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Amariah Freeman House, 1908

Amariah Freeman House, 1908 image
Year
1908
Description

1315 Hill Street

Amariah Freeman House, 1908

This is a textbook example of the Italian Renaissance style as described by the McAlesters in their Field Guide to American Houses. It was built by local attorney Amariah Freeman in 1908 and features a triple-arcaded entry with free standing columns. It has large arched windows on the main floor with smaller ones on the second floor, red brick quoins at the corners contrasting with pebbly light stucco walls, red clay tiles on the hipped roof and dormers, and bracketed eaves.

Freeman and his wife built a second house six years later at the corner of Hill and East University and sold this house to Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. Photographs taken in 1915 by University of Michigan photographer George Swain, show a stone balustrade on the roof of the porch entry (now gone) and a wonderfully wooded setting, still somewhat in evidence today. Although large houses like these were requisitioned for use as barracks during World War I, it remained the fraternity's home until 1941. It was then sold as a 'League' house, or boarding house for women students under the direction of Mrs. Marie Maddy.

From 1949 to 1962 Alpha Kappa Kappa Fraternity owned the house, renting it out during the early 1960s for a series of University-related institutes. By the mid-1970s, Paul and Edith Nickel occupied the first floor and rented out about 15 rooms to graduate students. It is now the home of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity.

The house has an unusual floor plan which is hardly suggested by the exterior. The interior is designed like an Italian palazzo with a completely open courtyard in the center. One wall on each floor has windows facing on this open court, which gave the whole an extraordinary feeling of light and air.

Rights Held By
Photos used to illustrate Historic Buildings, Ann Arbor, Michigan / by Marjorie Reade and Susan Wineberg.