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

1001-1007 Broadway
Anson Brown Building 1832
This building, the oldest surviving commercial structure in Ann Arbor, has a
symmetrical front facade, and parapet end walls characteristic of eighteenth
century Dutch-influenced buildings on the east coast. Hand-hewn timber
framing of oak is visible in the attic.
Anson Brown had worked for seven years on the Erie Canal before he arrived
with his fortune in Ann Arbor, where he became the principal landowner of
Lower Town, north of the river. He wanted his business district to be the commercial center of a fine
metropolis, and he named his
streets Broadway, Wall,
Maiden Lane after the major
avenues of the Empire City
of his native state. He erected as a merchandising center
this building and two similar
blocks (The Exchange Building and, across the street, the
Ingalls Block, replaced in
1959 by a motel and restaurant). The Washtenaw Hotel
fiearby was one of the largest hotels on the route from Detroit to Chicago, a
comfortable stop before crossing the Huron River. The new buildings were an
attraction to trade, and Brown was successful in securing an appointment from
the Territorial Governor to be postmaster of the town. His brief but intense
rivalry with the "hilltoppers" for control of Ann Arbor's development ceased
abruptly when Brown died in the cholera epidemic of 1834.
The upper town regained political dominance, the new University of Michigan
drew development in that direction and the railroad came through on the
south side of the river. Brown's building outlasted all the other commercial
structures of his time and is the only survivor of the town he envisioned and
partially built.
The well-maintained building, somewhat European in flavor, was owned by
the Colvin family for more than sixty years until it changed hands in 1989.
IHP

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