Little more than four weeks after the sinking of the battleship Maine, volunteers in Company A of the Michigan National Guard posed on the courthouse steps on April 26, 1898, before leaving to fight in the Spanish-American War.
Although Company A saw no combat in Cuba, they were nonetheless greeted as heroes on their return to Ann Arbor in May 1899. Citizens raised $3000 toward the purchase of a local armory as a gift to them, and city council appropriated $300 to buy medals for all who had served in the war.
Like virtually every other American city,town, and village, Ann Arbor sponsored recycling campaigns during World War II to gather valuable materials for the war effort. Rubber tires, motor oil, and metal were just some of the materials gathered.
Months before the formal entry of the U.S.into the war in 1941,bins were erected on Courthouse Square for the collection of aluminum, a critically important resource in industrial war production.