In Memoriam: Wystan
On Broadway, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April, 1937.
An Ann Arbor News Photo, undoubtedly by Eck Stanger -- from the Ann Arbor District Library's OLD NEWS website.
The "Neon Signs" business, and the Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Co., together occupied what is now Ann Arbor's oldest commercial building, which had been erected in 1834 by Anson Brown, onetime Ann Arbor Postmaster, and the activist kingpin of "Lower Town" Ann Arbor -- the portion that lies north of the Huron River -- also long known as the Fifth Ward. That building is now occupied by the the St. Vincent dePaul resale store, which has been there for decades.
The four-story building attached to it in 1937 had had its windows removed in anticipation of a drastic remodeling that removed the two upper floors. In the mid-19th century this had been the Medical Works Building, owned by the clairvoyant physician, Dr. Daniel B. Kellogg. It is a pity that the upper floors were lost, because there were rumors in town, no longer susceptible to confirmation, that Kellogg had a system of speaking tubes and wires concealed in the walls, that could be manipulated by his relatives to simulate ringing bells and ghost messages -- designed to satisfy the doctor's clients that he was in two-way communication with the Spirit World.
Dr. Kellogg's advertisement in the 1872 Ann Arbor City Directory: www.flickr.com/photos/70251312@N00/5906585871/
Steve Stricklen, 64, tells me that Wurster Dairy (at right) went bankrupt in 1938, and that his parents took over the building, which became the HQ of their Cloverleaf Dairy. In 1966, Stricklen's father told him to remove the building's false front (visible here), which was coming apart. (The front had been constructed for Wurster Dairy "on the cheap" by a contractor named Hilbert. It lent a cachet of modernism to the building, which had been a homely-looking automobile repair garage.) The Dairy building is now the location of the Northside Grill -- successor to the Cloverleaf Lunch, which moved to the NE corner of Liberty and Fourth Avenue.
[September 2012].
On Broadway, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April, 1937.
An Ann Arbor News Photo, undoubtedly by Eck Stanger -- from the Ann Arbor District Library's OLD NEWS website.
The "Neon Signs" business, and the Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Co., together occupied what is now Ann Arbor's oldest commercial building, which had been erected in 1834 by Anson Brown, onetime Ann Arbor Postmaster, and the activist kingpin of "Lower Town" Ann Arbor -- the portion that lies north of the Huron River -- also long known as the Fifth Ward. That building is now occupied by the the St. Vincent dePaul resale store, which has been there for decades.
The four-story building attached to it in 1937 had had its windows removed in anticipation of a drastic remodeling that removed the two upper floors. In the mid-19th century this had been the Medical Works Building, owned by the clairvoyant physician, Dr. Daniel B. Kellogg. It is a pity that the upper floors were lost, because there were rumors in town, no longer susceptible to confirmation, that Kellogg had a system of speaking tubes and wires concealed in the walls, that could be manipulated by his relatives to simulate ringing bells and ghost messages -- designed to satisfy the doctor's clients that he was in two-way communication with the Spirit World.
Dr. Kellogg's advertisement in the 1872 Ann Arbor City Directory: www.flickr.com/photos/70251312@N00/5906585871/
Steve Stricklen, 64, tells me that Wurster Dairy (at right) went bankrupt in 1938, and that his parents took over the building, which became the HQ of their Cloverleaf Dairy. In 1966, Stricklen's father told him to remove the building's false front (visible here), which was coming apart. (The front had been constructed for Wurster Dairy "on the cheap" by a contractor named Hilbert. It lent a cachet of modernism to the building, which had been a homely-looking automobile repair garage.) The Dairy building is now the location of the Northside Grill -- successor to the Cloverleaf Lunch, which moved to the NE corner of Liberty and Fourth Avenue.
[September 2012].