The Hoban Block looking West from Fourth Ave., ca. 1900
Year
c.1900
The "Ann Street Block" still houses storefronts, offices, and residences. It was built in 1871 as the Hoban Block after fire destroyed earlier buildings. Customers came to butchers, grocery stores, saloons, restaurants, billiard halls, a laundry, hotel, and adjoining monument and harness shops.
By 1920 the growing Greek immigrant presence in the neighborhood added the social life of all-male coffee houses. After African American workers migrated to Ann Arbor and doubled the black population in the 1920s, the businesses in the Ann Street Block primarily served the black community. The block was restored in the 1980s.
Frame location: On North wall of Courthouse
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Photo
Subjects
Stores & Shops
Hoban Block
Historic Buildings
Businesses
Ann Street Block
Ann Street Black Business District
D. J. Malloy Harness
Hing Lee Laundry
Richard Kearns' Saloon
LOH Entrepreneurship
LOH Entrepreneurship - Ann Street
Downtown Ann Arbor Historical Street Exhibit Program
Site 7: Town life and the Courthouse square
Commerce on the "Ann Street Block"