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

1219 and 1223 Traver Street
Solomon and Jacob 14 n 8
Armstrong Houses18 3ad 85.......Solomon Armstrong was born
in 1821 in Baliston Spa, New
York. He arrived in Ann Arbor
in 1843 to work as a carpenter
and millwright together with
his father Jacob and his sons
John and Frank A. Armstrong.
Solomon's papers are now
housed in the Bentley Library
in Ann Arbor and include
~notebooks of his work on houses such as the Jonathan Lund house at 132 4
Pontiac (see 13 1) and the Kellogg Mill. Even his recipe for paint is included.
The house at 1219, probably built in 1851 when the Armstrongs purchased the
two lots, represents the more common style of Greek Revival house with its
simple rectangular massing and side gables with returns. The house at 12 23 is
an example of an unusual Greek Revival house form known as "hen and
chicks." Said to be unique to southern Michigan, this house type has a tall central portion with a roof gable facing the street, flanked on either side by shorter
wings giving the overall appearance of a mother hen sheltering her baby chicks.
"Hen and chicks" houses were popular during the 1 830s and 1 840s, so this is
probably the older of the two houses and may have been moved from Armstrong's original property down the road.
Armstrong sold 1219 in 1861 to Amos Corey, another carpenter. In the 1 920s,
1219 passed into the hands
of the Schlemmer family,
who occupied it until the
mid-1970s. The house at
12 23 was occupied by the
Hatch family for almost the
identical period and then by
Mrs. Adaline Barbiaux for
several decades.
The houses have been fea--
tured in books on Ann
Arbor's historic buildings, most recently in Ann Arbor Architecture, A Sesquicentennial Selection, published by the University of Michigan Museum of Art
in, 1974. Uatered,, until recetly the., tw buligsfr-uiu gopn