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

326 West Liberty Street
1870 Peter Brehm House
Peter Brehm, proprietor of The Western Brewery located on Fourth Street
near William Street, built his mansard-roofed brick home in the Second
Empire style around 1870. In choosing this particular style, Brehm was participating in a short-lived trend in Ann Arbor architecture. The 1860s and 70s
witnessed a flurry of building activity, especially in the central city. A few of
the more affluent chose the Second Empire style, the most elaborate examples
of which were Hill's Opera House at Main and Ann Streets (now demolished
as were most residential examples of this style), and the Raja Rani restaurant at
Division and William Streets, built as the residence of architect Peleg Marshall
in 1860. This boom turned to bust in the Panic of 1873 and newspapers began
to fill up with mortgage sales and business failures. Building activity virtually
ground to a halt. Brehm's residence remains a rare survivor of this style.
The mansard roof that is the hallmark of this fashionable style was popularized
by French Renaissance architect Francois Mansart, revived by Napoleon III in
the 1850s and copied throughout Europe and the Americas. Brehm's residential version is a simple domestic expression of the wealth, and monumentality
reflected in more elaborate examples. The roof, it should be noted, tops a
building more Italianate in character with typical round-headed windows,
hood-moldings, overhanging eaves and decorative brackets. Such combinations of styles were common for Midwest American architecture.
Brehm founded the Western Brewery in 1861 after arriving in Ann Arbor the
same year. By the 1880s, under different ownership, it was the largest brewery
in Ann Arbor. Brehm became wealthy as a brewer and in 1868 was able to purchase the property at 326 West Liberty, demolish an old house on the site, and
construct his Second
Empire building.
Another brewer who
also became wealthy
in this period was
John Adam Volz, who
built an elaborate
Italianate house at
716 North Fifth
Avenue (see 46).
Brehm's quick rise to
wealth is almost as
puzzling as his.
decline, for by 1872
he no longer owned
CONTINUED on next page

203