civic affairs. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

Normal College’s formidable Dean of Women, Bessie Leach Priddy, knew about the growing problem. If things continued along the current course, the entire college could be disgraced. Boards of Education across the state might refuse to hire the graduating young teachers. The institution’s reputation could suffer. The situation was intolerable and it was time to act – forcefully.

The local paper uncovered the expulsions and gave the story a front-page, above-the-fold placement.

So forcefully, it turned out, that in the fallout from the result, no less a paper than the New York Times said in so many words that the Ypsi school was staffed by meddlesome, old-fashioned fuddy-duddies.

Some weeks prior in the spring of 1922, Dean Priddy had met with college president Charles McKenny, who shared her concern. After discussion, the two decided to immediately expel 17 female students and place 13 more on probation for the spring term. Dean Priddy and President McKenny drafted a letter explaining their action and sent it to the matrons of the boarding houses around town where female students lived before the era of dorms.

The 17 prospective teachers packed their things, said goodbyes, and had their trunks delivered to the train depot. The whistle blew. Their career at the Normal was over.

And all for smoking cigarettes.

Dean Priddy resumed her duties and President McKenny left town to attend an educational conference. The matter had been settled with hushed discretion.

Until the local paper caught the story.

Dean of Women Bessie Leach Priddy kept a sharp eye on female Normal College students.

“17 GIRL SMOKERS ARE OUSTED FROM NORMAL,” blared a huge headline on the front page of the April 12, 1922 edition of the Daily Ypsilantian-Press. The paper printed most of the letter that President McKenny and Dean Priddy had sent to the boarding houses. It revealed that the expelled female students had committed other infractions in addition to smoking.

The official reasons for the dismissals according to the letter were “undesirable attitude toward work, inability to do the work, class absences … dishonesty in work, in school work, and in financial matters, and smoking.”

“Regarding smoking,” continued the letter, “[t]he college does not enter into the discussion of the question of whether it is any worse for a woman to smoke than it is for a man.” The same was true, it said, for coming in at 2 in the morning or getting drunk. The college, claimed the letter, held male and female students to exactly the same standards.

No male students, however, had been dismissed.

The next day, the New York Times published its take on the Ypsi story. “The members of the Faculty … say that misdemeanors are harmful because they result in poor class work. But many made it plain that they believed bobbed hair, cigarettes, and strolling in gardens under the moon did not fall short of being actually sinful …”

Students felt treated like children, said the story. “‘We are old enough to look out for our own morals,’ is a common expression these days among both men and women students.”

Normal College president Charles McKenny thought himself progressive on the issue of women's hairstyles.

The Times story stung. “The claim that girls are discredited because of bobbed hair has no foundation,” President McKenny insisted in a special statement printed in the following issue of the Normal College News. “Some of the best students on the campus have bobbed hair, and … in an address quoted far and wide in Michigan, [I have] said that bobbed hair was no indication of perverse moral character.”

That bold declaration, from a gentleman born before the Civil War, must have caused much eye-rolling among his 45 female faculty members, just over half of whom had the stylish new cut.

But it hadn’t just been a skipped class or two that had flustered McKenny and the Dean of Women and led to the expulsions. It was the liberated behavior of some of the Jazz Era women students.

Buried further in the boarding house letter, McKenny’s other concerns come to light. What worried him and the Dean, aside from playing hooky, was what he called “social indiscretion.”

Some female students couldn’t handle the freedom of college life, said the letter. Additional reasons the women had been dismissed included “attentions from many and sometimes strange men, allowing undue familiarities from men who were casual acquaintances – sometimes from several men in one term,” and “constant week night dates with evasion of [boarding house] closing hours [10 p.m. according to a citywide rule].”

Another expulsion offense McKenny listed was “auto riding without permission, and sometimes by street pickup.” Yet another was “walking in parks and gardens by night” (moonlight canoe rides were popular too), not to mention “gaining access to rooming houses by way of windows.”

However, times, hemlines, and hairstyles were changing. The day soon came when female students did not have to secure permission for an auto ride, or face dismissal for a nocturnal stroll, a stolen kiss, or a cigarette.
 
 

Mystery Artifact

Last column’s reader-submitted Mystery Artifact was a true stumper – perhaps in part as it comes from overseas.

Mystery Artifact

Its owner describes it thus: “It’s a traditional Japanese paper folding fan, except that it’s made of cast iron. A disguised weapon a samurai would sneak around with if he had to relinquish his swords!” Yikes! Thank you to the reader who shared his remarkable and fascinating artifact.

[Editor's note: For readers who didn't notice the 3D version of the mystery artifact from last time, it's under that link. Readers who lack the red/blue specs required to view it properly might earn some of these magical cardboard/plastic eyeglasses from The Chronicle's limited stash by guessing a mystery artifact correctly, or sending in an image of a mystery artifact (3D or otherwise), and asking for a pair.]

Sticking with a cast-iron theme this week, let’s take a look at this odd object. Like the iron fan, it has an unexpected function; what might it be? Good luck!

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives” and “Hidden History of Ypsilanti,” which was released Oct. 6, 2011. Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support the publication of regular columnists like Laura Bien. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

William Lister in his fraternal-order finery, circa 1904.

Overnight, he’d become the most hated man in Ypsilanti. A series of editorials in the Ypsilanti Daily Press condemned his actions and character. The paper even published a jeering cartoon, among large headlines detailing his disgrace.

William Lister wasn’t a murderer, rapist, or adulterer. With his wire-rimmed glasses and prim expression he resembled a rural schoolmaster or Sunday School teacher, both of which he had been. But his steady gaze hinted at a steely character with greater ambitions, which was also true. In the fall of 1907, William tangled with one of the most powerful groups in town, risking his reputation and his lucrative government job on a matter of principle.

William Noble Lister was born in a log cabin in Iosco township in Livingston County on the last day of 1868. His cabinetmaker father drowned when William was two. William’s mother Frances remarried and the family moved to Ypsilanti in the spring of 1882.

In 1887 William graduated from Ypsilanti High School. For a year, he taught in a rural school in Livingston County’s Unadilla. He returned to Ypsilanti to obtain his teaching degree from the Normal teacher training college. After another stint as a teacher in the western Upper Peninsula, William became Saline school superintendent from 1891 to 1895 – a first step to greater things.

In 1895, William operated a Saline drugstore with Benjamin Sheeder. Near the end of his four years at Lister and Sheeder’s, William became the Washtenaw county commissioner of schools. One of his reforms for Washtenaw schools was adopted statewide, and under his leadership the number of county school libraries increased from six to 108.

William also gained prominence in Saline’s local group of Masons, winning its highest office, “Worshipful Master.” He represented the lodge at state Masonic conventions. He also became a member of the Ypsilanti Masons, the Knights of Pythias, and the Maccabees. This wide web of connections, and William’s interest in Republican politics, would in time serve him well.

Despite his success as school commissioner, William chose to reenter business life in 1903, becoming president of Ypsilanti’s Reed Furniture Co. Producing a variety of popular wicker furniture shipped across the country, the company was a growing concern.

Though the Reed Furniture Company promised to be profitable, in about a year William sold – or was persuaded to sell – his interest in the company. The Ypsilanti workers, who had been earning roughly $1.60 a day [about $38 today], were fired and the factory was moved to Ionia. Inmates of the Ionia State House of Correction now made the furniture, working over 9 hours a day for 50 cents.

Reed worker trade groups protested. “Reed goods manufacturers in Michigan, following the example set by the Michigan Broommaker’s Union, are preparing to oppose the use of convicts in the State penal institutions there,” said an article in the December 27, 1906 Wooden and Willowware Trade Review. The contract with the Ypsilanti Reed Furniture Company should be dissolved, said the article, as it violated state law.

Their protest was fruitless.

The new Reed Furniture Company owner was Fred Warren Green. A graduate of the Ypsilanti Normal School and the University of Michigan law school, Green served as Ypsilanti city attorney. His political ambitions led him to become mayor of Ionia in 1913, treasurer of the state Republican party in 1915 and a decade later, state governor.

William in a postal delivery cart, circa 1905.

In the spring of 1904, William was appointed Ypsilanti postmaster by Michigan Republican congressman Charles Townsend, originally of Jackson. At the time, although regular clerks in the post offices across the state got their jobs by taking civil service exams, the position of postmaster was appointed by the political party then in power. It was regarded as a plum job with easy indoor work and a fat federal salary, and was often fiercely fought over.

Grumbling about William’s appointment was heard in Ypsilanti from local Republicans who regarded him as an upstart, not someone who’d earned the privilege of postmaster after years of service to the party, much less someone who’d lived in town for very long or invested much into the city. “The proposed appointment . . . is a big surprise to people of [Ypsilanti],” said one Washtenaw paper, “and it is said to be the result of a [hunt] on the part of a few politicians managed by Committeeman Prettyman of Ann Arbor . . . Mr. Townsend has been made to think that Mr. Lister was the whole cheese at Ypsilanti.” Prettyman would himself become Ann Arbor postmaster two years later.

“The people of Ypsilanti are well pleased with the announcement by Congressman Townsend,” said one Ann Arbor newspaper. “This choice evidently meets the approval of all . . .”

In 1907, resentment in Ypsi boiled over.

A home-grown editorial cartoon satirizing Lister in the November 20, 1907 Ypsilanti Daily Press.

That fall, the Ypsilanti Masons were raising money for a new lodge, their Michigan Avenue quarters having become too small. After rejecting one spot on Washington Street, they chose a North Huron Street lot. It was expensive, so the fraternal order decided to hold a huge fundraising event – a three-day bazaar featuring entertainment, food, and donated goods for sale.

Comprising local merchants and businessmen, the group was influential in town. Hundreds of donations came in from storekeepers and private citizens. One shipment of 250 cigars even arrived from Detroit. A local widow donated a golden watch that her departed husband, a onetime Mason, had given her. Her gracious letter was printed in the paper.

The bazaar kicked off on Nov. 7. Huge crowds thronged the event housed in the onetime Light Guard Hall on Michigan Avenue above the present-day Mix boutique. The hall was filled with booths selling everything from clothing to guns. Baas and clucks emanated from the livestock room, and Madame Cheiro read palms. Tickets were sold for a prize drawing. Each night musical programs were presented and the Order of the Eastern Star, the Masons’ women’s auxiliary, prepared large banquets, one chicken pie supper serving over 200 people.

The Nov. 11 Ypsilanti Daily Press printed a list of the prizes attendees had won over the course of the bazaar. F. Kibler won a diamond ring, Tracy Towner snagged the buffalo robe, and Mrs. Mary Wilson won the heaviest prize, a ton of coal. An accompanying story praised the Masons for their good work. The group had netted $1,500 [$35,000 today], reported the paper, with more than $300 from the culinary efforts of the Order of the Eastern Star.

The newspapers were printed and bundled. Those headed for rural subscribers were addressed and brought to the post office on North Huron at 5:30 p.m. The post office stood across the street from the North Huron lot that the Masons wanted. Similarly, the postmaster and the Masons were about to face off against each other in battle.

William refused to deliver the papers.

Two days later a Nov. 13 headline in the Ypsilanti Daily Press blared, “Postmaster Lister Administers Insult to Phoenix Lodge.” None of the rural subscribers had received their Nov. 11 edition of the Press. “Lister’s action, when it became known today, was roundly scorned by prominent local businessmen. They styled it the smallest, meanest, and most contemptible piece of work they ever heard of.”

The problem had been the Nov. 11 article listing the prize winners. The innocuous news that Mrs. George Gaw had won a ham, William Ellis a pair of trousers, and Will Duratt an “owl cushion” had not passed muster with the postmaster. He had no animus towards owl cushions. The problem lay in the prize drawing being too similar to a game of chance.

According to the Comstock Act, no obscene material could be delivered via U.S. mail. The act prohibited the mailing of items relating to contraception, abortion, or other topics deemed immoral or lewd – including gambling. Even private sealed letters came under the purview of the Act, all the more a front-page newspaper story describing a “gambling” event at a Masonic fair.

“Who is this Lister?” bellowed the Nov. 13 Press. “W. N. Lister, a rank outsider, a man who but recently floated into town; a man who didn’t have a dollar invested here; who was a citizen of Ypsilanti scarcely in name, had contrived to get himself appointed to the office,” said the article. “Republicans who had labored here for 20 years for the good of the town and the party; who had given of their time and money, were passed over for this fellow.” William’s political connections, the article said, were the only reason for his appointment.

The newspaper launched a smear campaign that depicted William as the smug holder of an undeserved sinecure. The Nov. 15 paper published tearful accusations from one Widow Barnes, who alleged that William had driven her husband Charles, the former deputy postmaster, to an early death. William had kept the office too cold, the paper quoted her as saying, causing her husband to catch pneumonia and be confined to his home. After demands from William that Charles return to work at once, he died in the post office at his desk.

There is some evidence that William was a demanding boss. He opened the post office six days a week at 6:30 a.m. and kept it open until 7 at night. He even opened it for an hour on Sunday mornings instead of giving his staff of 8 clerks and 22 mail carriers a day off.

The Nov. 20 Press published an editorial cartoon depicting William as devouring his “first term [as postmaster] pie” while chortling, “I’ve got this job for life!” In December, the Press continued the campaign. A story in the Dec. 2 paper, “How Mr. Lister Discriminates,” claimed that a Detroit paper contained a description of a “Yankee Circus in Egypt” to be put on by Detroit Masons. The event was nigh identical to the Ypsilanti bazaar, said the article, yet William allowed this item to cross his desk unhampered. Unfair!

“The postmastership is the softest snap in Ypsilanti,” continued the article. “The salary is $2,600 a year [about $60,000 today]. When Lister completes his four-year term, he will have drawn more than $10,000 [$231,000 today] – a fortune to most citizens” – especially in 1907, considering that year’s financial panic. The paper urged citizens to contact Congressman Townsend urging him to rescind his appointment – or at least not renew William’s term for another four years.

There were plenty of “Reasons Why Masons Are Sore,” said a Dec. 16 story in the Press. A former Ypsi resident living in Washington D.C. had sent the Press a Washington newspaper detailing a Masonic prize giveaway. “It is very interesting to members of Phoenix lodge,” said the article, “that a paper published in Washington, under the very eyes of the postmaster general, could circulate its papers, when the [Press] was held up here by ‘Grand Mogul’ Lister.”

The paper’s appeals to sway the congressman, which continued up to the end of 1907, were in vain. William retained his position, and became the first postmaster in Ypsilanti history to secure a second term. He married Detroit teacher Sarah Hutton, bought a home in the midtown area, and had two children, Frances and William.

Over time, feelings against William seemed to abate. By 1916 he was city treasurer and served on a county road board. In 1938 he was honored at an oratory festival at Normal College, as a former star orator.

The protests of an entire town had not dislodged the resolute and resourceful postmaster. The former teacher had done his homework.

Reader-Submitted Mystery Artifact

Last column’s artifact drew a number of correct guesses.

Mystery Object (Image links to 3D version)

“Its a woodworker’s scribe tool,” said ABC. Cosmonican also knew. It was a delight to learn that this tool is still in use in modern form today.

This week’s Mystery Artifact is special as it is a reader-submitted Mystery Artifact, a fun feature which I’d like to include in this column as often as possible. Do you have innumerable cool old tools/machines/doodads lying around? Why not take a picture and send it to ypsidixit@gmail.com and I’ll include it as soon as possible. See if you can stump other readers!

This object certainly stumped me. Had I not been told what it is, I simply would never have guessed. What might it be? Perhaps it’s not exactly what it seems …

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives” and “Hidden History of Ypsilanti,” which was released Oct. 6, 2011. Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like Laura Bien. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Jim Ottaviani – University of Michigan librarian and graphic novel author. His latest book is "Feynman," a biography of physicist Richard Feynman.

For  a graphic novel with a title like “Feynman,” my smart-aleck reflex is to pronounce the word silently to myself with deliberately wayward stress – so the final vowel gets its full flavor, instead of an unstressed schwa.

That way, it patterns with Superman, Spiderman, Aquaman, Ironman, Batman and other comic book heros. And that allows me to wonder what special powers this Feynman might have, how he got those powers, what his home planet was …

Of course, the Feynman in Jim Ottaviani’s recently published graphic novel is actually not a comic book hero. It’s Richard Feynman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his work on quantum physics. (So Feynman’s home planet was Earth, you see.)

Ottaviani explained during his teeter totter ride a couple of weeks ago that he’d not intended the title of his most recent graphic novel to be a word play. It was the publisher who had chosen the title, when Ottaviani had “punted” on that task.

Soon after talking with me on the totter, Ottaviani left town for a book tour. He’ll be back in Ann Arbor in a couple of weeks when he gives a talk on “Feynman” in the University of Michigan’s Hatcher Library Gallery, on Oct. 13, 2011 at 5:30 p.m.

To prepare for his talk, you can buy “Feynman” at Nicola’s Books.

To me, the most interesting part of my conversation with Ottaviani involved the graphic novel as a mechanism for telling a story – in the case of “Feynman,” it’s a physicist’s biography. There’s nothing particularly novel about that – Ottaviani has covered scientific subject matter before in comic book form. His previous work includes a number of books that contain episodes from the lives of Feynman, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Marie Curie, among others.

But that led me to contemplate a different idea. What if one of the staples of Chronicle coverage, a government meeting report, were presented in the form of a graphic novel?

Ottaviani’s reaction to the idea: “Do that, please, is all I can say.” At least the title of that comic book (with apologies to Sabra Briere, Margie Teall, Sandi Smith and Marcia Higgins) would be straightforward: “Councilman.”

Though I can’t draw, I did take a shot at creating two panels of “Councilman.”

(Image links to higher resolution file) Councilmembers were in the middle of a routine vote ...

... when suddenly a strange electricity filled the chambers. Had the city's CFO, Tom Crawford, been rubbing a balloon on his head again? It seemed to be more intense than that ...

The images in those panels are constrained by the limits of my “artistic” ability as expressed with software made by Adobe. That’s not how Ottaviani works, of course. He describes each panel in detail, and that description is eventually handed off to the illustrator, who actually draws what Ottaviani has visualized. The illustrator for “Feynman” was Leland Myrick.

How big a project would a city-council-meeting-as-graphic-novel be? The last city council report published in The Chronicle came in around 13,000 words. A rule of thumb for comic book panels, Ottaviani told me, is that each panel should have about 35 words of dialogue. That would work out to 370 panels – if every word in the report were included as dialogue. But clearly, not every word would need to be included as dialogue. Much of the meaning could be conveyed through the illustrations.

In thinking about how to make a comic book out of a city council meeting, I paused to reflect on how The Chronicle approaches meeting coverage. While we include a considerable amount of descriptive detail about the meetings, as well as background to orient the reader, there’s also a lot of material that gets pared away.

Some of the material that gets pared away might be arguably be less important than material we include. For example, why include a photo of a helium balloon trapped against the ceiling of the city council chambers (with a joke caption), but not a description of a liquor license transfer? After riding the totter with Ottaviani, I was rummaging around the Internet for some information about Feynman, and found a succinct answer to that question. It’s in Richard Feynman’s lecture, delivered on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize. From his introductory remarks:

I shall include details of anecdotes which are of no value either scientifically, nor for understanding the development of ideas. They are included only to make the lecture more entertaining.

Included in Feynman’s introductory remarks is the expression of another basic tenet of Chronicle reporting – we’re committed to telling readers what we did to “get to do the work.” So if we had to email or call a source after the meeting, in order to pin down a fact, we’ll tell readers that up front. We think our reports are a plenty dignified way to tell readers exactly what we did. If we didn’t attend a meeting, we won’t report on it as if we did. In Feynman’s Nobel lecture, he puts it this way:

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks … So there isn’t any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work … So, what I would like to tell you about today are the sequence of events, really the sequence of ideas, which occurred, and by which I finally came out the other end with an unsolved problem for which I ultimately received a prize.

Jim Ottaviani’s complete Talk is worth a read. If you’d prefer to see him talk live, in person, he’ll be talking about “Feynman” at the University of Michigan’s Hatcher Library Gallery, on Oct. 13, 2011 at 5:30 p.m.

In its August 1909 article on student hazing, Hearst Illustrated magazine published A. S. Lyndon's 1908 photo of students jostling around a flagpole, intent on removing the banner.

The article concerned a developing tradition on college campuses across the country, including UM: an autumn clash between freshmen and sophomores known as “rush.”

The late 1860s appear to be when UM’s tradition of an annual October rush began. The practice would survive for decades despite hospitalizations, expulsions, and several bans against rushing by student government and university officials.

“A rush is a miscellaneous row between two classes, generally freshmen and sophomore, who meet in any of the college halls or grounds,” reads a May 16, 1868 University Chronicle piece on student slang, “and in our own institution is seldom anything more than a good-natured trial of strength between the opponents.”

The article also included slang terms for freshman hazing practices. These included “pumping,” or dousing a frosh in a public water pump, “shaving,” or a less than careful haircut, and “smoking out,” or invading a freshman’s room en masse and lighting pipes till the room was choked with smoke and the new student was nauseated.

Rushing began as more or less impromptu scraps between freshmen and sophomores, as noted in an Oct. 17, 1877 article in the Ann Arbor Register. “One of ‘ye old time rushes’ occurred in front of the post office, on Friday evening, and resulted in the arrest of a sophomore … [the combatants] then adjourned to the campus, and indulged in a rush in front of the Law Building.”

The next year, faculty quashed the practice. “One by one our privileges are taken from us,” moaned an Oct. 26, 1878 article in the student newspaper The Chronicle. “First it was hazing, next horning, [a surprise night assault with noisemakers] and now it is rushing. Yes, nocturnal rushing has been ‘sat down upon.’ An edict from the faculty forbids this gentle sport, even upon the campus, our own territory.”

The article continued, “The ‘peelers,’ [police]* backed by this authority, are getting saucy, and have the courage to display their ‘billies’ in open daylight. Truly we are degenerating.”

The ban held for the following year. “The old-time rush is gone forever,” mourned a May 3, 1879 article in the University Chronicle. “Last year there were indications of a revival of the time-honored custom, but the new regime has extinguished all such indications and we hear no more of the contest of the classes.”

Over the ’80s and ’90s, impromptu rushes continued off campus. The October 12, 1889 issue of the student newspaper the Michigan Argonaut registered its disapproval:

It has been the custom of late years to frown upon the ‘barbaric freshman-sophomore rush’ and to suggest substitutes in the way of picked sides, brickbat contests at five hundred yards and the like. We, for our part, would enter strong protest against the discontinuance of the time-honored rush … We know from experience that class-room work, absorbing as it may be, does not develop an esprit de corps and fails utterly to give that peculiar flavor to college life which the old alumnus looks back to with a retrospective smacking of lips.

By 1900, more than lips were being smacked as rushing returned with a vengeance: “The night of the 5th October … was a night of horrid orgy,” reported the November 1900 Inlander student literary magazine. “The charging of multitudes of roughly clad youths … the stolen hat, glaring bon fire, the perfunctory arrests of the usual five, the mob clamoring for their release, the sudden peace in the dawning: all go to make up one’s impression of the Freshman-Sophomore rush.

Around the turn of the century, rushing had become a more formalized ritual, heralded by mocking posters sophomores pasted around town as in this 1903 example:

OH! JOY! FRESHMAN BLOOD!

You have encroached upon our sacred rights.

You have smoked on the Campus. You have been seen in our refreshment parlors.

You have enjoyed yourselves at the theater from the first five rows.

You have made goo goo eyes at the co-eds.

You have trespassed on our game preserves at Ypsi [the predominately female student body then at EMU].

For this you deserve DEATH. May your lot be fire and brimstone, hades without end.

The poster also invited all and sundry to a “Freshman Barbecue” featuring such dishes as “Fried ’07 Suckers,” “Prime Ribs of Fresh Beef,” and “Freshman Brains (?) in Season.”

Another new development in the tradition was a flagpole-climbing contest to capture the rival class’s flag. The January 1907 Michigan Alumnus included an article describing the custom:

When college opens in the fall and ye all-wise Freshman is given unceremonious introduction to the various niceties of university life, he learns from eager informants of that ordeal, known as the ‘banner-scrap’ … on a Friday evening several weeks after college has started, these members of the youngest class are formed about a flag-pole, located on the east side of the Campus. This flag-pole bears their first symbol of class unification and they are there to defend it with all the energy and determination that they possess. At a given signal, the Sophomores rush this band of Freshmen and the struggle lasts until the flag is captured by the older class, or until the Freshmen have defended it for thirty minutes.

After this evening rush was deemed too violent, the UM Senate and Student Council in 1909 altered the event to an afternoon scrap on Ferry Field called “Black Friday.” Posters, hazing, and the word “rush” were forbidden. Black Friday featured three 28-foot-tall poles, greased to nine feet high and crowned with the class and school banners.

The 1910 Michiganensian printed a vivid description of the event.

At two-thirty o’clock, [football captain] Dave Allerdice, the referee, gave the signal for hostilities to begin, and with wild yells the rival classes rushed to the poles, swarming about them in a frenzied attempt to gain the banners floating high above the ground.

Each class stationed a band of its best men to defend its own banner and with the remainder tried to capture the other two banners … [O]ne of the freshmen, climbing upon the heads and shoulders of the dense mass which surged about the middle pole [with a block M flag], managed to get beyond the reach of the sophomores and pulled himself up past the slippery part of the pole and then climbed the remainder of the distance to the flag without much effort. There was a shout of triumph from the first year men upon the achievement of this victory.

The freshmen then attacked the sophomore pole, said the article, and won that too. The article continued:

As in former years the winning of the rush was merely a preliminary victory. The real rush began when the freshmen, proud of their achievement, scattered over the field yelling and singing. The sophomores … organized themselves into squads and made every lone freshman they caught their victim. Not many escaped.

The trees surrounding Ferry field were well filled and an empty box car upon the siding of the Ann Arbor Railroad made a temporary prison.

Today the old tradition of the freshman-sophomore rush has faded away. Almost all evidence of the custom is gone – but not entirely.

The onetime sophomores plastering their rude and ribald posters around town little dreamt that one day, a few of those ephemeral scraps would end up in the Bentley Historical Library, as carefully curated fragments of a colorful chapter of Michigan history.

*Named for Robert Peel, who in 1829 created London’s first police force.

Mystery Artifact

Last week’s Mystery Artifact is answered in this column – though it’s a little unclear as to whether the student in question is grasping one of the greased poles or perhaps the “freshman tree.”

Mystery Artifact

What do you think?

This week’s artifact also deals with wood. It’s an eight-and-a-half-inch long wooden device with a hand-carved wooden screw on top securing the movable square block.

The top edge of this object is ruled in inches.

What might it be? Take your best guess and good luck!

Laura Bien is a local history columnist and collector of non-functioning Depression-era gas station cash registers. Her second book, “Hidden Ypsilanti,” is due out this fall. Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like Laura Bien. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

The 1890 inaugural issue of the U. of M. Daily, later the Michigan Daily (public domain image from Wikipedia).

The University of Michigan was once disgraced with a nickname so disreputable, so slangy and vulgar, that an essay was published protesting its use. Even a newspaper in another city ran a disapproving editorial.

That nickname was “U. of M.”

In the April 1903 issue of The Michigan Alumnus, a former grad fumed against “the continued and persistent use of the compromising appellation, ‘U. of M.’” He found it coarse – unworthy of a great university.

“In the first place it is not distinctive enough, as there are several other ‘U. of M.’s,’ Maine, Minnesota, and Missouri being the most conspicuous,” he began, going on to excoriate the sloppy abbreviation.

He was not alone.

If that contributor wished to banish the term, he was several decades too late. Students had created it in the 19th century, and weren’t about to abandon it.

The oldest citations for “U. of M.” appear in student-published campus newspapers, of which there have been over a dozen through the years. In one, the April 1879 edition of The Chronicle (a student publication from that era, not The Ann Arbor Chronicle), appears an article rebutting Depauw University’s student newspaper’s critique of the Ann Arbor school.

The Asbury Monthly seems to think that the University is to be outstripped by Wisconsin, because the latter institution has secured Prof. Watson. The fact is that, while we regret much the departure of our great astronomer, the U. of M. is too great a fact, her foundations are laid too strong and deep, and there are too many great men left here in charge to allow it to be suddenly ‘outstripped’ by a young institution.

The editorial used “U. of M.” twice.

Contemporaneous local city papers avoided the term, preferring more dignified phraseology. The April 2, 1879 Ann Arbor Register reported, “To the friends of the University, irrespective of party, the vote on Regents is gratifying …” In the same issue it stated, “A proposed game of foot ball to be played in Detroit by a senior fifteen and a University fifteen, is now being talked of.”

Charles Chapman in his 1881 “History of Washtenaw County” did not deign to use the term. Years later, Samuel Beakes in his “Past and Present of Washtenaw County” mentioned it exactly twice, but only to list a student publication whose name included the undignified moniker.

Students paid no heed. In the June 1883 student paper the Argonaut, the term appears again. “It is with the utmost confidence that we assert that the Senior invitations are the most elegant ever seen at the U. of M.,” adding, “Hay-making on the campus is not a success in this weather.” [For many decades, hay was grown and harvested on what is now the Diag area]. The Argonaut survived until 1890, and numerous instances of the hated appellation pepper its pages.

An out-of-town paper noticed the term, and found it a handy space-saver for headlines. “The U. of M.—Its Approaching Semi-Centennial to be a Great Event,” reported the Detroit Free Press on June 18, 1887. “U. of M. Beaten in the Great Foot Ball Game Yesterday at Chicago,” read a November 30, 1888 Free Press headline. The Free Press still used the more formal terms in the text of its stories.

That changed around the early 1890s. A March 3, 1892 story mentioned the one-year anniversary of “the U. of M. Oratorical Association.” Meanwhile, a new campus paper took things further. Emblazoned across the inaugural September 29, 1890 issue was the masthead “U. of M. Daily” in a big, craggy font. The paper would survive to become today’s Michigan Daily.

City newspapers were holding the fort against the offending abbreviation. As an example, the January 3, 1890 Ann Arbor Argus story reported, “The Yale catalogue just published shows 1,477 students in attendance there. Yale is only about 700 students behind Michigan University …” However, later that year, cracks began to show in the foundation as the slang term crept into use. One November 6, 1890 Argus blurb said, “The [student paper] Chronicle-Argonaut is desirous of stirring up the poetic muse in the U. of M.”

A neighboring newspaper, the Ypsilantian, took a dim view of these developments. “The use of the mutilation ‘U. of M.,’ for ‘University,’ has nothing under the sun to recommend it,” reads an October 13, 1892 editorial. “It is an abbreviation that does not abbreviate, a contraction that does not contract, and can be classed only as a mutilation. In print it is scarcely shorter, and in speech it is decidedly more clumsy to utter and wanting in euphony to the ear.”

The article continued, “‘The University’ expresses to everybody here fully and exactly what is meant; and in other parts of the country where it would be necessary to say ‘University of Michigan,’ the mutilation ‘U. of M.’ would not be understood. We are surprised that it should find place in the columns of any newspaper.”

The term that offended local editors and alumni was by then so commonplace to students that it wasn’t even considered slang anymore – or so it’s suggested by a survey of UM student slang.

Students in an 1895 fall semester rhetoric course were asked to collect examples of slang they used. Over 600 terms were submitted. In the following spring semester, students voted on which terms were genuine slang and which could be crossed off the list as just ordinary words.

The resulting list of 446 slang terms and their definitions was published in three parts in the November and December, 1895 and the January, 1896 issues of the Inlander, a campus literary magazine.

“Hen-medic” was a female medical student. “Freshlet” meant a young freshman, and “moke” a fool. “Flops” denoted a saucer of ice cream and strawberries. “Squatchetery” meant “admirable, pleasing: ‘Your new gown is decidedly squatchetery.’” “Varsity” was defined as “from [the word] University.” A laggard might be called an “ice-wagon.”: “A student calls to a companion for whom he is waiting, ‘Come, don’t be an ice-wagon.’” “Lunch hooks” were teeth, and to “feed one chunks” meant to fib, as in “Do you think I believe you? You are feeding me chunks.”

The term “U. of M.” appears nowhere in the long list.

An 1897 ad for the U. of M. Toilet Parlors.

Meanwhile, townspeople were adopting the term. A Mrs. Trojanowski opened her “U. of M. Toilet Parlors” at 32 South State Street. Paul Meyer ran the “U. of M. News Depot” at 46 East Williams. It was a year after “Levy’s U. of M. Shoe Shop” opened that the alumnus magazine burst forth with its aforementioned scathing 1903 editorial.

That writer seethed against the use of the term. “But fostered as it is by the U. of M. Daily and all the ‘esteemed’ metropolitan papers of Detroit, there is small hope of betterment until an adverse sentiment is created and the students shall boycott all ‘U. of M.’ concerns and insist on the use of the name, University of Michigan, or the permissible abbreviation, Michigan, in the papers to which they subscribe.”

He wrote, “[W]ith the ‘U. of M. Barber Shop,’ the ‘U. of M. News Stand,’ the ‘U. of M. Lunch Room,’ the ‘U. of M. This,’ and ‘U. of M. That,’ the student is disgusted and chagrined to have this cheapened and unworthy title applied to his Alma Mater.”

Many businesses adopted the offending moniker.

Nonetheless, a few years later the U. of M. Restaurant joined the throng. The U. of M. Toilet Parlor, now the U. of M. Barber Shop, advertised its services as “Strictly Sanitary Shaving Parlors and 
Bath Rooms, Olive Oil, Crude Oil, and Mange Shampooing our Specialty.”

One wonders what that alum would think to see the modern ubiquity of the nickname he so despised.

Thanks to Ann Arbor historian Wystan Stevens for information about the U. of M. Daily.

Mystery Artifact

In the previous column, cmadler, Dave, TJ, and Irene all correctly guessed that the object in question was a mustache cup, which “kept the man’s mustache from getting hot liquids onto it, which would melt his mustache wax,” as Dave remarked.

Mystery Object

This week, in keeping with the University theme, our Mystery Artifact is one related to a onetime campus ritual.

In this photo from an issue of the Michiganensian, you can see a student grasping this large item, but why? It’s not a tree, and ignore the letter B in the background.

What’s going on here?

Take your best guess!

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives.” Her second book, “Hidden History of Ypsilanti,” will be published this fall. Reach her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our columnists like Laura Bien and other contributors. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

A 1935 Ypsilanti Daily Press article reflects concerns over rabid dogs.

The severed head of a small white poodle was sent from Ypsilanti to Ann Arbor in the summer of 1935.

It wasn’t a grisly threat or an act of revenge. The head’s recipients were neither surprised nor disgusted. Severed dog heads were their stock in trade.

The poodle had belonged to Herbert Wilson of Ypsilanti’s northside Ann Street. The dog was “so vicious,” according to the Aug. 6, 1935 Ypsilanti Daily Press, “that even after being wounded by the officers’ rifle fire, [Officer] Klavitter had to strike him with the gun to protect himself. The blow bent the rifle barrel and the officer had to use a nearby tree limb to finish killing the dog.”

The dog had bitten 5-year-old William Himes on his right arm and leg, in an era when a dog bite could lead to an agonizing death.

Dogs in Ypsilanti that August were under quarantine, meaning that they had to be contained within the owner’s home or property. Dogs that broke loose or wandered into the street could be shot on sight by police. In earlier years, anyone was welcome to take their rifle or shotgun into the street and play Atticus Finch with mad dogs.

In the summer of 1909 Ypsilanti’s Board of Health proclaimed, “For a period of three months from the date of this notice, all dogs, male or female, muzzled or unmuzzled, running at large on any street, alley, or public grounds, or on private premises, not the premises of the owner or keeper thereof, may be killed by any person …”

The precautions were not enough. Just a few days later, 14-year-old Morton Crane was bitten. “Many dogs have been killed since the Crane boy was bitten,” reported the June 16, 1909 Ypsilanti Daily Press, “and the warm weather of the past few days is making the mothers and fathers anxious while their children are playing on the street. Chief Gage is using every effort to prevent another scare and every dog seen on the streets without a muzzle is being shot regardless of the value of the animal …” Ann Arbor also had its share of incidents.

The fear was rabies.

There was no cure, and little warning, as the disease initially presents in an insidiously innocuous form. Those infected can be symptom-free for months – even up to a year or two. The first signs are flu-like symptoms. Left untreated, these progress to anxiety, confusion, insomnia, brain dysfunction, paranoia, and painful paralysis of the throat and jaw.

The term “hydrophobia” comes from the natural swallowing reflex, made intensely painful by rabies – even the sight of water is enough to trigger an agonizing throat spasm, hence aversion to liquids despite increasing thirst. The rabies virus’s ongoing damage to the central nervous system can lead to seizures, paralysis, coma, and heart or respiratory failure.

Though rabies doesn’t give much warning with its mild initial symptoms, it usually leaves a calling card in its wake: Negri bodies. A post mortum analysis can reveal the abnormal structures in brain nerve cells. They were first discovered by Italian pathologist Adelchi Negri in 1903.

In April of that year, the University of Michigan opened its Pasteur Institute on campus, specifically for the diagnosis and treatment of rabies. Pasteur had famously discovered the vaccine for rabies in 1885. UM’s Pasteur Institute was, and for many decades remained, the only such rabies treatment clinic in the state. It was the sixth such institute to open in the United States. Dog-bite victims from around Michigan came to Ann Arbor for the “Pasteur cure,” consisting of 21 or more injections of rabies vaccine in the abdomen, initially over a period of eighteen days.

The institute charged $25 ($600 today) for the treatment. Room and board was extra. An act of the Michigan legislature mandated that paupers could receive treatment for free, paid for by local municipalities. The institute also examined dog brains under the microscope, looking for Negri bodies so as to confirm a diagnosis of rabies.

By 1920, the institute had treated nearly 1,600 human cases of the disease. But without a rabies vaccine for dogs, the malady persisted.

Dogs were quarantined in Ypsilanti throughout the Depression. In the 1940s, a rabies vaccine for dogs was finally developed. By 1941, the institute claimed to have treated 2,815 cases of rabies, all successfully.

Well, almost all successfully. In 1911 a three-year-old boy arrived at the Institute for treatment, having been bitten three weeks previously. “The dog was shot and the brain sent to the University of Michigan Pasteur Institute and pronounced rabid,” reported a case study in the August 1911 issue of Physician and Surgeon magazine. “A report was immediately sent to the parties concerned, requesting that the child be brought here for treatment. As the child did not appear, after some length of time, Doctor Gumming sent a second urgent telegram. Still the child was not brought here until a week or ten days later.”

It was too late. The child couldn’t take food or water. He was finally admitted on the afternoon of May 29, 1911, and died a day later.

In the fall of 1917, another advanced case, a young schoolboy, was admitted to the Institute at noon. He died shortly after midnight.

The sadly failed cases were exceptions. UM’s Pasteur Institute was a leader in eradicating rabies in the state. In tandem with other anti-rabies efforts, the institute was so successful that it made itself obsolete. In the 1940s, vaccines for dogs were developed; 1948 marks the last incidence of human rabies in Michigan until the 1980s.

By then, thanks to dog vaccination campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s, dog-borne rabies had almost entirely disappeared. After 1960, the primary host of rabies in Michigan became wildlife, particularly bats. That remains true now, though only a tiny percent of bats are actually infected.

Today parents need not worry about the dog days of August, thanks to UM’s pioneering Pasteur Institute and its good work in detecting and treating the onetime scourge of summer.

Mystery Object

No one correctly guessed the identity of the sinister-looking mystery artifact from the last column.

Mystery Artifact

Housed in a case on the second floor of the Ypsilanti Historical Museum, the “jackknife thingy,” as one commenter called it, is a doctor’s bloodletting knife, evocative of an age of considerably cruder medical knowledge.

This time we have an artifact more connected to bodily appearance than bodily health. Here’s a strange-looking vessel. What might it be? Take your best guess and good luck!

Laura Bien is a local history columnist and collector of non-functioning Depression-era gas station cash registers. Her second book, “Hidden Ypsilanti,” is due out this fall. Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like Laura Bien. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Excerpt from Abba Owen's diary entry for Aug. 1, 1888. (Image links to larger file.)

Largely forgotten today, August 1 was once an annual holiday for black residents of Washtenaw County: Emancipation Day.

The day commemorated Britain’s 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, which a year later ended slavery in most of the British empire. That included Canada, of course, from which many early local black settlers emigrated.

The day was distinct from and older than Juneteenth (also often called Emancipation Day), a holiday that commemorates the belated announcement of the end of slavery in Texas on June 18, 1865. This year, Ann Arbor observed Juneteenth in Wheeler Park, near the city’s historically black Kerrytown-area neighborhood.

Organized by the Ann Arbor branch of the NAACP, local Juneteenth celebrations date back to 1994.

Before the first Juneteenth and even before the Civil War, Emancipation Day was associated in the United States with the anti-slavery movement. The Aug. 1, 1844 Ypsilanti Sentinel reprinted a speech originally given at an annual meeting of Quakers in New York. “Shall it be said then,” reads part of the speech, “that the United States of America, a land of all others the loudest in its boast of liberty and of its liberal institutions, is the last to relax its iron grasp – and that when driven from other lands, slavery is still seen to linger on our own free soil[?]”

According to scholar John Dancy, in 1850 2,372 black people lived in Michigan. Following Wayne County with 697 black residents, Washtenaw contained the second highest number of black residents of any Michigan county, 231 – almost exactly one-tenth of the state’s black population. Close behind Washtenaw was Cass County in southwestern Michigan, which like Washtenaw had a significant number of Quaker settlers.

After the Civil War, the holiday began to be celebrated annually in Ypsilanti with a parade, gatherings at the local fairgrounds (now Recreation Park), speeches, music and a large communal banquet.

“Wednesday, Aug. 1st, was celebrated quite extensively by our colored people here,” reported the Aug. 4, 1866 Ypsilanti Commercial. “Delegations from several neighboring towns met in the morning at the A.M.E. Church and marched to Cross’s Grove (Recreation Park) where one and all enjoyed a ‘feast of reason and a flow of’ – lemonades, &c.” The paper continued, “In the evening music was had at Hewitt Hall [now Mix boutique on Michigan Avenue] and lively feet kept time to the livelier music of Wood’s Band.”

Following the February 1870 ratification of the 15th Amendment giving blacks the right to vote, speeches at the 1870 Emancipation Day celebration addressed black suffrage. The Commercial reported, “As the procession swept through the streets, with flags and banners waving and the band playing, it presented a most cheerful and joyous scene.” The paper triumphantly added that “[Now] it is the government of the whole American people” – a sentiment that wouldn’t actually be true for another half century, when women achieved the franchise.

“The Union Cornet Band of this city headed the procession,” reported the Aug. 5, 1876 Commercial. “The large preponderance of the citizens of Ann Arbor and Jackson celebrated with the Band … before dinner, [Ypsilanti doctor] D. A. Post, [Normal School principal] Professor Estabrook and [local black pastor] J. W. Brooks made eloquent speeches [in front of] the grand stand, well filled with people, about half and half black and white.”

Superior Township poet-farmer William Lambie attended this event, writing later in his diary, “Ground very dry – hoping for rain – the colored man’s day of Freedom – [Isabelle] and I went to see the Celebration in William Cross Grove at the Fair Grounds – The dark Beauties rigged out in white, red and blue and a feast of good things. Apples 75¢ a bushel.”

Excerpt from the diary of William Lambie. (Image links to larger file.)

Lambie often made note of Emancipation Day throughout his more than three decades of diary-keeping, and attended the celebrations more than once.

Another Ypsilanti diarist took note of the event, but only to write that her and her grandmother’s domestic help were absent to attend the festival. Abba Owen was the daughter of Ypsilanti mineral water baron Tubal Cain Owen. On Aug. 1, 1888 Abba wrote, “To-day is Emancipation Day and all the colored people celebrate it so we have no girl and Grandma also hasn’t a girl so they all came up to our house and took their meals and helped us do the work. In the afternoon Marian Henderson made a call. [Abba’s brother] Eber started this afternoon for Gross [Ieal] Island to make Miss Gray a visit. To-day has been a great deal cooler than yesterday.”

The event continued to be celebrated at the turn of the century. “On the whole, it was a great day for our colored people,” reported the Aug. 2, 1900 Ypsilanti Commercial, “and was observed in a manner and spirit in keeping with the important event which the exercises were designed to commemorate.” The 1910 paper also took note of the day, but in a more abstract manner without reference to any actual local events.

By 1920, however, Emancipation Day seems to have faded from Ypsilanti news coverage. A cursory survey of August editions of Depression-era and 1940s Ypsilanti newspapers also shows no coverage of the onetime event.

Today the joyous pageantry and stately ceremony of Emancipation Day is gone and the holiday largely forgotten, though once it served as a day of celebration for both black and white citizens of Ypsilanti.

Mystery Artifact

Jim Rees, Cosmonican, and Irene Hieber correctly guessed that last column’s Mystery Artifact was, as Jim said, a “rotary snowplow for use on a railroad,” adding, also correctly, “I’m guessing you don’t actually have one and this is just a drawing.”

Mystery Artifact

This week we’re moving from a macro-artifact to a tiny one in the Ypsilanti Historical Museum. This small device on the second floor shares one aspect with the railroad snowplow, however – it’s a little scary-looking. But what is it? Take your best guess and good luck!

Laura Bien is a local history columnist and collector of non-functioning Depression-era gas station cash registers. Her second book, “Hidden Ypsilanti,” is due out this fall. Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.