Historic buildings, Ann Arbor, Michigan / by Marjorie Reade and Susan Wineberg.

326-328 South State Street
Nickels Arcade 1916
This small but charming example of the glass-roofed shopping arcade popular
in Europe, but rare in the United States, was designed by Ann Arbor architect
Hermann Pipp. Other existing Pipp designs include the Barton Hills Country
Club and the Marchese Building.
The Arcade's State Street facade, faced with terra cotta, is essentially Beaux
Arts Classic in design and proportion with details anticipating the Art Deco
designs of a few years
later. The Maynard
Street facade is similar
in design but it is of yellow brick with terra
cotta trim. A glass skylight illuminates the
passageway of the steel
and brick structure. Of
the eighteen shops
which open into the
265 foot tiled arcade,
three - Van Boven's, the Caravan, and the post office - have been there from
its earliest days. Shops and offices occupy the second and third floors.
The land extending from State Street to Maynard was owned by John H.
Nickels, proprietor of a meat market on State Street. When his son, Tom E.
Nickels, inherited the market, he razed the building and bought out other portions of the property left to his brothers and sister. A man with strong feelings
about Ann Arbor's need to grow, Nickels began the Arcade in 1915. He moved
to a residence at 513 East William to be near the construction, which took
three years to complete.
The Farmers and Mechanics Bank, which originally occupied the south corner
on State Street, owned its portion of the Arcade. Only after its successor institution, the Ann Arbor Bank, moved its branch to Liberty Street in 1960 did
the Nickels family finally complete its ownership of the entire structure.
Today, some seventy years after its construction, the Arcade remains essentially unchanged. In 1987, when the building was listed in the National Register
of Historic Places, a thorough refurbishing was done. The terra cotta interior
and exterior were repointed, the mosiac tiles reset in the floor, and new lamps
were hung. It is today, as when it was built, one of Ann Arbor's unique and
most attractive structures.
NR, IHP

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