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

505 North Division Street
Clark Girls School 1865
The most famous and most permanent of the private schools in 19th-century
Ann Arbor was the Misses Clark's Seminary for Young Ladies. This simple
brick building, now converted to apartments, was the sixth and final location of
that school.
Mary Clark came to Washtenaw County in the 1830s with her family and
established the school in Ann Arbor in 1839 with her sisters Chloe and Roby.
All three were graduates of the famous finishing school of Mrs. Emma Willard
of Troy, New York, and brought the Willard philosophy of education into the
wilderness. According to the
1881 History of Washtenaw
County, "many prominent
womeni owe their high culture to the facilities enjoyed
in [the Clark] seminary."
So famous was this school in
the 1840s and 50s that onethird of its pupils came from
outside Ann Arbor, some
from as far away as New
York. The education philosophy was heavy in moral
tone and stressed observations of nature as Mary Clark was an avid botanist. Boarders were not allowed
to receive callers except on Friday or Saturday evenings with the principal present. Shopping was allowed only on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons as the
Misses Clark did not want to "promote an undue love of society, but an
acquaintance of the courtesies of life."
When Mary Clark died in 1875, the school closed, never to be re-opened.
Chloe died shortly thereafter in 1880 and an era of old-fashioned gentility
died with them.
By 1900 the building had been converted into apartments. Called the Oakwood Apartments in the 1910s, it was further subdivided in the 1920s into
eight units and renamed the McLean Apartments by its owner and resident
Donald McLean. McLean family members still own and reside in it today.
OFW

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