John Wagner Jr. Blacksmith Shop, 1869

122 West Washington Street

John Wagner Jr. Blacksmith Shop, 1869

Blacksmithing and related crafts were already concentrated along Ashley Street (called Second Street until 1889) when John Wagner Jr. undertook the construction of his carriage and blacksmith shop in 1869. He was not only expanding the craft into more elegant quarters but was also carrying on a family tradition. His father, John Wagner Sr., trained as a blacksmith in his native Wurttemberg and was one of Ann Arbor's earliest blacksmiths, arriving from Germany in 1837. He lived kitty corner from this shop, at the southwest corner of Ashley and Washington. John Jr. must have succeeded at his trade, for the 1872 City Directory contained the following advertisement: "John Wagner, Jr. CARRIAGE AND BLACKSMITH SHOP, keeps on hand and manufactures to order all kinds of CARRIAGES, WAGONS AND SLEIGHS. Customer work and horse shoeing done promptly and in a satisfactory manner...Corner Washington and Second Streets."

By 1874, probably due to the Depression of 1873, the shop became the property of John Schneider Jr., another early German pioneer and blacksmith. In 1878 Schneider was in business with his brother Louis, but by 1883 he was by himself. Three years later Schneider's horse shoeing business moved around the corner onto Ashley Street (where Wagner's business had moved earlier), and the building was named the Union Hotel. In 1888 a bottling works shared this building with the hotel and by 1899 only the bottling works remained.

After 1895, the storefront portion was operated by Oswald Dietz as Deitz's Saloon. Throughout the 20th century, saloons and restaurants operated here under a half dozen different names: Barrell House, Dietz's Soft Drinks (during Prohibition), Flautz's Restaurant, Metzger's German-American Restaurant, Flautz's Cafe, LaCasa Restaurant, and Del Rio Restaurant and Bar, the present tenant. Charles Miller, in his 1982 biography of W. H. Auden, recounts going with Auden in 1941 to "the then popular Flautz Tavern" and having him comment, "This is all right, but isn't there a common place where, uh, the workers go? A kind of beer hall?" (They ended up going to another bar on Ashley Street.)

This commercial Italianate building is typical of many built just after the Civil War in Ann Arbor. It is of local red brick, three stories high, with a fancy bracketed cornice surmounting brick pilasters which divide the facade into three bays. True to the Italianate style, the upper story windows are tall and narrow and capped with curved window heads and keystones.

The ground floor facade was sympathetically remodeled in the mid-1970s. Using an old photograph, the new owners eliminated earlier changes inappropriate to the building's style.